What Qualifies as a Test Allrounder?

[andmark]

A no rounder

Does a no-rounder, by virtue of having no speciality, mean being an all-rounder?

 

[Red]

It's easy to say these things, but Marshall would have had to double his average to be a successful Test batsman, and by that logic you might reckon that Miller, Imran, Botham and Kapil could have averaged 60+ if they hadn't been bowlers.

If by logic you mean "I assume if a bowler who was a decent batsman didnt bowl at all his batting average would automatically double"

 

[Days of Grace]

Square it and divide by 100. A - 441, B - 625

How are you getting those numbers?

 

[AndrewB]

I was looking at which players had the most matches in which they'd been successful with both bat and ball... if you use 100 runs and 6 wickets as the cut-offs, then Botham and Shakib Al Hasan are well clear with 6 each, and the only other player to manage it 3 times was Tony Greig. (Another 9 have achieved it twice: Ashwin, Cairns, Faulkner, Gregory, Imran, Kallis, Mushtaq Mohammad, Sobers and Vettori).

(100 runs and 6 wickets are fairly arbitrary choices, of course, but if you reckon each side has 6 batsmen and 4 bowlers, they've each been achieved about 20% of the time so I thought it was reasonable to regard them as roughly equivalent).

 

[Flametree]

I'm happy with the revised list; it includes allrounders who were clearly selected as allrounders and were relatively successful, but only played 20 or so tests so wouldn't reach the previous limits.

I agree that the ratings should favour people who are good at both disciplines fairly equally so someone like Dexter looks too high. I consider that one discipline should constitute no more than 66% of your final rating, though I don't know if it's possible. Eg your batting rating is 40, your bowling rating is 10 on some arbitrary scale. Your allrounder rating should be 30, not 50...

An alternative would be to scale the final score by some factor based on runs per innings ((eg if 25 is the standard, anyone with 20 gets 80% of their initial rating) and their wickets / inns if its lower than 1. Not sure if that's just double-counting something which has already been factored into their earlier ratings though.

 

[Bolo]

I was looking at which players had the most matches in which they'd been successful with both bat and ball... if you use 100 runs and 6 wickets as the cut-offs, then Botham and Shakib Al Hasan are well clear with 6 each, and the only other player to manage it 3 times was Tony Greig. (Another 9 have achieved it twice: Ashwin, Cairns, Faulkner, Gregory, Imran, Kallis, Mushtaq Mohammad, Sobers and Vettori).

(100 runs and 6 wickets are fairly arbitrary choices, of course, but if you reckon each side has 6 batsmen and 4 bowlers, they've each been achieved about 20% of the time so I thought it was reasonable to regard them as roughly equivalent).

6 wickets seems a lot more significant. It's nearly 1/3 of required team output, whereas 100 runs might be about 1/6.

Alternatively, most of the best bats manage pretty close to 50rpi. Almost no bowlers get close to 3wpi.

Anyway, that lobsided distribution is interesting. Huge gap after Botham and Shakib.

 

[TheJediBrah]

100 runs and 6 wickets are fairly arbitrary choices, of course

Starfighter to comment

 

[AndrewB]

6 wickets seems a lot more significant. It's nearly 1/3 of required team output, whereas 100 runs might be about 1/6.

Alternatively, most of the best bats manage pretty close to 50rpi. Almost no bowlers get close to 3wpi.

Bear in mind, though, that if a batsman gets a big innings he may well not get to bat again, but if a bowler has a good first innings they can expect to bowl again.

Consequently there are more bowlers with 6+ wickets per match (Barnes, Richardson, Lohmann, Yasir Shah, Muralitharan) than batsmen with 100+ runs per match (Bradman).

That might give another way to find equivalence: e.g. of people who've played 20 or more Tests, 60 have taken 4+ wickets per match and 59 have scored 75+ runs per match. If you look at the top 10 to achieve both in a match, you get:

15: Sobers
14: Shakib
11: Botham, Cairns
8: Greig, Vettori
7: Kallis, Miller
6: Flintoff, Hadlee, Mankad

which looks a reasonable mix of bating and bowling all-rounders.

