For sportstats home page, and info in Test
Cricket in Australia 1877-2002, click here
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Z-score’s Cricket Stats Blog The
longest-running cricket stats blog on the Web For comments, or to
contact Charles Davis, zscore334 at iinet.net.au (no
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Charles Davis: Statistician of the Year (Association of Cricket
Statisticians and Historians)
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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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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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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 reign, and India
eventually crumbled. It was the start of a dominant era for the West Indies.
A Question from Arjun Nathan
Hauritz dismissed Andrew Strauss in all the 6
innings he bowled to him in ODIs. Is it true? …. A:
This is very well spotted. Not only is it true, but it is possibly unique.
Strauss and Hauritz played in 11 ODIs together, but
Hauritz bowled to Strauss in only six of those and
dismissed him each time. I
have look at ODIs since 2001 (about 58% of all ODIs)
and this is the only case of 6 that I found. Other cases of 5: Shane Watson
to Chris Gayle, Murali to Chigimbura,
and UT Yadav to D Ramdin. It
may also have happened earlier than 2001, but I think that the data is too
patchy to make a judgement. In
Tests, Hugh Tayfield bowled to JH Wardle in eight
innings and dismissed him each time. This is the most that I have in the Test
database. Next is Patrick Patterson to Craig McDermott with 7 dismissals. Head to Head without dismissal We
are looking here at the number of games where the bowler actually bowled to
the batsman. Given that Wasim Akram
took far more ODI wickets than anyone else, it is remarkable that he never
dismissed David Boon in the 18 innings that he bowled to him… Wasim Akram bowling to David Boon… 18 games J
Srinath to W Cronje… very uncertain but no more
than 18. JH
Kallis to Michael Bevan… 17 games Chaminda Vaas to Bevan… 15 or 16 games. S
Pollock to Shoaib Malik… 14 games Mohammad
Nabi to Sikander Raza… 14
games Murali to AD Jadeja… up to 14 games The
uncertainty is due to lack of data for some games. Without ball-by-ball data,
it is often not possible to be certain whether a batsman faced a particular
bowler. In
Tests, John Gleeson bowled to John Edrich in 19
innings without ever dismissing him. Also on 19: Carl Hooper bowling to Steve
Waugh. With
data being incomplete, there could be other pairings exceeding this. However,
it is very unlikely. For example, Mudassar Nazar bowled in 25 innings that Sunil Gavaskar
batted in, without ever taking his wicket. Ball-by-ball records are missing
for most of these Tests. However, available data plus a close look at
scorecards suggests that in at least 9 of these innings, Mudassar
could not have actually bowled to Gavaskar. ******** Counting No
Balls. The
counting of no balls in bowling analyses (runs conceded) started in 1983-84,
but for some reason New Zealand and England did not adhere to it until later.
The 1983-84 Test series between New Zealand and England, 1983-84 Sri Lanka
and New Zealand, and 1984 Tests in England did not adhere to it. My bbb database for the 1984 Tests was in error in this
respect and I have fixed that now. The
adding of a run for every no ball (even when scored from) was much later,
starting with Australia v Pakistan in 1998-99. I am pretty certain that all
countries changed from that point on. Note that this was a more important
change than the earlier one, because it actually changed team totals; it is
probably the only such change since sixes were introduced. I have noted
earlier that Australia would have won the 1992-93 Adelaide
Test under the later protocol, because they scored off more no balls
than West Indies. England would also have beaten Zimbabwe in a drawn Test in
1996 for the same reason. As
for multiple no balls being separated into 1 no ball plus byes/leg byes, I
have notes of cases occurring from mid-2018. A couple of multi-no balls in
mid-2017 were simply described as ‘5 no balls’ and ‘2 no balls’ respectively
in the Cricinfo texts, and it appears that they
ended up as multiple no balls in the scores. So 2018 seems to be the starting
point. The
accounting of no balls and wides against bowlers has a rather complex
history. Wherever possible I think that, in scores, the no ball/wides columns
against bowlers should count only the actual number of deliveries called by
umpires. This is currently the protocol; however, varying protocols have been
used in the past. I may at some stage change my online scores to reflect the
modern standard (wherever possible but a big job). However, there will be a
significant number of other older Tests (about 300) where this cannot be done
(bowlers’ no balls and wides were published, but bbb
is not available). There are also about 240 further Tests where no
information on bowlers’ no balls and wides is available at all. ******** |
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The Earliest Broadcasts The
first full ball-by-ball broadcast of a cricket match was for the 3rd Test of
the 1924-25 Ashes series in Adelaide, from 16-23 Jan 1925. Bill Smallacombe of radio station 5CL was the sole
commentator, and he did the whole 7-day match without help. 5CL
had only commenced broadcasts a few weeks earlier. There cannot have been
many home radio receivers in Adelaide at the time, but large crowds gathered
around shops and other places that had radios. There
had been earlier live radio reporting of cricket matches, including the first
two Tests of that series (Sydney and Melbourne) but they were in the form of
regular updates rather than ball-by-ball descriptions. Credit
to Bernard Whimpress who researched the 1925
Adelaide broadcast. ******** Last Use of Boundary Fences in
Australia In
Australia, some of the Tests of 2000-01 retained the fence boundaries, but
(from video evidence) all the Tests of 2001-02 had boundary ropes inside the
fences. The ropes in 2001-02 were closer to the fence than they are today. I
recall that ropes were used in early day-night ODIs at the SCG, because the
lights did not illuminate the outfield completely. There
was a boundary rope for the Adelaide Test in 2002-03, but it was only about a
foot inside the fence. It
can be seen in video of Glenn McGrath’s famous catch. ******** Unfortunately
the excellent "test-cricket-tours" website has gone down:
"Suspended" it says. In the past I have linked to this extensively
from my own database. Those links no longer work. The
fellow who created this (Michael Ronayne) died a
few years ago without completing it. Most of the 20th Century
series were complete, but there were gaps: Pakistan tours were missing, among
other things. Even so it was an extremely useful source. I placed links to it
on each series cover page on my database website, and saved copies for most
series (up to 1991) on my own computer. Test
series up to 2015 had been posted, although some 21st Century series were
missing or incomplete. I don't know if it will come back, but in case it
doesn't I have started a scrape of the old copies of the website pages found
on the Wayback Machine. There are hundreds of pages to download. I will post
