Longer Articles

A new section featuring older articles by Charles Davis. Hopefully this will grow with time.

The Thousand-Ball Partnerships. An article published in the cricket Statistician, on the longest Test partnerships ever.

The Great Test Match of 1880. An over-by-over reconstruction of this historic match at the Oval, with famous centuries by WG Grace and Bill Murdoch.

Bannerman’s Miracle. An historical study of the very first Test innings, Charles Bannerman’s incredible 165 (retired hurt) at the MCG in 1877, which holds a number of Test records to this day.

The Myth of the Nightwatchman. This is older excerpt from my book The Best of the Best. It gives some background to discussion of the nightwatchman tactic in the blog, and shows how the tactic fails more often than it succeeds. There is also a short piece on partnerships: do wickets fall in pairs after long partnerships?

A Tale of Two Spinners. An unedited version of an article published in Wisden Australia 2005-06, comparing the careers of Shane Warne and Mutiah Muralitharan. Data to June 2005 only.

The Last Shall Be First. An unpublished analysis of the advantages, or otherwise, of winning the and the choices captains make. The data are only current to 2005, but the trends have not changed since.

Page Inserts For Wisden Australia 2005-06. This is material published in Wisden Australia 2005-06. It covers the same ground as some items in the blog, but there is some new material here. Again, data is current to mid-2005 only.

Statistical Snippets. Prepared for The Age (Melbourne) Ashes Magazine.

Some comments about Shane Warne’s Test career. These were written for a book “On Ya Warnie” by Ken Piesse.

Searching for the Greatest Olympic Performances a paper presented at the “Olympic Legacies” conference at Oxford University in 2008.