(I'm not claiming this is a great way to rank the best all-rounders: Imran is in the group on 5, alongside Warwick Armstrong, Mitchell Johnson, Moeen Ali and Bob Simpson. But it does give some idea of who was most likely to be effective in both skills in the same match)

 

[Migara]

How are you getting those numbers?

A - 210 * 210 /100 = 441, B - 250 * 250 / 100 = 625. 210 and 250 were your numbers BTW. I.E. A - 700 * 300 / 1000 and B - 500 * 500 / 1000

 

[Migara]

Bear in mind, though, that if a batsman gets a big innings he may well not get to bat again, but if a bowler has a good first innings they can expect to bowl again.

Consequently there are more bowlers with 6+ wickets per match (Barnes, Richardson, Lohmann, Yasir Shah, Muralitharan) than batsmen with 100+ runs per match (Bradman).

That might give another way to find equivalence: e.g. of people who've played 20 or more Tests, 60 have taken 4+ wickets per match and 59 have scored 75+ runs per match. If you look at the top 10 to achieve both in a match, you get:

15: Sobers
14: Shakib
11: Botham, Cairns
8: Greig, Vettori
7: Kallis, Miller
6: Flintoff, Hadlee, Mankad

which looks a reasonable mix of bating and bowling all-rounders.

(I'm not claiming this is a great way to rank the best all-rounders: Imran is in the group on 5, alongside Warwick Armstrong, Mitchell Johnson, Moeen Ali and Bob Simpson. But it does give some idea of who was most likely to be effective in both skills in the same match)

Probably not 100, but there are penty who will have 80-90 per match though.

Edit.

Headly 99.5, Pollock 98.8, Sangakkara 92.6, Smith 96.7, Weekes 92.8, are some

 

[trundler]

Can frequency of 30+ scores and 3+ wickets in a match be combined in some way? Or something like that.

 

[Migara]

Top runs per match performances

	Name	Runs/M
1	DG Bradman (AUS)	134.5
2	GA Headley (WI)	99.5
3	RG Pollock (SA)	98.1
4	SPD Smith (AUS)	96.9
5	ED Weekes (WI)	92.8
6	KC Sangakkara (SL)	92.5
7	BC Lara (ICC/WI)	91.2
8	JB Hobbs (ENG)	88.7
9	L Hutton (ENG)	88.2
10	AD Nourse (SA)	87.1
11	CA Davis (WI)	86.7
12	GS Sobers (WI)	86.4
13	CL Walcott (WI)	86.3
14	V Kohli (INDIA)	85.6
15	Younis Khan (PAK)	85.6
16	WR Hammond (ENG)	85.3
17	JE Root (ENG)	84.5
18	H Sutcliffe (ENG)	84.4
19	KS Williamson (NZ)	84.2
20	ML Hayden (AUS)	83.7
21	Mohammad Yousuf (PAK)	83.7
22	KF Barrington (ENG)	83
23	V Sehwag (ICC/INDIA)	82.6
24	SG Barnes (AUS)	82.5
25	GS Chappell (AUS)	81.7
26	R Dravid (ICC/INDIA)	81
27	SM Gavaskar (INDIA)	81
28	JH Kallis (ICC/SA)	80.1
29	RT Ponting (AUS)	79.6
30	SR Tendulkar (INDIA)	79.6
31	KC Bland (SA)	79.5
32	DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	79.3
33	MEK Hussey (AUS)	78.9
34	CA Pujara (INDIA)	77.4
35	E Paynter (ENG)	77
36	AB de Villiers (SA)	76.9
37	A Flower (ZIM)	76.1
38	FMM Worrell (WI)	75.7
39	MJ Clarke (AUS)	75.2
40	DCS Compton (ENG)	74.4
41	AC Voges (AUS)	74.3
42	Inzamam-ul-Haq (ICC/PAK)	73.6
43	S Chanderpaul (WI)	72.4
44	AR Border (AUS)	71.6
45	Javed Miandad (PAK)	71.2
46	IVA Richards (WI)	70.6
47	CP Mead (ENG)	69.7
48	J Ryder (AUS)	69.7
49	SR Waugh (AUS)	65
50	VG Kambli (INDIA)	63.8

 

[Migara]

90 runs per match and 6 wickets per match seems to be of similar value. However we should note there are 4 bowlers and 7 batsmen. Roughly there should be twice the batsmen as bowlers for a given category.

