Boxing Day tests roundup

So, India did lose the first test at MCG, as I feared in my previous post, this defeat did make it to the Highest margins of defeat by runs record. Shameful. This is India's third worst defeat, behind 342 run loss against Australia at Nagpur 2004 and 341 run loss against Pakistan in Karachi 2006.

If Australia do win this series, which I am feeling might probably happen, it will be their 8th consecutive series victory, which will be their best ever consecutive performance and they will come in line to eclipse England's record of 9 successive test series win between 1884-1891.

If Australia win at SCG, they will equal their own record of 16 consecutive test match wins. That previous sequence was broken by India in the famous Kolkatta test where VVS Laxman hit that beautiful 281. Lets see if India can stop them from progressing once again.

West Indies defeated South Africa yesterday to go 1Up in the series. Its a significnt achievement for West Indies. Not only have they secured a victory against South Africa, no less, they have done it in the first test. West Indies, like India are known to be slow starters in any series. They previous win in the first test came against Pakistan in 2005. And prior to that in 2002 against Bangladesh. So, you can judge how rare, but deserving victory this is. Its only the start, and they must secure the series win, unlike India, which squandered a 1-0 lead against SA to lose 2-1 last year.

Indias Target in perspective

India's target of 499 seems huge. Of course, India's own poor batting performance lead to them having such a huge target to chase. But lets actually see what's happened in the past in the fourth innings.

At least on one occasion, England has scored 654/5 in the fourth innings of the test match against South Africa. They were chasing 696 in the 1938-39 series and ended just 42 short. Two centuries and one double century was hit in that epic innings of 218.2 8 ball overs.

Apart from that great effort, there have been 13 other occasions where a team has scored 400 or more runs in the fourth innings, with 3 leading to victories.

Only in this decade did Sarwan and Chanderpaul hit centuries to score 418/7 against - guess who - Australia to win the match. The bowling comprised of McGrath, Gillespie, Lee and McGill. Just a month back, Sri Lanka, lead by a wonderful knock by Sangakkara, scored 410 against Australia and got into 96 runs of victory. Don't forget that India's chase of 406 against the West Indies in Port of Spain is legendary.

Thats not a lot, but enough precedent to go after this target whole heartedly and see if they can get across. Its time to make fresh history....

ps: If they don't make, hope they don't make it to the list of highest margin of victories.

MCG disaster

Well, at the end of the second day of the first test between India and Australia, you have already seen so much. Firstly, we saw a fantastic performance from Aussie openers, which Hayden followed up to a century, then the fantastic bowling performance from Kumble. And then, you see a forgettable performance from Indian batsmen.

This test is not going to go from a draw either due to dour batting or due to rain. It certainly seems set up for a result and at this moment, if I could bet, I would bet all the damn money in my life of Aussies.

This match will also go down, I am guessing, as probably the tale of the biggest lost opportunity in Indian Cricket for some time to come. Australia are world champions and it takes a lot to defeat them and that too at home. But here you are, in the first test, your bowlers unexpectedly did such a good job and set up the match for India to take control.

All this famed Indian batting line up came off with nothing, zilch and it will be yet another humiliating victory and with that Australia might take the momentum all the way to a sizable win in this series. What a shame....

Who can we put our fingers on? My take is Dravid. If he is so unhappy playing at the opening position, he should have put it out on the table and declined to take field. Thats the gracious thing to do. You come out, do what you did today and hand over the momentum to the opposition and set up non-existent demons and the others just follow suit. I did watch him innings, almost entirely. This was neither such a bad pitch or such a brilliant bowling performance that you need to stifle yourself so much. But, anyway, all this is in retrospect.

India had a golden opportunity to play well, set up the game for a good finish, hopefully finished the winner and if not, given the Aussies the shivers.

100th Test roundup on Ganguly

The folks at Cricinfo have always been good with statistics. I wanted to do a roundup on Sourav Ganguly on the occasion of his playing his 100th test match today. But before I could start on it, CricInfo has done a fantastic roundup. Go ahead and see it there.

I am summarizing it here:

• Seventh Indian to play 100 test matches behind Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Gavaskar, Kumble, Vengsarkar and Dravid. Mohd Azharuddin ended his career after 99 tests...
• Due to his good performance against Pakistan, 2007 is his most successful year, completed 1000 runs in a calendar year, second-highest aggregate by an Indian in a 3 match series etc.
• His record is better in away tests compared to home tests, and better as a non-captain compared to while he was a captain.
• He is the most successful Indian left handed player.
• Most successful captain ever.

