Review of Australia-New Zealand Tests-1

The overall results at the end of this series:

As Australia won all 3 Tests, they gained 120 points for the World Test Championship. The points table as of 06 Jan 2020:

Australia won their second clean sweep in a 3-Test series against New Zealand. They had earlier done this in New Zealand in 1999-2000.

While New Zealand has lost most of their series against Australia, they did win both at home and away in 1985-86 thanks mainly to RJ Hadlee.

Now for individual performances in Batting:

Most runs (750 or more):

Warner, Taylor and Smith are the current players here.

The most centuries are 5 by Border and Warner.

The most 50+ scores are 11 by Border and Boon.

Highest innings (140 and above):

None of these high scores are from this series, although there are some from 2015 and 2016. Taylor and Warner made the top scores for these teams in the same Test in 2015.

Highest batting averages (Min 20 innings, all instances):

Taylor and Southee represent the current players. Warner has not played enough in this series. JL Langer has a large lead over the next-placed Greg Chappell.

Highest batting strike rates (Min 1000 balls faced, 50.00):

Gilchrist leads by a large margin over Warner and Taylor.

To be continued:

 

England and the curse of Cape Town

England recorded its 62nd win (out of  151) against South Africa, the 32nd out of 83 in that country and its 10th win (out of 21) at Cape Town.

Have a look at how they have fared in Cape Town (which has only one Test ground):

Of these 10 wins, 8 were before 1930. The 9th was in 1957 almost exactly 63 years ago, and the 10th was in 2020.

The 1957 win was mainly due to JH Wardle’s 12 wickets.  In 2020, it was Ben Stokes’ 3-dimensional performance with 119 runs, 3 wickets and 6 catches:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/19430/scorecard/1185305/south-africa-vs-england-2nd-test-icc-world-test-championship-2019-2021

England also gained 30 points in the WTC championship and moved into third place. Meanwhile Australia bagged all the 120 points in their series against New Zealand and continued to creep up towards India’s tally.

Snippets from Aus-NZ Test series

The 3-Test series ended in a clean sweep for Australia. Earlier in 2019-20 Australia had also swept Pakistan 2-0. All these 5 Tests ended in 4 days or less. A brief summary:

All 5 of these Tests ended on the 4th day.

They are duly recorded in the list of clean-sweep series:

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283942.html

And Australia’s captain TD Paine is presently the only Test captain who is a wicketkeeper. His Pakistani counterpart has been dropped since January 2019:

NZ set an unwanted record during this series-their 256 in the first innings of the 3rd Test is the lowest top score by a team in a Test series of 3 or more matches:

The previous record was set by South Africa in their tour of Australia in 1993-94. That was a somewhat less one-sided series than this and was drawn 1-1.

A summary of New Zealand’s totals:

Even the top score of 256 included a 5-run penalty after DA Warner was found to be running on the pitch during Australia’s second innings.

And the World Test Championship saw Australia getting a full 120 points and New Zealand none. Here is the WTC points table on 06 Jan 2020 which included this series as well as the first Test between South Africa vs England, which was won by the former giving them 30 points.

See how Australia is creeping up towards India’s total.

 

Quick guide to Test matches of 2017

In the calendar year 2017, 47 Test matches were played. 40 had results and 7 were drawn. Coincidentally, in 2016 there were also 47 Tests if which 7 were drawn.

These were the ICC rankings at the end of the year:

India clearly at the top, although there is some chance that South Africa will close the gap in the current series. But even a 3-0 win is not likely to put SA at the top.

At the bottom end, note that West Indies and Bangladesh are now level and Zimbabwe is far behind. It will be interesting to see where Ireland and Afghanistan will be (say) five years from now. While Ireland seems to be declining, Afghanistan may well get ahead of Zimbabwe.

Now we look at the win-loss ratio for all Tests in 2017. This is not expected to give the same results as the ICC rankings since the latter cover a longer period.

While India clearly leads, New Zealand has also done well to be in second place. Zimbabwe is the only one without a win, though Pakistan and Bangladesh have the same number of wins.

More detailed analysis of individual performances will follow.

 

The ODIs of 2017

With the conclusion of ODIs on Dec 26, these were the ICC rankings for this date:

We see that South Africa leads with India just a point behind. As they are to play a 6-match ODI series in January 2018, the top position may well change hands.

We now survey ODI performances in 2017, starting with overall win-loss rations for all ODIs from starting between Jan 1 and Dec 31. All later tables are also in this time frame.

Win-Loss ratios:

This cannot be expected to tally exactly with the ICC rankings since the latter takes into account a longer time span. And this table cannot be taken too seriously as it has Hong Kong in 2nd position, as it mainly plays with the lower-ranked teams. Among the regulars, we have England followed by India, South Africa and Pakistan. And the West Indies is at the very bottom, with its fellow wooden – spooners Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea.

We now move on to individual performances, starting with batting.

Most runs (500 and above):

Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Tharanga scored the most runs. The two Indians also have the most centuries (6 apiece) and most 50+ scores (13 and 11 respectively).

Among those who batted for 20 innings and above, the highest averages are for Kohli (76.84) followed by Rohit Sharma.

Among those who faced at least 500 balls, the highest strike rates are by de Villiers (116.94) followed by KM Jadhav (!) and Ben Stokes.

Now for the highest innings (115 and above):

RG Sharma has the only double century (208*) while du Plessis and Guptill are some distance behind.

Now for bowling:

Most wickets (15 and above):

The table is led by rising stars Hasan Ali and Rashid Khan, with Bumrah and Plunkett a little behind. Hasan Ali is the only one with three fivers, while Rashid Khan and Plunkett each have four 4+s.

Best innings bowling (including all 5wis):

Rashid Khan and TA Boult were the only ones with 7-wicket hauls. An interesting feature here is A Dananjaya (SL) with a 6-wicket haul besides 18 wickets overall. A year ago, he was an interesting oddity as his ODI career of 1 match saw him neither batting, bowling nor fielding.

To save space, there is no table for bowling averages. Taking a minimum of 1000 balls bowled, we see:

JJ Bumrah has the best bowling average of 26.25, followed distantly by B Kumar.

B Kumar has the best economy rate of 5.05, followed closely by JJ Bumrah.

And JJ Bumrah has the best strike rate (30.6) followed by HH Pandya .

An Indian monopoly-as Indian players are practically the only ones who have bowled enough overs. JO Holder is the only other one to have crossed 1000 balls.

Now for fielding:

Most dismissals (10 and above):

Dhoni is far ahead of the second-placed Buttler. They do have the same number of catches though Dhoni has more stumpings. Several non-keepers have 12 catches.

Most innings dismissals (4 and above):

Latham is the only one with 5 dismissals. GJ Maxwell is the only non-keeper with 4 catches.

Dismissals per innings (minimum 20 innings):

Dhoni (1.392) is followed closely by SD Hope with 1.238.

Among non-keepers Kusal Mendis has the highest with 0.571.

All-round performance (overall, see criteria in table):

Ironically, only Rashid Khan has respectable figures here- as he can bat a bit to go along his excellent bowling average.

All-round match performance (minimum 40 runs and 4 wickets):

Dominated by players from the lesser-ranked teams, with Stirling and Mustafa having the best performances.

 

 

Review of cricket team performance in 2016

Here we look at the ICC rankings in all three formats as on Dec 31, 2016 as well as the wins and losses during the calendar year.

There will not be a direct correlation between the ICC ranking and wins/losses as the ICC rankings take into account a longer period.

Tests:

ODIs:

T20Is:

It can be seen that both table toppers are the same for Tests and T20Is, but not in ODIs.