 

[Days of Grace]

500 career runs
25 career wickets
20.00+ Adjusted batting average
1.00+ wickets per match
400+ ratings points for both batting and bowling

Batting multiplied by batting rating. Divided by (750*750) and multiplied by 1000.

1 Imran Khan 581 906 935
2 GS Sobers 877 577 900
3 IT Botham 611 778 845
4 Sir RJ Hadlee 482 964 827
5 JH Kallis 837 550 819
6 SM Pollock 517 827 760
7 N Kapil Dev 585 726 755
8 Shakib Al Hasan 604 647 695
9 R Ashwin 457 844 686
10 CL Cairns 566 674 678
11 KR Miller 540 694 666
12 GA Faulkner 671 537 640
13 RA Jadeja 456 785 636
14 AW Greig 631 560 629
15 Mushtaq Mohammad 625 561 624
16 DL Vettori 533 641 607
17 Wasim Akram 409 828 603
18 TL Goddard 545 615 596
19 W Rhodes 550 581 568
20 ER Dexter 722 438 562
21 A Flintoff 545 577 559
22 MW Tate 448 694 552
23 R Benaud 426 715 541
24 MH Mankad 496 602 531
25 FMM Worrell 694 427 527
26 RB Simpson 718 407 520
27 CG Macartney 654 445 518
28 MA Noble 522 554 514
29 BA Stokes 534 535 508
30 EJ Barlow 687 408 498
31 Mohammad Hafeez 607 457 493
32 JR Reid 559 493 490
33 TE Bailey 468 583 485
34 WPUJC Vaas 411 663 484
35 Shahid Afridi 613 441 480
36 J Briggs 418 642 478
37 WW Armstrong 620 424 468
38 SR Watson 553 474 466
39 JO Holder 438 588 458
40 FE Woolley 607 418 452
41 RJ Shastri 564 439 440
42 BM McMillan 543 451 436
43 GE Gomez 451 542 435
44 JM Gregory 441 552 433
45 MM Ali 475 499 421
46 M Prabhakar 489 480 417
47 DJ Bravo 476 472 400
48 JDP Oram 501 445 397
49 RG Nadkarni 403 531 380
50 G Giffen 438 482 375
51 Abdul Razzaq 444 474 374
52 KD Mackay 491 426 372
53 DG Phadkar 456 449 364
54 L Klusener 483 421 362
55 R Illingworth 402 500 358
56 G Miller 407 494 357
57 OG Smith 450 422 338
58 G Ulyett 437 430 334
59 SJ Snooke 408 437 317
60 JH Sinclair 402 421 301

Davidson just misses out (batting rating of 390). But it's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make to get rid of Swann, Johnson, Harris, et al who do not deserve the tag of being labeled allrounders. Davo also never scored a test century so to be honest I'm not sold on him being an allrounder either. Even though he was selected to be one he never produced all-round contributions consistently.

 

[trundler]

Imran and Pollock being that high doesn't sit right with me.

 

[Migara]

Imran and Pollock being that high doesn't sit right with me.

I can think of reservation about Pollock, but Imran?

 

[Days of Grace]

Pollock will always be underrated in all facets of his game, because he wasn't spectacular and he doesn't have the memorable performances of Kapil, Cairns, Botham, et al. Just went on accumulating runs and wickets at outstanding averages for an allrounder.

 

[Starfighter]

What's Kelleway's ratings? Maybe Billy Barnes too. Surprised to see Dexter and Simpson make the bowling cutoff.

 

[Days of Grace]

A lot of the ratings are preliminary. My system automatically adjusts averages based on the era when a player debuted. As Kelleway debuted before the Great War, his batting and bowling averages are much higher then they will be after I do a proper analysis later.

 

[bagapath]

Davidson scored five half centuries in 44 tests. not an all rounder.