Review of Australia-New Zealand Tests-2

Hope that you have read part 1

Continuing with the individual performances.

Bowling:

Most wickets (25 or more):

Sir Richard Hadlee and SK Warne are far ahead of everyone else. The former has the most 5-fors (14) and 10-fors (3)

Best innings bowling (including all 6wi and more):

Hadlee again has the best performance. Strangely enough no Australian bowler has taken more than 6wi. Predictably that was Warne.

Best match bowling (including all 10wm and more):

Hadlee still again, followed by Vettori. Hadlee’s 15-1243 is the best of New Zealand against all teams. He also scored a fifty in that match, and took 33 wickets in that 3-Test series in Australia in 1985-86.

Best bowling average (Min 2000 balls, all instances):

Here Lyon just edges in ahead of Hadlee. Chatfield has the best economy rate and Lyon the best strike rate.

Fielding:

Most dismissals (20 or more):

RW Marsh is far ahead of the next. Border has the most (31) dismissals by a non-keeper.

Most innings dismissals (5 or more):

Marsh is among those with 5 dismissals. No non-keeper has 5 catches.

Most match dismissals (7 or more):

Gilchrist has the most dismissals, while no non-keeper has 7 catches.

Best dismissal rate (Min 20 innings, 0.600):

Marsh predictably leads this table. The highest dismissal rate by a non-keeper is by MA Taylor.

All-round performance (Overall):

See criteria in table.

Warne and Hadlee lead. Warne’s Test highest of 99 came against New Zealand.

All-round match performance (fifty and 5-for):

Hadlee’s 54 and 15 wickets takes pride of place here. Dodemaide’s 50 and 5wi came on his debut, while he failed to make either in the rest of his career.

 

 

 

When the tail wagged against India

Indian bowlers have often been frustrated by lower-order batsmen. This happened in the first Test of this series as well as the first innings of the second Test.

Here we list all scores in Tests of 70 and above from No 8-11 (sorry, 12) against India:

This includes several debut scores (including 137* by Neesham, 105 by BR Taylor, 103* by Samaraweera to begin with) as well as career-best scores of 173 by IDS Smith, 137* by Neesham, 107 by Christiani and numerous others such as MA Starc, MD Marshall, TT Bresnan and even Anderson and Muralitharan. The most recent entry is KA Maharaj with 72.

We also look at the averages (with a minimum of 10 innings) for those who batted at 8-12 against India:

Vettori, Broad and Starc have scored the most runs here. Starc, JO Holder and Broad have done well in recent years.

Finally, partnerships of 90+ from the 8th wicket onward against India:

Ironically the highest such partnership is for the last wicket, when Anderson scored his only Test fifty. From the current series we have Maharaj and Philander with 109 for the 9th, and Muthusamy and Piedt with 91 for the 8th.

 

 

The new honors boards at Lord’s-2

The topic of honors boards at Lord’s for Tests has been covered in this blog several times.

Now the authorities have announced that they would be adding honors boards for

ODIs and Women’s matches.

Having covered the centuries, we continue with the 5-fors in ODIs at Lord’s:

Only 9 such instances, compared to the 30 centuries.

No one has taken more than 5 wickets in an innings. And no one has taken a 5-for more than once. Unlike in the case of centuries, we cannot find anyone here who failed to take a 5-for in Tests at Lord’s.

The first such instance was by GJ Gilmour in the final of the 1975 World Cup. The best is 5-30 by DL Vettori vs WI in 2004. Also note J Garner’s 5-38 in the final of the 1979 World Cup.

The “Home” board:

Only one entry here.

The best against India are 4-22 by SJ Harmison on 05 Sep 2004 and 4-46 by LE Plunkett on 17 Jul 2018.

Now for the “Visitors” board:

Somewhat longer. The best by India is 3-26 by A Nehra and 3-28 by Harbhajan Singh in the same match against England on 5 Sep 2004 (in which Harmison also had the best figures against India).

And the “Neutral” board:

In this category India has only played one match, the World Cup final in 1983. India’s best performances were 3-12 by M Amarnath and 3-31 by S Madan Lal. The best against India was 3-32 by AME Roberts.