By Benjamin Conkey
October 16th 2008 @ 2:17am
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Is Ponting really Harbhajan’s bunny?
There’s nothing worse for a batsman than getting out for a duck. Actually, there is. Getting out to the same bowler for more than one duck. It’s happened to the best of them and it usually leads to calls for bunny status.
Once you become a bunny, every time you get dismissed by the same bowler (no matter what score you’re on), you feed the symbolism of a rabbit being trapped.
If Ricky Ponting is Harbhajan Singh’s ‘bunny,’ he went some way to escaping the hutch in the First Test against India.
Ponting’s patient 123 in the first innings proved he can score runs in the sub-continent, but more importantly, shows he can score against The Sheikh of Tweak.
Harbhajan has consistently taken the prized wicket of Ponting.
But there are positive signs and statistical evidence that Australia’s captain has used his bat to say “asta la vista” to The Turbinator’s dominance.
The brilliant Statsguru service on Cricinfo tells us that since becoming captain Ponting has averaged 43.62 against India when Harbhajan is playing, compared with 17.12 before he got the top job.
Of course, the bunny tag was born in the famous 2001 series when he succumbed to Harbhajan’s prodigious turn on spin-friendly pitches, scoring a paltry 17 runs in three tests.
But we have to remember that he wasn’t alone in that series as Harbhajan amassed a staggering 32 wickets.
I’ve always been skeptical of the statistical importance of how many times a bowler has dismissed a batsman. Just like death and taxes, it is inevitable that a top-order batsman is going to get out in a Test match innings.
And you don’t need rocket science to work out that if a top-class batsman and a top-class bowler go head-to-head often enough, the bowler will eventually get the batsman out.
I used to laugh when I heard Glenn McGrath go on about how Brian Lara was his bunny. McGrath did claim Lara’s wicket fifteen times, but let’s put it in perspective.
Lara played head-to-head against McGrath in 24 matches involving 46 innings, meaning McGrath only dismissed him 32 per cent of the time.
In those matches, Lara scored six centuries and averaged 46.38 – hardly calls for bunny status.
In fact, you could say that if Lara was a bunny, he smashed his way through McGrath’s rabbit-proof fence!
There are other wrongly accused bunnies.
One of them is Arthur Morris, who sits second on the all-time list of bowler-batsman dismissals. Sir Alec Bedser from England dismissed him 18 times, but Statsguru shows that Morris actually averaged 57 when he played against Bedser.
Ponting had one bad series against Harbhajan, but this doesn’t make him a bunny. It takes a whole career.
The biggest bunny in this regard is Michael Atherton.
For Athers’ sake, I’m sorry to say I couldn’t find any statistic to save him. He was dismissed 19 times by Glenn McGrath in 17 matches. In 34 innings Atherton never scored a Test century against an Aussie team that included the ‘pigeon.’
As the top rabbit, it wouldn’t surprise me if Atherton is infected with myxomatosis, such was the suffering McGrath inflicted on the opener.
So what is the moral of the story?
Don’t get out to the same bowler more than once in your entire career or people might start rabbiting on.
Benjamin Conkey is a new columnist on The Roar, having won The Roar’s Armchair Sports Writers Award, 2008. This is his first column.
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Josh said | October 16th 2008 @ 11:37am | Report comment
Just as one dismissal does not qualify a batsman for bunny status neither does one century mean he is not a bunny and/or has beaten the Harby curse. 9 dismissals - many of them for low scores does indicate that Harby has had some modicum of success against Ponting.
Greg Russell said | October 16th 2008 @ 12:52pm | Report comment
I would also like to endorse cricinfo’s statsguru, although I am not as proficient at using it as Benjamin (more on that in a minute!).
As a physical scientist I also am anti-Churchillian in regarding statistics as powerful and insightful. But at the same time there is an element of truth in the great man’s famous line that “there are lies, damned lies and statistics” (actually, it would seem this originated with Benjamin Disraeli and was then pilfered by Mark Twain). The truth is that statistics should be used carefully and appropriately.
Take the statistic that Lara averaged 46.38 in tests against McGrath. This of itself has little meaning. It assumes more meaning by noting (from statsguru) that Lara’s career average was 52.88, that his career average against Australia was 51.00 (more meaning still), and that his career average against Australia while McGrath was player was 49.79 (even more meaning still). The last necessary statistic, Lara’s average against Australia during the McGrath era but not playing against McGrath, I cannot get statsguru to give me. But I estimate that it must be about 94. This suggests that McGrath did indeed have a huge impact on Lara. But then recognize that in the McGrath era, Lara only played 2 tests against a McGrath-less Australia. 2 tests certainly is not a statistical sample, so whatever this average is, it is of little meaning. Get my point?
