Cricket Stat Snippets

The year 2018 is now history. A year when two major players were banned, along with a team mate, for charges of cheating. A year when India consolidated its position at No.1 test team even after losing series in England and South Africa. A year when Australia slipped ranks down in all formats. A year when Sri Lanka fared rather poorly in tests. A year when Virat Kohli reconfirmed his top position in Tests and ODI as the premier batsman. A year when two new entrants felt the heat of Test Cricket..... 2018 - The Best Year for Result Oriented Tests In total, 48 tests were played in the year 2018 , and just 5 of them ended in draws , that is to say that 89.6% of the tests gave results . This is the highest in terms of the percentage of tests giving results when more than 8 tests were played in the year. The nearest that we have in this statistics, for years when more than 10 tests were played, was in 2002 when 46 out of 54 tests provided results (85.2% results). Curiously, the la...

India just completed its 532-nd test at Melbourne, on 30th December 2018. And, India is completed its 150th Win in test cricket. Here's a short post on India's test journey so far. India started playing Test Cricket in June 1932 , against England, under CK Nayudu , at the Lord's. England was lead by Douglas Jardine, more infamous for his later invention of the bodyline tactics. India lost that test by 158 runs. From there on, India has played 532 tests till the Melbourne Test that concluded on the 30th of December 2018. India has won 150 of them, lost 165 , drawn 216 and tied 1 . In total, India has capped 295 players , including Mayank Agarwal who debuted in Melbourne. 10 players have played more than 100 tests for India, Tendulkar leading with 200 tests. During this journey in test cricket, India fielded 33 different players as captains , with MS Dhoni (60 tests) being the player who has led in most tests. Two players, Maharaja of Vizianagram and Nawab of Pa...

Gautam Gambhir has announced his retirement from all forms of cricket. Once thought to be an ideal partner for Virender Sehwag, and a player with potential to have a long run, Gambhir lost the way somewhere. A regular in the scheme of things for Indian cricket till 2012, he was discarded for loss of form, and subsequently dropped. He was there and thereabouts, but never came with a strong case for inclusion. The four tests that he played, two in 2014 and two in 2016 never took him up. The emergence of Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan also didn't do him any big favors. Let's look at how his career went.  Gambhir played 58 tests , 147 ODI and 37 T20I for India. He was the top scorer for India  in both the World Cup finals which India eventually won, the T20I World Cup in South Africa 2007 and the ICC ODI World Cup in India 2011 . In both these finals, he was the main batsman around whom others played. In the WC-2011 finals, Dhoni was able to get going only because he...

How does it feel like reaching a summit, the highest point scaled so far? I don't look for answers here. But, more tricky, you have reached a level, or are nearing one. But then, there is someone else breathing down your neck, he can potentially overtake you. The scenario is more complicated, that you have to keep outscoring your opponent to stay on top. Cricket records have often seen such tussles between the (as people call them) legends of the era. Shane Warne and Muralitharan ran close to each other for a long time in a race to break record for the highest wicket taker until Warne retired. Tendulkar and Ponting had a run for the most centuries (I remember there was an article titled " Run Sachin, Run " because Pointing was quickly catching up). The four great all rounders from the seventies also had their bit in the run towards the highest wicket taker record. This article is about the progress of the four common man statistics, Most Runs , Most Wickets , Mo...

Ever thought what it would be like to be a Richard Hutton ? A Chris Cowdrey ? A Surinder Amarnath , a Shoaib Mohammad , a Sanjay Manjrekar , a Rohan Gavaskar , a Stuart Binny or an Arjun Tendulkar ? On one hand, you are a born celebrity, your friends recognize a "special you", the cricket lovers would smile at you when you are snapped alongside your father, you step into a cricket field and people immediately give you a chance. All the more of this would happen when you yourself are into cricket and you are good enough too. But then, there is a lot of weight pulling you down, especially when you are noticed at the international level. People expect you to emulate the great heights that your father has achieved. Their love turns to despair when you fail. And failed, did some. There were some good stories too. Yuvraj Singh, Chris Cairns, Mohinder Amarnath, Alec Stewart.... just to name a few. Some interesting father-son cricketers.  Note 1: Only players who have pl...

Every often we see some reference or other to the famous Indian Spin Quartet, a team with a dream variety. Indeed, it was a group of talent with a variety you can think of. Bishan Singh Bedi , (the left arm spinner), Bhagwat Chandrashekhar (the meverick leg spinner), Erappalli Prasanna (the guileful offspinner) and Srinivas Venkataraghavan (another master offspinner). But surprise, surprise .... They haven't played much together. In fact, all of them have played together only in one test , against England at Birmingham in 1967. And they lost the test. They did take 18 wickets together, but that wasn't sufficient to pull out a win, the batting failure in the first innings cost them the match. However, the Quartet was the main force behind India's tests during that period. In total, at least one of them have appeared in 98 out of the 136 tests India played, after Prasanna debuted in 1962 to Venkat playing in last test in 1983. In the 38 tests that India played wi...