Jayawardene overtakes DeSilva

Jayawardene is currently batting on 213* against England with Sri Lanka placed at 499/7. After this century, which is his 21st, he broke the Sri Lankan record of maximum test Centuries. The earlier record was held by Aravinda DeSilva (20). Other SriLankan high century scorers are Sangakkara and Attapatu ( both 16).

Player	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	100	50
DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	93*	151	11	7247	374	51.76	21	30
PA de Silva (SL)	93	159	11	6361	267	42.97	20	22
KC Sangakkara (SL)	71*	116	9	6032	287	56.37	16	24
MS Atapattu (SL)	90	156	15	5502	249	39.02	16	17

The world wide record is of course held by Sachin Tendulkar with 37 centuries. Other highlights of Jayawardene's career has been making 374 against South Africa, which is the fourth highest score in a test Innings. He also shared a World record partnership 624 for the 3rd wicket with Sangakkara in the same match. That partnership of 624 is still the highest ever test partnership for any wicket and the first and only partnership of over 600 in the history of Test Cricket.

Jayasuriya Roundup

Sanath Jayasuriya recently announced his retirement from International Test Cricket. It brings to an end a rather amazing career. He has scored just under 7000 runs in 110 matches and picked up 98 wickets in the same. He is a triple centurion, having scored the massive 340 against India, two other 200s and has 10 other 100s along with 31 50s. His best performances have come against Bangaladesh, India and Pakistan against who he averages well above 50.

I did write in an earlier blog that Sanath Jayasuriya is among the fastest players in the world. It is also well know that he is a really good six hitter. Lets actually take a good look at how many sixes has he actually hit.

In ODIs, he holds the record for hitting the highest sixes (11) in an innings and shares the same with Shahid Afridi. He also did manage to score 7 sixes in another innings.

Max sixes in an Innings

Player	Runs	Balls	4s	6s	SR	Team	Opposition	Match Date	Scorecard
ST Jayasuriya	134	65	11	11	206.15	Sri Lanka	v Pakistan	04/02/96	ODI # 1088
Shahid Afridi	102	40	6	11	255	Pakistan	v Sri Lanka	10/04/96	ODI # 1125
ST Jayasuriya	109	87	7	7	125.28	Sri Lanka	v Bangladesh	03/21/07	ODI # 2546

Continuing in ODI mode, he also holds the record for the maximum sixes in career. He has hit 245 sixes scoring more than 2 sixes in every 100 runs he has scored. Considering that Shahid Afridi is scoring sixes at a much faster rate and is second only to Jayasuriya at the moment, he might take over from Jayasuriya anytime.

Aggregate sixes in ODIs

Player	Mat	Inns	Runs	Ave	4s	6s	Runs in 6s/100 Runs	6s/Innings
ST Jayasuriya (Asia/SL)	403	392	12207	32.63	1348	245	12.04	0.63
Shahid Afridi (Asia/ICC/Pak)	249	237	5239	23.28	491	237	27.14	1
SC Ganguly (Asia/India)	311	300	11363	41.02	1122	190	10.03	0.63
SR Tendulkar (India)	407	397	15962	44.33	1747	166	6.24	0.42
CL Cairns (ICC/NZ)	215	193	4950	29.46	345	153	18.55	0.79
Inzamam-ul-Haq (Asia/Pak)	378	350	11739	39.52	969	144	7.36	0.41
AC Gilchrist (Aus/ICC)	277	269	9297	36.03	1130	143	9.23	0.53
RT Ponting (Aus/ICC)	287	278	10701	43.85	940	133	7.46	0.48
BC Lara (ICC/WI)	299	289	10405	40.48	1035	133	7.67	0.46
IVA Richards (WI)	187	167	6721	47	600	126	11.25	0.75
Wasim Akram (Pak)	356	280	3717	16.52	247	121	19.53	0.43
HH Gibbs (SA)	220	213	7222	36.65	820	115	9.55	0.54
JH Kallis (Afr/ICC/SA)	269	255	9314	44.77	722	113	7.28	0.44
Abdul Razzaq (Asia/Pak)	231	198	4465	29.96	333	103	13.84	0.52
PA de Silva (SL)	308	296	9284	34.9	712	102	6.59	0.34
RL Powell (WI)	109	100	2085	24.82	185	75	21.58	0.75
JM Kemp (Afr/SA)	85	66	1512	31.5	98	60	23.81	0.91

* There are players who have hit more sixes than Powell and Kemp, but they have been specially included here because of the fast rate at which there are hitting sixes.

