Averaging 35 will be accepted again

[GIMH]

I think the take home message is keeper batsmen (and mediocre NSW offies) who average 40+ are like hen's teeth.

Can’t help but feel Prior wasn’t fully appreciated round these parts at the time. But that might just be there was one particularly prominent detractor who was a big voice round here back then.

 

[AndrewB]

231 teams (besides the 100 mentioned above) have had 6 players with a final average of 40+.

Some more details on the 231 teams:
- 87 were English:
-- 3 from the 20s
-- 17 from the 30s, 13 involving Ames
-- 14 from the 60s/early 70s
-- 53 from the 2000s/10s, 40 involving Prior

- 80 were Australian:
-- 5 from the early 30s (Ponsford, Woodfull, Bradman, Jackson, McCabe, Fairfax
-- 1 from the late 30s (Barnes, Fingleton, Bradman, Brown, McCabe, Hassett)
-- 4 from the 60s
-- 1 from the 70s (Redpath, Edwards, both Chappells, Walters, Benaud)
-- 18 involved Gilchrist
-- 10 involved Matthews
-- 34 others from the late 80s/90s
-- 7 others from the 00s

- 26 were Indian (Dravid, Tendulkar + 4)

- 19 were West Indian: 7 from the 60s (Nurse, Sobers, Kanhai + 3), 12 from the 70s (Kallicharran, Lloyd + 4)

- 12 were South African: 2 from the 30s, 10 were Smith, Gibbs, Amla, Kallis, de Villiers, Prince

- 6 were Sri Lankan (Dilshan, Jayawardene, Sangakkara, Samaraweera + 2)

1 was the ICC XI.

 

[Nintendo]

Well you and I both know Chapman and those stupid rules about amateurs captaining ****-blocked that '20s dream and Mead's career in the process.

And yeah, one could look back at Ponting-Clarke-Hussey-Smith in the future and think jeez that must've been some powerhouse lineup but 2 of those fellas were well over the hill and one was a spring chicken.

If green and Pucovski come good you could do a similar thing with warner-pucovski-marnus-smith-green from the 3rd test vs India at Sydney, but 2 of them had just started. Context is extremely important when evaluating this type of thing.

 

[Shady Slim]

If green and Pucovski come good you could do a similar thing with warner-pucovski-marnus-smith-green from the 3rd test vs India at Sydney, but 2 of them had just started. Context is extremely important when evaluating this type of thing.

two of them had just started and warner’s warnerball on australian pitches did not fire all series too - i wonder what exactly he averages post that series where he abused pakistan on roads here

 

[Nintendo]

two of them had just started and warner’s warnerball on australian pitches did not fire all series too - i wonder what exactly he averages post that series where he abused pakistan on roads here

He made an unbeaten 100 vs NZ in the 3rd test and averaged 50 that series AFAIK, wouldn't surprise me if he was averaging 40 post Pakistan abuse since he only played that NZ series and India.

 

[Uppercut]

I think Flem is right, and there are corollaries. Like I said when he brought it up in a match thread, it's more pronounced at lower levels. Averaging 30 over a series isn't necessarily an outright failure. Even less can be a solid effort depending on the circumstances where the runs are scored.

If 35 is test standard, and opening for England is probably the hardest batting role in cricket because of home conditions, do we need to start thinking of 30 as a just about acceptable average for an England opener? Burns is averaging 32 without really improving or looking like he's capable of scoring more, and nobody wants him dropped, so the line is probably a little lower than that.

But in practice averaging 30 feels *awful*. You can easily go a whole year averaging under 20 just through variance, at which point it becomes very difficult for anyone to defend your place in the side. Maybe this is why England went through so many openers.

There are other corollaries. Should we still think of a century as a good indicator of a decisive contribution? There will be a lot of match-winning innings under 100, but I kinda prefer it this way. If anything that arbitrary line should have been higher in the 2000s.

 

[GIMH]

If 35 is the new 40, what’s the new 30 for bowlers?

