A statistical tribute to Max Walker

As you would know, Australian pace bowler Max Walker passed away recently. He played an useful support role to the more flamboyant Lillee and Thomson. Oddly enough, he never played against India in his 34 Tests and 17 ODIs. Most of his teammates such as the Chappell brothers, Marsh, Lillee, Thomson and Mallett did play in at least one series against India.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/8137.html

I remembered him for a statistical quirk in his last Test, the final Test against England in 1977. This was a dead rubber match, which saw Walker and debutant Mike Malone putting on a century partnership for the 9th wicket. Being Packermen, they were not able to return to the Test team after the “amnesty”. They did get to play a few ODIs.

The scorecard of that Test: http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63194.html

Now Walker (besides debutant Malone) made their highest Test scores (78 and 46) in their final Test. In fact Walker had never made a Test fifty before. This led me to study how many people had made their career-best score in their final Test.

This is not something which can be pulled out directly from Statsguru, but requires some additional work. If you stick to career-best scores of 50+, there are over 80 such instances so there isn’t much point in listing them all.

Anyway, I have listed all such cases of making their career-best score in their last Test, that score being 100 or more:

Of course, the 4 instances of 2016 should not really be here as all of them (especially Kohli and Rahane) will be playing for a long time to come. Note the strange case of Andy Sandham who made the world Test record in his last Test, though Bradman overtook it a few months later. The special cases of Ganteaume and Redmond would be familiar.

I also listed the Indian players who made their career-best score in their last Test, that score being 50 or more:

The Yuvraj of Patiala (a.k.a. Yadavendra Singh) is the only Indian among the 15 who scored a fifty or more in his only Test. Leaving out Kohli and Rahane, there is only Vijay Merchant who made his highest score of 100+ in his last Test.

Another record for Brendon McCullum (Revised in Sep 2017)

As we all know, Brendon McCullum recorded the fastest ever Test century in the Christchurch Test when he crossed 100 in 54 balls.

He also became the only Test player to score a century in the last test of his career, while captaining his country. This is what you get from Statsguru:

Naturally, Smith can be discounted as we know he has not retired. So McCullum is the only one who qualifies.

This seemed a bit odd, so I repeated this check to identify those who scored a fifty in the last test of their career, while captaining their side. We get this:

This live link may be more useful: http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?captain=1;class=1;debut_or_last=2;filter=advanced;opposition=1;opposition=2;opposition=25;opposition=3;opposition=4;opposition=5;opposition=6;opposition=7;opposition=8;opposition=9;orderby=start;qualmin1=1;qualval1=fifty_plus;team=1;team=2;team=25;team=3;team=4;team=5;team=6;team=7;team=8;team=9;template=results;type=batting

As many as 34 names here. But it includes some whose Test careers are not over, essentially everyone from Mushfiqur Rahim downwards excluding McCullum and now Misbah. So we remove Mushfiqur, Kohli, Mathews, AN Cook and SPD Smith.

So we are left with 29 who scored a fifty in their last Test when they were captaining. In some cases their retirement was known in advance, in other cases they may not have known they were playing their last Test.

McCullum has scored the most runs in the match (170) among these, though a few others have crossed 100 without making a century. The WI player RK Nunes is the only one to score two fifties in this category.

We may as well see the list of all those who scored centuries in the last Test of their career, regardless of captaincy:

This live link may be more useful: http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/282931.html

Here we have a total of 42. We remove current players who are likely to keep playing for a while: Hafeez, Rahane, SE Marsh, Amla, SC Cook, de Kock, Burns and SPD Smith. This leaves 34 who scored centuries in their last Test (unless McCullum makes a comeback). In contrast, 100 players scored 102 centuries on debut (Remember Rowe and Yaseer Hameed).

Naturally our old friends AG Ganteaume and RE Redmond are there, as their first and last Tests were the same. Others who scored centuries on debut and last Tests are Duff (104 & 146), Ponsford (110 & 266), Greg Chappell (108 & 182) and Azharuddin (110 & 102). In case SE Marsh does not play another Test he will also join this club with 141 & 182.

Centuries in their last Test include those by Sandham (325, the first Test triple century) and double centuries by Ponsford, Nurse, Aravinda de Silva (last f-c match) and (strangest of all) night-watchman Gillespie making his only Test century.

CAG Russell is the only one to score centuries in both innings of his last Test. He was the first English player to score centuries in both innings of a Test.