In Test matches however, he has scored 59 sixes, which is impressive, but falls well short of the current record of 100 sixes by Adam Gilchrist. He has also scored 10 sixes in T20s, however he falls short of 15 sixes held by Yuvraj Singh.

If you combine the three forms, Test, ODI and T20s, Jayasuriya again comes trumps. He has scored an impressive 314 sixes. Again he is being closely followed by Shahid Afridi and could overtake him anytime.

Maximum 6s in combined careers of ODIs, Tests and T20s

Player	Mat	Inns	Runs	6s	Runs in 6s/100 Runs
ST Jayasuriya (Asia/SL)	520	587	19426	314	9.7
Shahid Afridi (Asia/ICC/Pak)	285	292	7080	295	25
AC Gilchrist (Aus/ICC)	381	411	14964	255	10.22
CL Cairns (ICC/NZ)	279	299	8273	240	17.41
SC Ganguly (Asia/India)	410	461	17709	240	8.13
BC Lara (ICC/WI)	430	521	22358	221	5.93
IVA Richards (WI)	308	349	15261	210	8.26
SR Tendulkar (India)	550	627	27261	208	4.58

Remarkable debut - Immaduddin [Update]

Update: Sorry for posting this blog. It was supposed to go into my other general blog - "Tidbits here and there" and has been rightly moved there. I am sorry for posting the same here. I will be a little more careful in future.

Disgraceful moment video

For the many who never saw the "Most disgraceful event in Cricket History", here is the video of the same. Do visit the wikipedia page on this.

Delhi vs Chandigarh

Delhi Jets team is taking on Chandigarh Lions in their Indian Cricket league semi final match currently. The match is in progress and I don't know the results. This match reminds of an old, eventful match which was significant for me.

I started watching cricket in 1994 and soon took to the game, the statistics and so on. The cricket fever was so dominant in me that I wanted to even follow Ranji Cricket. As we know Ranji cricket, during those days was not shown live on TV and if you wanted to watch it, you went to the grounds.

I did go to see one match and it was the only time that I have ever gone to see a First Class match in the ground. I have never seen an International match in the ground. So, coming back to the match in question, it was the same two teams (of course, in the avatar of Delhi vs Punjab) fighting it out in the 1994-95 Ranji Trophy semi final match at Ferozeshah Kotla. In the first 3 days, Delhi had scored 554 and had got Punjab's first six wickets for 298. At that point, Bhupinder Singh Jr and Pankaj Dharmani got together. I went to watch on fourth day hoping that Delhi will bowl them out, enforce or follow on, or otherwise bat and set a nice target.

What happened was history-in-the-making. The two put on a massive
460 for seventh wicket, which is still the First-Class record for 7th wicket. By the time the time ran out (on 5th day), Punjab put on 780/8 and were through to the finals against Mumbai. They eventually lost the finals. Delhi, after scoring 554 could not believe that they could not make it to the finals and it was a humiliating match for them.

Pankaj Dharmani went on to make his Debut for India in ODI, but then never again played for India. If my memory serves right, Bhupinder Singh Jr never got an India reckoning. I can never forget the mauling that the two gave to the Delhi bowlers, Prabhakar, Wassan and co. Such matches come one in a long long time and I can proudly say I was there to witness this part of cricket history.

Debut Co-Performances in Tests

Yasir Arafat (Pak) picked up 5-for in his debut match against India yesterday at Bangalore. In the next innings, Ishant Sharma (India) also picks up 5-for and I get thinking that this is an interesting stat (assuming that Ishant also made his debut in this match). However, I realize that Ishant made his debut against Bangladesh earlier this year. So, I thought about finding good co-performances by debutants in tests. So what did I get?

If you take the best performance in an Innings in Test matches and consider the best 50 performances (the list includes best performance of AE Trott, 8-43 down to U Chandana 6-179), you find three matched containing two entries. But as it happens, all three were instances where the same bowler performed well in both innings:

Innings Best Co-Performances

Player	Overs	Mdns	Runs	Wkts	Team	Opposition	Ground	Match Date
F Martin	27.0x5 *	9	50	6	England	v Australia	The Oval	Aug 11, 1890
F Martin	30.2x5 *	12	52	6	England	v Australia	The Oval	Aug 11, 1890
RAL Massie	32.5	7	84	8	Australia	v England	Lord's	Jun 22, 1972
RAL Massie	27.2	9	53	8	Australia	v England	Lord's	Jun 22, 1972
ND Hirwani	15.2	3	75	8	India	v West Indies	Chennai	Jan 11, 1988
ND Hirwani	18.3	3	61	8	India	v West Indies	Chennai	Jan 11, 1988