 

[TheJediBrah]

Can’t help but feel Prior wasn’t fully appreciated round these parts at the time. But that might just be there was one particularly prominent detractor who was a big voice round here back then.

He was pretty underrated in general. Keeping wasn't top-class but it was easily good enough and his batting more than made up for it. Had a shocking melon though and this might have worked against him

If 35 is the new 40, what’s the new 30 for bowlers?

27.

 

[Immenso]

Is it really it though? I am not particularly convinced. For example, Lyon and O’keefe wrecked the havoc last time when they were in India. They wouldn’t have come close against previous Indian team on the same decks IMO. So, I don’t think it has to do with variety in pitches. It’s cliche to say it but there have been change in the way batsmen play the game after induction of t20. I have seen old timers mention today’s batsman don’t have technique to grind it out when facing a tough spell. This might seem like an arrogant statement full of nostalgia ie. things were better in my days but looking at above example of Indian team vs spin, this sentiment definitely holds true. Are wickets really varied these days?

Does drs make a significant difference? I see just as many decisions going in batsman’s favor as being given out. I don’t know.

Overall quality of bowling is definitely higher, I will give you that. India, England and NZ have gotten better but Lanka, Sa and Pakistan have regressed. But India and Eng play higher percentage of tests so results are heavily skewed by big 3.

Judged on listening to his podcasts; Jarrod Kimber thinks it is the wobble seam delivery that has been the biggest contributor to this "bowling era".

 

[Flem274*]

Prior is one of the greatest keeper bats of all time in that tier below the one obvious best but yeah he did have a very persistent Haddin fan bagging him here haha.

Yeah 27 feels right. I think the bowlers ranging from perfectly fine to very good test bowlers who averaged over 30 in the 00s would average a couple less now. Your Hoggards, Bichels, Zaheers, Martins and of course Andrew Flintoff. Spinners would be even more pronounced. Vettori, Boje and Panesar would be frothing for DRS, and can't imagine the actual world class guys would be saying no.

I used to think 35 was the cut off for test standard pacers but you can probably lower that to 33 now.

 

[Uppercut]

He was pretty underrated in general. Keeping wasn't top-class but it was easily good enough and his batting more than made up for it. Had a shocking melon though and this might have worked against him

27.

Yeah it might be the face. He seemed to sometimes rub people the wrong way despite not really doing anything wrong. I'm just remembering that time when he was first called up, and he made a dad joke about porsches that was misinterpreted by the media as sledging Tendulkar by bragging about his car. It became a multi-day story with ex-players taking turns to put the boot in. Very strange episode in hindsight, not that it made much sense at the time.

 

[TheJediBrah]

For example, Lyon and O’keefe wrecked the havoc last time when they were in India. They wouldn’t have come close against previous Indian team on the same decks IMO.

lol Michael Clarke took 6/9 on a similar deck in 2004

that 2017 Pune wicket nearly took batting ability out of the equation, surviving and scoring was 90% luck. Unlikely previous Indian teams would have done better.

 

[Nintendo]

If 35 is the new 40, what’s the new 30 for bowlers?

lol Michael Clarke took 6/9 on a similar deck in 2004

that 2017 Pune wicket nearly took batting ability out of the equation, surviving and scoring was 90% luck

Yeah Smith's 100 on there was down to 5 drops and a few **** drs calls. Was literal "roll the dice" cricket from school.

 

[Prince EWS]

Can’t help but feel Prior wasn’t fully appreciated round these parts at the time. But that might just be there was one particularly prominent detractor who was a big voice round here back then.

Daily reminder that Prior > Haddin.

 

[Nintendo]

Daily reminder that Prior > Haddin.

Daily reminder that Inglis>prior

 

[Flem274*]

I wondered if the middle tier for bowling fell away during the Batting Boom so I went and looked at 2001-2010 with the 50 wicket qualification.

9 of 79 players to take 50 wickets averaging under 25. 14 average 25-29.99 with 11 averaging 28-29.99. 15 players average 30-31.99, and then 20 average 32-34.99. 21 average 35+ with our lord and savior the great man himself Mohammad Sami at the bottom of the averages.

