Review of Tests in 2020-Part 2

Hope you have read Part 1.

We continue with individual performances

Fielding – 8 or more dismissals:

Led by Buttler and Watling. The most catches by a fielder are 14 by Root and Stokes.

From India, Pant has 12 catches as a keeper.

The most stumpings is 3 by Dickwella.

Innings dismissals – 4 and above:

5 dismissals by 4 players, including a non-keeper in Stokes. He also gets a share in the world record of 5 catches held by several players. Pant has 4 catches in an innings.

Match dismissals – 5 and above:

Dominated by de Kock and Watling. Among non-keepers, Stokes and Pope have 6 catches each.

All-round match performances (50 and 5wi):

Broad achieved the rare double of a fifty and 10wm. The next best performance was by Sikander Raza with 100+ runs and 8 wickets.

In Part 3, we will look at the performances of debutants in 2020.

Review of Tests in 2020-Part 1

After Covid had done its worst, only 22 Tests were played in 2020 (i.e. Tests starting in the calendar year 2020). The corresponding figures were 48 in 2018 and 40 in 2019-and the latter was a World Cup year.

A quick summary of Test results:

All 4 of India’s Tests were away (2 vs NZ and 2 vs Aus) and that meant that their results were poorer than usual. England and New Zealand are clear leaders here.

We now look at individual performances. The number of matches is not enough to make meaningful comparisons of averages, strike rates and the like.

Batting-Most runs (250 and above):

Stokes and newcomer Sibley are at the top. India does have one representative (Rahane) near the cutoff of 250 runs. Stokes and Sibley were the only ones with 2 centuries, while Pope made 5 scores above 50. 4 others made 4 scores above 50.

Highest innings scores (90 and above):

Here you see all the centuries made along with the near misses (a 98 and 2 95s). Newcomer Crawley and (inevitably) Williamson have the only 250+ scores.

There is only one score here from India (Rahane’s 112 at Melbourne).

Bowling- 8 or more wickets:

Broad and Southee lead at a distance. Bumrah and Ashwin lead for India.

There are two 10-fors (Broad and Lyon) and four players have taken two 5-fors (Anderson, newcomer Jamieson, Lyon and Southee).

Best innings bowling (5wi and above):

While the best innings bowling is by Sikandar Raza of Zimbabwe, Broad and Holder also have 6-wicket hauls. Ishant Sharma has the only fiver for India.

Best match bowling (8wm and above):

After Broad and Lyon, there are several with 9wm. There is no Indian bowler here.

To be continued:

Analyzing Test captaincies-1

With the summer season of 2020 out of the way, we review Test captaincies up to Aug 31, 2020:

Most Tests

Headed by Tendulkar with 200. Anderson (156) and Broad (143) are unlikely to come near, although they may challenge Cook for the England record of 161.

Most Tests as captain:

GC Smith leads with 108. Kohli (55) will probably overtake Dhoni (60) but is unlikely to come near GC Smith. Root (44) is probably the only other captain who will move up a bit-but may not pass Cook’s England record of 59.

Most Tests not as captain:

Tendulkar again, with Anderson and Broad some distance behind.

The next logical question is to find who has played the

Most Tests without ever being captain:

The record was held by Warne for a long time. He has now been overtaken by Anderson with Broad just behind him. Other potential candidates like Ishant Sharma and Lyon are unlikely to come near. VVS Laxman has the India record of 134.

And finally

Those who were captains in all their Tests:

Many of them were from the glorious days of amateurs ruling the roost, although that does not apply to the first few names here. Germon and Porterfield are the only ones from recent times.

Also note the 5 who captained their sides in their only Tests. CA Smith was the only to have won their Test, and ultimately settled in Hollywood.

Also note the father-son duo of FT Mann and FG Mann.

Vizianagram or Vizzy joins his amateur English friends here.

The other double: 50 + 10 wkts in a match

Most of those who follow Test cricket know about the double of a century and 5wi in a match. This has been done 32 times, with the last occasion being the present WI player Roston Chase in 2016.

The lesser-known double is that of 50 and 10wm, which is slightly rarer and has been done on 30 occasions. Stuart Broad joined this list in the 3rd Test against West Indies in 2020.

This seems to be a little harder to achieve compared to the other double. Sir Richard Hadlee is the only one to do it 3 times and Shakib Al Hasan the only one to do it twice. Kapil, Botham and Imran duly appear here. “Sir” Jadeja is the only other player from India here.

In a mirror of Bruce Taylor’s 100 + 5wi against India on his debut in 1965, only one player John Lever has  managed 50 + 10 wm also against India in 1976. Oddly enough S Venkataraghavan was in India’s team on both occasions.

