Test hundreds: an analysis

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Let’s take a break from the T20 action from the IPL as our expert delves into ways to analyse Test hundreds by the greats of the game.

Since 99% of articles, reports and analysis are on IPL, I decided to interject an article on a totally different format, viz., Test cricket. This article looks at a couple of different ways of looking at Test hundreds, a fascinating subject for many.

Everyone is aware that Sachin Tendulkar is fast approaching 50 Test hundreds and 100 international hundreds and it is only a matter of time before he reaches these magical numbers. However, these are achieved through years of top level consistent batting and are primarily longevity measures. Here I will look at performance related measures.

First measure is the “Average of hundreds”. All of us talk about how Virender Sehwag makes big hundreds and 8 of his last 9 hundreds are 150+. This measure translates these statements into numbers. It is simple. Sum the 100+ innings and divide by the number of hundreds and rank by this value.

Let us look at the tables. The criterion is a minimum of 10 Test hundreds.

No	Batsman	Cty	100s	Total	Avge100
1	Bradman D.G	Aus	29	5393	186.0
2	Sehwag V	Ind	19	3488	183.5
3	Zaheer Abbas	Pak	12	2158	179.8
4	Lara B.C	Win	34	5889	173.2
5	Amiss D.L	Eng	11	1879	170.8
6	Jayasuriya S.T	Slk	14	2356	168.2
7	Sangakkara K.C	Slk	21	3518	167.5
8	Hammond W.R	Eng	22	3685	167.5
9	Simpson R.B	Aus	10	1646	164.6
10	Jayawardene M	Slk	27	4377	162.1
11	Atapattu M.S	Slk	16	2584	161.5
12	Gibbs H.H	Saf	14	2226	159.0
13	Younis Khan	Pak	16	2530	158.1
14	Hutton L	Eng	19	2966	156.1
15	Javed Miandad	Pak	23	3584	155.8
16	Smith G.C	Saf	20	3108	155.4
17	Gayle C.H	Win	12	1835	152.9
18	Gooch G.A	Eng	20	3041	152.0
19	Dravid R	Ind	29	4391	151.4
20	Sobers G.St.A	Win	26	3918	150.6
38	Tendulkar S.R	Ind	47	6761	143.8

Don Bradman, as expected, is on top with an average hundred value of 186.0. Sehwag is in second place with an average hundred value of 183.5. In fact, readers would be interested to know that Sehwag was on top of this table until just before the South Africa Test series when his innings of 109 and 165 brought him down into second place. He needs to score 232 or more in his next hundred to overtake Bradman.

Zaheer Abbas is in third place with 179.8 runs. Lara’s penchant for high scoring is displayed with his average hundreds value of 173.2 runs. The top-5 is rounded off with the England opener, Amiss with 170.8 runs. Tendulkar, with 47 hundreds, averages 143.8 runs. This is understandable since the sheer number of centuries will mean that quite a few might be in the 100-150 range.

The second table is ordered on the frequency of Test hundreds. This is determined by dividing the number of Tests by the number of Test centuries.

No	Batsman	Cty	Tests	100s	Frequency
1	Bradman D.G	Aus	52	29	1.8
2	Headley G.A	Win	22	10	2.2
3	Walcott C.L	Win	44	15	2.9
4	EdeC Weekes	Win	48	15	3.2
5	Sutcliffe H	Eng	54	16	3.4
6	Hayden M.L	Aus	103	30	3.4
7	Tendulkar S.R	Ind	166	47	3.5
8	Sobers G.St.A	Win	93	26	3.6
9	Chappell G.S	Aus	87	24	3.6
10	Md Yousuf	Pak	88	24	3.7
11	Gavaskar S.M	Ind	125	34	3.7
12	Ponting R.T	Aus	144	39	3.7
13	Pietersen K.P	Eng	60	16	3.8
14	Harvey R.N	Aus	79	21	3.8
15	Morris A.R	Aus	46	12	3.8
16	Lara B.C	Win	131	34	3.9
17	Hammond W.R	Eng	85	22	3.9
18	Younis Khan	Pak	63	16	3.9
19	Strauss A.J	Eng	71	18	3.9
20	Sehwag V	Ind	76	19	4

Bradman is on top by a wide margin. He has scored a century every 1.8 tests, an amazing achievement unlikely ever to be bettered. The Bradman of the darker shade, Headley, follows next with a hundred every 2.2 tests. A couple of great West Indian batsmen of the 50s, Weekes and Walcott, follow with frequency figures of 2.9 and 3.2 respectively.

The doyen amongst English openers, Sutcliffe, follows next with 3.4. Hayden has a similar figure. Tendulkar does well in this measure with a 100 every 3.5 tests.

It is possible to do other analysis on hundreds such as % of career runs, hundreds scored in winning matches etc., but these are the two basic measures.

The height of inequality

Monday, April 12, 2010

Our expert looks at the monetary values of cricketers in the Indian Premier League and finds an interesting disparity therein.

As the Battle of Britain raged in 1940, Winston Churchill was supposed to have said: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few”.

He was talking of the brave World War II English soldiers … but you could twist the expression to mean other things; e.g., the kind of money that IPL franchise owners pay some of their top players.

On Thursday night, after some elementary arithmetic, I wrote on my Twitter page: With Jayasuriya and Duminy ‘on the bench’, there may be more Ambani money in the dugout than in the playing field.

I see that this tweet has been retweeted around quite a bit, suggesting that some people find this sort of arithmetic quite interesting.

So the next morning I decided to complete the exercise. We looked at all the 8 teams playing in IPL3, and decided to arrange the player prices in descending order.

For example, for Mumbai Indians (MI) we have: Tendulkar (US$1,121,250), Jayasuriya ($975,000), Duminy ($950,000), Harbhajan ($850,000), Pollard ($750,000) … and so on.

How much does the MI total add up to? $6,446,250.

And how much do these top five players add up to? $4,646,250.

So that’s almost 72%—or three-fourths of the total money!

Was this just a MI aberration, or did this percentage appear with other franchises too? And instead of looking at the top 5 expensive players, why not look at the ‘top 4’, ‘top 5’, ‘top 6’ and ‘top 7’? The table below shows the percentages.

	RCB	CSK	DC	DD	KKR	KXIP	MI	RR
Top 4	57.7	55.0	60.0	51.8	48.6	54.7	60.4	59.4
Top 5	64.4	64.5	71.4	59.5	58.1	64.2	72.1	68.5
Top 6	71.2	70.4	80.7	65.3	67.2	71.5	79.1	72.6
Top 7	77.2	76.0	86.9	71.1	76.3	78.3	84.5	75.9

This table leads to the following conclusions:

# Every franchise pays half its money to only the top four players
# Every franchise pays three fourths of its money to the top 6-7 players.

This distribution appears extremely skewed. As a franchise owner, I would feel uncomfortable with these numbers and seek to correct them at the earliest with something more equitable; especially given that cricket is a team game.

There’s another interesting sub-story that we’ll take up next time. Rajasthan Royals spend half, or less than half, the money that other franchises spend and still achieve comparable results. No RR player even receives $500,000 now! Their two highest paid players are Shane Warne ($450,000) and Yusuf Pathan ($475,000), and they cleverly let Mohammed Kaif go because he cost $650,000 and offered no returns.