Another point is that statistics are averages. Lara’s average of 46.38 versus McGrath, as opposed to 49.79 against Australia without McGrath during the McGrath era, seems like a trivial difference. But it’s nearly 10%. To put that in perspective, the current drop in the Dow-Jones index is of order 10% … I don’t hear many economists saying that is “trivial”. Or to put it another way, a drop in GDP of 10% would be the ruination of the Australian economy. So this is another context in which statistics must be seen.
All of this is to make the point that statistics must be used and interpreted very carefully. Some are obviously pregnant with meaning - for example, here’s an interesting one: Matthew Hayden’s test average in Australia is 62.5, outside it is 42.6 - while some are not so clear. I would contend that Benjamin’s fall into the category of “a bit of both”. Lara was always strong against Australia but McGrath did have his measure to some extent; similarly, Ponting is not as helpless against Harbhajan as many have made out, but there is no doubt that Josh is correct: the visual evidence is clear, Ponting has had major struggles against our Sikh friend. It is silly to pretend otherwise.
Spiro said | October 16th 2008 @ 7:22pm | Report comment
Someone once stated that statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is crucial.
My feeling about ‘bunnies’ is that the top batsmen will get out to the top bowlers so that the number of times this happens is essentially irrelevant. It stands to reason that if a bowler like McGrath bowls often enough at, say, Lara he is going to dismiss him about a third of the time they play each other.
There are instances, though, where a certain bowler has the measure of a certain batsman. Warne-Cullinane comes to mind. and Amiss-Lillee.
Cullinane was a good batsman, potentially a great player, who liked to smash the bowlers into submission. But he couldn’t pick Warne’s flipper and tended to go after any short ball bowled by the champion without taking into account that the flipper came through fast and low making pulling it a dangerous shot.
Amiss just couldn’t handle Lillee’s pace and bounce and menace, even though he could murder attacks a little below world class standards.
This is the mystery of cricket, the way some batsmen can and can’t handle particular bowlers. Lindsay Hassett, a little, neat stroke-maker could handle the towering. glowering Bill O’Reilly better than his contemporaries including Bradman, apparently.
Benjamin Conkey said | October 16th 2008 @ 9:14pm | Report comment
I appreciate your comment Josh and it’s interesting that you say he hasn’t beaten the ‘harby’ curse. What does Ponting or any batsman have to do to beat the bunnny tag? I guess that’s what my article was getting at. Ponting has now scored two centuries this year against a Harbhajan-India side.
Greg, I agree with you that McGrath has had an influence on Lara. You can definitely see that by the fact that Lara ‘only’ averages 37 in Australia against a McGrath-Australia side. But six centuries that includes two double centuries is a sign that McGrath didn’t have it all his own way like the Australian media and McGrath would have us believe.
And finally Spiro thanks for taking us down memory lane with Warne-Cullinan, perhaps the most memorable bunny of all-time. I can distinctly remember Cullinan coming in at first drop in a one-day final. It was inside the first ten overs, and despite the ball being brand spanking new it was of course given straight to Warne. The psychological hold he had over Cullinan was amazing.
Greg Russell said | October 17th 2008 @ 3:00pm | Report comment
Just to change the topic slightly, I would like to draw to everyone’s attention a very recent article in The Independent, which argues at length for something I fervently believe: that Ponting is the best since Bradman. Spiro too has made this case on this website. The significant thing here is that the rest of the world is finally starting to get the message, because it’s not easy to convince the hard intellects of the British press (Spiro, do you know Brenkley? Brian Waddle said on NZ RadioSport this morning that he’s quite a character). Here is the beginning of the article (Google will quickly take any interested reader to the rest):
Ponting: The best since Bradman
Questions were being asked of the Australia captain, Ricky Ponting, as he led his team into the series with India. His brilliant century in the first Test suggests he remains one of the great batsmen of this, or any other, era. Stephen Brenkley on an underappreciated genius
Thursday, 16 October 2008
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Rabbitz said | October 18th 2008 @ 9:47am | Report comment
So statistically is Tendulkar Siddle’s bunny? If you look at the numbers, Siddle has taken Tendulkars wicket in 100% of the tests in which he has bowled to him…
Seriously, though I think that Ponting will lift with the confidence of finally getting an Indian ton. Although Harbijan appears to have the wood on him, I would like to see a breakdown, in percentage terms, by bowler, of the bowling that Ponting has faced against India and against All commers. This would give some balance to the “dismissed him x times” figure.
Nick J said | October 26th 2008 @ 7:37pm | Report comment
Benjamin,
I agree to some extent about your comments about the bunny status. However, my personal expereience in an unkown competition commonly referred to in the south west slopes as the wombat shield, the bunny status really is only deployed as a mere psychological tactic. We didn’t have statistics and in most cases it the batsmen and bowler had only met once before meaning there was no prior encounter. But the bunny call always seemed to work for us and the batsmen were seen hopping off the field.
The ‘Bunny’ is a powerful tool, use it wisely.