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home page, and info in Test Cricket in
Australia 1877-2002, click here
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Z-score’s Cricket Stats Blog The
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Charles Davis: Statistician of the Year (Association of Cricket
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Who are the Fastest-Scoring
(and Most Tenacious) Batsmen in Test Cricket? Click Here. |
Longer articles by Charles Davis Click Here |
Unusual Records. For Cricket
Records you will not see anywhere else, Click Here |
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a
list of “Unusual Dismissals” in Test matches |
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some remarkable first-class innings, re-scored. |
The Davis Test
Match Database Online. Detailed scores for all Tests from 1877 to the1990s have now been
posted. Almost three-quarters of Tests include ball-by-ball coverage;
virtually all others offer some degree of extended detail, beyond anything
previously made available online. The starting page is here. An information page
outlining this database is here. Major Test Partnerships (200+) 1877 to 1970. Major Test Partnerships (200+) 1971 to 1999.
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I
came across a 1982 newspaper article by Bill O’Reilly. He was talking about his
early recollections of cricket broadcasting on television, which he had first
seen in 1938 in England. The match was Middlesex v Australians on 30th
May 1938 (O’Reilly says it was the 28th, but that day was rained
out). This is before the Tests that year, and must represent one of the very
first cricket TV broadcasts. The
television set (super-expensive in those days) was on loan to the hotel where
the Australians were staying. Most curiously, O’Reilly said he was in the
team playing that day, but he had stayed behind in the hotel to deal with
some correspondence! He had expected the team to bat all day, but they
started losing wickets. O’Reilly could see from the broadcast that the pitch
was dodgy, so he hurried down to the ground, and was just in time to bat and
make a duck. ******** I
took a look at the question of a bowler taking a wicket with his last ball of
a Test and first ball of his next, and found only 25 cases (from the database
covering about 85% of Tests). Waqar Younis and Richard Hadlee did
it twice. The
low number might seem surprising when you consider that there are well over
one thousand cases of wickets with consecutive balls in general play, but
remember that there is never more than one opportunity per Test match for a
bowler to do take two in two in different Tests (and usually no chance at
all), whereas the same bowler may well have multiple opportunities for two
wickets in two balls during the course of a Test match. There
are no known cases of three in three across two Tests (a quasi-hat-trick)
except for the extraordinary case of George Lohmann,
who took a hat-trick to finish a match in 1895-96, and then a wicket with his
first ball of the next Test, to secure four wickets in four balls (he made it
five in six two balls later). Overall,
the chances of taking a wicket with a hat-trick ball are only 1 in 30, so,
given the low incidence of two in two balls across two matches, it is not
surprising that three in three is so rare. There
is an interesting case of Mervyn Dillon, whose last two balls at Port of
Spain in 2002 were a run out and a wicket (in two different overs), followed
by a wicket with his next ball at Bridgetown. Waqar Younis
extended one of his wicket pairs to three wickets in four balls; Rashid Khan
of Afghanistan has done the same, and that was across his first two Test
matches (9 months apart). ******** |
1 November 2021 The
Test Match Database Online has reached a crossover point with the Cricinfo Ball-by-Ball Archive texts. Beginning with the
1998-99 India v Pakistan series in January 1999, Cricinfo
began to archive their bbb logs. I am fairly
certain, from memory, that they were doing some ball-by-ball descriptions of internationals
before that – the earliest record goes back to the 1996 World Cup final – but
for some reason they never preserved them (sad emoji). If I have checked
correctly, the only Test that we have from Cricinfo,
from that period, is a single day from the 1997 India series in West Indies. The
early Cricinfo texts were typed commentaries and
were not designed as rigorous scores; there are gaps and anomalies. Where
necessary (and possible) these have been adjusted with reference to surviving
scores or other published information. In a few cases, such as the final day
of the Asian Test Championship Final in Dhaka 1999, the gaps and problems are
substantial, and there is no detailed backup. In such cases, I have
‘recreated’ a bbb version that is consistent with
surviving scores and reports. These cases are few and I hope I will be
forgiven for doing this for the sake of completeness. There
are actually six Tests from the early period that are missing entirely from Cricinfo, five of them from New Zealand; I have managed
to obtain alternative scores for all of these and so maintain continuity of
the ball-by-ball record. I
have also obtained alternative scores for a significant number of other 21st
Century Tests, but this collection is not comprehensive. Of the first 100
Tests from the ‘Cricinfo era’ starting in 1999,
there are 36 Tests where I rely entirely on Cricinfo
for bbb records. The
archived Cricinfo texts gradually improved in
detail and reliability, especially after 2002. It
would be wonderful if someone at Cricinfo could
unearth some ancient backup tapes from 1997 and 1998 and find some more bbb logs. 1998 is not so
essential as I have all the Test matches from that year already (some ODIs
are missing), but there are considerable gaps in my data for 1997. I
understand that there has been a search of this kind, sadly without success. I
am not sure how far into this new era that my online work will go. But I have
been at this for nine years now and I don’t really know how to stop. ******** The
Kolkata Test of February 1999 at Eden Gardens is one of only seven Tests that
Pakistan has played at that cavernous venue. The match quite possibly
attracted the highest attendance of any Test match; however, the numbers were
never accurately counted. I am told that the ground had 90,462 seats at the
time, so any numbers in excess of that must have been standing room only. The
available numbers are estimates, and it must be said that the estimates vary
widely. I
have collected (with assistance from others) some mentions of crowd numbers
from reports at the time, illustrating the variations in estimates…
Ironically,
the last overs of the match were bowled in a virtually empty stadium,
following a roughhouse clearing out of the final day crowd by police, in
response to serious unrest that suspended play for three hours and 20
minutes. There had also been serious unrest on Day 4. Even
though it appeared in Wisden, I
consider the estimate of 465,000 to be highly improbable. A figure around
400,000 seems a reasonable compromise from the conflicting numbers. This
number is in the same ballpark (if I may use the expression) as the estimate
of 395,000 for the Test against Australia at the same Ground in 2001, and the
390,000 estimate from 1981-82. I don’t have figures for Tests at Eden Gardens
after 2002, but it has been apparent that Test attendances have been
declining in India, even though interest remains substantial. At the same
time, Indian authorities have been distributing Test matches among a wider
range of smaller venues, and Kolkata has hosted only 12 Tests in 22 years
since the match in question. The
largest accurately measured total attendance for a Test remains the 350,534
over six days at the MCG back in 1937. The most for a five-day Test is
271,854 for the MCG Boxing Day Test in 2013-14 (including a ground-high
91,062 on the first day), and the highest average daily attendance is 81,450
for the equivalent match in 2006-07, which only lasted three days. ******** |
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16 October 2021 I
don’t think I have discussed before, on this blog, the origins of the early
Test match “canon”, that is, the list of matches regarded as official Tests. It
is widely held that the originator of the list was a South Australian
journalist named Clarence P. Moody. Beyond that, it remains a bit of a
mystery how Moody’s list, drawn up in the 1890s, became accepted as gospel.