these on my database and change the links but this will take some time. It
is a lesson about ‘free’ data on the internet. It can disappear overnight
without warning and never return. I
understand that there are some published booklets by the same author that
cover the same territory. I must find them and see if they fill any of the
gaps. ******** Two
little snippets...I was watching a ODI from 1980,
and Richard Hadlee, as a fielder, did a 'slide
pickup' of a ball that was nearing the boundary. It is the norm nowadays, but
I don't remember seeing it very often that far back. Some
film I saw of a Test in 1961 included a 'tag team' return from near the
boundary, one fielder scooping the ball up to a nearby teammate who completed
the throw. Again, something that is routine now. When
Farook Engineer (on 18) was struck on the head by
Andy Roberts at Delhi in 1974, the ball landed about 2 yards inside the
boundary. Engineer retired hurt and lunch was called; he returned to the
crease later and made 75. ******** |
18 October 2020 So, who
bowled the most no balls? Identifying
the bowler who bowled the most no balls in Tests is not quite
straightforward. Information from the major websites is very patchy. There is
also the issue of how to count no balls; the protocol has varied over the
years. Nowadays,
the number of no balls counted against the bowler is the same as the number
of actual no ball calls by the umpires. This was not the case before 1998;
before then no balls with runs off the bat were not counted as such, while
multiple no balls (with added byes/leg byes) counted as more than one. For
comparison of bowlers, I much prefer the modern counting, and this is
possible with ball-by-ball records. As
it happens, no balls have become less common for various reasons (mainly
umpires who don’t bother to check for them anymore). The greatest numbers
come from previous generations of bowlers, after the front-foot rule was
introduced around 1964. There are two contenders who are well ahead of anyone
else – Bob Willis and Wasim Akram. I
have Willis’ career (17,357 balls) complete in ball-by-ball form. In this
database, Willis was called for 932 no balls. In ‘classic’ counting it would
be only 763 (no balls with runs off the bat excluded). The 932 is an
extraordinary number and sets the bar quite high. The
case of Wasim Akram is
more complicated. He bowled 22,627 balls, but I have only about 81% of his
career ball-by-ball. There were 768 no balls calls in that data. I also have
another 10% of his career with published no ball counts, but no ball-by-ball
data. This adds 72 no balls, but these would be classically counted: the
figure translates to 81 no ball calls, based on his typical pattern. There
is an additional 9% or so of Wasim’s career with no
available data, so some estimating is required. Based on the patterns for the
other 91%, the estimate comes to 936 no ball calls for his whole Test career.
I am not sure how wide the put error bars should be, but Willis’s 932 would
certainly be within the margin of error. So
for now, I cannot distinguish between the two bowlers. Wasim
may ease clear if you include his wides – more than 40 to Willis’s 19. The
next bowler on the list appears to be Malcolm Marshall. Once again there is
no exact number and some estimating is required; this produces an overall
figure of 810 no ball calls. ******** I
was watching some footage of the 1961 Ashes a couple of weeks ago. It
occurred to me that this was the earliest footage of such quality that I have
seen. By ‘quality’ I mean that the coverage actually captured most incidents
of importance, and the viewpoint, in line with the pitch, made appreciation
much easier. Just
about all other film that I have seen from around this time or earlier is of
indifferent quality. Prior to TV, the cameramen sent to the grounds obviously
had very limited amount of film; this meant that they either missed most
important events or only caught the aftermath of dismissals. The newsreels
used various editing tricks to try and paste together a narrative. I
don’t know how the 1961 footage, which originated with the TV broadcast, was
recorded. Videotape existed in those days but I don’t know if it was being
used in Britain at that time. The footage that I have seen looks like it was
recorded by putting a film camera in front of a TV monitor. There are
fragments of earlier such footage: some of Laker’s 19 wickets at Old
Trafford, and England winning the Ashes in 1953 can be found online. They
look like TV material. The 1961 material is much more extensive. I
have the ABC coverage of Tests in Australia from 1958 to 1963, about an hour per
Test. This was taken by a single film camera; it misses a great deal in terms
of highlights but is still most interesting. For some of these Tests, the
film was processed and edited in a great rush each day and flown by special
courier to other capital cities, where it was shown as highlights about 10pm
on local TV. It was not possible to transmit TV from one city to another in
Australia (using coaxial cables) until the early-to-mid 60s. [UPDATED see 21
November.]
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Watching
some old films of the 1962-63 Ashes, an odd observation: at Adelaide, there
was a boundary rope maybe 10 metres in at the River
end of the ground. Very unusual for those days. There
have been no recorded instances anywhere since 1996; such strokes are much
more unlikely now that grounds have been shrunk down. Incidentally,
there was only one hit for six in the whole 1958-59 series. That was by Fred Trueman off Richie Benaud at
the SCG, and he was out next ball. ******** At Brisbane in 1970-71, Rod Marsh was
caught off Colin Cowdrey, but a no ball was called
because three fielders were behind square leg. Lou Rowan was the square leg
umpire. ******** Wisden
1984 says that the first use in a cricket match of a full electronic
scoreboard that could show replays was at the Victoria v England XI match in December
1982. ******** At
Lord’s in 1956, Richie Benaud was struck on the
pads by Brian Statham. There was a loud appeal, and umpire Lee immediately
give Benaud out lbw. However, the ball, still in
motion, rolled onto the stumps and the bails fell. Benaud
was recorded as out bowled, as the Laws allow for the ‘bowled’ dismissal to
take primacy here. ******** Also
from 1956, spinner Tony Lock actually opened the bowling on the final
afternoon at The Oval “…rubbing the ball first into the ground to remove the
shine.” (Belfast News-Letter). Australia only had to bat 2 hours to
save the match, but were in such a state of confusion against Laker and Lock
that they almost lost, finishing on 27 for 5 off 38.1 overs when bad light
stopped play. ******** The great double-century drought: when Greg
Chappell scored 204 at the SCG against India in 1981, it was the first Test
double-century in Australia for more than ten years, since Keith Stackpole had made
207 against England at the ’Gabba in 1970. There had
been more than 1,950 innings played in Australia in the meantime. Moreover,
there had been more than 560 innings since anyone had passed 150, the score
made by Derek Randall at the SCG in 1978-79. I
remember noticing the dearth of big scores at the time, and wondered where
they had all gone. It just seems to have been one of those things.
