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...