* 5 ball overs
But if you consider the other statistic - best performance in a Match, then you find that there have been test matches where two players have performed excellently, with both making theing debuts:

Match Best Co-Performances

Player	Overs	Mdns	Runs	Wkts	Team	Opposition	Ground	Match Date
TK Kendall	71.1x4 *	28	109	8	Australia	v England	Melbourne	Mar 15, 1877
A Shaw	89.3x4 *	50	89	8	England	v Australia	Melbourne	Mar 15, 1877
CTB Turner	62.2x4 *	33	68	8	Australia	v England	Sydney	Jan 28, 1887
JJ Ferris	78.3x4 *	37	103	9	Australia	v England	Sydney	Jan 28, 1887
AL Valentine	106	36	204	11	West Indies	v England	Manchester	Jun 8, 1950
R Berry	57.5	25	116	9	England	v West Indies	Manchester	Jun 8, 1950

* 4 ball overs

As you see that in 2 of these 3 occassions, it was debutants from opposites sides who put in a good effort.

Muralis Record

Murali broke the test record for higher number of wickets recently. Here is a video clipping of him doing it. I am still working on a detailed stats analysis of his performance. Maybe I will put one out in near future.




My heartfelt thanks for Sunny Vishwa, my cousin for presenting me the link to this video.

Little too many extras..

Update: By the end of innings, India have indeed given away the highest total in extras in the history of Test Cricket. Am Updating the Tables accordingly - 14:45 IST, 11-Dec-2007.

In today's day of play between India and Pakistan, third Test, Bangalore, India conceded 70 runs in the total of 369/5. This is the second highest extras' score in an test Innings. The innings is not yet over and in all likelihood, India will give away some more and end up conceding the highest even number of extras (The previous highest being 71 by West Indies against Pakistan in 1988.

Top 3 times, the benificiary of such generosity has been Pakistan:

Batting Team	Score	Ext	b	lb	w	nb	Conceding Team	Match Date
Pakistan	537	76	35	26	0	15	v India	12/08/07
Pakistan	435	71	21	8	4	38	v West Indies	04/02/88
Pakistan	291	68	29	11	0	28	v West Indies	02/18/77

Extras as a percentage of the innings total were highest in these innings:

Batting Team	Score	Ext	b	lb	w	nb	Conceding Team	Match Date	Extras as %age of total
Pakistan	291	68	29	11	0	28	v West Indies	02/18/77	23.37
Australia	248	53	17	6	2	28	v West Indies	03/23/91	21.37
England	252	52	19	13	10	10	v West Indies	06/05/80	20.63
Zimbabwe	319/8	65	10	18	1	36	v Sri Lanka	10/11/94	20.38

India, at various occassions have given high number of extras (more than 50) in an innings:

Batting Team	Score	Ext	b	lb	w	nb	Match Date
Pakistan	537	76	35	26	0	15	12/08/07
England	477/4d	55	16	22	5	12	08/23/90
Pakistan	496/9d	52	17	20	13	2	03/08/05
South Africa	510/9d	53	9	22	1	16	11/20/04
England	515	51	12	31	1	7	09/05/02
England	633/5d	60	4	27	11	18	07/12/79
England	564	50	18	18	0	14	07/04/96
New Zealand	630/6d	53	21	28	1	3	10/16/03
Sri Lanka	952/6d	58	28	9	7	14	08/02/97

Whats interesting to note is that India did not concede so many noballs and wides as they did Byes and leg Byes which normally is attributed to the Wicket Keeper. And as we all, MS Dhoni could not play this test and Dinesh Karthik is substituting with gloves for him. Well, well well....

Update: By the end of innings, India have indeed given away the highest total in extras in the history of Test Cricket. Am Updating the Tables accordingly - 14:45 IST, 11-Dec-2007.

Yuvi's six sixes

I know I have not been able to blog for the past week or so. I have been doing a lot of travelling in this time period. While I generate a suacy piece of statistic for you, check out this video. Its the video of Yuvi hitting six sixes. Its not new, but neither is it boring or stale. Its worth another watch....




Update: I am sorry for not thanking Sunny Vishwa, my cousin for providing me with this link. Thanks Vishwa