Cricket stats
As MS Dhoni finally breaks his T20i duck, Roderick Easdale looks at other global superstars who didn’t always have things their own way
Some weird and wonderful facts from the game
Last week’s third T20 international of the recent series between India and England saw MS Dhoni make a half century. No great surprise you might think there – after all he has long been one of the best white-ball cricketers around. Asked to name a World T20 side to take on the Martians, many would plump for Dhoni as batsman-keeper-captain. Moreover, Dhoni was playing his 76th T20i and his 66th innings and went to the crease averaging more than 36 in this format.
Yet this was the first time the 35-year-old had made a T20i half century.
In comparison, England’s wicket-keeper batsman, Jos Buttler, has five half centuries in 20 fewer innings; Dhoni’s successor as captain, Virat Kohli, 16 half centuries in 22 fewer innings. England’s skipper, Eoin Morgan, has played the same number of innings as Dhoni, but has eight fifties. The 22 players in this match had gone into the game with 48 half centuries between them.
Clearly statistics do not always tell the full story. Three men who were selected for England either as a batsman or an all-rounder made a pair on Test debut. Two of them were never picked again. The third went in to win 118 caps and become, for a while, England’s record run scorer – Graham Gooch.
Debutant Gooch had learnt at breakfast on the morning of the match that he was playing from one of the selectors, Len Hutton. “Have you played against Australia before?” asked Hutton, chattily.
“Yes, you selected me for the MCC two weeks ago.”
“Did I?“replied Sir Len. “Sorry, I don’t watch much cricket these days.”
Hutton had started his own Test career with a duck (as he also had done in first-class cricket). So too did Ken Barrington, Maurice Leyland, Colin Milburn, Charles Russell and Charles Mead. The lowest test batting average among that sextet is Leyland’s 46. Barrington averaged 58, Russell and Hutton 57.
Mike Atherton also made a duck in his debut Test innings. Indeed, he was to add 19 more during his career. But few bowlers got Athers out. But those that did, did so in spades. More than a quarter of his dismissals were to either Glenn McGrath, Courtney Walsh or Curtly Ambrose.
Fellow Lancastrian Jimmy Anderson, the ‘Burnley Lara’, became famed for having never been out for a Test duck. This record lasted for the first 41 matches and 54 innings of his career. Only four men have longer records from debut: AB de Villiers, Aravinda de Silva, Clive Lloyd and Ross Taylor. Since then, Anderson has made 21 ducks, seven of them first-ballers.
The West Indies side of the 1980s bowled their overs slowly and balls quickly, and was one of the most devastating attacks of all time.Yet two of their regular bowlers were the most ineffectual regular bowlers in test cricket.
The two worst strike rates for Test bowlers (of those who bowled at least 400 overs) belong to members of that team. Viv Richards bowled 856 overs – more than Patrick Patterson did incidentally – for the Windies and took 32 wickets, and Larry Gomes contributed 400 overs to garner 15 wickets.
Talking of Garner, what do Joel Garner, Colin Croft, Patrick Paterson, Garfield Sobers, Jeff Thomson, Bob Willis, Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie, Darren Gough, Ray Lindwall, Jaques Kallis, Andrew Flintoff, Bill Johnson, Heath Streak and Morne Morkel have in common? Apart from a reputation for being some of the finest fast or fast-medium bowlers of their
respective eras, none of them ever took a 10-for in Test cricket.
Between them, they have 1,039 caps and 3,405 wickets.
Kent’s Charles ‘Father’ Marriott had a short prancing run, described by one writer as ‘goose stepping’ to the crease. He bowled quick leg-breaks and googlies with a high action, and one arm swung behind his back so hard after delivery that it hit his back with a resounding slap, off-putting to batsmen. He made his debut in the final Test of the summer of 1933, and took 11-96. Although picked on the following winter’s tour, to India, he never played another test.
Andrew Flintoff went through a first-class career of 183 matches and only ever took a five-for in an innings on four occasions. In first-class cricket he averaged under two wickets a match.
In England’s Greatest Post-War
All-Rounder, I pondered the question, “Will future generations of cricket followers look at Flintoff’s statistics and wonder what the fuss was all about?” Part of the reason his stats are poor is that he was indeed a poor Test player during the early years of his 11-year international career, a raw, bits-andpieces cricketer. Five years into his Test career he had taken only 34 wickets, and these had come at an average of 52.
Ian Botham’s career went the other way. In his last six years in Test cricket, he reached 50 only once – a 51 not out – and his best innings return was 3-217.
Great players can also have periods mid career which are dramatically out of kilter with their career as a whole.
Wally Hammond, possibly the best English batsman of the 20th century, once went 22 innings, and 21 dismissals, without making a half century. Despite this, he averaged 58 over a 140-innings Test career in which he reached 50 on 54 occasions, converting 22 of these innings into centuries, seven of which were double tons, with one triple.
Bowlers can go through barren periods too.
Sobers bowled 744 Test deliveries in a row without taking a wicket; on another occasion he went 558 balls between wickets. This particular record, however is held by Maurice Tate, another of the all-time greats, but who once toiled away for 822 fruitless deliveries. It had once seemed so much easier for Tate – he took a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket as he and Arthur Gilligan bowled South Africa out for 30 in 12.3 overs.
Sobers’ reputation as the greatest all-rounder the world has ever seen relies on his batting and versatility as a bowler, which saw him perform for the West Indies as an orthodox left-arm spinner, wrist spinner and an opening bowler of fast-medium swing. Of the 50 players to have taken at least as many Test wickets as Sobers’ 235, no-one bar Daniel Vettori has a bowling average worse than Sobers’ one of 34, and 15 of these bowlers have an average at least 10 runs a wicket better.
The hero-to-zero route can be traversed quickly. In the Perth Test of 1997 Curtly Ambrose took 5-43 in the first innings and in the second he bowled a record-breaking over. But not in a good way.
It lasted 17 balls as he no-balled repeatedly. The next over went on for 12 deliveries as he sent down six more no balls, and after that he was taken off for the rest of the innings.
Yet West Indies won the game by 10 wickets and Ambrose – whose 30 no balls meant that he had contributed more runs to Australia’s totals than Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Greg Blewett combined – was named man of the match. Cricket... don’t you just love it?
I ponder the question, will future generations of cricket followers look at Flintoff’s statistics and wonder what the fuss was all about?