******** The
practice of altering playing hours and extending lunchbreaks in Pakistan, to
accommodate Friday prayers, appears to have started in the series against
India in 1978-79. I have notes that in two of the Tests (1 & 3), the
first session of the Friday was “extended”, and it may well be that this
applied to the other Test too. I don’t know how long the lunch breaks were. It
probably did not apply in the previous series against England in 1977-78. In
the Karachi Test in
that year, the first Friday session was 10:00 to 12:00. Lunch was in fact extended
that day, but this appears to be due to the teams being presented to General
Zia. Play restarted at 1:05. ******** |
20 September 2020 The Old
Stump Scramble I
remarked a little while ago on the old, odd, practice of players
‘souveniring’ stumps, bails and balls at the end of a Test match, usually
after an unseemly scramble. In 1946 Keith Miller even grabbed a stump while
the ball was still in play, and ran the winning run with stump in hand. At
Trent Bridge in 1948 Sid Barnes, thinking the match won after he hit a
boundary, seized a stump and bolted for the Pavilion. He, and the stump, had
to be hauled back out of the dressing room because Australia still needed one
run to win. It took some time to restore order and complete the match. I
wondered when this practice ended, and found a reference in Trove. In
September 1952, the Australian Board of Control ‘asked’ that captains
instruct players not to do it anymore. For the upcoming South Africa series,
umpires were instructed to collect the stumps and bails and return them to
ground authorities. The authorities were then permitted to distribute the
stumps and bails to the players, equally to each team. So
the on-field scramble had ended (in Australia) with the last Test of 1951-52
against the West Indies. A report from the final Test of that series says the
souveniring had only been half-hearted anyway, perhaps because the series had
long been decided. The
Board’s action followed the lead of the M.C.C., which had stopped the
practice in England that year. I
am not so certain when the habit started. I couldn’t find and mention of it
for the 1920-21 and 1924-25 Ashes series, but some souveniring went on when
England won the Ashes at The Oval in 1926. Arthur Mailey,
last out, stuck the ball in his pocket, while Herbert Strudwick
grabbed the “last” stump. There are references to players taking stump
souvenirs in the 1928-29 series. Other
countries also took part. There was the “usual scramble for souvenirs” at the
end of the Bombay Test of 1948-49 (India v West Indies). In that case, the
scramble may have tricked the umpire into calling stumps early, with India
needing six runs to win. The scramble was reported in the 1951-52 Tests
between New Zealand and West Indies, but I found no mention of it in
newspapers reporting the 1952-53 New Zealand v South Africa Tests. [UPDATE:
Ashru has sent me a photo of a stump scramble when
New Zealand won its first ever Test, against West Indies in 1955-56. It would
have been quite unusual by that time, but it was a very special occasion as
far as New Zealanders were concerned. On (special) occasion, stumps have been
souvenired since then. I think Botham grabbed a stump when England won the
Ashes in 1981, and there is that famous footage of Shane Warne ‘dancing’ with
a stump in 1993.] ******** Largest
innings without facing a maiden over (where known)
Warner’s
innings is the highest for a team batting first. The Walters and Paynter
innings involved 8-ball overs, so maiden overs were harder to bowl. Walters
faced one over where he did not score off the first six balls, as did
Paynter. The highest score with just one maiden is Ben Stokes’ 258 at Cape
Town in 2015-16. The
most maiden overs found in a single innings is 36 by
Dudley Nourse (208) at Trent Bridge in 1951. The
number is a little uncertain because of a high number of unmarked byes and
leg byes in the score. Bob Simpson faced 33 maidens and Ken Barrington faced
31, in the same Test at Old Trafford in 1964. The
number of maidens faced by Hanif Mohammad in his 337
is not known, but would probably well exceed the above figures. ******** The
Lord’s Test of 1963 is famous for its finish, a draw with England nine
wickets down, six runs to win, and with Colin Cowdrey
at the non-striker’s end with his arm in plaster. The match would have had a
much different finish, however, but for an oddity in the scheduling of Tests
in England in those days. The standard hours were 11:30 to 6:30, but on the
last day hours were shortened to a 6:00 pm finish, apparently to make it
easier for touring teams to reach their next location. And so it was at
Lord’s – the fifth day was shortened by half an hour and play finished at
6:00. [Correction: the final day playing hours were 11:00 to 6:00.] ******** I
have been gathering more information on bowling ends and umpires’ ends for
Tests before 1972, this time for Tests in England. Much of the data has come
from scouring the online (subscription) British Newspaper Archive.
Information is now virtually complete for all Ashes Tests since 1948. (For
1948, Barry Valentine’s analysis was very useful.) I have also gathered the
necessary info for series involving West Indies in 1963, 1966 and 1969, and a
few other Tests (including Edgbaston 1957 and Lord’s 1960). From 1971
onwards, the information is substantially complete, thanks largely to Bill Frindall, who started recording these things in his
scoresheets from about that time. The
information is incorporated into ball-by-ball files and is being uploaded
progressively. For Tests in Australia, the upload is complete for Tests
(those that have bbb) since 1911-12. I have bowling
end and umpire info on more than 60% of all Tests; this will end up online
eventually I hope. I
hadn’t realised this before, but Lord’s is one of very few grounds to have an
east-west pitch (Pavilion to Nursery end). The standard north-south is
probably not possible at Lord’s, because the famous slope would play havoc
with bowlers. Old Trafford used to have an east-west pitch too (Stretford to
Warwick Road) with the Pavilion off to the north, but it was reoriented after
2010. The ends are now called the Anderson end (Pavilion) and the Statham
end. The
MCG was originally an east-west ground. It was used as such in the Tests of
1877, but stumps had to be called at 5 pm (in March, very late in the season)
because the batsmen were looking into the sun. Shortly after that, the pitch
was realigned to north-south, and we ended up with a ground with huge square
boundaries and much shorter straight boundaries. Football is still played on
a (roughly) east-west axis on the MCG. Eden
Park at Auckland has a pitch running southeast to northwest. ******** |
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When
illness struck the team during the Bangalore Test of 1988, New Zealand took
to the field with five fielding substitutes, including Jeremy Coney – retired
from Tests but reporting for Radio New Zealand – and TV commentator Ken Nicholson.
Only three bowlers were fit to bowl in India’s second innings. ******** We’ve
all seen the old films of players rushing to souvenir stumps when a Test
match finished. In the 5th Test of 1946-47, Keith Miller went one
better. Three runs were needed to win when Colin McCool drove a ball from
Dennis Compton. They ran two, and with an easy third run on offer, Miller
seized one of the stumps at the bowler’s end. With the ball still in play,
Miller ran the winning run with stump in hand. Miller handed the stump to
Compton as they left the field. ******** When
Ernie Toshack took 5 for 2 off 19 balls against
India on a drying ’Gabba pitch in 1947-48, the only
runs he conceded were off a thin edge that all but bowled Sohoni.
