New Zealand-South Africa Tests, 2022 (Part 2)

Hope you have read Part 1: https://abn397.wordpress.com/2022/03/05/new-zealand-south-africa-tests-2022-part-1/

Continuing with individual performances in

Bowling:

Most wickets (20 and above):

The current players here are Wagner and Rabada.

Steyn has the most fivers (6), followed by CS Martin and M Ntini with 4 each.

Steyn is the only one with two tenners.

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

In this series we have MJ Henry taking 7-23 in the first Test as a record for NZ v SA, surpassing JR Reid’s 6-60 at Dunedin in 1964.

Best match bowling (including all 9wm and better):

Here Henry has 9-55, which is NZ’s second best match bowling performance against SA. CS Martin’s 11-180 figured in NZ’s first home victory against SA in 2004.

Best bowling averages (Minimum 2000 balls bowled, all instances):

Headed by Steyn and Tayfield. No current players here. Also note Vettori’s poor performance.

Steyn and Tayfield have the best averages.

Tayfield and Reid have the best economy rates.

Steyn and CS Martin have the best strike rates.

Now for

Fielding:

Most dismissals (12 and above):

Headed by Waite and Boucher, who are far ahead of the others. Boucher has 49 catches to Waite’s 47, although Waite has the most dismissals.

No current players here. GC Smith (18) has the most catches by a fielder.

Most innings dismissals (5 and above):

de Kock appears twice, while several other keepers have 4 dismissals in an innings. No fielder has more than 3 catches in an innings.

Most match dismissals (6 and above):

Several keepers have made 7 dismissals in a match. The best by a current player is 6 by Blundell. GC Smith took 5 catches as a fielder.

Best dismissal rate (Minimum 20 innings and 0.40):

Waite heads this list by a large margin, followed by Boucher. GC Smith has the best rate for a fielder.

All-round performances:

Overall (see criteria in table):

With these criteria, JR Reid has the best overall performance, far ahead of Vettori.

Match (fifty and five-for):

Only two instances, and MJ Henry’s performance is the best here. His fifty came at No 11.

Diamond ducks in Tests

After looking at fast scoring, we look at the lack of scores. Different kinds of ducks and pairs have been enumerated in various posts. We now concentrate on diamond ducks, where a batsman is dismissed without facing a ball. This usually happens when he is run out at the non-striker’s end. Less often, it could be when he is stumped or run out off a wide.

The number of balls faced in a batsman’s innings was not always recorded in the past. These are the undisputed cases of diamond ducks up to Oct 25, 2019:

The only one to have two of these ducks is CS Martin, sometimes considered as the worst ever batsman in Tests. Ken Rutherford, Umar Gul and Nuwan Pradeep are the only ones to score diamond ducks on debut. Rutherford got a pair including this duck, but went on to become a successful batsman. Many years later his son Hamish Rutherford made 171 on debut.

Umar Gul and Younis Khan batted the longest-7 minutes each.

There is no case of a diamond pair. The closest approach to one appears to be that of Taufeeq Umar who scored a pair with innings of 0 and 2 balls, thus scoring 0 in two innings with 2 balls which is the equivalent of a “king pair” or dismissal off the first ball of each innings.

Also note: There have been 152 diamond ducks in ODIs. The last were by AU Rashid and MA Wood, who were the last two batsmen dismissed in the World Cup final between England and New Zealand on July 14, 2019.

There have also been 50 diamond ducks in T20Is.