With limited debate, and no input from English sources, it has become set in
stone, so to speak. Moody was something of a cricket statistician. He was
also a friend of George Giffen, who may well have
suggested the creation of the list. However, there was never any official
imprimatur on Moody’s work. I
went looking for Moody’s original list. Various printed sources and online
articles said that it came from Moody’s 1898 book on South Australian
Cricket. I managed to borrow, from Roger Page, a facsimile copy of this book
(originals are rare and valuable) and was rather surprised to find that it
contained no such list. However, an Introduction to that facsimile edition
pointed me to an earlier (1894) Moody work, Australian Cricketers 1856-1893-94. Fortunately, the Trove
Archive has this book online, and there can be found the original list, on
pages 80 and 81. Clarence
Moody’s 1894 list of Test matches
One
noteworthy aspect is that Moody restricted himself to England v Australia Test
matches. In that respect, the list is indeed identical to the accepted canon,
but there are several other matches, played in South Africa in 1888-89 and
1891-92, that are not included. So how did those Tests get into official
lists? I don’t know but I would like to find out. (I am told that the South
Africa matches were listed as Tests by Ashley-Cooper in a Cricketer Annual in
1930-31, but I don’t know if there are earlier references.) I
do know that there has been plenty of doubt and dispute over the Test status
of some matches, and also some matches that did not make the list but might
have. In the case of 1888-89, even the first-class status can be questioned,
since there was no first-class cricket in South Africa at the time, and a
number of the Englishmen were themselves not first-class cricketers. (A
favourite stat: JEP McMaster played Test cricket, but was out to the only
ball he ever faced in first-class cricket.) In his 1951 collection of Test
match scores (The Playfair
Book of Test Cricket), Roy Webber certainly expressed a sceptical view,
but he also said that “little purpose seems to be served by omitting
‘doubtful’ matches”. I agree, but I think that caveats need always to be
expressed when records from those matches crop up (such as Briggs 15 wickets
for 28 at Cape Town, 14 of them clean bowled). A
comment from the Sydney Sportsman
in 1901 seems pertinent here…
It
should be said that Moody’s list did not require deep scholarship. Once the
matches of 1877 are accepted into Test cricket, most of the rest falls into
place. However, the fact that the list came to be used as a reference, in the
face of the disagreements expressed above, makes it important. I
won’t go into the detail of the claims of certain matches for Test status.
But here are a couple of observations: -
The touring English team in 1884-85 did not regard the first two matches, now
regarded as Tests, as authentic. As far as they were concerned there were
three Tests in the series. The canon lists five. -
The 1887-88 match was by no means regarded as a
proper Test match even in Sydney. The Sydney
Morning Herald described the Australians as the "non-representative
Australian XI". ******** An Earlier
Wagon Wheel I
have written (somewhere) that the first known batting Wagon Wheels were found
in Test match reports in the Daily
Express in 1905. Sreeram has now pushed the
date back a little further, finding similar diagrams in Manchester Guardian reports for the first Test of that series
(innings by Hill and Tyldesley). Unfortunately, the
Guardian reports do not say how the
diagrams were made or by whom, although they do claim copyright. The Express does suggest that theirs were
drawn up in the newspaper office, based on information telegraphed or
telephoned from the ground. It
has been claimed/reported that Wagon Wheels were invented by Bill Ferguson,
who in 1905 was the Australian scorer, making his first of many tours.
However, the diagrams in the British papers are different in style to
Ferguson’s, with concentric circles for each run value. No actual
Ferguson-style Wagon Wheels earlier than 1911 have been sighted. In
his autobiography, Ferguson provides a whole range of examples of his Wagon
Wheels, but he is curiously vague about their development. The earliest
diagram in that book is from 1912 (he didn’t call them “Wagon Wheels” by the
way; I wonder when the term originated). Sreeram has added
further evidence by finding another 1905 Guardian
Wagon Wheel, this time from a county match, Lancashire v Yorkshire in June (Tyldesley 134). It even names the bowlers for each shot.
Ferguson
at this time was elsewhere scoring for the Australian team, so could not have
contributed to this. I think that it is now fair to say that Ferguson
adopted, rather than invented, the idea of a Wagon Wheel. ******** |
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In
the Test match at The Oval, Rohit Sharma (127) was
dismissed by the first ball with the new ball, after a partnership of 153
with Pujara. This is the second highest partnership
ended by a brand new ball, after a partnership of 172 between Mark Richardson
and Stephen Fleming at Colombo PSS in 2003.(where known) ******** Something
curious about cricket watching in Sri Lanka…during England’s Test match in
Colombo in 1992-93, the attendance on the Saturday was only about 1,000. On
the same weekend, two interschool matches in Colombo attracted crowds of over
10,000. (source:
Sunday Times) ******** Here
is a neat little stat. When West Australian Des Hoare batted for the first
time on debut at Adelaide in 1961, his first ball was from Lance Gibbs, who
had just completed the hat-trick. As
far as I can see, Hoare is the only batsman in Test history whose first ball
in Tests was the first ball after a hat-trick (the double hat-trick ball).
Others on debut have come in after a hat-trick, but it was either the second
innings, or they didn't face the double hat-trick ball. One case was CA Absolom in 1878-79, who came in after Spofforth
took a hat-trick, but the hat-trick came off the last three balls of an over,
and Absolom faced a ball in the next over, before Spofforth bowled again.
******** Longest
sequence of missed chances off a bowler without a catch being taken (data
since 2003)... In
2019, Joe Root had a sequence of seven chances missed off his bowling,
without any catches being taken, spread over three Tests. Same thing happened
to Nathan Hauritz in 2010, again over multiple
Tests. ******** It
hadn't occurred to me until a question on Ask Steven, but I found that never
before had a team, behind on first innings, declared its second innings after
lunch on the 5th day, and won. This is what India did to England at Lord's. ******** The
most threes in a Test career were hit by Steve Waugh (397) and Ricky Ponting
(381). The top six positions are held by Australians who were active (at
least in part) during the 1990s, before the much-lamented ‘shrinking’ of the
grounds and the advent of Super Bats. Mark Taylor hit 354 threes or 14.1% of
his runs; this is the highest percentage of any major batsman. Threes
have always been more common on the larger Australian grounds. The top 13
positions are held by Australian or English batsmen. ****** |
16 September 2021 I
have been working on a
list of “Unusual Dismissals” in Test matches. This is
largely drawn from notes that I have made over the years in my study of Test
matches and scorebooks, rather than specific research. Some of the instances
have been thanks to suggestions by others. The
stimulus to finally put this together was the dismissal of Nauman Ali at Harare earlier this year, stumped by Chakabva off a wide. As far as I know, this was
unprecedented in Test matches, although it happens from time to time in
limited overs games. Any
suggestions for additions would be welcome. The general criteria include: a
dismissal must have occurred, and there must have been something very unusual
about the dismissal itself, not just the situation (for instance, run out for
99 is not included unless there was something strange about the dismissal).
Also excluded is where one fielder drops a catch and deflects to another:
there are actually many examples of this in Tests. Bowlers deflecting a shot
to effect a run out is also excluded, unless it was
a dropped catch. ******** While
checking through the list of most
overs in a day by individual bowlers, I noticed again the
absence of any modern names. The list is effectively set in stone, and is
dominated by Tests where over rates were high and days lasted six hours. Most
instances came from the 1940s and early 1950s, when some captains, rather
lacking in imagination, would put spin bowlers on and just keep them bowling.
This certainly applied to John Goddard of the West Indies. So
I have prepared a separate list for Tests since 1998. Most Overs
in a Day: individual bowlers since 1998.
