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Purple Patches

A

AndrewB

International Vice-Captain
In the 1987 book of this name by Ralph Barker (reviewed here), each chapter describes (to quote from the dust jacket) "one of those transient periods when a cricketer scales unprecedented heights". They're quite a varied set, including Bill Ponsford's record-breaking scoring in the Sheffield Shield in 1926-28; Bill Alley scoring 3000 runs in the 1961 season; Frank Tyson's Ashes series of 1954-5, and Denis Lindsay's series of 1966-7; David Hookes scoring 5 hundreds in 3 matches to play his way into the Centenary Test; Bob Massie's 16-wicket debut in 1972.

It got me wondering - what "purple patches" would stand out since the book was written? A few possibilities that occurred to me:
  • Harbhajan Singh's 32 wickets in the 2001 series against Australia
  • Lance Klusener in the 1999 World Cup (281 runs @ 140 with a SR of 122, plus 17 wickets)
  • Mark Ramprakash averaging 100+ in both 2006 and 2007, including 150s in 5 straight matches
  • Adam Voges' sequence of 269*, 106*, 239 in 2015-16
Who else would you include?
 
SillyCowCorner1

SillyCowCorner1

Moooo
Rubel’s been stuck in a pumpkin patch throughout the entirety of his test career. And I remember how good he was in his debut series against us.
 
P

Pup Clarke

Cricketer Of The Year
Steve Harmison had a golden 2004 - collecting 61 wickets in 11 matches at an average of 21.59. Nothing earth-shattering, but compared to his overall career stats it represents a huge discrepancy
 
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Teja.

Teja.

Global Moderator
Kapil Dev had 75 wickets in an incredible 18 tests in 1983 @ 23.18 bowling as the sole test level bowler in his side for most of the time with only batting AR Ravi Shastri as his support. The second highest amount of wickets that year was 54 by Marshall. 11 of those 18 tests were against the ATG WI side against whom he took 46 wickets @ 20.89. The remaining 6 tests were against Pakistan which was the second best side at the time. He also scored 579 runs @ 22.26 to add to the above including a 100* out of 95 balls against a bowling attack of Marshall, Holding, Roberts and Garner at Port of Spain.

That is not even the most remembered part of his year as he also led India to an impossible world cup victory in 1983 scoring 303 runs @ 60.06 with a SR of 108.99 and taking 12 wickets @ 20.41 over 8 games.

Another great purple patch for Kapil was his first full year in test cricket in 1979 at the age of 20 which was another time he led the wicket taking charts in tests by a massive margin. He took 74 wickets @ 22.9 and scored 609 runs @ 30.9 in 17 tests.

The below puts into context the bowling attack Kapil was working with in 1983:

1615114421829.png
 
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wpdavid

wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
Pup Clarke said:
Steve Harmison had a golden 2004 - collecting 61 wickets in 11 matches at an average of 21.59. Nothing earth-shattering, but compared to his overall career stats it represents a huge discrepancy
Click to expand...
You could narrow that down to the series in the WI and, to a lesser extent, the home series against NZ. He was actually pretty ordinary for most of the home series against WI, and then he was abysmal in SA at the end of the year.
 
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