Differences between home and away bowling averages

Here, we consider the differences for the 261 players who have bowled at least 2000 balls in home and away/neutral Tests.

The full list of Home average-Away/Neutral average can be seen in this spreadsheet.

sorted home advantage

This is for Tests up to Oct 25, 2019. The 2005 Test involving the ICC XI is not included.

However, you may find it simpler to look at the top 40, whose home average has the greatest positive difference  with the away/neutral average. Or those who derive the greatest advantage from home conditions.

Note that some prominent players do not feature here as they have not bowled 2000 balls in one of the two categories.

Many of the current Pakistani players are not here because they have played few or no Tests at home.

Those with the strongest home advantage:

We see that JDP Oram (NZ) followed by CR Woakes (Eng) and MH Miraj (BD) have the greatest home advantage, with Oram having a large lead. The leaders from other countries are  TW Wall (Aus), BC Strang (Zim), SLV Raju (Ind), RL Chase (WI), Abdul Qadir (Pak), BM McMillan (SA) and MDK Perera (SL). Some of them, particularly the spinners such as Miraj, Raju and Qadir are known to have done much better at home.

Those with the weakest home advantage:

Some relatively lesser known names at the top, apart from Worrell who was not a regular bowler for most of his Test career. RDB Croft (Eng) leads by a large margin over the next FM Worrell (WI) and PJ Wiseman (NZ). The leaders from other countries are IK Pathan (Ind), GRJ Matthews (Aus), RAS Lakmal (SL), Mushtaq Mohammad (Pak) and AA Donald (SA). We have to go beyond the top 40 to find Shakib Al Hasan (BD) at #90 and PA Strang (Zim) at #120.

Pathan was fortunate to play two away series against the particularly weak teams of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

The median value is -3.36 (NAT Adcock, PH Edwards). This implies that an average bowler would be expected to have a home average about 3 more than his away/neutral average.

Those with a difference near zero are MA Holding (0.10) and HJ Tayfield and Shakib Al Hasan (-0.14). They are among the best bowlers from their countries, and did equally well at home and away.

The Lord’s triple honours list

You know about the honours boards at Lord’s: one for scoring a century, one for 5wi and one for 10wm. (Then there are separate boards for home, visitors and neutral players. Ignore that for now).

How many players do you think qualify to be on all three boards? One of them joined the club during this Test.

An elite group of all-rounders, with only one visitor (Miller) among them.

CR Woakes scored a century in this match. He had earlier taken 5wi and 10wm in 2016.

He really seems to like Lord’s, as we see from his record here:

Of those who appear on two or more boards. Vinoo Mankad and Ian Botham are the only ones to have taken a century and 5wi in the SAME match.

No one has scored a century and taken 10wm in the same Test at Lord’s. This has been achieved only three times in all Tests, by Botham, Imran and Shakib.

As an afterthought, here are the only two who have scored a fifty and taken 10wm in the SAME Test at Lord’s:  they would be duly listed for their 5wi and 10wm, but not for their fifty.

A similar piece from Cricinfo: http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/24350452/chris-woakes-lord-love

Tail piece: Some readers seem to be unsure about the existence of the 10wm boards. Maybe they are a relatively recent innovation. However, we have some pictures to verify this:

Part of the 10wm board.

Also, when someone gets 10wm with two fivers, both fivers are mentioned on the fiver board. If he gets one fiver and another haul of less than 5 wickets in the match, both are mentioned (and marked) as you can see here:

And finally, one of the obscure boards for neutral Tests:

These were set up in 2010 and so far cover only two Tests, Aus v SA in 1912 and Aus v Pak in 2010.