Cricket Stat Snippets

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...

Some say bowlers hunt in pairs. While it is important that bowlers from both ends should keep up the pressure to force wickets, does having an equally attacking bowler help? Or, rather, does it help each other? A look purely from career stats perspective. First look is ofcourse to the best proponents of swing bowling, a bowling combination which proved deadly to teams all over the world (wait, let me check the facts to fully endorse the last phrase). Fondly(?) called the Sultans of Swing, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis were most dreaded pair for their ability to extract reverse swing and hurl out toe-crusher yorkers.  During their career, put together, they have taken more than 38% of the wickets that Pakistan bowlers had got, and when playing together, they had a healthy share of 56% . This has remained fairly the same, irrespective of the result, Win or Loss. Akram started his career in 1985, with the series in New Zealand. In the second test, Akram had his first (...

In the history of Cricket Test Matches, there were 30 players who captained their teams while being the designated wicket keeper. Pakistan, West Indies and South Africa had 5 players carrying out this double duty. The earliest Captain-WK role was taken up by JM Blackham , who captained Australia for 8 tests while being the Wk. The latest entrant too is an Australian, TD Paine , who took over from Steve Smith last year. There is no surprise to note that the Wicket Keeper who has captained his team the most is our own MS Dhoni . Dhoni has captained India in 60 Tests , winning 27 of them (6 Away Tests) with a win % of 45%. Mushfiqur Rahim , the Bangladesh keeper has captained in 28 tests with a 25% win. Ridley Jacobs , the West Indies player has a 100% track record, with his team winning both the tests he captained. There have been 16 instances (7 different players) of the Captain-WK scoring hundreds. PW Sherwell (South Africa) was the first such player to score a hundred, in ...

The last of the previous century men bowing out. Now only millennials to play test cricket. Probably, one of the players who rarely got his due because of the presence of a giant, the master of the trade himself . Just a look into the stats would prove how much Murali 's presence affected Herath 's career. They played 15 tests together, Herath took 24 wickets at an average of 48 , Murali 52 at an average of 27 . Those were early days for Herath, but the picture would be tru e only when we look at the facts more closely. From his debut in 1999, Herath played only 24 tests till 2009, while Murali played 91 (he retired in 2010). Herath became a regular in the SL team only after retirement of Murali, and from 2010 onwards, when Murali retired, Herath played 71 tests. Herath averaged more than 36 during those years, while Murali kept it below 22 taking an absurd looking 589 wickets, striking at a wicket every 52 balls as against Herath's 73 balls for 70 wickets. But onc...