Incomplete
overs counted as one There
are ten cases of 39 overs. Even in this list, the near absence of instances
in the last ten years is notable, with just one appearance, by Jadeja. There are only three instances from the last ten
years in the Top 30. By contrast, Muralitharan
appears ten times in the Top 30, and even then his Tests before 1998 are not
included. There
are worrying signs that over rates are on the way down again. It has become
unusual for teams get through 90 overs in the allotted six hours, often not
even in the allowed extension to 6.5 hours. The great majority of innings in
Tests this year have recorded over rates of 80 balls per hour or less (40 out
of the last 46 innings). In the 1960s, rates of more than 100 balls per hour
were commonplace; in the 1940s and earlier, it was
120 balls per hour or more. Fielding
sides are mostly to blame, but not entirely. Batsmen nowadays often go
through elaborate preparations and are quite frequently not ready to face
when a bowler is trying to get through an over more quickly than usual. ******** There
has been a general checking and updating of various records in the “Unusual Records”
section. Not everything has been checked, but those sections that have been
checked have been appropriately labelled with a date. |
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A
scoring curiosity: in the second Test between Zimbabwe and New Zealand at
Harare in 1997-98, it appears that when no balls were scored from, an extra
run was added (for example, a no ball hit for four added five runs to the
total). This was not the established protocol at the time: the practice came
into general use about a year later. There were no instances in the first
Test of that series (none of the no balls were scored from), but there were
several instances in the second Test. The
change became permanent in Test #1424, Pakistan v Aus,
Oct 1998. In
the Zim Test, it is particularly interesting in
that the match was very close. In the final innings, the 8th wicket fell with
4 balls left and 11 to win. At that point the tailenders decided not to go
for victory and played out the four balls. But if the scoring protocol had
been normal for that time, the target would actually have been 8 runs (and 7
to tie), not 11. I wonder: perhaps they would have had a go at that. ******** From
time to time a batsman scores a century on the first day of a Test even
though his team batted second. Bowlers have also been known to take five or
more wickets on the first day, bowling second, but it has become rather rare
in these days of covered wickets and slow over rates. The most recent case is
Glenn McGrath at Lord’s in 2005. After Australia was out for 190, McGrath
took five wickets for two runs from his 4th to 9th
overs, immediately following tea. He finished the day with 5 for 21. ******** Fred
Price was a wicketkeeper from Middlesex who played one Test in 1938. He
played 402 first-class matches without ever bowling, the all-time record for
a complete career. Kumar
Sangakkara played 529 List A games (and also 267 T20)
without bowling. However, he bowled in f-c cricket. T20:
Eoin Morgan has played 333 T20s to date without
bowling. Combined
totals: Steven Davies, who has played for England and various counties, has
played 581 games (240 f-c, 188 List A, and 153 T20) without bowling. He
bowled one over in an Under-19 Test. He is still active. ******** |
17 August 2021 In
response to an enquiry, I put together a list of bowlers who have bowled
underarm in Tests. Gerald
Brodribb actually wrote a book on underarm
bowling. I don’t have a copy, but
there is a surprising amount of stuff on ‘lob’ bowling on the internet
(Cricket Country and elsewhere) that is probably derived from Brodribb, at least in part. I have scoured this and come
up with the following (some is from notes in my database). Most of these were
bowling lobs, and the underarm part is presumed. Hornby is an exception,
bowling "grubbers". Underarm bowlers
in Tests T
Armitage Eng v Aus (1),
Melbourne (MCG) 1876/77 AN
Hornby Eng v Aus (1),
Melbourne (MCG) 1878/79 WW
Read Eng v Aus (1),
Melbourne (MCG) 1882/83 WW
Read Eng v Aus (3), The
Oval 1884 A
Lyttleton Aus v Eng (3), The Oval 1884 G
Ulyett Eng v Aus (2), Melbourne (MCG) 1884/85 one ball only AE
Stoddart Eng v Aus (4), Melbourne (MCG) 1897/98 GHT
Simpson-Hayward Eng v SAf
1909/10 Five Tests Simpson-Hayward
is regarded as the last of the regular lob bowlers. Test players
recorded as bowling underarm in first-class cricket but not in Tests For the most part, these players did
so only once, or on rare occasions. EM
Grace SMJ
Woods CB
Fry R
Spooner GF
Vernon LCH
Palairet RH
Spooner EG
Wynyard JM
Blackham H
Verity JB
Iverson JM
Brearley CF
Root G
Brown Yuvraj of Patiala Dilip Vengsarkar is said to have bowled an over of lobs for
West Zone against the MCC in 1984-85. However, these appear to have been
‘donkey drops’, not underarm. I
read also the Hornby was also ambidextrous with regard to bowling. Apart from
him, I have not seen any references to bowling ‘grubbers’ (as opposed to
lobs) in Tests. ******** Dismissal
Frequency by Ball of Over Is
there any pattern to dismissals according to which ball of an over is being
bowled? I decided to have another look at this. For all dismissals in Tests
from 2003 to 2020, the numbers are
This
distribution is largely random. There is a slight shortage of dismissals on
Ball #1, which seems to be associated with a pattern in tail-end dismissals.
There is an excess of 8th-10th wicket dismissals toward the end of an over,
perhaps because of failed strike-farming attempts. For
the first seven wickets, where the innings continued after the dismissal, the
numbers are
This
is a fairly random set of numbers. None of these numbers is even 1 percentage
point away from the mean of 16.67%. ******** |
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13 July 2021 I
have updated the Hot 100 list – the
fastest-scoring Test batsmen. It’s been a couple of years since the last
update. Most
batsmen tend to score at a characteristic rate which varies less, over time,
than batting average. The upshot is that the list changes only gradually, apart from new players making an
appearance, so it doesn’t matter too much if updates are infrequent. It
is interesting though that David Warner, still very prominent in the list,
has been ‘calming down’ to some extent in recent years. He sometimes plays
defensively now (only sometimes). His career scoring rate as of 2019 was
74.5; this has now dropped to 72.7. His scoring rate in the interim has been
62.5 runs per 100 balls, and that includes his triple-century against
Pakistan. The
full lists are at the usual link. I have also prepared
the list below, restricted to fully-recognised batsmen, just to see how the
list looks without the lower-middle-order all-rounders and wicketkeepers who
are prominent on the full list. The list is filtered simply by restricting to
batsmen with an average batting position of less than 6.1. (All innings for
such batsmen were included, even below #6 position,
as long as the career average position was 6.1). The runs qualification has
been raised to 2000 career runs for modern batsmen, although it remains at
1000 runs for earlier times. Given
these qualifications, Virender Sehwag’s
lead becomes very striking indeed. Shahid Afridi
was faster still as a top-order player, but his Test record is rather patchy
and he never reached 2000 runs. Fastest-scoring Test batsmen:
‘recognised’ batsmen
A modified version of this list, with
adjustment for changes in runs-scoring standards over time, is
available at the link. This particular list has not been
updated since 2019. |
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During
a tour of Sri Lanka in 1996, Alistair Campbell and Henry Olonga
of Zimbabwe were swept out to sea while swimming, and had to be rescued by
lifeguards. The incident was reminiscent of a rescue during the rest day of
the Bridgetown Test of 1977, when Pakistan players Zaheer
Abbas and Wasim Bari were rescued from drowning
while attempting to swim back to their hotel from a raft that had drifted out
to sea. ******** |
21 June 2021 Well it’s been a while since anything
was posted. Put that down to other work coming in (non-cricket) and general
lassitude. It might not be a reasonable response, but the effect of all these
crushing lockdowns has been to discourage rather than encourage me. Nevertheless,
Test matches are still being posted in my database – well into 1996 now. I
have been making minor (but painstaking) corrections to some older data too,
mostly in the session-by-session and ball-by-ball files, which did not always
line up precisely, particularly for inter-War Tests. Thanks to Glenn Timmins
for pointing out the problems. Anyway.
