Flem274*
123/5
Before the 00s batting bubble the border between test class and see ya later was a batting average around 35 or so. Loads of guys had long and respected careers whose batting averages settled in the 30s by retirement. Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Hansie Cronje, Stephen Fleming (in the 90s)...all examples of instant picks for their sides despite career averages that get you very dropped in 2006.
40 became the new 35 in the new millennium. Pitches became more homogeneous around the world as "green top" and "turner" became swearwords. The dominance of pace bowling, which had made a great leap forward in terms of consistent quality between the 70s to the 90s, stalled. The spinners did complete their return to relevance, which is nice for them I guess.
I'm not going to go into the why of it much because that would make a punishing effortpost even more punishing. Suffice to say most teams were not very good at keeping their best bowlers fit in the 00s and batsmen did actually improve on average, imo.
Anyway, the correction to normal began around 2010ish and violently so from 2018 onwards. In my book the main contributors are DRS spelling out leg stump exists, more variety in pitches worldwide and improved bowler management compared to the 2000s creating a production line of good attacks around the world with strong depth and competition for places. Umesh Yadav and Lockie Ferguson in particular are good individual examples of the wider trend - they would play every test for their sides in 2001.
Spark raised an interesting point the other day which I wanted to look into because my gut feeling disagreed - he suggested the good tier of test batsman was looking thin. I went and looked at batsmen in the top 7 since 2018. I filtered by 500 runs instead of 1000 because 1000 excludes a lot of players who comfortably make their sides like Mohammad Rizwan and I get a kick out of seeing Sean Williams at the top, but here is the list with the 1000 run qualifier (which inadvertently excludes the smallest sides unfortunately).
I'm going to define the good tier as an average between 40 and 45. Both lists imply the same - only 6 of 78 (or 3 of 37) test batsmen average between 40 and 44.99 from 2018 to now. They are Mushfiqur Rahim, Abid Ali, Mohammad Rizwan, Mominul Haque, Tamim Iqbal and Rishabh Pant. They are predominantly from Bangladesh and predominantly wicketkeepers. It's unfair, but most of these guys are a bit out of the way of the mainstream, which makes the torch Spark's observation shines on test batting even harsher. There are several guys just outside those boundaries, but overall Spark is correct.
I think this will correct itself by 2030, but teams have to get by in the meantime and adjust expectations accordingly. If you have a good bowling attack (and you really should) then you know you can defend scores below 500. 500 is matchwinning. 300 is probably par now rather than 400.
There are 18 of 78 (13 of 37) batsmen averaging 45+ and 19 of 78 (9 of 37) batsmen averaging between 35 to 39.99. Throughout almost all of cricketing history, that's fine. The number of test standard batsmen hasn't changed all that much despite the hole in the middle Spark notes, but our expectations did.
35 is back, and personally I hope it's here to stay. Just not in my team please. I like this whole actually good thing. England though, you and India can suck at batting until the end of time please and thank you.
40 became the new 35 in the new millennium. Pitches became more homogeneous around the world as "green top" and "turner" became swearwords. The dominance of pace bowling, which had made a great leap forward in terms of consistent quality between the 70s to the 90s, stalled. The spinners did complete their return to relevance, which is nice for them I guess.
I'm not going to go into the why of it much because that would make a punishing effortpost even more punishing. Suffice to say most teams were not very good at keeping their best bowlers fit in the 00s and batsmen did actually improve on average, imo.
Anyway, the correction to normal began around 2010ish and violently so from 2018 onwards. In my book the main contributors are DRS spelling out leg stump exists, more variety in pitches worldwide and improved bowler management compared to the 2000s creating a production line of good attacks around the world with strong depth and competition for places. Umesh Yadav and Lockie Ferguson in particular are good individual examples of the wider trend - they would play every test for their sides in 2001.
Spark raised an interesting point the other day which I wanted to look into because my gut feeling disagreed - he suggested the good tier of test batsman was looking thin. I went and looked at batsmen in the top 7 since 2018. I filtered by 500 runs instead of 1000 because 1000 excludes a lot of players who comfortably make their sides like Mohammad Rizwan and I get a kick out of seeing Sean Williams at the top, but here is the list with the 1000 run qualifier (which inadvertently excludes the smallest sides unfortunately).
I'm going to define the good tier as an average between 40 and 45. Both lists imply the same - only 6 of 78 (or 3 of 37) test batsmen average between 40 and 44.99 from 2018 to now. They are Mushfiqur Rahim, Abid Ali, Mohammad Rizwan, Mominul Haque, Tamim Iqbal and Rishabh Pant. They are predominantly from Bangladesh and predominantly wicketkeepers. It's unfair, but most of these guys are a bit out of the way of the mainstream, which makes the torch Spark's observation shines on test batting even harsher. There are several guys just outside those boundaries, but overall Spark is correct.
I think this will correct itself by 2030, but teams have to get by in the meantime and adjust expectations accordingly. If you have a good bowling attack (and you really should) then you know you can defend scores below 500. 500 is matchwinning. 300 is probably par now rather than 400.
There are 18 of 78 (13 of 37) batsmen averaging 45+ and 19 of 78 (9 of 37) batsmen averaging between 35 to 39.99. Throughout almost all of cricketing history, that's fine. The number of test standard batsmen hasn't changed all that much despite the hole in the middle Spark notes, but our expectations did.
35 is back, and personally I hope it's here to stay. Just not in my team please. I like this whole actually good thing. England though, you and India can suck at batting until the end of time please and thank you.
