Australia-England series review-2

Hope you have seen the first part:

Australia-England series review-1

Continuing with individual performances in

Bowling:

Most wickets (90 or more):

Headed by Warne and Lillee. Current players are headed by Broad (131), Anderson (112) and Lyon (101).

Best innings bowling (including all 8wi or more):

Headed by Laker. SCJ Broad is in 4th place with 8-15 in 2015. No one else from recent times, unless you count McGrath’s 8-38 in 1997.

Best match bowling (including all 12wm or more):

Laker heads this table as well, with Massie’s freak debut in second place. From recent years the best is 12-246 by Warne in 2005.

Best bowling averages (Minimum 2000 balls, 25.00 or less):

Here we do have some current players such as PJ Cummins (20.75) and Hazlewood (24.45).

Lohmann has the best bowling average (13.01), Attewell the best economy rate (1.31) and Ferris the best strike rate (42.2)

Now we look at

Fielding:

Most dismissals (40 or more):

Headed by RW Marsh (148), though there are several current players such as Paine, SPD Smith and Bairstow. The specialist stumper Oldfield has 31 stumpings besides 59 catches. Among fielders, the highest is 61 by GS Chappell. Current players include SPD Smith (46).

Most dismissals in an innings (5 or more):

Several keepers have taken 6 in an innings. No fielder has more than 4. Oldfield has 4 stumpings.

In this series, Carey and Billings each took 5 catches on debut.

Most dismissals in a match (7 or more):

Several keepers have taken 9 in a match. Also note GS Chappell’s 7 as a fielder. He was the first Test player to achieve this, although several others have equaled this (and India’s Rahane has taken 8).

In this series AT Carey took 8 dismissals on debut. All 8 were catches, which is a record in all Tests. Others have taken 8 on debut but included one or more stumpings.

See https://abn397.wordpress.com/2021/12/11/alex-careys-records-in-the-brisbane-test/

Best dismissal rate (Minimum 20 innings, 0.75):

Headed by Gilchrist and Haddin, with Bairstow, Buttler and SPD Smith from current players. LC Braund has the best (0.973) among pure fielders.

All-round performances:

Career figures (see criteria in table):

KR Miller leads by a large margin. Stokes represents the current players.

Match performances (50 and 5wi):

A long list. The best would be those with 100/5wi (JM Gregory, Botham) and with 50/10wm (W Bates, Trumble and Woolley).

Australia-England series review-1

Australia won this series 4-0 and came within one wicket of making it 5-0. They had already achieved this against England in 1920-21, 2006-07 and 2013-14.

Last-wicket pairs thwarting defeat are more common than one would imagine. Here is a complete list of these instances in Tests:

This was only the second such instance in Aus-Eng Tests. The earlier one was at Manchester in 2005.

India also appears a number of times in this list, both as thwarter and thwartee.

Here is the summary of matches between Australia and England. Remember that there are some Tests which are not considered as Ashes contests.

Australia’s dominance at home is clear, and they almost lead England in England as well.

We now look at individual performances, starting with

Batting:

Most runs (2000 and more):

Many famous names here. Bradman has the most centuries (19) followed by Hobbs with 12.

Bradman also has the most 50+ scores (31) followed by Border with 29.

You will struggle to find current players here. They are SPD Smith with 3044 with Root just scraping in with 2016. Going a little further back there is Cook with 2493.

Highest innings (200 or more):

In recent years there are 244* by Cook (2017), 239 and 215 by Smith (2017 and 2015).

Highest batting averages (Minimum 20 innings, 45.00 or more):

SPD Smith is No 4 (after Bradman, Sutcliffe and Barrington). No one else from the last few years, unless you count CJL Rogers who played a few Tests in 2013-2015.

Highest strike rates (Minimum 1000 balls faced, 50.00 or more):

Oddly enough, SCJ Broad has the 4th highest strike rate (after Gilchrist, Flintoff and Prior). And Warne is 5th. Warner, SPD Smith and Stokes are also here.

To be continued.

The Ashes since 1970

So the 2019 series was drawn 2-2, and Australia retained the Ashes which they held since winning the 2017-18 series.

Here we look at the history of the Ashes since the 1970-71 series, when England won the Ashes after a long gap-Australia had held them since 1958-59 so they were away from England throughout the 1960s. There were also longish droughts for England in the early 1920s and from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s.

Similarly, Australia had held the Ashes from 1989 to 2005, so the 1990s also passed without England getting hold of them. However, Australia has had the better of the contests since then (especially in Australia).

A quick look at the list shows some captains who won the Ashes on two or more occasions, including Ian Chappell (2), Brearley (3), Border (3), Taylor (3), S Waugh (2), Strauss (2) and Cook (2).

Those who have lost the Ashes on two or more occasions are Border (3), Gooch (2), Atherton (2), Hussain (2), Ponting (3), Clarke (2) and Root (2).

Alistair Cook’s record score.

As you can see from here, Alistair Cook’s 244* at Melbourne is not his highest Test score.

That is 294.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/player/11728.html

However, it set a number of records. He became the first Test player to make 244*, while Bradman is the only one to be dismissed on 244 (vs England, who else?) in 1934.

Cook’s 244* is also the highest score by anyone carrying his bat through a Test:

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283149.html

The previous record was 223* by GM Turner vs WI in 1971-72; this series had all 5 Tests drawn and is the only such series not involving India.

The previous record for England was 202* by L Hutton vs WI in 1950-this was not enough to prevent an innings defeat against Ramadhin, Valentine and Goddard.

And the previous record in Australia was 169* by MA Taylor vs SA at Adelaide in 1998.

There was also a near-miss in 1974 when DL Amiss made 262* against WI in a total of 432/9.