Here are a few items… Players making the greatest number of
different scores,
from 0 to 100, in all Internationals combined. It is not surprising that
Tendulkar leads here, but he never made scores of 58 or 75. A pity then that
he was out for 74 in his last Test; he had already made that score three
times. He also made two 76s late in his career. Tendulkar
did make scores of 58 and 75 in first-class cricket, although he never made
99 or 102, and a few other scores below 90, including 87. He did make those
scores in List A. If my search is correct, the lowest score (f-c and List A
combined) that Tendulkar never made is 129, followed closely by 130.
******** Batsmen
who faced 100 balls in a Test innings – highest career percentages. H Sutcliffe 58.3% of
innings B Mitchell 52.5% WM Woodfull
51.9% DG Bradman 50.0% IR Redpath 50.0% L Hutton 50.0% KF Barrington 49.2% EAB Rowan 48.0% G Boycott 45.6% GM Turner 45.2% RS Dravid
45.1% (minimum 50 innings; some
estimates – a limited number – are necessary for older data) ******** Some stats on 20 (+) run overs in
Tests. There
have been 178 known instances of which 27 were in 8-ball overs. Of
the 178, 96 occurred in this century. Of
the 178, 118 included an individual batsman making 20 or more runs. In the
others the runs were shared or there were extras to make up the 20. Bowlers
conceding 20 in an over... four times for JR Thomson and MJ Hoggard. Two of Thomson's were 8-ball overs. Three times
by Swann, M Morkel, Boje,
Willis and Sobers (Willis and Sobers include 8-ball overs) Batsmen
hitting 20 runs in an over: Gilchrist 6 times, Lara and Botham 3. Thirteen
batsmen have done it twice. Botham and Lara were also in one additional over
each worth 20 or more runs, although they did not themselves score 20. David
Warner has batted in four 20+ overs, although he has scored 20 runs only once
himself. ******** Here
are some percentages for 'No Play' days in Tests, by country. Days can be
lost for a variety of reasons but mostly weather. Abandoned matches not
included, but all other Tests are. Ireland
20.0% (1 match only) Bangladesh
5.6% New
Zealand 4.8% England
4.2% India
3.2% Sri
Lanka 3.0% South
Africa 2.7% Zimbabwe
2.2% Australia
2.0% Pakistan
2.2% West
Indies 1.9% UAE
0.6% (1 day lost, following death of PJ Hughes) ******** |
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Although
he was selected as an opening batsman, Roger Twose
did not get to bat until the fifth day of his second Test match. His debut at
Chennai in 1995 was washed out with only 2 sessions of play, and New Zealand
did not bat. The following Test at Cuttack was similarly afflicted, and New
Zealand did not bat until the morning of the fifth day. ******** I
have mentioned before that when Garry Sobers hit the ******** |
28 April 2021 Musical Cricket I
had an unusual 'cricket' experience recently. I went to a concert by a
classical trio (piano, violin, cello) who call themselves the Benaud trio. They played a new piece by David Lang called
"The Tied Test". As a musical concept, it is possibly unique. It
was literally a Test match (the Brisbane Tied Test in 1960) set to music. It
had four movements, one for each innings, with each over of the match
corresponding to one bar of music. Moreover, each of the 22 players was
represented by a small motif which was played while they were bowling (piano)
or batting (violin, cello). The players explained a few of these motifs
before the performance; they were linked to the players’ names, so “Richie Benaud” had four notes and “Alan Davidson” five, with
rhythms similar to the spoken name. “Wes Hall” had just two notes, but played
heavily to suit a fast bowler. I could not make out all 22 motifs, of course,
but I am sure I heard “Norm O’Neill” frequently during the second movement.
O’Neill of course scored 181 in the corresponding innings. I
had made a small contribution to this. David Lang contacted me a few months
ago about his idea, and I supplied with all the statistical information I had
on the Tied Test. I
regarded the music as a great success. It had a calypso flavour, and was much
more accessible than typical modern music. It
was the first concert I have been to in 18 months, so was particularly
memorable. It was a small venue, perhaps 100 seats, but was sold out. There
was no social distancing. Masks were encouraged but not mandatory; about 20%
of patrons wore them. I
must find out how the Benaud Trio got its name. The
name is serious; the group has been around for 15 years and has won various
chamber music competitions and awards. There
is a clip of the composer explaining the music at the link (I get a mention) https://www.facebook.com/benaudtrio
******** I
did an interview last week with Jack Snape of the ABC, discussing aspects of
the history of cricket scoring. We covered a range of subjects and it was
quite enjoyable. It is a bit unfortunate, though, that they focussed on that
old Bradman four runs thing, an article that I wrote 13 years ago, and is old
news. https://www.abc.net.au/.../sir-don-donald.../100078546 For
the record, I still stand by the analysis of Bradman. However, moving the
mystery four runs (in the final Test of 1928-29) into the Bradman column is
only one of a number of possible resolutions for the anomaly in the surviving
scorebook, and I would concede it is not the most likely. It is still an open
question, though. ********* 333 with no 3s It’s
a rather large and fiddly table, but for anyone interested here is a complete
breakdown of scoring strokes for all Test triple (or should that be treble?)
centuries. It’s fair to say that all such innings benefit from benign batting
conditions, but how could it be any other way? If a batsman could score a
triple under difficult conditions, what should he be capable of when the
going is good? There
is quite a lot of variability in the composition of the strokes. This can
reflect the speed of the outfield or the batting style, or both. It can be
hard to unravel these factors. Undoubtedly, Chris Gayle benefited from a
small ground and fast outfield when he hit 333 at There
is a quite a remarkable difference between the triples by Edrich
and Cowper, made within months of one another. Edrich
hit 57 boundaries and 3 threes, while Cowper hit 20 boundaries and 26 threes.
Cowper’s 307 was scored on a large ground with
extremely slow outfield: his fours included several that were all-run. One
can speculate that Cowper’s innings might have been worth an extra 50 runs
under the conditions enjoyed by Edrich.
