Preview of the Asia Cup 2018

Hong Kong won the qualifying tournament, and will join the regular teams India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan in cricket’s Asia Cup 2018

The odd thing is that Hong Kong is not a regular ODI team now, as it had lost its status in April 2018. They qualified ahead of Nepal and UAE who do have ODI status. (That is why the Nepal v UAE match was the only official ODI among the qualifying matches). The other matches had only List A status.

It is understood that Hong Kong will get ODI status for the Asia Cup matches. This temporary membership has happened before for various teams in the World Cup and Asia Cup.

For more details see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_International#Teams_with_ODI_status

For the Asia Cup matches, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Asia_Cup

KL Rahul’s feat in perspective

Here is a list of all those who have scored 75 or more on their ODI debut:

It can be seen that Rahul is 11th on this list, and the only one to have scored a neat 100. Just below him is SP Patil of the UAE with 99 not out. While there have been  three 99s on Test debut, none of them were unbeaten. In fact there are no unbeaten 90s on Test debut.

SP Fleming was out in the 90s both on Test and ODI debut. Andy Flower, Desmond Haynes and Praveen Amre are among others who made a fifty-plus on both Test and ODI debut.

Note the big gap between the highest score here (148) and the next (124).

There is at least one case (Shahid Afridi, 102 in 1996) who scored a century in his first ODI innings (in the then record of 37 balls), not having batted in the first. Similarly Yuvraj Singh scored 80 in his first innings in his second ODI in 2000.

Here we see the list of  all Indian players with 40 or more on debut, which was headed by Uthappa and now by Rahul:

Patel and Wadekar scored their fifties in India’s first-ever ODI, while Ashok Mankad followed in the very next match. Sidhu is the only one here to do this in a World Cup match (1987), while PK Amre is the only one to score fifty-plus on Test as well as ODI debut. Both of them came against South Africa soon after its comeback, in an ODI in 1991-92 and a Test in 1992-93.

 

 

Making the most of limited chances-Allround performances

We conclude this series with a look at those who put in a good all-round performance in their only opportunity in international cricket. We will look at batting + bowling as well as batting + fielding in the three formats of the game.

We start with Tests:

30-plus runs and 3-plus wickets in their only Test:

Heading the list is MF Malone, one of the Packermen who was given a chance in the final Test of a series which Australia had already lost. It would clearly be the best all-round performance for someone who played only one Test. Next would come that of JP Faulkner. He is a key member of Australia’s current limited-overs teams and will probably play a few more Tests.

30-plus runs and 3-plus dismissals in their only Test:

Again, some relatively lesser-known players. Ronchi and Ojha can be expected to play again. L Ronchi’s performance, for the moment, is the best for any keeper who played in only one test. NV Ojha would be next.

Passailaigue is the only non-keeper here. He put on 487* for the 6th wicket with George Headley in 1931-32 which is still the world first-class record for this wicket.

Now for ODIs:

10 or more runs and 1 or more wicket in their only ODI:

After scraping the bottom of the barrel, we have these 8 ODI players. India’s leading spinner of the 70s is there along with a few other Test players such as AV Mankad, ADG Roberts and JR Hammond. Fittingly Chandrashekhar has the best bowling here, while AV Mankad has the highest score.

10 or more runs and 1 or more dismissal in their only ODI:

ADG Roberts appears in both of these lists. Other famous names are Bill Lawry and the now-familiar Phil Emery.

Finally we move to T20Is:

10 or more runs and 1 or more wicket in their only T20I:

Famous names include Tendulkar (in India’s first T20I), Rafique (Bangladesh’s first genuine all-rounder) and Gillespie. The list is headed by Scott Borthwick who also played one Test and two ODIs.

Gillespie scored the most runs (!) while Hitchcock is the only one to take 2 wickets.

10 or more runs and 1 or more dismissal in their only T20I:

12 in this list, and some of them like Tendulkar, Borthwick and Fayyaz appear again.

Dinesh Mongia, like Tendulkar, made his only T20I appearance in India’s first ODI. He has the highest score here,while no one has more than one dismissal. Nixon is the only one to make a stumping.

There are a number of Test players here including Read, Nafees, Tendulkar, Key, Reifer and Kieran Powell.

This concludes our series on those who did well in their only opportunity in international cricket.

 

Eclectic score cards for ODIs

This is a follow-up from the last post

https://abn397.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/eclectic-score-cards-for-tests/

Now we take up ODIs in the same way. Though others interested in cricket statistics may disagree, I have removed ODIs involving multi-national teams such as the ICC World XI, Africa XI and Asia XI.

First, the highest scores at various batting positions in all ODIs:

Interesting that Kapil’s 175* in 1983 is the oldest record standing, followed by Viv Richard’s 189* in 1984. That was the only ODI played at Tunbridge Wells, and there is no video of this match available because of a dispute with the BBC at that time.

Now for Indian players:

Interesting that the records for numbers 9 and 10 came in the same match.

Now we look at all debutants in ODIs:

Interesting that Haynes’s record of 1978 still stands.

No debutant from India in the above table. Their details are here:

Oddly enough Brijesh Patel’s 82 from India’s very first ODI in 1974 is still a record.

Some may be thinking of Yuvraj Singh’s 84 at No 5 in 2000. But that was in his second ODI, while he did not bat in the first. (Shahid Afridi’s 37-ball century had a similar story).

 

Performance in the first 25 Tests and ODIs

The learning curve can be quite steep in international cricket, although Bangladesh have now shown some signs of improvement since they started. Their performance in Tests is still quite dismal, and it is therefore worthwhile to compare how other countries fared in their first 25 Tests and 25 ODIs. It is often forgotten that India and New Zealand took some 20 and 25 years respectively to record their first Test wins. Here we see a tabulation of all Test-playing countries in their first 25 matches:

It can be seen that England (closely followed by Pakistan) lead the table. New Zealand, Zimbabwe, India and Sri Lanka had a rather unimpressive run of wins but were able to draw more consistently than Bangladesh.

Australia is the only team to win its first Test, and Zimbabwe the only one to draw its first Test. The other 8 teams all lost their first Tests.

Now let us look at the first 25 ODIs for the top 12 teams at the moment, being the 10 Test nations plus Afghanistan and Ireland. As in the case of Tests, we have removed the multinational teams. Apart from the ICC XI there are Africa XI and Asia XI to be removed.

Afghanistan and Ireland have a bit of an advantage as they played more matches against lower-ranked teams which are on the fringes of ODIs, though not good enough to dine at the high table of the main ICC rankings. As we might guess, the West Indies were the big bosses from the beginning though Afghanistan and England tie for the second place, closely followed by Australia. Zimbabwe and Bangladesh take up the bottom. Bangladesh sadly is at the bottom in both formats.

4 of these teams won their first ODI: Afghanistan, Australia, New Zealand and Zimbabwe while the other 10 lost their first matches.

It might be instructive to see how they fared in their first 50 Tests and 50 ODIs.