In answer to 8: I wouldnt be surprised if Rudi Koertzen is found in the morning with a stump through his heart, Fosters scattered round his hotel room, and Australia going on to win 3-1.

Awesome!!!Especially t one that calculates bell's avg as 240 by 2013...does it also mean he is gonna avg almost 500 in 2015???Imagine

Considering this is a comedy article, the options for question 9 sure made me depressed. The truth cuts deep sometimes.

5. (e) Match abandoned without a ball bowled.
6. (d) However, coating the outfield with a green pigment and dressing the fielding side in jungle camouflage may alleviate aforementioned problems.
8. (a) Australia does not have Shane Warne to constantly sledge Ian Bell about his appearance and will see him revert to his normal average.
9. (e) All of the above.

hi andy..this is first time i m commenting...i m a big fan of ur blog...i just love ur sarcasm and wacky stats...how do u manage to collect such arbit stats?....amazing ....this was a brilliant quiz...for ur 5 Q...i just hope we have a tie!!...and the options u gave for 6 Q was just mindblowing!!...continue ur good work

england is going to win third test

Love your work Andy, wish I could get your Ashes podcast in Australia.

5.C
6.B
7.A
8.C
9.C Only in Australia and South Africa

"Will there ever be another Test pitch with genuine pace and bounce in it?"
Good one !!!!

Andy Zaltzman cricket record is outstanding.
It is certainly better then what I did not achieve.
I was clean bowled 4 consecutive balls from the same bowler in a selection match.
The bowler was selected but was so euphoric with his achievement that he never ever could bowl near the stumps again.

Andy, you beauty! Bell didn't know so much about his own performances I'm sure!

AHAHAHAHAHA! had me laughin aLOT brutally honest answers, mixed with some brutally ridiculous, i love that ur not showing any bias towards any side!

Mr. Andy - you made me laugh on an otherwise dull day at the office. The build up of your questions is great, and the last question answers it all!

It just keeps getting better and better;
Andy you beauty!

Answer to 9 is (c) yes, provided it stops raining before the Oval

I've read all the questions but don't really know the answers and with time running out, I'd like to answer C for all of them (even question 9).

'the biscuits shaped like Colin Cowdrey' comment was rude but funny. Moreover Bell's stats are typical Andy stuff.

Brilliant, as usual, Mr Zaltzman. In particular, your keen grasp of mathematical statistics to predict a tied test at Edgbaston. Question 5 is the only one I can answer with certainty -- the answer is b). Keep up the great work!

I've just put a tenner on Bell scoring exactly 297. If it comes in I'll pay off the mortgage. If it doesn't, well I think you owe me a tenner.

Good effort Andy. I do like the description of a talented player with a disapointing career being described as fillet of prime sirloin made into an adequate stroganoff. I will be stealing that analogy and using it whenever appropriate.
One other suggestion about ending dubious catches is havig Hotspot cameras trained on the slips. This would pick up any instance of the ball hitting the gound. Admittedly that would be costly as there would have to be 6 such cameras at every ground and it would only pick up slip catches but well worth considering. Or adapting the Hawkeye technology like they have done in tennis. Or the old Cyclops thing that beeps when the ball hits the ground. Or just be honest in the field and accept the umpires decision when it is given

I'll work on the answers sometime in 2018. I like question 7. But don't quote Pietersen's average of 0.3 catches per Ashes Test. Look at his ratio of drops to catches, which is about 3:1, and his total of misfields and overthrows, which is getting close to 3 figures. Bopara looks vastly promising in the overthrows department too.

I'll work on the answers sometime in 2018. I like question 7. But don't quote Pietersen's average of 0.3 catches per Ashes Test. Look at his ratio of drops to catches, which is about 3:1, and his total of misfields and overthrows, which is getting close to 3 figures. Bopara looks vastly promising in the overthrows department too.

I'm pretty confident I've got all these right. I took the Confectionary Stall Ashes exam four years ago and the test is definitely getting easier. It's like A-levels except there's no obvious application in the workplace. In fact, this quiz is exactly like A-levels.

Anyhoo, I wonder if anyone fancies offering Ponting or Strauss a leather jacket following a third day of rain in order to force some kind of result...

australia will win the ashes this year i think i am pretty sure.

By .3 of a catch do you mean the kind of catch that Strauss took?

If Strauss declares with Bell on 297, I guess there will be some investigations about him having been phoned by a Mr. Alex Coe. Good luck to all three nevertheless.

No more pitches with pace and bounce? The very thought! I miss the days of batsmen hopping to leg every delivery and never getting off the mark in the first half hour. Whatever happened to proper fast bowling? In the Malay Peninsula we used to hold net sessions on inch deep rubber matting, prop up the villagers and knock 'em over like skittles until they couldn't get up. Kept us in the region for another thirty years and here we are now with the country in rapid decline, a population of sixty million and no decent fast bowling. Who wants to see wretched Australians batting forever just because they can? Where's the sport in that? What we need at Headingley is a strip of jagged concrete under an inch of whangy rubber and half a dozen seven foot tall bowlers with arms like medieval siege engines, bad tempers and the ability to park the ball in Australian throats best out of three. If we can't produce those, what are our schools for? That's the way to redress the balance. Nurse! My cocoa.

