The best tailenders in Tests

Having studied the Indian tailenders here , we take a look at Test batsmen from 8 to 12 (!) in all Tests.

Minimum 20 innings, average 25.00

Some of the players here also batted at 7 or higher. Jadeja’s only century and some of Kapil’s centuries came that way.

This list is headed by the relatively lesser known JDC Goddard who was the West Indies captain during the 1948-49 tour of India and the epochal 1950 tour of England.

The current players include (in descending order) Mahmudullah, Jadeja, JO Holder and Ashwin.

As most of us would be more familiar with recent players, we repeat the above exercise for players from 2000 onwards:

Minimum 20 innings, average 20.00 after 01 Jan 2000

Here, only performances after 1 Jan 2000 are included. So the earlier careers of a few trans-millenials such as Boucher, Vettori, Pollock and Streak are not included here.

Here, Boucher is followed by the already forgotten MD Craig, Mahmudullah, Prior and Jadeja. Those currently playing include Mahmudullah, Jadeja, Holder and Ashwin.

Vettori has the most centuries (5) and 50+ scores (20). In contrast, Australia’s NM Hauritz has only one fifty but still manages a batting average of above 20. Similarly for SA’s AJ Hall and England’s TT Bresnan with two fifties apiece.

India’s best tailenders

Ishant Sharma’s heroics and his maiden Test fifty reminded us of the importance of having tailenders who can score some runs. Or, failing that, at least stay around long enough for other batsmen to score some more runs. Ishant was perhaps more of the second type.

We have a quick look at the best performers at 8-11 in the three formats.

For Tests and ODIs  a cutoff of 20 innings is used. For T20Is it is 10 innings.

Test batting averages at 8-11:

RA Jadeja’s average is now above Kapil Dev’s. Remember that both of them and a few others like Nadkarni scored centuries up to No 7 as well.

Kapil, Ashwin and Harbhajan have two centuries here. Others with centuries are Kirmani, IK Pathan, Kumble and Agarkar.

Here Agarkar has the lowest average by a century-maker and Ishant the lowest by a fifty-maker.

The lowest average here is by Maninder Singh, followed by Chandrashekhar and Doshi which most would have guessed.

In ODIs, we have:

The highest averages are by Pathan and Chetan Sharma. Sharma has scored a century batting lower.

Pathan and Agarkar are the only ones here with 2 fifties. The lowest average by a fifty-scorer is by Praveen Kumar.

The lowest average is by Sreesanth, followed by Ishant Sharma and Nehra.

For T20Is, no one has 20 innings so we take the cutoff of 10 innings instead.

Ashwin and Harbhajan are the only ones who qualify here. Neither has scored a fifty.