†Hammond’s
official score is, of course, 336 not out, but re-scoring the scorebook gives
him 337 not out. I have used the latter so that the strokes add up. Incidentally,
the highest innings for which I do not have a full stroke breakdown is the
next on the list – Bradman’s 299* at Adelaide in 1931-32. ******** |
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26 March 2021 A Lost Century? In
the previous post I mentioned the discovery of scores from the 1909-10 M.C.C.
tour of South Africa. I have now rescored these matches into ball-by-ball
form and they have been posted in my online database here. Robin
Isherwood has provided more information on the source. The scorebook was the
work of one Bernard de Rockstro Malraison
(1844-1930), a long-time scorer in Transvaal. He had stood as an umpire in a
match involving Major Warton’s team in 1888-89, but not in the Tests. He is not
to be confused with his son W. de R. Malraison
(1876-1916) who played for Transvaal a couple of times. The younger Malraison died fighting in the Great War, not in Europe
but in East Africa, where there was considerable conflict between British and
German colonials. In
the scorebook, the first three Tests are in the same hand, almost certainly Malraison himself. The scores are accurate and re-scoring
was straightforward. The fourth and fifth Test scores, played in Cape Town,
are in a different hand. The scorers are identified as W.W.A. Colson
(1884-1941) and T.H.G. Lancellas (1874-1934). These
later scores contain problems. They are almost certainly re-copies, and
errors have crept in, some of them significant. For instance, in South
Africa’s 103 in the final Test, there are 33 extras recorded. These extras,
however, apply to England’s first innings of 417. An
unusual feature of newspaper reports of the final Test include statements
that there was an error in the scoring of Aubrey Faulkner’s 99 in the second
innings, and that he actually scored 100; it was said that one run had been
mistakenly credited to Sinclair (37). And indeed, the re-score does give
Faulkner an exact 100 and Sinclair 36. Unfortunately, it is not clear-cut.
There are several anomalies that occur in the score during the innings; for
example, Faulkner’s scoring stroke order in the batting score does not match
the bowlers’ rescore analysis. So, uncertainty must remain; I would say,
though, that when I tried a few possible changes to the bowling (which itself
creates new anomalies), Faulkner still gets his 100. Robin
Isherwood also sent me a photo of Malraison with
his scorebook, taken when he was 84 years old. It is rather charming and I
will post it here…
******** A New Look at the ‘Slowest’ and ‘Quickest’ Bowlers I
have done a little exercise to look for the current bowlers who are fastest
and slowest in getting through their overs. I was able to do this thanks to
Benedict Bermange, who has over the years sent me quite a number of his
linear Test scores with clock times at the start of every over. I have
entered this data onto a spreadsheet for 22 recent Tests (since 2019, more
than 7000 overs). Benedict only scores Tests involving England, but the 22
Tests involve all the major Test countries. Bowlers who did not play against
England in this period are not covered. I
was inspired to do this by a comment from Benedict that Ishant
Sharma seems to take an inordinate time to get through his overs. And sure
enough, guess who tops the list of 67 'slowest' bowlers, and by a significant
margin? Bowler minutes per over I
Sharma 5.56 ST
Gabriel 5.07 MA
Starc 5.03 JL
Pattinson 4.98 JJ
Bumrah 4.90 AA
Nortje 4.85 MA
Wood 4.83 PJ
Cummins 4.80 JR
Hazlewood 4.69 Shaheen Shah Afridi
4.65 Times
are given in fractions of minutes, not minutes:seconds. The
calculation only considers what I call 'standard' overs, or complete overs
without interruptions. (Standard overs comprise about 82% of all overs.)
Overs with wickets, reviews, drinks break, injuries etc
are filtered out. Leaving them in doesn't affect the order much. The
bowlers who get through their over the quickest, based once again on
uninterrupted overs, are NM
Lyon 3.50 S
Nadeem 3.45 RL
Chase 3.41 Yasir Shah 3.39 RRS
Cornwall 3.34 JE
Root 3.34 KA
Maharaj 3.31 R
Ashwin 3.23 JL
Denly 3.21 AR
Patel 3.17 Although
Akshar Patel has the fastest standard over, he
ranks only about 10th on an 'every-over' basis. This reflects the very high
frequency of wickets that he has taken to date, which increase over times by
about 1.5 minutes each time there is an interruption. The
qualification is minimum 25 'standard' overs. Benedict's clock times only go
to the nearest minute, but when averaged out, more precision is possible. I
also looked at the effect of interruptions of various kinds on minutes taken
to bowl an over.
******** |
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Most
runs off 6 consecutive balls in Tests… The
record for a single over is 28, but three batsman have scored 29 off six consecutive
balls spread across multiple overs: Adam
Gilchrist 664616 during his famous Perth century; Andy
Blignaut 646661 at Cape Town in 2005. ******* The
player involved in run outs most times in ODIs is Mohammad Yousuf 79 times (run out 38 times, partners 41). Steve
Waugh is on 78 (27+51) and on 76 there is Inzamam
(40+36) and Sachin Tendulkar (34+42). Run out most times is Marvan Atapattu on 41 (+24
partners),while for partner run outs the record is
Waugh (51, above). There
is uncertainty in some of the above figures for partners. I suspect that
there are errors in fall-of-wicket batsman identifications in older matches.
I have never checked the 'official' identifications in ODIs but I believe
that some of them are guesswork. I have surveyed the equivalent data in Tests
and found more than 400 errors in the 'official' online scores. ******** From
Arnold D’Souza: ******** |
13 March 2021 Falling at the Last Here
is a list of batsmen who batted all day only to be out to the last ball of
the day. I prepared this when I noticed that this fate had recently befallen
two English batsmen in the space of only a few Tests. Almost 200 Tests had
passed since the previous instance in 2016. Batsman
(final score)...number of runs, day, Test H
Sutcliffe(161)…141, day 3, Eng v Aus (5), The Oval 1926 CA
Roach(209)…209, day 1, WI v Eng (3), Georgetown,
Guyana 1930 Pankaj
Roy(140)…140, day 1, Ind v Eng
(2), Mumbai (Brabourne) 1951/52 Pankaj
Roy(150)…120, day 5, Ind v WI (5), Kingston,
Jamaica 1953 Waqar
Hassan(189)…154, day 3, Pak v NZ (2), Lahore (Jinnah) 1955/56 Khalid Ibadulla(166)…166, day 1, Pak v Aus
(1), Karachi (National) 1964/65 ED Solkar(67)…67, day 3,
Ind v Eng (1), Lord's
1971 GM
Wood(126)…126, day 4, Aus v WI (3), Georgetown,
Guyana 1978 SM Gavaskar(115)…115, day 1, Ind v
Aus (4), Delhi (FSK) 1979/80 MD Crowe(137)…123, day 3, NZ v Aus
(2), Christchurch 1985/86 MH
Richardson(99)…99, day 1, NZ v Zim (2), Harare
2000/01 MP
Vaughan(177)…177, day 1, Eng v Aus
(2), Adelaide Oval 2002/03 AN
Cook(105)…105, day 1, Eng v WI (3), Bridgetown,
Barbados 2015 TWM
Latham(136)…136, day 1, NZ v Zim (2), Bulawayo
(Queen's) 2016 JE
Root(186)…119, day 3, Eng v SL (2), Galle 2020/21 DP
Sibley(87)…87, day 1, Eng v Ind
(1), Chennai (Chepauk) 2020/21 Qualifications:
more than 50 overs in the day and the match had to continue next day after
the batsman was out. In
the Solkar and Crowe cases, the team was all out,
so it is very likely that the day’s play would have continued if the wicket
had not fallen. Of
the above, only Waqar, Ibadulla,
Gavaskar and Taslim were
out to the last ball of an over, so presumably these are the only ones who
knew they were facing the last ball of the day. This is not absolutely
certain, since there could have been another over if they hadn't been out.