Sohoni was out next ball. ******** Peter
Petherick of New Zealand scored a place in the records by taking his first
three Test wickets as a hat-trick, at Lahore in 1976. Petherick was also a
“world class” Number 11 batsman. In the following Test at Hyderabad, Petherick hit his
first ever boundary in first-class cricket, on the way to 12 not out. Prior
to that he had played in 13 first-class matches and had scored just 17 runs. ******** Most
‘handled the ball’ incidents are somewhat contentious, but when Mohinder Amarnath was the first
to be dismissed this way in an ODI, at the MCG in 1986, the batsman actually
walked before the umpire could give a decision. Amarnath
had blatantly used his hand to swat away a ball that he had played but was
heading for the stumps. He knew right away that he had done wrong, and when
the Australians appealed he turned and headed for the pavilion. ******** Cricketing Understatement of the
Century? As
Trevor Chappell prepared to bowl the notorious underarm ball against New
Zealand in 1981, TV commentator Bill Lawry, perhaps taken aback, commented “…possibly a little bit disappointing” Richie
Benaud was rather more forthright when presenting
the highlights that evening: “…a
disgraceful performance…should never be permitted to happen again”. “We keep
reading that the players are under a lot of pressure; perhaps they might
advance that as an excuse…not with me they don’t. It was a very poor
performance, one of the worst things I have ever seen on the cricket field.” ******** At
Perth in 2015-16, David Warner and Usman Khawaja put on 302 in 63.4 overs
without a maiden over being bowled. There were 91 consecutive non-maidens
including parts of the previous and subsequent partnerships. The first day of
90 overs included only one maiden, the first over of the day. Warner did not
face a maiden over in his innings of 253. ******** A
couple of snippets from India’s tour of New Zealand in 1989-90, courtesy the
“Test Cricket Tours” website: • When selected for the New Zealand
tour, pace bowler Vivek Razdan
had already toured Pakistan with India. Even though he was now going on his second
Test tour, he had played only one first-class match in India at that time. He
had played two Tests (in Pakistan), but was not selected for the Tests in New
Zealand. He faded from selectors’ favour and played for a few years in Indian
domestic cricket. • “Bedi’s
reign as India’s first ‘cricket manager’ or coach was brief. His
uncompromising approach became renowned after making furious threats to throw
members of the team out of the plane into the sea (!) after losing to New
Zealand, and after eight months he was replaced.” ******** |
23 August 2020 Shipperd Strikes Back When
Mark Greatbatch took 462 minutes (341 balls) to
reach 100 in the Perth Test of 1989-90, it was the slowest century in terms
of time in Australian first-class cricket history. As it happened, the
previous record had only been set three weeks earlier when Greg Shipperd took 449 minutes (343 balls) for Tasmania v
Western Australia on the same ground. I don’t know if Shipperd
regarded this as a challenge, but only six days after Greatbatch’s
marathon, Shipperd re-took the record with a
century in 481 minutes (412 balls) against Victoria at Launceston. This
remains the slowest century in Australia in terms of both time and balls
faced. Outside of Test cricket, only two batsmen are known to have faced more
than Shipperd’s 412 balls in reaching a century. Shipperd’s earlier
record came during an innings of 200 not out (in 708 minutes, 571 balls). I
wonder if anyone making a double-century has taken longer over the first 100.
In Tests, the slowest century to be turned into a double was by Grant Flower,
who took 437 minutes and 340 balls to reach his century on the way to 201,
against Pakistan at Harare in 1995, in a rather notorious match. ******** Here
is an apparent error in the official umpire listings. For the 5th Test of
1951-52 (Aus v WI) the umpires are named as HAR
Elphinstone and MJ McInnes. These names are given
online and in the Wisden Book of Test
Cricket. However, the official score from the SCG for this Test names HAR
Elphinstone and RJJ Wright (name given as R Wright). Searching
Trove for "umpire McInnes" for the dates
of the Test produced no hits, but Wright is named in newspapers from the
time. Cricinfo and Cricket
Archive have been informed. Another
correction: some sources say that Thomas Flynn, who umpired some Tests in the
1890s, was born in Kyneton, Victoria in 1869. This is not the case. The actual
year of birth appears to be 1849, and although he lived in Kyneton he was
born in Melbourne or in Tasmania. (There was a younger Thomas Flynn born in
Kyneton in 1869, but he was the nephew of the Test umpire.) As
such, Flynn cannot be counted among the youngest Test umpires. Flynn
died in Townsville in April 1931, aged 82. ******** Fewest
Scoring Strokes to Reach Test 100.