5(b), on the 5(a) argument that one brings two. When did Oz last win at Edgbaston?
6(d). It would stop fielders throwing the ball away having 'taken' a catch.
7. There are lies, d*mned lies and statistics, so who cares?
8(c). Who's saying that their performance was disappointing? I found it utterly encouraging. 4-0, anyone?
9. Define genuine. But you won't need a tiebreaker, I'm obviously the clear winner.

i think england will win the ashes this year i think i am preetty sure Haroon

i think england will win the ashes this year i think i am preetty sure Haroon

Funny stuff Andy, enjoyed Bell's statistics the most. As far as predictions are concerned, it should be an England Ashes win if we go by the mathematical series Aussie win (2002-03) England win (2005), Aussie win (2006-07).. the next one in the series is obviously England. On the other hand, if we go by the immediately preceding mathematical series covering the Ashes years 1990- 2001, an Aussie win cannot be ruled out.

5c
6b
7a
8a
9b

5.C
6.B
7.A
8.A
9.A

Austraila will win the third Ashes test and they will fire the england in all matches as ponting will be back in his form.

It will be a tie and England will take the series with 2-1 or 1-0.This series will never tie this year iam 100% sure.

andy zaltman is friggin BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"There has never been an Ashes tie. The last Edgbaston Test was the closest the two teams have ever come. There have been 321 Tests between these nations. Statistically, with only four results possible, around 80 of those should have been ties. It is long overdue." your an idiot. thats the most nonsense thing ive ever read and i don't even want to finish the article thats written by someone so ignorant and stupid. there isnt a 25% of a cricket game being a tie. what a ludacrous thing to publish. how on earth did you get a job writing articles? although i guess better doing this than anything to do with maths

What a Monty Pythonesque picture: "coating themselves in mayonnaise and climbing into those jaws." Ha ha! I really love reading your pieces, Andy!! Keep it up!

There are qustion is who win the ashes,in that position of because last result is very intresting it england had won and aussies now in some kind of underpressure ,but we can underestimate australia they are great fighter i hope they came back ,came back very strongly,edgbaston is the great territoray of this war,because they do everything to win here other wise very hard for them to defend their title,let,s hope we see a great kind of cricket coming of 5 day,s

The final question was the best of the lot.

(and result to be published before dead line, which is in 10 years time . :) ... keep it up

A stat that seems to be lacking from your analysis is the throwing-a-wobbler average of Dicky Ricky.

Just back from office (another dull day) ...on my toilet seat with my iphone and reading this...and laughing like hell at Question no. 7.

Amazing stuff mate. keep it up.

Have to agree with Simon, it's easy. Ask the fielder if he caught it.
Should the unthinkable happen and a fielder is caught in a terminological inexactitude, he should be put into stocks under the Grace Gate and pelted with Jubblys and Pontefract Cakes!

Regarding the following excerpt from Question 5:
"There have been 321 Tests between these nations. Statistically, with only four results possible, around 80 of those should have been ties"
The idea that 80 of 320 games should have been ties seems to require that the probability of getting a tie is equal to that of other possible outcomes. Whereas history shows otherwise and logically it doesn't follow that this should be the case.

James, James, James ... you would be wise to heed the famous words of Confucius, who said something along the lines of: "Man who write abusive comment on internet forum end up with egg on his face." If I can break it to you gently, everyone who's read your comment has shaken their head in amazement that you could so spectacularly miss the point. Satire works by making outrageous claims with a straight face. AZ knows the 25% stat is outrageous; this blog is satirical; therefore he boldly made the claim. The ignorant person is the one who took him seriously.

Haha Andy Z, you've done it again! Rudi Koertzen is definitely the part of the Aussies' game they most need to work on to avoid a repeat of Lord's (Question 8). Honourable mentions to the suggestion of using bright radioactive purple pigment to judge if a ball has bounced before being "caught" - especially by Andrew Strauss! James, I guess your sense of humour (if you ever had one!) chose to desert you while reading what is clearly a humourous article! Hint: Try laughing and enjoying the article instead of critiqueing the maths! Go Andy Z! You all right, mon! ;-)

Struggling to write this as broke my ring finger warming up the keyboard. I haven't caught your style of humour yet, bit low for me but Strauss probably has. Not bothering to answer your multiple guess questions as my averages in Ashes quizes are poor: 7.03 if I put a) each time; 7.08 putting a) b) c) etc in rotation and 13.90 if I phone up TMS. I did get 240* in your Eskimo v. Norfolk tour match quiz by asking my Mum.
If I may make a personal comment or two, you need to get a haircut and a job; get one and you'll get t'other. It'll mean I won't have to read any more of this rain-break filling guff and return to doing something more useful instead, like swearing on radio and hoodie-hugging.

The answer to Q7 is definitely, incontrovertibly B.

The answer to question 8 was proven beyond all doubt to be C when Koertzen denied Johnson the most stone-dead lbw I think I've ever seen.

I'm English, and frankly I wanted Bell to be out, because the references to "rub of the green" are getting tiresome. And Bell is as out of his depth as ever.

5 c
6 c
7 b
8 b
9 b
G R E A T Means Getting Really Exicited About Tomorrow

6(d) seems like the only way forward for the 5-day game; our attempts to daub only certain parts of the surface with red advertising will be seen in retrospect as a fence-sitting prevarication once the purple fields are revealed for future test matches. The side issue of how to deal with the now invisible new ball cherry will need to be dealt with, and meanwhile the crowd will need entertainment in between deliveries (unless it develops a ball-wiping spectator fetish in the meantime) - so my suggestion is that we run a continuous world cup 20:20 competition on an adjoining ground.

@James,
It's satire, my friend. You like Zaltzman, read the blog, don't like, leave it alone.

I wish you put the same or similar effort into 'The Bugle' blog as you do this one.
Go Australia! Hopefully they pick Stuart Clark for the next test.
Andy, say hi to Tom for me.