For sportstats
home page, and info in Test Cricket in Australia 1877-2002, click here
Who are the Fastest-Scoring
(and Most Tenacious) Batsmen in Test Cricket? Click Here.
The Fastest, and Slowest,
batsmen in Ashes Tests.
Longer articles by Charles Davis
|
For
comments, or to contact Z-score (Charles Davis) email statz334 at iprimus dot com dot
au (The address is like this to avoid
SPAM. Type the address in the usual format) |
12 May 2008 The
website/blog Cricket Buzz has
produced a list of “50 Best Cricket Blogs”, and
included this site on the list. So there is a compliment. Thanks, guys. Actually,
I didn’t know there were 50 cricket blogs, best or
otherwise, but with millions of people blogging, I
suppose it is not surprising. So Near but So Far (Written for Cricinfo) When Virender Sehwag strode to the Chennai wicket on the fourth day of the recent Test against South Africa, he already had 309 runs to his name. There would have been a great many fans wondering how far he could go: could he top Brian Lara’s 400? Statistics, however, say that the fans were very likely to be disappointed (as they were). The truth is, that while 309 and 400 sound like reasonably similar scores, they are not. In fact, it is harder for a batsman to add another 100 runs if he has already made 300, than it is at almost any other score. There have now been 22 Test triple centuries, enough for some statistics. Only one of those triples has gone on to produce the magic 400, while 17 have been dismissed. Only one out of 18: that is only a 5.6% conversion rate. (The other four innings finished not out between 300 and 399; it is better not to include them in this calculation.) It is interesting to compare this to the conversion rates at other scores:
*0-99 data involves only recognised batsmen (#1-#6
in batting order). “Number of successes” refers to the number of innings that
have passed through the specified range without dismissal, e.g., for 0-99 it
refers to the number of centuries. While interesting, this data is not very robust for the 300-399 range. If the next batsman to make a triple century happens to go on to 400, the conversion rate will almost double (to a rate similar to the 300-400 conversion rate in first-class cricket of 11%). However, the difficulty that batsmen encounter above 300 can also be seen when we look more closely, at 20-run increments
Note the similarity of the pattern at the 200 mark and the 300 mark. As batsmen approach 200, their conversion rate rises, only to fall suddenly after reaching the milestone; the same thing happens at 300. A dismissal between 280 and 299 is a rare thing. It is also striking that a batsman’s ability to add runs once he has reached 300 (67% and 58% for 300-319 and 320-339) is, in effect, no better than for those who have just reached 100 (62% and 65%). Further perspective can be gained by looking at the one batsman who did make it to 400, Brian Lara at St John’s in 2004. In that innings, Lara played with caution and great focus after reaching 300, taking 178 balls to go from 300 to 400 (56 runs per 100 balls). This is probably the slowest progression from 300 to 400 in first-class cricket: in doing this under very benign conditions when quick runs were called for, Lara also sacrificed any chance his team had of winning the match. Few triple-centurions take this approach. The surprisingly high failure rate after reaching 300, when scoring should be easiest, is probably a combination of mental exhaustion and the need of teams for quick, high-risk runs in those circumstances. The typical scoring rate for triple centurions in their first 300 runs is about 63 runs per 100 balls, but for runs beyond the 300 mark (apart from Lara), the rate is over 80 runs per 100 balls, in time-limited Tests. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
5 May 2008 Sreeram has pointed out a bowling spell
that belongs in the list of longest-ever spells: Garry Sobers at the MCG in
1960/61. He bowled 41 consecutive eight-ball overs over the second and third
days, coming on at 124/0 and finally relieved at 335/9. This is the
third-longest known bowling spell after Hirwani in 1990 and Athol Rowan in 1948/49. George Giffen’s 300-ball spell in 1894/95 is no longer the
longest-known in Australia. There
could still be others even longer than Sobers’, although this seems unlikely. I have
added these records to the Unusual Records
section. Something Completely
Different In the Longer Articles
Section, I have posted a paper I wrote and presented for the “Olympic Legacies”
conference at Oxford University in March 2008. The title is fairly
self-explanatory: Searching for the
Greatest Olympic Performances, Using a Complete Summer Olympics Database Hope you
find it interesting. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
1 May 2008 here is
some basic information on Australian batting partners in Tests. The pairs who
scored most in partnership are as follows
As you can
see, a number of opening pairs at the top, although Australia has had
relatively few long-term successful opening pairs. Interesting that
Hayden/Ponting and Langer/Ponting have more century stands than
Hayden/Langer. Here is a
list of highest partnership averages among batting pairs. Minimum 1000 runs
in partnership.
|