Not
surprising to see Astle and Gilchrist on such a
list, but note that their innings are not their most famous high-speed
centuries. McCullum’s record-breaking century off 54 balls heads the list,
though. Beyond the above list the field is quite crowded, with almost 40
innings coming in at fewer than 35 scoring strokes. Also, this is a ‘where
known’ record. ******** I
have been doing some work to identify bowling ends in Test matches in
Australia, and the umpires at those ends. (specifically,
the end used for the first over of each innings). This information is
generally not found in scorebooks prior to 1980, with the exception of Frindall’s scores (from 1968). Even Fergie’s scores lack
the information, with the odd exception of the 1911-12 Ashes. I
am only looking at Tests for which ball-by-ball scores are available. Once
that info is available, you only need to find a single incident in a
particular innings for which the end is known, and everything else falls into
place. Very often this can be gleaned from photographs. Prior to 1970, nearly
all Test match photos published in Australian newspapers were taken from the
northern (Pavilion) end of the grounds, and this can be confirmed by the
direction of shadows. Where
possible, I have added identification of umpires for the first over of each
innings. This is not always so easy for the old days, as umpires were not the
celebrities that they seem to be regarded as today, and were only
infrequently mentioned by name in connection to specific incidents. However,
with the power of Trove it can be done for some innings. Moreover, once you
have an umpire ID for one innings of a Test, the rest of the Test falls into
place, assuming that the umpires followed the protocol of standing at one end
for the first two innings of a match, and changing ends for the third and
fourth innings. I have checked data where possible, and I think that
Australian umpires have been sticklers for this protocol for a very long
time. Ray Webster tells me that the practice pre-dates Test cricket. I
have completed this work from 1911-12 onwards in terms of bowling end, and
from 1924-25 in terms of umpires, up to the late 1960s. The 1970s was already
done, but with gaps that I will try to fill. There are several Tests for
which I cannot find the umpire information, even with Trove. Trove also
largely ends in 1954, so other sources have to come into play. The Sydney Morning Herald is available up
to 1995 through the Victorian State Library, and Google
newspapers has a partial but substantial collection of The Age. Trove still has the Canberra
Times after 1954, and various foreign papers (The Times, Guardian, Times of India) are
available online. I have video copies of Test highlight films, made by the
ABC, for the 1958-59, 1960-61 and 1962-63 series, about 45 minutes per Test
and all very useful. For
Tests in England, end ID and umpire ID is substantially complete from 1968
onwards, thanks largely to Frindall’s scores. I may
be possible to push this back in time a little, but
it may be more difficult than the Australian work. Other countries will be
more difficult still, at least for years before 1980. The
updated ball-by-ball records will be posted progressively. I have done
1911-12, 1920-21 and 1924-25 so far. ******** I
have been making some cosmetic changes to the presentation of data for 50s
and centuries in my online database. It looks a little less cluttered. An example is here. I will post
these progressively. The original versions were posted (a frightening number
of) years ago and there may be some added information. I haven’t kept track
of changes. ********* |
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Batsmen
dropped most often in 21st Century Tests: 78 for Alastair Cook, 67 for Sehwag and Sangakkara. Sehwag is an interesting one since he played fewer
innings than the others. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he
hit the ball so hard. Ben
Stokes recently reached #3 in the ICC rankings even though his career batting
average was only 38.5.This is the lowest average for a #3 batsman even when
rankings are ‘backcast’ to 1954. (IMHO, the ranking
system does not work well before then, because Tests were too infrequent).
The previous low for a #3 was an average of 38.8 by Gundappa Viswanath in September
1972. Lowest
batting average as a #1 batsman… KR
Stackpole (1972) 39.96 IM
Chappell (1973) 40.90 GR
Viswanath (1975) 42.19 GA
Gooch (1993) 43.05 (since 1955). Gooch was also #1 in 1991 when his average
was 43.12 ********
HJ
Tayfield bowled to JH Wardle in 8 Test innings and
dismissed him each time. Next best is Craig McDermott bowling to Patrick
Patterson in 7 innings, dismissing him each time. ******** Charlie
Macartney scored 231 and the Australians 330 runs
in a two-hour session (lunch-tea) against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in
1921. Don't know if that is a record for first-class cricket, but it must be
right up there for a two-hour session. When Australia scored 721 in a day
against Essex in 1948, the session totals were 202, 292 and 227. ******** On
Australian TV, they have been showing some ODIs from the 1980s. An
observation: displaying players' names on their cricket shirts started in
1988-89 (Australia/West Indies/Pakistan tri-series). ******** Most
runs in the 50th over of ODI innings: MS Dhoni
315, (data complete), CZ Harris at least 243 (data missing for five matches) ******** In
Tests, Decision Review outcomes are close to 60:40 in favour of batting
teams, partly because bowlers are more likely to initiate reviews, and most
reviews are unsuccessful. Where
umpires' decisions are overturned, it is a bit tighter; the outcomes favour
the batting side 55:45. This means that wickets are slightly more harder to
get than in the days before DRS. ******** |
29 July 2020 The First
Test umpire A
couple of snippets of information missing from the very first Test in 1877
are the bio dates of one of the umpires, known as Richard Benjamin Terry. My
wife Ann, a skilled hand at genealogy, has tracked him down and found that he
was born Benjamin Terry in Bulwell; then a village, now a suburb of
Nottingham. He was born on 25 Nov 1852 and was baptised was on 5 Dec 1852.
Known as Ben, he spent a few years in Australia from 1876 and played three
first-class matches. He returned home and moved to Scotland, played some more
(non f-c) cricket and became a bookmaker. He died aged 57 on 10 July 1910 in
Edinburgh. Indications
are that Terry, aged only 24, was umpiring at the bowler’s end for the
first ball of that first Test in 1877 (unconfirmed). The pitch was oriented
east-west in those days, and the first ball was from the east end. Terry
remains one of the youngest ever Test umpires, although George Coulthard in a Test in the following year was younger
still. “Terry was
standing at square leg for the opening over of the England first innings in
the inaugural Test in March 1877. The Melbourne Argus reported that Hodges’
final delivery [from the west end] was turned to leg and, as the batsmen set
off for a run, it was noticed that a bail had been dislodged. On appeal, Terry claimed that he had not
seen how that had occurred, nor did Reid at the bowler’s end, with the result
that Hodges was denied a wicket. It
was further reported that the batsman later confirmed he had made contact
with the stumps.” Online and
later published sources give Terry’s given names as Richard Benjamin.