However, in the Ibadulla and Gavaskar
cases, it is known that no further overs could have been bowled. ******** Here
are lists of the fastest and slowest Test partnerships, in terms of speed for
the first 100 runs. The data is drawn from the ball-by-ball database,
supplemented, where ball-by-ball data is absent, by research into original
reports. Overall, time or balls faced information was found for the first 100
runs for about 95 % of century partnerships. Generally speaking, where data
is absent, the partnerships were not remarkable in terms of speed (or lack of
it). In
some cases, conversions had to be made between minutes and ball bowled, using
over rates for the relevant innings. This creates a little uncertainty in the
exact rankings in the following tables, particularly the first table where
changes of only a couple of minutes could affect results. The
fastest times in minutes (and the slowest in balls bowled) are mostly from
older Tests, played in the days of high over rates. By contrast, when it
comes to fast partnerships in balls bowled, recent Tests dominate. Fastest Test Century partnerships (1st
100 runs, minutes)
Slowest Test Century partnerships (1st
100 runs, minutes)
Fastest Test Century partnerships (1st
100 runs, balls)
Slowest Test Century partnerships (1st
100 runs, balls)
None of the partnerships in the final
category would rival the partnership of 98 by Sardesai
and Manjrekar at Bridgetown in 1962, which occupied close to 590 balls and
248 minutes. I
may add these lists to the Unusual Records section. ******** Andrew
Samson has come up with some ‘new’ Test match scores, found at the
Johannesburg Wanderers ground. They are from a handwritten scorebook, by a
gentleman named Malraison, that has somehow survived the years. It contains, among
other things, full scores for all five Tests of the 1909-10 M.C.C. tour of
South Africa, Tests that were previously lost. Breakthroughs
like this have become rare, made even more difficult by the restrictions
related to the Covid virus. So this is a great
find, and Andrew has kindly already supplied me with copies. I will re-score
it into ball-by-ball form in due course. Credit
to Robin Isherwood, who alerted me to the existence of this book, and the
possibility of it containing Test match scores, 15 months ago. It took a
sustained effort by Andrew to get access to the book. ******** |
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The
responsibility for calling no balls in internationals has now been fully
handed over to the third umpire. The change was introduced when Test matches
re-commenced in England last July. In 18 Tests since then, there have been
199 no balls called. In the previous 18 Tests, when the calls were left to
on-field umpires or referrals, there were only 77 no balls. This
is quite a significant change! ******** Most
runs by a batsman off a single bowler in an ODI… at the SCG in the 2015 World
Cup, AB de Villiers (162*) scored 76 runs off JO Holder. Note: this was NOT
de Villiers' record-breaking 100 in 31 balls innings. ******** Carl
Hooper took 568 balls to progress from 99 Test wickets to 100, spanning three
Tests in 2001. ******** (As
of end of January) In the last 19 Tests, only one has been won by the team
winning the toss. Three draws and 15 losses. In the sole victory (NZ v Pak at
Christchurch) the team winning the toss (NZ) chose to bowl. It certainly does
fluctuate. In the previous 19 Tests, there were 11 wins to the team winning
the toss, and 5 losses. Back in 2018 there was a sequence of 13 consecutive
wins to teams winning the toss. ******** How
did underarm bowling really work?... Before
about 1750 cricket bowling was literally bowling, that is all along the
ground. Lumpy Stevens, it is said, invented ‘length’ bowling. I
don't really know about the specific actions, but according to Barclay's
World of Cricket A-Z, most bowling before 1800 was "medium to
fast". A bowler named Lamborn was the first
off-spinner. From 1777, a bowler named Noah Mann was "giving a curve to
the ball the whole way". About
50 years ago my club played a game against a team of blind cricketers
(legally blind, but most could see a bit). The ball was made of wicker with a
bell in it, and the bowlers bowled underarm. You had to pitch the ball in the
first half of the pitch, and the ball, ringing, would bounce several times.
The bowlers had a run up and sent the ball down surprisingly fast. The stumps
were bright orange (for those who could see a bit) and had a bell attached
which the keeper would ring to orient the bowler and assist returns from the
fielders. We did sometimes help fielders who couldn't find the ball when it
stopped moving. They
absolutely thrashed us, as I recall. Certainly the most memorable cricket match of my youth. ******** The
Australia/India series really went down to the wire, with the series result
very much in the balance going into the last hour of the last Test. I
couldn't find any precedents in series of 4 or more Tests, where the final
Test produced a result. It
has happened occasionally with 3-Test series. In 2013-14 in South Africa,
Australia won the final Test with 6.4 overs left, to take the series 2-1. In
West Indies in the same season, New Zealand won the final Test with 13.4
overs left, to take the series 2-1. ******** Highest
innings in Tests that were both unbeaten and completely chanceless… Lara's
400* contained 'technical', 'half-' or 'possible' chances only. Warner's
335* against Pakistan last year was chanceless but there was one DRS and he
was caught off a no ball on 236. In
the DRS era, Adam Voges 269* against West Indies
was chanceless and there were no reviews or run out attempts. Javed Miandad's
280* against India in 1982-83 was chanceless. All other unbeaten innings
higher than this prior to 2000 are known to have included chances of some
description. ******** Usman
Shinwari of Pakistan has played in 17 ODIs but has
faced only seven balls in his four innings. His one and only scoring shot was
a first-ball six off Marcus Stoinis in 2019. He was
out next ball.
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7 February 2021 Dropped Catches Report 2019-2020 I
have updated the survey of dropped catches in Test matches to include matches
up to the end of 2020. As I have reported in the past, the list is created by
searching Cricinfo’s (vast) ball-by-ball texts for
mentions of missed chances, searching for up to 40 terms (or euphemisms) that
are used to indicate chances. This usually whittles the texts down to about
100 ‘hits’ per Test, which I then read through to identify real chances. The
continuous survey goes back to late 2001, plus some Tests from the previous
12 months. The first two or three years have gaps, in that the texts
sometimes lacked the necessary detail. (I also have very patchy data on Tests
from the 1920s to 1990s from other sources, which I have reported on
elsewhere.) I
have combined the data from 2020 with 2019 since the number of matches in
2020 was so limited. Overall, 24.1% of chances were missed in this period, including missed stumpings
but not missed run outs (run outs are not searched). This represents 6.26
missed chances per Test. Since 2002, the average rate has been 25.6%, so
24.1% represents a better than average year from the fielders’ perspective;
However, the rate was higher than 2018’s 22.6%, which was the lowest
recorded. Overall
the rate from 2002 to 2010 was 26.0%; from 2011 to 2020 it was 24.9%. This
indicates a gradual, if slight, improvement in catching. This appears to be
an extension of a long-term trend; data from earlier decades, where
available, indicated rates of 27-30%. The
data breakdown for the various countries is shown in the table. Overall,
South Africa has had the best catching record, although there are signs of
decline in the most recent data. For some years, South Africa had Boucher
keeping wickets and Graeme Smith at slip; both of these players had
outstanding catching records, as did AB de Villiers. Recent
improvement in catching by Pakistan is quite striking and appears to be
sustained. Is it something to do with the UAE grounds?
