Test Hundreds: A fresh look

Friday, May 18, 2012

Our expert analyses which batsmen convert to big centuries after crossing the 100-run mark.

A couple of years ago, I had done a short analysis on Test hundreds. That covered the average value of 100s and the frequency of hundreds. Don Bradman came on top quite comfortably on both measures.

Now I will be taking a fresh look at the Test hundreds.

Let me raise the bar to 150s and work out the average score. This will give us an idea of the batsmen who, after crossing the hundred mark, went on to convert these into really big innings. I have taken a minimum of five 150+ innings for consideration.

Ah! What do we have here? A rare table in which Bradman is not at the top. Chris Gayle tops the table with an average value of 231.8 when he crossed 150. Readers might remember that he, along with Bradman, Brian Lara and Virender Sehwag, is the only batsman to have crossed 300 twice. That he has managed to go above Bradman is a testament to his high-scoring ability, a trait he shares with his more illustrious country-man, Lara.

Bradman is second with 225.9 and is almost upstaged by another modern batsman with a penchant for attacking batting, Sanath Jayasuriya.

At the other end of the table we have three players who have not crossed 175. Steve Waugh’s is a peculiar case since his highest Test score is 200. That means he has 14 scores between 150 and 200.

Now let me look at the rate of conversion from 50s to 100s. The criterion is ten hundreds.

Bradman converted 29 of his fifties into hundreds, giving him a conversion rate of 69%. However, this is not as much distant from others as his other batting measures are. There are 9 others who have converted 50% or more of their fifties into hundreds. Ashwell Prince and Matthew Hayden are the modern batsmen who fall into this category.

At the other end, we have VVS Laxman who has converted below one-in-four of his fifties into hundreds. He is joined in this by Alec Stewart and Michael Atherton.

ODI wins on the last ball: Revisited

Monday, May 07, 2012

How close is a ‘close match’? Our expert analyses all those one-dayers that went down to the wire.

I had looked at this topic during 2010. But then, I had considered only the clearly-defined cases of second batting teams winning. It is not very easy to define whether the wins by the team batting first are really last-ball wins since, in most cases, we do not know what happened in the last ball. 9 runs might have been needed for a win, a 4 was hit and the team could lose by 4 runs. However, I have decided that it is essential to make some assumptions and complete this interesting analysis, especially as there has been a spate of last-ball finishes in the current edition of the Indian T20 League: at last count 5 out of 45 matches.

I will only consider matches which are won by 3 runs or less. If the margin is 4 or more, it is fair to assume that the match would not really have been a last-ball finish. It might have been lost a few balls back.


The first two results are from ancient times when we had a quaint, but nice, rule that the team losing fewer wickets in tied matches would be declared the winner. Only two teams, India and Pakistan, have won through this rule. It is obvious that the losing team could have done something more on the last ball to prevent a loss.


Now for the 1-run wins. It is almost certain that in these 17 matches, the last ball would have mattered. Unless otherwise a six was scored, the last ball would have proved decisive. There is one case of the chasing team winning by 1 run, a totally unlikely scenario, through D/L. Let me add that all such matches have been nomenclatured D/L even though D/L was not in existence during the first 25 years.


Now, for the 2-run wins. There is a fair chance that most of these 20 matches would have been decided off the last ball. All the D/L instances have been wins by first batting teams.


It is obvious that some of these 3-run wins might have been beyond the reach of the second batting team. I would venture to say, about half of the 9 matches.

Just for the record, there are twelve 4-run wins, ten 5-run wins and thirteen 6-run wins. It is fair to say that in most of these 35 wins, the runs needed to get in the last ball would have been beyond a single-ball expectation.

That leaves us with 59 really close matches and 35 close matches. This is around 3% of the total number of ODIs played.  One in 30: not too bad!