So two things I immediately notice are the very good to mid-tier players have been hit by a truck and grouped strongly in the 28-31.99 bracket with only Shaun Pollock, Doug Bollinger and Graeme Swann averaging between 25-27.99, and secondly there are many short careers going around.

So given 9 years is plenty of time to take 100 wickets, that's what we're going to filter for next.

34 bowlers achieved 100 wickets in this period. Only 6 averaged less than 25, and 13 less than 30. 17 bowlers retained their spots long enough to take 100 test wickets at an average between 30-34.99.

I think the most striking statistic though is how many bowlers we lose from the list. In the space of 50 more wickets we're down from 79 to just 34 bowlers. Just over half never made it, and of our original 23 to take 50 wickets at an average below 30, we are left with 13. Our big group of 26 players averaging from 28-31.99 is halved to 13.

What I might do next is look into where the new tiers are and how far they've shifted from 2001-2010.

 

[Daemon]

I wondered if the middle tier for bowling fell away during the Batting Boom so I went and looked at 2001-2010 with the 50 wicket qualification.

9 of 79 players to take 50 wickets averaging under 25. 14 average 25-29.99 with 11 averaging 28-29.99. 15 players average 30-31.99, and then 20 average 32-34.99. 21 average 35+ with our lord and savior the great man himself Mohammad Sami at the bottom of the averages.

So two things I immediately notice are the very good to mid-tier players have been hit by a truck and grouped strongly in the 28-31.99 bracket with only Shaun Pollock, Doug Bollinger and Graeme Swann averaging between 25-27.99, and secondly there are many short careers going around.

So given 9 years is plenty of time to take 100 wickets, that's what we're going to filter for next.

34 bowlers achieved 100 wickets in this period. Only 6 averaged less than 25, and 13 less than 30. 17 bowlers retained their spots long enough to take 100 test wickets at an average between 30-34.99.

I think the most striking statistic though is how many bowlers we lose from the list. In the space of 50 more wickets we're down from 79 to just 34 bowlers. Just over half never made it, and of our original 23 to take 50 wickets at an average below 30, we are left with 13. Our big group of 26 players averaging from 28-31.99 is halved to 13.

What I might do next is look into where the new tiers are and how far they've shifted from 2001-2010.

Ok

 

[Nintendo]

Doug bollengar wasteman?

 

[Burgey]

Yeah my view is that the 2000-early 10s era of batting is highly anomalous but it's warped the expectations of all of us who grew up in that era (which would be a big chunk of this website, I suspect) and made us realise that averaging 40-45 is very solid at Test level, 45-50 is a long-term bedrock of your team and consistent 50+ over a full career on real pitches (i.e. not mid-00s SSC or mid-10s WACA) against good bowlers is outstanding. You shouldn't rely on players who average, like, 38, but you likely won't have much of a choice but to pick a few of them and stability is underrated as an attribute of a Test lineup. Test batting against this level of bowling is really, really hard and being able to discriminate servicable vs good vs great is a very good thing about current-day cricket. Though that doesn't mean you should tolerate Bairstow-level mediocrity for 70 Tests or so.

Yeah, the Aus side which beat the Windies in 95 had a pretty highly regarded top six, and each of Slater, Taylor, Boon and M Waugh ended up with career averages in the low 40s. Steve Waugh became the stand out of that line up, though it's worth mentioning that coming into that series he was averaging nothing like what he ended up with. Blewett was the exciting up and comer in that side, but sadly he died in the arse due to Mushtaq's wrong 'un. Was a shame. Exciting player to watch.

 

[Raz0r6ack]

Overall average for top 6 batsmen in the history of the game 37.14



Overall average for top 6 batsmen in the 1990s 36.57



Overall average for top 6 batsmen in the 2000s was 39.54



Give or take, essentially a 3 run difference between eras. Not taking night watchmen into account.