- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Since the furore regarding the suspension of Saeed Ajmal for chucking erupted I’ve been seeing one statement pop up in comments and articles over and over again – “batsmen are dominating cricket”.
I haven’t been the biggest fan of unorthodox off-spin bowling of the bent arm variety popularised by Muttiah Muralidaran. In fact, I have been known to stand in my living room and yell things at the telly about him pegging the ball down the pitch.
To be fair to Murali, after watching many hours of slow motion footage in my Cricket Bat Cave using high-tech analysis methods like turning up the definition on the YouTube, I am prepared to accept that he didn’t throw the ball any more than Brett Lee did. Which, as an Australian fan, I can live with.
What I can’t live with is people calling for the legalisation of the waltz-up to the pitch and peg method of off-spin bowling. Give me 40 degrees of arm bend and guess what? I can bowl the doosra too.
I can also turn an off break a fair way when allowed 40 degrees of arm bend. What I can’t do is bowl a consistent googly, which I’ve been trying to do for quite some time now. So when I saw that people were calling for the legalisation of blatant rule breaking because batsmen have it too easy, I began to crunch some numbers.
Batsman dominate the game? Which game? The only one worth caring about is Test Cricket. So let’s look at that.
Using 20 Test matches played in a 10-year time period as an arbitrary qualifier these are the numbers that my array of statistical super computers, hooked up to Cricinfo, spat out.
1983-1993
32% of batsmen averaged more than 40 runs an innings.
5% averaged more than 50 runs.
1% averaged more than 60 runs.
1993-2003
27% averaged more than 40 runs.
6% averaged more than 50 runs.
1% averaged more than 60 runs.
2003-2013
31% averaged more than 40 runs.
10% averaged more than 50 runs.
1% more than 60 runs.
Just in case the advent of T20 world cups suddenly caused batmen to start to dominate, I had a gander at that too.
2007-2013 – 130 players played more than 15 matches
30% averaged more than 40 runs an innings
8% more than 50 runs.
1% more than 60 runs.
So what can we draw from these numbers besides pleasure at their aesthetic qualities? Well, it seems pretty clear to me that for the last three decades batsmen have been pretty darn consistent.
In the 1990s there was a three per cent decline in batsmen scoring more than 40 runs an innings, which I put down to Murali and Shane Warne’s habit of ruining careers.
And between 1993 and 2013 there was a five per cent increase in batsmen scoring more than 50 runs an innings. It being the era of Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting and Jacque Kallis. I defy you to put down the success of those four to big bats, smaller boundaries or a spat of bowlers receiving gypsy curses or whatever else people are saying.
If you look at the last six years, you’ll see that number is creeping down from 10 to 8 per cent. It’s no coincidence that this coincides with all four of those dudes entering the twilight of their careers and retiring.
So what I what to know is, where are people getting the idea that batsmen are dominating from? My guess is they’ve been watching too much of Glen Maxwell in the IPL and not enough Test Match cricket.
Ask the English cricket team how dominating their batsmen were in Australia recently. Ask Australia how dominant their batsmen were in their last Test in India.
Ask anyone who watched Australia play South Africa recently if they thought the batsmen dominated or if they thought it was a great contest between bat and ball, free of any dicky actions. Not including that thing Steve Smith does to the front of his pants before each ball he faces.
So what does this mean?
I think it shows batsmen won’t start to dominate Test match cricket until Glen Maxwell is batting regular for Australia. Frankly after that happens Ajmal can chuck as much as he likes because it never really seemed to worry Max that much.
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.