However, no original sources, including birth or death certificates, include
the name Richard. That name should be deleted. *********
After
the sudden flurry of activity, there have now been 72 Tests at Old Trafford
since five-day Tests were introduced to England in 1948 (the three-day Test
of 1949 being the only exception). Most have been affected by weather to a
greater or lesser extent. I have made a list of Manchester Tests that lasted
into the fifth day and experienced no apparent weather interruptions. It is quite
short…
Special
mention should go to the 1995 Test against the West Indies, which lasted only
four days. It had no weather interruptions apart from a short suspension of
play due to “sun glare” from a row of greenhouses adjacent to the ground. Tea
was taken 21 minutes early, but no net time was lost. The
1955 Test finished with South Africa winning with nine balls to spare. The
1964 Test, a famous (perhaps notorious) marathon draw, went the distance with
551 overs bowled. Modern Tests almost never go beyond 450 overs. Bob Simpson
was on the field for 548 of those 551 overs. Although
it was a four-day Test, 1934 is also deserving of a mention: "From first
to last, the sun blazed down, the heat being at times almost unbearable"
(Wisden). The next Ashes Test at
Old Trafford (1938) was rained out without a ball being bowled. ******** Q. Shannon Gabriel's highest FC score is 20
not out. Does he have the lowest high score of all the players with minimum
100 First class matches? A. Jim Griffiths played 177 matches for
Northamptonshire from 1974 to 1986 with a highest score of 16. Also Eddie
Row, 103 matches, HS 16 and James Shaw (long ago), 115 matches, HS 18*. More
recently, Ethy Mbhalata,
129 matches, HS 19 from 2002 to 2016. None
of these players played Tests. ******** I
just came across a note from the Lord's Test of 1979. John Lever batted left-handed
for one ball of his innings of 6 not out off 8 balls, facing Bedi, the second ball of 4 that he faced in that over
(0001). A strange incident, but recorded clearly in Bill Frindall's
score. The only other known cases of batsmen batting both left- and
right-handed in the same innings are Salim Malik v West Indies in 1986, and Talat Ali at Adelaide in 1972-73. In both cases the
batsmen were suffering from broken bones. Colin Cowdrey,
with a broken arm, was prepared to bat left-handed at Lord's in 1963, but he
did not have to face a ball. ******** Royal
Presentations… George
V was the first British Monarch to attend a Test match, Australia v South
Africa at Lord's in 1912. The King arrived just before tea, and play halted while
he was being seated. The players were 'presented' to the King, off the field,
when tea was called a few minutes later. It was a Wednesday. George
V also attended Saturday play of Ashes Tests in 1921 and 1926. Players were
presented to the King, off-field apparently. George V attended the 1924 Test
v South Africa at Lord's but apparently not the 1929 Test or the 1928 Test v
West Indies. When
the King attended the Lord's Test of 1930, play was interrupted for 10
minutes and the King met the players on the field. Ponsford
was out 2 minutes after play resumed. Players
have been presented to Elizabeth II in quite a number of Tests. One of these,
in 1977, was at Trent Bridge rather than Lord’s. ******** |
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Reaching ODI 100 with a four most
times... V
Kohli 12 S
Dhawan 10 LRPL
Taylor 9 HH
Gibbs 8 KC
Sangakkara 8 One
other century by Gibbs is not recorded. Sixes... AB
de Villiers 7 EJG
Morgan 6 HH
Gibbs 4 RH
Sharma 4 Combined...
de Villiers, Kohli on 14. ******** In
Tests, Wasim Akram bowled
at least 20 unsuccessful hat-trick balls, and two successful ones. Murali, who never took a Test hat-trick, bowled at least
17 unsuccessful hat-trick balls. These
figures do not include taking of the last two available wickets with
consecutive balls, precluding any hat-trick. The
figures are uncertain because there could be some unidentified instances from
the 1990s. These would be few in number. In
the Tests that I have ball-by-ball up to 2019, there are 1195 hat-trick balls
and 38 hat-tricks, or one hat-trick in every 31 attempts. ******** Damien
Fleming’s hat-trick in 1994-95 must one of the most unusual in first-class
cricket. His third victim was Salim Malik, whose 237 is far and away the
highest score by the 3rd wicket of a Test hat-trick; the next highest is 1. I
suspect that it would be a record for first-class cricket also. Only
four century-makers have been involved in a Test hat-trick. Apart from Malik,
the others were all the first victim, the highest
being Javed Miandad with
163. The
highest score by the second victim of a hat-trick is 52 by PM Walker, in
Geoff Griffin's hat-trick in 1960. ******** |
26 June 2020 Barry
Valentine has produced a ball-by-ball record of the 1945 "Victory"
Tests, which is available on the ACS website for those who are interested. https://archive.acscricket.com/research/The_Victory_Tests_1945.pdf I
get a rather fulsome mention. The
series has some interesting aspects. It began only a couple of weeks after the
German surrender, while the Pacific War was still raging. One of the matches
started on the day the Atomic Bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. It
is interesting that Bill Ferguson was around to score the series. I can only
presume that he was in Britain for the duration of the War (he had scored the
Tests of 1939, on a West Indies tour of England that was cut short by the
outbreak of war). Fergie accompanied the 1945 Australian Services team to
India for some matches and the team then toured Australia before disbanding.
I have read that the players did not much enjoy all this touring, since they
were keen on getting home to their families, but they were aware of the
importance of this tour in re-starting first-class cricket. ******** I
have completed the task of making notes on all cases of batsmen retiring hurt
in Tests, recording the cause of each. There are 342 cases in my list, a
handful of which are absent from online sources. The Wisden Book of Test Cricket was useful for descriptions of
many cases, but many others required deeper reading. The
data probably justifies a longer article, but I will just summarise here some
data on the bowlers responsible for ‘retiring’ batsmen. This is something I
have touched on some years ago, but the data now is more certain. Batsmen
retire not out for a variety of reasons, many of which do not directly
involve a bowler: pulled muscles, illness, cramp, collisions, or previous
injuries are among them. The majority, however, retire after being struck by
a bowled ball – 269 out of the 342. The bowlers involved are nearly all pace
bowlers (the cases off spinners generally involve batsmen edging balls onto
the face/head). The
bowlers inflicting retirement on the most batsmen are listed. I have taken
care to identify the bowler responsible for the injury, which is not always
the bowler active when the batsman actually retires. There are some cases
where the batsman retired some time after being
struck. Bowlers Causing Most Retired Hurts in
Tests
While
Courtney Walsh leads in this category, Colin Croft stands out with six
retirements in just 27 Tests. It is also fair to say that Croft was regarded