There are some odd cases here involving players who were not generally considered all-rounders, such as Qadir, Border, Bevan and Steyn. And others who had short careers such as Lever, Nash and Craig. But most of the big names of the past few decades are there.

The elite group with a century and 10-for includes Botham, Imran, Shakib and honorary member Davidson with 100 runs and 10-for.

Broad achieved this in the nick of time, taking the last wicket of the match to complete his tenner.

Batting recoveries 3: Doubling the score by the 8th wicket partners

The last post in our series on great batting recoveries covers cases where the 8th-wicket pair doubled the score after the 7th wicket fell. There are 24 such instances; 13 resulted in losses, 4 in draws and 7 in wins.

These matches are tabulated below:

 

The highest such 8th-wicket partnership of 332 by Trott and Broad in that tainted Lord’s match of 2010, where it is very likely that Pakistan’s bowlers deliberately allowed them to add runs to satisfy the requirements of the fixers. The “genuine” highest partnership would then be the 313 by Akram and Saqlain in the only Test ever played at Sheikhpura.

The highest ratio of (8th wkt partnership)/( sum of 1st to 7th wicket partnerships) is 3.255 by Trott and Broad (102/7 to 434/8) followed by 2.423 by Absolom and Lord Harris (26/7 to 89/8). The lowest here is 1.053 by debutants Morkel and Vincent who went from 38/7 to 78/8.

Absolom and Harris did this as early as 1879, unlike the 9th wicket recoveries starting from 1946 and 10th wicket recoveries starting from 1980.

Soon afterwards Absolom became the first (and only?) Test player to be killed by sugar bags (or bananas?) falling from a ship’s crane.Also see https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/22972852/the-curious-affair-charlie-absolom

Lord Harris went on to bigger things, not necessarily in cricket. He did, however see England win in all his 5 Tests although he hardly contributed to these victories.

If you look at the ratio of (innings total)/(sum of 1st to 7th wicket partnerships) the highest is 4.333 where Blunt and Dickinson started the recovery from 21/7 to 64/8 which went on to 112. This was New Zealand’s first ever Test and noted for debutant MJC Allom’s hat-trick and 4 wickets in 5 balls. Next is 3.474 by Morkel and Vincent, who started with 38/7 and went to 78/8 and finally 170. This is a little better than 3.255 by Trott and Broad, 102/7 to 434/8 and finally 446.

The lowest is the anemic 1.250 by Pakistan in 2017, going from 36/7 to 78/8 and 81.

Of special note was the England-WI Test of 1966 which witnessed a 200+ stand for the 8th wicket (Graveney and Murray) as well as a 100+ stand for the 10th wicket (Higgs and Snow), taking them from 166/7 to 383/8, 399/9 and finally 527. This ended a series of heavy defeats by the West Indies, and marked the start of the short reign of the maverick captain DB Close.

The Lord’s Dishonour Boards (Aug 2021)

You know all about the Test honours boards at Lord’s, which have been covered in this blog a few times.

You also know who never did well while playing in several matches at Lord’s: https://abn397.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/those-who-missed-the-bus-at-lords/

Now imagine the concept of a Dishonour Board. For batting, this would be anyone who gets a genuine pair (dismissed for a duck in both innings) at Lord’s:

Dismissed for a pair at Lord’s:

India contributed Murali Vijay and Kuldeep Yadav in the 2018 Test. Earlier that season, Stuart Broad was dismissed for a silver pair (out second ball in each innings). Anderson and Curran both got pairs against India in 2021.

In 2021, Sam Curran became the first to get a golden pair (out first ball in each innings) at Lord’s. No instance could be found of a bronze pair (third ball).

As you may guess, most of these players are not specialist batsmen (though Prior, Stokes and Murali Vijay are exceptions).

Botham’s pair in 1981 was the final trigger to his dismissal from the captaincy, when England trailed 0-1 in the second Test of an Ashes series. Brearley came back as captain, and the rest was history  as England won three Tests in a row to win 3-1.

Now we look at those who bowled in each innings of a match and had match figures of  0-100 or worse:

The most runs conceded are 143 by West Indian Fidel Edwards and 142 by Australian AC Agar. The most overs bowled is 51 by R Berry in 1950. That was in the historic victory when the West Indies won in England for the first time.

The only instance from India is that of Shastri, who came up against Gooch’s 333 and 123 in 1990.

And finally, we look at wicket-keepers who did not make a dismissal after fielding in both innings of a match:

Leslie Ames appears here three times in the 1930s. A number of other prominent keepers ranging from Waite to de Villiers are here as well.

Now someone like Andy Zaltzman can take this up further and put up the Dishonour Boards at Lord’s.