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Which team will chase down 500 in Tests?

Which team will chase down 500 runs in a Test first?

  • Total voters
    140
grecian

grecian

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Lillian Thomson said:
Footy results?

Oh I see. You were refering to comments in this thread. There are many reasons why higher fourth innings scores are more common. Flatter pitches is one, and the fact that there are three times as many Test Matches being played is another - law of probability and all that.:dry:
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Well, you've made the odd comment that suggest you may support a relatively unknown cornish team, apologise if I'm wrong:)

Well, I don't think that if you played 20 times as muany games back in the eighties you would get the scores your getting now. Not in England, New Zealand and West Indies anyway, yet it's an imponderable, I suppose.
 
A

asty80

School Boy/Girl Captain
India stand the best chance - before Tendulkar retires and with Sehwag in form.
Case in point - the chase against Eng this year, where they won only the last day of the 5 days.
 
Lillian Thomson

Lillian Thomson

Hall of Fame Member
grecian said:
Well, you've made the odd comment that suggest you may support a relatively unknown cornish team, apologise if I'm wrong:)

Well, I don't think that if you played 20 times as muany games back in the eighties you would get the scores your getting now. Not in England, New Zealand and West Indies anyway, yet it's an imponderable, I suppose.
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Apology accepted.;)

I can't be arsed to look to it up but I doubt whether many of these higher scores that "prove" this 0ties trend were achieved in England, New Zealand or the West Indies. In the 80's the West Indies was a different kettle of beeswax as the pitches were prepared to suit their fast bowlers.
 
inbox24

inbox24

International Debutant
Realistically there are only three teams in world cricket who can do this, SA, India and us. The other two have already done some big ones recently so it's our time to shine really! It's just a shame that we don't have as flat a pitch as the other two teams had, but in form we certainly have one of the best batting strings in the world.
 
zaremba

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
Lillian Thomson said:
I really hope Girls Aloud are going to come around to my house tonight naked with a bucket of custard but sometimes reality has to be faced.
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:laugh: Great line. Not that keen on custard, personally. But if it were smeared over Cheryl Cole I'm sure I'd take one for the team
 
SJS

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
It has nothing to do with concentration of Test matches. More Test matches per year does not lead to more big scores in the last innings of the match.

They have more to do with quality of wickets, relative strengths of batting and bowling and the hegemony of one team in cricket in a period or a relative equality between sides.

If you look at the 400 plus scores in the 4th innings of Test matches over time, it is strange to see how they are clustered. For example there are no such scores before WW I (The first being in 1924-25 season). This is understandable since the quality of wickets improved dramatically in the 20th century.

Then there are quite a few (four in fact) between the wars and Bradman's last tour of England after the war. This period, saw some of the strongest batting in the world and not the greatest of bowling attacks (attacks mind you not individual bowlers) except for spinners like Grimmett and O'Reilly.

Then there is a huge of 25 years before it happened again.

Then with a spurt in the seventies, we have the largest gap in the two decades of 80's and 90's. Finally we have a lot of incidents again in the current decade of weak bowling attacks.

Of course there is more to it in terms of individual match situations etc. But its clear that more Tests does not mean more frequent BIG fourth innings totals.

Code: 
[B]Period                	Tests	400+ 4th inns	Tests/400[/B]
			
[COLOR="DarkRed"]1877 to 1924      	158	0	[/COLOR]
			
1924-25 to 1948 	147	5               29.4
			
[COLOR="DarkRed"]1948-49 to 1972-73	419	0	[/COLOR]
			
1973-1981         	188	6               31.3
			
[COLOR="DarkRed"]1981-82 to 2001-02	694	0	[/COLOR]
			
2001-02 till date	339	7               48.4
Another thing to remember is that the team that is bowling in that 4th innings has to be a strong side to set up a 4th innings target of 400 plus.

Of the 18 times this has happened in Tests so far, 15 times the team setting the target has been either England or Australia.

South Africa did it once in that infamous ten day "timeless" match in 1939 and West Indies once when they had that battery of pacemen in 1974-75 against India.

The final spot is with Sri Lanka who were playing Bangladesh so could be considered a much stronger (and confident) opponent as well.
 
Craig

Craig

World Traveller
Is there an unwritten rule on CW that if a team gets set more then 500 to win that this thread has to get dug up? Royalties please.
 
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Lillian Thomson

Lillian Thomson

Hall of Fame Member
SJS said:
It has nothing to do with concentration of Test matches. More Test matches per year does not lead to more big scores in the last innings of the match.

They have more to do with quality of wickets, relative strengths of batting and bowling and the hegemony of one team in cricket in a period or a relative equality between sides.

If you look at the 400 plus scores in the 4th innings of Test matches over time, it is strange to see how they are clustered. For example there are no such scores before WW I (The first being in 1924-25 season). This is understandable since the quality of wickets improved dramatically in the 20th century.

Then there are quite a few (four in fact) between the wars and Bradman's last tour of England after the war. This period, saw some of the strongest batting in the world and not the greatest of bowling attacks (attacks mind you not individual bowlers) except for spinners like Grimmett and O'Reilly.

Then there is a huge of 25 years before it happened again.

Then with a spurt in the seventies, we have the largest gap in the two decades of 80's and 90's. Finally we have a lot of incidents again in the current decade of weak bowling attacks.

Of course there is more to it in terms of individual match situations etc. But its clear that more Tests does not mean more frequent BIG fourth innings totals.
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It's equally clear that when I said that I was taking the pea eye double s out of the staticians - hence the :dry: smiley.
Good of you to produce yet more stats to attempt to ridicule the theory though.:sleep:
 
GIMH

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
That'd mean us getting out after scoring 80 or so tomorrow wouldn't it? Plenty of batting still to come, would be a hell of a collapse.

Jimmeh will be not out at close, and Swann will hit the winning runs from the only ball he faces (it will be a six or maybe even a nine)
 
Craig

Craig

World Traveller
GeraintIsMyHero said:
That'd mean us getting out after scoring 80 or so tomorrow wouldn't it? Plenty of batting still to come, would be a hell of a collapse.

Jimmeh will be not out at close, and Swann will hit the winning runs from the only ball he faces (it will be a six or maybe even a nine)
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That reminds me of the 1992 WC in the England - South Africa game, where there was a muck-up somewhere along the line and SA needed 21 off the final ball. As it was said then, "South Africa need a really big hit".
 
GIMH

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
vic_orthdox said:
Didn't SL make 9/532 recently in the fourth innings of a Test vs England to draw it? How many were they actually chasing?
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Richard said:
England also dropped about 15 catches over the course of SL's two innings' that Test. You'd not imagine that will be happening very often - and in fact it doesn't.
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It's taking me four years but I feel compelled to point out that it was actually the third innings of said Test.

....

Which isn't why I dig this old thread of course. Will it ever happen? Why not over the next couple of days :p
 
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