as the most feared and dangerous bowler of his time. Other
bowlers with high ‘strike rates’ include Silvester Clarke (27 per 100 Tests),
Azeem Hafeez (17), Harold
Larwood (14), and Neil Adcock (12). However, these
bowlers only caused three retirements each during their careers. The
absence of active bowlers from the list is a sign of the decline in batsmen
retiring hurt, which in the past decade has been less than half the rate of
the peak years 1975-85; this is attributed to improvements in protective
equipment. There has, however, been a recent increase in cases due to the
increased concern about concussion and its long-term effects. The
availability of full substitutes is a corollary. ******** Which
century partnership has one partner contributing highest percentage of the
runs in Tests? Sanath Jayasuriya (253) scored 89 out of a partnership of 101 in
2004; there were 11 extras, and his partner Dilhara
Fernando made 1. You would expect that (at 87.1%) this would be the record,
but Mike Hussey scored 88.8% of a stand of 107 with Glenn McGrath in 2005-06
at the MCG. Dennis
Lindsay scored 71.0% (157 runs) of a 221 stand with PL van der Merwe in
1966-67. For 300+ stands, Wasim Akram
is unchallenged with 70.3% of the 313 with Saqlain Mushtaq at Sheikhupura in 1996
(220 out of 313) Honourable
mention: Dennis Compton 164 in a stand of 192 with Trevor Bailey at Trent
Bridge in 1954 (85.4%). ******** Here
is a rare reference to the first 1877
international as a 'test match'. This was in a New Zealand newspaper; I
haven't seen the term 'test match' used in relation to this match in
Australian sources, although it was used occasionally in reference to other
matches or other sports around that time. This reference was found by Peter
Huxford. Peter has also found the phrase ‘test match’ in Australian newspapers
in the early 1880s; while they sometimes refer to actual Test matches (as per
the modern canon) the references are rather
scattered and irregular. In
my recent searches, I have seen the use of the term 'test matches' randomly
in the NZ papers for even provincial matches. ******** What
is the highest score by a batsman off his first 100 balls in a Test innings? An
interesting question with a strange answer: Brendon McCullum - twice. For
exactly 100 balls, McCullum reached 145 off 100 balls against Sri Lanka at
Christchurch in 2014 on the way to 195. For less than 100 balls, it is 145 by
McCullum once again, this time off 78 balls at the same ground, against
Australia in 2016. He was out next ball. Ross
Taylor (138) was on 137 off 100 balls at Hamilton in 2010 against Australia,
and Roy Fredericks reached 134 off 97 also against Australia, Perth 1975-76,
on the way to 169. In
ODIs, Shane Watson scored 185* off 96 balls against Bangladesh in 2011. For a
batsman facing his 100th ball, AB de Villiers had 172 against
Bangladesh in 2017. ******** |
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Highest
Test partnerships without extras: Two
Test partnerships of 222, both for the 4th wicket: Hazare (89)/Manjrekar (133) Leeds 1952 v
England Rahane (82)/Kohli
(140) Hyderabad 2017 v Bangladesh. ******** In
the Pakistan v New Zealand series in 2018-19, Pakistan had five 5WIs to New
Zealand's one, and four centuries to New Zealand's two, but New Zealand won
the series 2-1. ******** First
use of StumpCam: Stump
Cam was an innovation of Kerry Packer's Channel Nine network. Allan Annual
1989-90 (Allan Miller) records the first use in the 1989-90 SCG Test v Pakistan. (My own memory was that it was older than
that, but I think I was confusing it with the Stump Microphone which goes
back to the early 80s.) ******** The
first overseas cricket televised live in Australia was part of the final Test
of 1972. I watched it, and remember Rod Marsh swinging his arms round and
round as he ran the winning run. In retrospect it is strange that they didn't
televise more of that series, given that the technology existed. I
was so keen in those days that many times I sat up late into the night
listening to the radio broadcast. 1975
was the first overseas series shown in full. Colour TV had just started in
Australia. The
first use of the term "test match" was for some matches of the
Stephenson tour of 1861-62. The term was coined by Tom Wills. Those matches
were against odds and certainly not regarded as Tests today. A
quick look through Trove for "Test match" gave no hits for 1881-82,
but a number of hits for 1882-83 including the first Test. It still was not a
common term. There were mentions for 1884-85, but few and far between. The
Shaw/Shrewsbury tour book uses the term test match (once) in relation to the
3rd Test, but not the first two Tests.
In fact, the touring team did not regards the
first two Tests as authentic. The
term became more common from 1886-87 onwards, particularly from 1891-92. A
quick search of The Times and the Guardian produced no hits for 1890 or 1893,
but a number of hits for 1896. The surviving scorebook for the 1890 tour does
not seem to use the term Test match, but the 1893 scorebook does so. Australian
newspapers were using the term regularly when reporting Tests in England from
1884 onwards, but not in 1882. See
update above. ******** |
22 May 2020 Here
is a list of players who played Test cricket with a notable disability or
chronic condition, for all or most of their careers. Sporting injuries are
excluded. Credit
to Michael Jones for initiating the list; others have contributed. Readers
are invited to suggest additions. (I
am not sure about Murali, who rather benefited from
his condition)
******** Highest average Test partnerships. Unbroken
stands counted as ‘not outs’. DG
Bradman 71.1 H
Sutcliffe 56.7 RT
Ponting 55.9 JB
Hobbs 52.5 ML
Hayden 51.8 Younis Khan 51.7 Shoaib Mohammad 49.9 SJ
McCabe 49.8 DPMD
Jayawardene 49.8 GC
Smith 49.7 minimum 30
Tests Factors:
batting average, batting averages of team mates, openers and higher order bats
favoured, because they bat less with tailenders. Slower batsmen do a little
better than expected (note Shoaib Mohammad). Their
partnerships tend to be longer, and when batting with a fast batsman, are
worth more runs. ******** |
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22 April 2020 The nervous 90s and Beyond Here
is a graph of the frequency of dismissals over a range of scores (75 to 130)
in Tests. Strange to think that I first made a graph of this more than 20
years ago, to look for scores where the number of batsmen getting out was
unusually high or unusually low. Well, I have updated it now.
The
relationship between score and number of dismissal is an exponential decay
curve, best shown on a log-linear scale. An exponential line has been fitted
to the data; this comes out as a straight line on a log-linear graph. It can
be seen that this line fits the data quite well across the range of scores
used. Of
particular interest is the frequency of scores before and after the magic
score of 100. In short, there is a deficit of scores in the range 85-99, and
an excess in the range 100-115, and more specifically a deficit from 95-99
and a surplus from 100-105. These observation can be quantified as departures
from the fitted curves, in a table
This
data shows that the “Nervous Nineties” is a myth, or rather, that whatever
nerves occur are often beneficial for the batsman.
