ODI outlier innings: an overview
Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi’s recent blistering knock got our expert curious about performers who stood out in comparison to their team-mates in team totals.
When Shahid Afridi essayed his century against Sri Lanka, I was intrigued to see the level at which he out-performed his team-mates. A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that he scored at 143.4 (109 in 76 balls) and his team-mates scored at 49.5 (106 in 206 balls). This gives an out-performance ratio of 2.90. I thought that this might be one of the highest ever. Then my inquisitive mind insisted that I do a complete analysis to see where Afridi’s masterpiece stood. It turned out to be an interesting analysis and led to surprising conclusions.
First of all, I set a minimum of 50 runs to be scored by the batsman. Otherwise a batsman who scores 12 in 2 balls would out-perform his team-mates by a ridiculous margin of 8 or 9. I wanted even cameos such as 20 in 6 or 40 in 15 to be excluded. Also, the extras had to be taken out of the equation. I set a limit of 2.50 for consideration of an innings to be a truly outlier innings.
The results are fascinating. 86 innings qualified. This is out of a total of 52,126 innings, working out to 0.16%, making this a truly exclusive selection.
The top-20 entries are listed below.
| MtId | Year | Batsman | Bat Runs | Details Balls | S/R | Team Runs | Details Balls | S/R | Ratio |
| 1093 | 1996 | Jayasuriya S.T | 76 | 28 | 271.4 | 81 | 169 | 47.9 | 5.66 |
| 182 | 1983 | Cairns B.L | 52 | 25 | 208.0 | 92 | 214 | 43.0 | 4.84 |
| 657 | 1990 | Ranatunga A | 58 | 27 | 214.8 | 135 | 267 | 50.6 | 4.25 |
| 152 | 1982 | Kapil Dev N | 60 | 37 | 162.2 | 115 | 293 | 39.2 | 4.13 |
| 225 | 1983 | Patil S.M | 51 | 28 | 182.1 | 106 | 216 | 49.1 | 3.71 |
| 53 | 1978 | Cairns B.L | 60 | 43 | 139.5 | 79 | 205 | 38.5 | 3.62 |
| 216 | 1983 | Kapil Dev N | 175 | 138 | 126.8 | 79 | 222 | 35.6 | 3.56 |
| 2365 | 2006 | Gilchrist A.C | 76 | 46 | 165.2 | 103 | 218 | 47.2 | 3.50 |
| 576 | 1989 | Border A.R | 84 | 44 | 190.9 | 140 | 256 | 54.7 | 3.49 |
| 1901 | 2002 | Ervine S.M | 61 | 41 | 148.8 | 67 | 157 | 42.7 | 3.49 |
| 608 | 1990 | Wasim Akram | 86 | 76 | 113.2 | 69 | 211 | 32.7 | 3.46 |
| 1660 | 2000 | Agarkar A.B | 67 | 25 | 268.0 | 213 | 275 | 77.5 | 3.46 |
| 2239 | 2005 | Shahid Afridi | 102 | 46 | 221.7 | 134 | 207 | 64.7 | 3.43 |
| 2687 | 2008 | Gilchrist A.C | 83 | 50 | 166.0 | 116 | 239 | 48.5 | 3.42 |
| 2252 | 2005 | Mohd Ashraful | 94 | 52 | 180.8 | 117 | 220 | 53.2 | 3.40 |
| 15 | 1974 | Zaheer Abbas | 57 | 61 | 93.4 | 13 | 47 | 27.7 | 3.38 |
| 1963 | 2003 | Davison J.M | 111 | 76 | 146.1 | 79 | 181 | 43.6 | 3.35 |
| 245 | 1984 | Holding M.A | 64 | 39 | 164.1 | 110 | 222 | 49.5 | 3.31 |
| 2638 | 2007 | Cann L.O.B | 52 | 32 | 162.5 | 106 | 216 | 49.1 | 3.31 |
| 2660 | 2007 | McCullum B.B | 80 | 28 | 285.7 | 7 | 8 | 87.5 | 3.27 |
| 2991 | 2010 | Shahid Afridi | 109 | 76 | 143.4 | 102 | 206 | 49.5 | 2.90 |
It is of interest to note that Afridi’s century comes somewhere in the middle of the list (42nd) of these 86 performances.
Look at Jayasuriya’s innings. He scored 76 in 28 balls out of a Sri Lankan innings of 172 all out in 32.5 overs (15 extras). He out-performed his team-mates by an amazing 5.66 times. Unbelievable indeed!
Coming in at no.8, Bruce Cairns scored 52 in 25 balls out of a New Zealand innings of 153 all out in 39.5 overs (9 extras). He out-performed his team-mates by a huge 4.84 times.
Ranatunga scored 58 in 27 balls out of a Sri Lankan innings of 227 all out in 49.0 overs (34 extras). He out-performed his team-mates by 4.25 times.
A few innings, such as Zaheer Abbas’ 57 or McCullum’s 80 are primarily here because of the low innings sizes. Still memorable innings.
Out of 86 such outlier performances, the following batsmen have done this feat most often,
Shahid Afridi: 9 times (over 10% - by a single batsman!!!)
Viv Richards: 4 times
Kapil Dev: 4 times.
A very revealing performance measure indeed.
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Great insight, and an intriguing way to compare individual Vs team scoring rates.
Thumbs up !!!