The
usual caveats apply to this data. Chances described as “half”, “technical”
and “academic” are included. Whether or not an incident counts as a missed
chance can be a matter of opinion; I do think, however, that up to 90 per
cent of chances would be agreed by nearly all observers. The data also
depends on the completeness of the Cricinfo texts
and the efficiency of the search. It would be nice if the Cricinfo
commentators would use a single indicator phrase to flag misses; they often
use DROPPED in upper case, but there are many exceptions that have to be
uncovered by deeper searching. As
for bowlers who have suffered the most, it is a two-horse race. Jimmy Anderson
is currently on 122 and Stuart Broad 120, well ahead of Harbhajan
Singh on 99. Note that Tests this year have not been covered. Spare a thought
for Pakistan spinners Danish Kaneria and Saeed Ajmal, who have suffered drop rates of 39 and 40 per cent
respectively off their bowling. Spinners often have higher rates because many
of their chances are caught and bowled or short leg,
or ‘reaction’ wicketkeeper catches. Alastair
Cook completed his career with 78 missed chances off his batting, a number
that will take some beating. Sangakkara and Sehwag are next on 67; Sehwag’s
miss rate as batsman of 37 per cent is the highest among major batsmen. Cook
is also the ‘leading’ fielder, missing 81 chances, or 32 per cent. He spent a
lot of time fielding at short leg, where catching is difficult and often a
matter of luck. A
more detailed article on this subject from 2016 is here. ******** Did Bradman know he needed just four runs in his last Test, to
average 100? Bradman
said he didn’t, in unambiguous terms: But
did anyone else know in advance? There is no apparent evidence. Looking
at Trove, I could not find any mention of Bradman needing four runs to
average 100 in any of the match previews just before the Test. Some previews
mention him needing 83 runs to reach 2000 for the English season, and 674 (on
the rest of the tour) to reach 10,000 career f-c runs in England. Bradman's
6996 runs, and his average as it stood of 101.39, can be found in isolated
reviews of the fourth Test in the Newcastle Morning Herald and in the
Melbourne Herald. Even this doesn't seem to have been widely noticed, and the
implications for the final Test were not discussed. It’s worth noting that
anyone pondering the question in advance would have presumed that The Don
would be batting twice at The Oval, in which case he would have needed 104
runs (if he was out twice). https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140342748?searchTerm=bradman%206996# https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/247298602?searchTerm=bradman%20average By
the end of the fifth Test, Bradman’s shortfall had been noticed in multiple
publications. Even before the final day, an article in the Brisbane
Courier-Mail remarked that Bradman was four runs short. It was evident at
that point that Bradman was not going to bat again, as England was going to
lose by an innings and plenty. It
is interesting that some sources at the time were reporting Bradman's career
average as 89.7. That was his average against England. There was still
widespread opinion in those days that the only 'real' Tests were Ashes Tests. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49918364?searchTerm=bradman%20average ******** |
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Here
is some data concerning the percentage of batsmen out ‘clean’ bowled versus
'played on'. I have conducted a little survey of the last 100 Tests, to come
up with some figures. (Caveats:
this depends on the accuracy of the Cricinfo texts
and my ability to interpret them.) Total
out bowled: 554 Hit
bat first: 121 Hit
pad/body first : 24 Some
(not quantified) hit both the bat and the pad. Bonus
stat... Batsmen
bowled offering no stroke = 26. This includes some cases where the batsmen
tried to withdraw the stroke but the ball hit the bat anyway. It
would also be interesting to know how many batsmen are playing on to balls
that would not have hit the stumps, but that is not feasible with text data. ******** Bowlers
on debut whose first two balls were hit for four, a very short list… Roy
Gilchrist 1957 Dinusha Fernando 2003-04 Navdeep Saini, SCG 2021 I
was surprised that I couldn’t find any more cases than this in the database. ******* |
9 January 2021 A few notes on the origins of ‘hat-trick’… I
was looking at various sources that discuss the origin of the term. They have
a tendency to either repeat one another, or sometimes contradict one another
without explanation. I decided to look to see if there are some truly
original sources to be found. The
concept of a hat-trick is said to have its origins when HH Stephenson took
three wickets in three balls in a match in 1858, and was presented with a new
hat for his troubles. However, the term ‘hat-trick’ (or ‘hat trick’) doesn’t
seem to appear in print in newspapers until 1865, in the Chelmsford Chronicle
in Essex.
This
reference is mentioned in Wikipedia. I did my own search of the British
Newspaper Archive, and found this independently; it was earliest reference
that I found. The
Stephenson 1858 link to hat-tricks has been reported many times. I was
curious about sources, and tracked down the actual origin match, an Eleven of
All England v Twenty-Two of Hallam and Staveley at Hyde-park, Sheffield on 6,
7 and 8 September 1858. The Eleven was a team of professionals touring around
England; the inimitable Julius Caesar was in the team. Stephenson’s triple
hit occurred on the last day, as recorded in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph.
There
are a couple of interesting elements to this original report. Firstly, that
the presentation of a hat was already a “custom” in this team, as long as the
three wickets occurred in the same (four-ball) over, and secondly, that
Stephenson was not actually presented with a hat after all! His trick was
spread over two overs, and so did not qualify for a hat, but it was
sufficiently noteworthy for the team to present him with a guinea (21
shillings) presumably after a whip-round. It is not clear how many, if any,
hats had previously been awarded through this ‘custom’. Hat-tricks were uncommon
even then, and we are talking about just one team. But
as we have seen, the actual term ‘hat-trick’ was not yet in use. We can see
where the ‘hat’ comes from, but why ‘trick’? Searches show that the term was
already in use in reference to magicians and magic shows, and this may have
rubbed off on cricket. A
search of Trove in Australia turns up quite a few occurrences of the term in
the early to mid 1870s, but always in relation to
magic. The first Australian cricketing reference is found in December 1877.
The hat-trickster was Harry Boyle, and he was indeed presented with a new
hat! This took place during an early match on the epic 1877-1878 tour by the
Australian XI, playing against 22 of Newcastle in New South Wales.
Perhaps
the term, and the custom of presenting a hat, was brought to Australia by
Shaw’s team earlier that year. However, it doesn’t seem to have been applied
during Shaw’s matches: perhaps there were no actual hat-tricks. There are a
few occurrences in 1876-77 for phrases like “three wickets in three balls”,
but all are in minor matches not involving the tourists, with no mention of
hats. ******** Note
the UPDATE below on the subject of international cricket broadcasts. |
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A
further note on the use of air transport: the 1938 Australian touring team to
England actually had a clause in their contracts that air transport would not
be used. The first use of air transport for a cricket tour came in 1946, when
the Australian team flew to New Zealand. Australian tours to England
continued to travel by ship up to 1964 (which went part of the way by air);
the 1968 team travelled entirely by air to Britain. ******** At
Port-of-Spain in 1960, Frank Worrell was caught on the boundary (one-handed)
by Fred Trueman, but umpire Jordan signalled six.
It is not clear what the umpire thought had happened, but Worrell ‘walked’
and averted any controversy. ******** It
is unusual to come across ‘significant’ errors in the standard online Test
data sources (Cricinfo /Cricket Archive), but here
are a couple from 1993… At
Moratuwa (Sri Lanka) Jonty Rhodes in the second
innings scored 101* off 204 balls, not 107 balls. The Wisden Book of Test
Cricket says 193 balls, but that applies to Rhodes reaching the century, not
his final BF. At
the Gabba later that year, Richard de Groen’s innings of 3 is given as 3 balls and 5 minutes,
even though his last-wicket partnership with Tony Blain was worth 40 runs. De
Groen actually faced 30 balls and batted 55
minutes. ******** In
the third Test of 1993-94 against Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad, Sachin Tendulkar,
at age 20, was the Indian vice-captain. Tendulkar took on the on-field
captaincy duties on the fourth day when Mohammad Azharuddin
was indisposed. Has any player younger than this (20.79 years to be exact)
ever taken on captaincy duties, even in an acting capacity? The
youngest confirmed named captain was Tatenda Taibu, who was 21 when he captained Zimbabwe in a couple
of Tests. (Rashid Khan was supposedly younger, but I do not regard dates of
birth from Pakistan and Afghanistan to be reliable.) ******** |
17 December 2020 About
four years ago I posted a list of the best
head-to-head bowling averages for bowlers, specifically when bowling to the
best batsmen – those with batting average over 45. A reader, Arjun, suggested
that I try a similar exercise for batsmen against the best bowlers. To do
this I had to decide on some criteria for deciding who the best bowlers were.