In general, a batsman has considerable lower chance of dismissal in the 90s
than just after reaching 100. In the range 94 to 99, the chances of dismissal
are depressed by about 10 per cent. From 100 to 105 the chances are elevated
by about 13 per cent. It is curious however that the number of dismissals
specifically on 99 is very close to the expected value. ******** I
mentioned a while back that I have a new format for ball-by-ball files in my
database, limited to one over per line. I have now completed the uploading of
the new format for Tests prior to 1940. The work will continue, but at a
measured pace. I still find it necessary to check each bbb
record for problems before uploading. |
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21 March 2020 Highest
Innings Starting and Finishing in Same Session
Nearly
all of these were post-tea sessions. You will see from the batting times that
at least four of these innings benefited from extended session times. In the
old days, this could happen due to the flexibility of the tea break, which
could be called very early if there was a change of innings. More recently,
post-tea sessions are often extended to meet minimum over requirements. ******** I
have done a reconstruction of Shahid Afridi’s
famous century in Nairobi in 1996 (102 off 40 balls), and posted it here. The reconstruction uses the
ball-by-ball record in the Cricinfo Archive, supported by other
sources. Cricinfo lists every ball faced by Afridi,
but does not include his partner Saeed Anwar, and it
does not have the first wicket partnership of Anwar and Saleem
Elahi. There is some quite good video on YouTube
that allows most of these gaps to be filled, resulting in a reconstruction
that covers the first 20 overs of the innings. While a few of the overs
remain speculative, the reconstruction reproduces all known stats for the
first 186 runs, including Anwar reaching 50 off 47 balls with 8 fours. ******** |
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14 March 2020 What
is the most common number of runs conceded by bowlers? A bowler taking, say,
four wickets in an innings will rarely concede less than 15 runs or more than
150, but somewhere in between the frequency will peak. It is quite
interesting to look at the data that emerges from many Tests… Most Common
Runs Conceded by Bowlers
Data for
Test innings since 1907. For 3 wicket data, bowlers bowling fewer than 10
overs excluded. More than 10,000 bowling returns were used in the
calculation. The
most striking thing is that, by and large, the typical runs conceded hardly
changes with the number of wickets taken. Nor does the spread of results,
expressed as Standard Deviation. The data for nine wickets is the exception,
for reasons unclear; note that the only bowlers taking 10 wickets conceded 53
and 74 runs respectively (average 63.5), rather similar to the data for 3 to
8 wickets. For
wicket counts lower than 3, the medians are lower, but the results tend to be
muddied by a large number of ‘small’ analyses from single short spells. This
data is not shown. Graphing
the data for each level produces something akin to a set of Bell Curves,
although somewhat skewed by the fact that the data is bounded at zero but
unbounded at the high end, giving each curve a ‘long tail’.
I
said ‘akin to’ a Bell Curve but there is something else at play here. It
appears that the data does not smoothly fit a Normal Distribution. The
upslope seems more linear than bell-like. Better statisticians than I might
be able to work it out. ******** |
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1 February 2020 I
have done some work on tidying up my session-by-session database, and fixing
a few anomalies. In doing so, I came across an individual century in a
session that I believe was previously unrecognised. At Leeds in 1924, England
was 122 for 1 at lunch on the first day against South Africa. Patsy Hendren came in shortly after lunch and was 104 not out
at tea, out of a score of 303 for 6. Even
though I have a scorebook copy for this Test, I had missed this one, mainly
because the scorebook is in a mess and contains so many anomalies that my
analysis has remained incomplete. Nevertheless, the century in a session is
clear from newspaper reports that are now available on the British Newspaper
Archive online. Hendren finished with 132 off about
160 balls. I
was also able to compile a list of batsmen making 99 runs in a session, which
I think should be complete. 99 Runs in a Test Match Session
BB
refers to total balls bowled in the session. In
some of these cases, the batsman benefited from considerable extensions to
the session, but I have included them anyway. That first day of Test cricket
way back in 1877, featuring Charles Bannerman, was effectively just two
sessions. Play did not start until 1:00 pm, and ended at about 5:00 pm,
possibly because the batsmen were looking into the late afternoon sun (in
mid-March) on the east-west pitch (the pitch orientation was changed to
north-south a few years later). A lot of balls were bowled in that second
session, but it is nice to put Bannerman on the list. Trumper, in his
famous 214* at Adelaide, made 98 between lunch and tea and then 99 between
tea and stumps. Both sessions were only about 90 minutes long. Kapil
Dev made his 99 in the final session of a dull draw. He had been one not out
at tea, and was allowed to complete his century, but not his session century,
before the match was called off prior to the scheduled close. Some
adjustments and addition have been made to session data in the database. Most
changes are minor, although there has also been some data added. Affected
series are: 1907
Eng SAf 1912
Eng Aus 1924
Eng SAf 1953
WI Ind 1955
WI Aus 1958
Ind WI 1959
Pak Aus 1976
WI Ind 1978
Ind WI 1984
Pak Ind ******** Another
block of Tests, from 1982 to 1986, has now been
completed and added to the database. Most of this period is based on surviving
scorebooks, but there are still gaps. The last series in this block, Pakistan in Sri Lanka in 1986, is
particularly short on extended data, perhaps as much as in any other series
in Test history. If anyone has any detailed info on this series, by all means
contact me! ******** |
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10 January 2020 From
time to time I hear of teams that choose not to use the DRS (Decision Review)
when doing so would have resulted in the reversal of a decision. I haven’t
seen any stats on this, so I set out to acquire some, by sorting through Cricinfo texts for the last couple of years. I
looked through the texts for 90 recent Tests, searching for occurrences of
the word “review” or similar on balls where no review occurred, and phrases
that indicated that the bowling team should have reviewed a “not out” or a
batsmen should have reviewed an “OUT”. This is not an exact process; it is
probable that instances were missed. We should also recognise that any
checking of decisions in the absence of an official review is informal, so we
cannot be absolutely certain that the 3rd umpire would have upheld
the review (overturned the decision). All
‘hits’ from the search process were checked, and confirmed or rejected, by
careful reading. There were also a number of instances where recognition of
the failure to review was only noted several balls later, when the DRS data
became available. Nevertheless, I would think that I identified a large
majority of cases, enough to compare teams. Overall,
there were 67 definite or probable cases of ‘failure to review’ – where a
review would have been successful – in 90 Tests. In 13 of these cases, the
failure was that the team had no reviews left; they had failed in too many
reviews earlier in the innings. In the other 54, the team had an opportunity
to use the DRS but declined to use it. Overall, 55 failures involved lbw
decisions – the rest were catches. The
breakdown by team is as follows…
The figures mean that Australia (for
example) had 14 ‘failures’. Two of these were due to running out of reviews,
so Australia chose not to review on 12 occasions when decisions would have
been reversed in its favour. If
you were under the impression that Australia has tended to blow its reviews,
there is good support for that. The above figures include the 2019 Ashes,
during which Australia failed to review six times when a review would have
gone in their favour; they also had one case of running out of reviews. This
was exacerbated by Australia having 13 consecutive bowling reviews go against
them in the Ashes. Australia’s only successful bowling review in the series
came against a tailender, and that was just a few overs before the end of the
series. Australia
did a little better in batting reviews in the Ashes, getting three decisions
out of 18 overturned. That is still a very unimpressive success rate. I
have posted a list of review failures here. If anyone can add to it (for Tests in
the last 2 years) please let me know. ******** |
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