Scientific data shows why Pak kept winning
AFP[ FRIDAY, APRIL 02, 2004 01:16:35 AM ]
PARIS: Pakistan's long string of cricket successes against India, which ended in a maiden Test defeat at home on Thursday, is all down to one fateful stroke of the bat in 1986, according to an offbeat scientific analysis.
The blow was struck by Javed Miandad, when he scored a match-winning six off the last ball in a One-day match that Pakistan had seemed destined to lose, according to the tongue-in-cheek study published in next Saturday's British Medical Journal (BMJ).
That shot - "heard throughout South Asia and much of the world" - had a dramatic effect on morale, lifting Pakistan and sinking India, in their confrontations over the next decade and a half, the authors suggest.
They painstakingly analysed all 133 India-Pakistan matches between 1952 and 2003. There were 47 Test matches and 86 One-day matches.
India won five (11 per cent) of the Tests, and 30 (35 per cent) of the One-day contests. Pakistan won nine Tests (19 per cent) and 52 (60 per cent) of the One-dayers. The rest were drawn or abandoned "because of bad weather, crowd trouble and assassination," the authors point out.
Before 1986, Pakistan and India were equal in One-day wins.