I came up with the following: - Bowlers with 200 Test
wickets, or 150 before 1970, or 100 before 1940. - All other bowlers with 25
or more wickets and a bowling average under 30. Bowlers
meeting these criteria have taken about 35,000 wickets, representing about
half of all wickets taken by bowlers. This divides the bowlers neatly into
two similar-sized sets. Not
surprisingly, most batsmen’s averages against the ‘top bowlers’ are lower
than their career averages. It is not always the case, however. Typically,
the top bowler average is about 87% of career average. I would say this is a
smaller effect than I would have expected. Anyway,
here are the batsmen with the best averages against top bowlers…
Minimum 1000 runs against top bowlers So
Bradman’s 99.94 comes down to 75.5 when facing the
best bowlers of his time. This is thanks to the efforts of bowlers like
Hedley Verity and Alec Bedser, who did well against
The Don. Next come a few West Indians, whose averages were little affected by
facing top bowlers: I can’t really explain this except to note that Tests in
the West Indies in the 1950s were a graveyard for many top bowlers. Prominent
batsmen who did not meet the 1000 run threshold but did very well against top
bowlers include Graeme Pollock (68.4) and George Headley (55.7). A curious
case is Andrew Jones of New Zealand, whose top bowler average is 56.4, which
is 127% of his career average of 44.27, the highest (and most
counterintuitive) percentage for any batsman. Wasim
Raja had a similar percentage (career average 36.16, top bowler average
46.0). I’m
not sure what more to make of this. Why some batsmen do better against good
bowling than bad bowling is puzzling. Perhaps others can make more of this
than I can. ******** The One-Year Wonder Some
notes I made years ago on fast bowler Ted McDonald. I thought I might as well
post them… Warwick
Armstrong certainly seemed to prefer his fast men bowling from the same end
taking turns, rather than bowling in partnership. Sometimes McDonald had to shoulder
a bigger burden: if Gregory had scored runs, Armstrong would cut back his
bowling duties for a few hours thereafter. While
they usually opened together, it appears that Gregory and McDonald, as a
pair, never took the second new ball together (available after 200 runs in
those days). Generally, Gregory would take the new ball, with someone like Kelleway or Hendry at the other end. McDonald's
entire Test career fitted into one calendar year (1921), in which he took 43
wickets. No other bowler with such a short (single-year) career ever took so
many wickets; in fact no one is even close. When
Armstrong bowled his famous two overs in a row after an abortive declaration
by England at Old Trafford, McDonald probably should have bowled the
intervening over. It was reported that the umpires ignored calls from the
crowd that the wrong bowler was preparing to bowl. The score presents a
puzzle here: I am pretty sure that McDonald bowled only 30 overs, not 31
given in official scores, in that innings. McDonald
twice dismissed batsmen by breaking their bats. At Leeds, McDonald broke A
Ducat's bat. The splinter hit the stumps while the ball was caught by
Gregory, and the batsman was given out caught. At Johannesburg, McDonald
broke the bat of JW Zulch, the splinter hitting the
stumps and he was given out hit wicket. I know of no other case of a batsman
being out in this way. Batting
at The Oval, McDonald thought he was out bowled (by Parkin)
and left the crease, but was recalled by the England captain Lionel Tennyson,
who felt that the wicketkeeper had dislodged the bail. There
is a picture of Tennyson batting one-handed against either Gregory or
McDonald at Leeds (the other bowlers he faced would have had the keeper at
the stumps). Tennyson hit a five off McDonald in this innings, and
(amazingly) two fours off Gregory and a six over square leg off Mailey.
********** The first ever international cricket broadcast? I
came across this snippet from the 1931 England/New Zealand series. It is not
100% clear to me what form this broadcast took…
UPDATE:
Peter Huxford in the UK has sent me some links to New Zealand reports of
these broadcasts, found on the Papers
Past website. It appears that the broadcasts were after-play match
reports, and they began with the first Test of the 1931 series. The
broadcasts, some of which were relayed through Sydney, were sometimes
unsuccessful. It seems that they were attempting shortwave broadcasting; very
ambitious in those days considering the distances involved. It
is also evident (from newspaper radio guides) that receivers in New Zealand
were able to pick up conventional Medium Wave broadcasts from Sydney and
Melbourne at that time. They must have had good aerials, but it was quite
feasible, especially if there was ‘clean air’, where frequencies were
uncluttered by competing stations. Radio reports of the 1930-31
Australia/West Indies series were received in New Zealand. It
is curious that shortwave broadcasting to Australia was not attempted for the
1934 Ashes series; the ‘synthetic’ broadcasts using telegraphed information
were preferred. In 1938 the synthetic broadcasts were still being used;
shortwave technology was improving but reportedly still unreliable. (The ABC,
incidentally, did not invent synthetic broadcasts – they had been used in
1930 by Australian commercial radio stations.)
******** |
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******** Sreeram asked: John Reid hit four sixes
before lunch on Day 1 at Calcutta, 1964-65. Has anyone else done that ? 5
Gayle at Basseterre v India 2006 4
Blackwood at Kingston v India 2016 4
Hayden at Chennai v India 2001 Blackwood
was batting at #5 ! The
Reid one is not in the database and was a surprise to me; so there could be
others, although it seems very unlikely in older Tests. The
most in any single session is 9 by Hammond and Astle.
You can guess in which Tests. UPDATE:
Gayle’s 5 sixes were actually hit in the second session of the match, the
first having been rained off. ******** Update on the 1961 video. (see 18
October) John
Leather writes to say that the BBC did have video machines from 1958 onwards.
However, the Ampex machines cost $70,000 each and
the tapes were so expensive and few in number that they were used only for
short-term storage. Editing these tapes was not practical. Long-term
recording of footage was primarily done with kinetoscopes (also known as
telerecording), which converted the image as displayed on a monitor onto
conventional film. The 1961 Ashes footage was archived and stored in this
way. Telerecording
continued through the 1960s even as videotape technology
improved. Tapes were wiped and reused even for important shows like Doctor Who
and At Last the 1948 Show, a 1968
precursor to Monty Python. It is fortunate, perhaps, that permanent copies of
Monty Python were kept. ******** |
21 November 2020 Timeline of
India’s Famous Win, 3rd Test Port of Spain 1976 This
was an important match historically. Not only a great win for India, but a
turning point for the West Indies, who, after this humiliation, always played
for keeps, with the fast bowlers offering no quarter. In the following Test
at Kingston, the short-pitched bowling was given free rein, and India
eventually crumbled. It was the start of a dominant era for the West Indies.
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