Test runs scored by Mike Hussey in eight Tests since he began the 2010-11 Ashes, sharing a hotel room with a noisy gaggle of question marks over his place in the Baggy Green team. Those question marks had earned the right to rifle through Hussey's minibar, dance in his jacuzzi bath, and snooze groggily on his couch. In his previous 34 Tests, over almost three years, he had scored just three hundreds and averaged 34 - 56th in the world (of players who had played five or more Tests in that time), and the tenth-best Australian. Having averaged over 35 in only three of his last 11 series, Hussey could have had no complaints that the writing was on the wall, nor that the writing was not entirely complimentary in tone, and contained the words "You are selectorial toast" in especially lurid paint. But rather than accept this unwanted decor, he whipped out his old set of paintbrushes, and covered over that writing with a high-class mural depicting himself waving his bat around, celebrating. In eight Tests since then, he has hit five hundreds and five more half-centuries, and posted an average of 73 - the fourth highest in that period, behind Bell, Cook and Misbah, and almost double the average of the next-best Australian, Shane Watson. Hussey's fallow period had followed one of the most remarkable starts to any Test career. In 20 Tests, he had scored 2120 runs, including eight centuries, at an eye-ballooning average of 84 - the best in the world in the November 2005 to January 2008 time slab. During his two Himalayan peak periods, therefore, he has hit 12 hundreds in 28 Tests and averaged 80 - midway between Graeme Pollock and Bradman - whilst in the rift valley in between, he nestled in amidst the statistical likes of Brendan Nash, Wasim Jaffer and Greg Ritchie. For a player and a man who seems to be the embodiment of consistent reliability, Hussey has had a barkingly odd career.

Also: The last year in which there were no recorded disputes about umpiring in top-level cricket.

Also: Virender Sehwag's close-of-play score whenever he visualises himself batting undefeated throughout the first day of a Test.

Comments (0) | Multistats

Andy Flower recounts the horror of watching Gary Kirsten bat from two feet away © Getty Images

A rather bizarre English international summer concluded with a nostalgia-fuelled display of English incompetence at The Oval, skittled by a rookie West Indian team amidst a flurry of schoolboy errors – a curious bookend to a season in which they had often struck perfection and seldom dipped below excellence. England’s cricketing present and future have seldom seemed rosier. Helped by the fact that several other countries’ cricketing presents and futures, in the Test arena at least, seem as rosy as a concrete car park.

My personal highlight of the season was the colossal showdown between England’s unceasingly incisive pace attack and the majestic throwback batsmanship of Rahul Dravid, who presented the only significant barrier to one of the finest team series bowling performances of recent years. The Bangalore Bulwark became the sixth man to score his team’s only three centuries in a series, and the third to do so in a losing cause, after Lara in Sri Lanka in 2001-02 and HW Taylor for South Africa against England in 1922-23.

It is often said that in professional sport winning is the only thing that matters. This is patently rubbish. For fans, if not for players. In tribute to Dravid’s heroics in a team that was so conclusively routed, therefore, here is the Confectionery Stall Great Series Performances in Defeated Teams XI.

Criteria for selection: candidates must have performed wonders over the course of a losing series, ideally with minimal or non-existent support, and even more ideally whilst his team was being ground to a pulp like a piece of garlic in a recently divorced French chef’s kitchen.

Part one: Batsmen and Wicketkeeper

Openers: Jack Hobbs & Herbert Sutcliffe, England in Australia, 1924-25.
The stats: Hobbs: 573 runs in 5 Tests, average 63, three centuries; Sutcliffe 734 runs, average 81, 4 centuries. Series result: trounced 4-1. Next highest England run-scorer: Woolley, 325. Centuries by other team-mates: 1.

England’s legendary openers are selected as a proven magnificent-in-defeat partnership for their heroic efforts in a 4-1 series drubbing. By the end of the third Test, each man had scored three centuries, and between them they had scored 1063 runs at an average of 88, and added 739 in six partnerships. And England were 3-0 down. Which must have been almost as annoying for them as it was for the designers of the delightful interior décor on the Titanic. “Well, we did our bit,” they must have gruntled, “and they didn’t ask us to make it all waterproof.”

Another century partnership, and Herbert Sutcliffe’s fourth hundred, followed as England won the fourth Test, before both failed in the fifth, and the Baggy Greens completed a 4-1 clouting. If man cannot live by bread alone, cricket teams cannot live by immortal opening partnerships alone either.

No. 3: Rahul Dravid, India in England, 2011
The stats: 461 runs in four Tests; average 76; three centuries; average balls per dismissal: 160. Series result: flambéed 4-0 (including two innings defeats). Next highest Indian run-scorer: Tendulkar, 273. Centuries by team-mates: 0. Combined series average of other top-seven batsmen: 22. Combined balls per dismissal of other top-seven batsmen: 47.

Before Dravid came to England this year, he had scored only one of his 32 Test hundreds in the 41 matches he had played in and lost. In the space of little over a month, he did so three more times, each innings a timeless monument of technical, temperamental and aesthetic mastery, each in the first innings, and each against a rampantly remorseless swing attack that reduced his rightly vaunted team-mates to a smouldering pile of confused and disorientated rubble.

It ranks as one of the great acts of solitary cricketing defiance. In India’s four first innings in the series, Dravid scored 388 runs, faced 789 balls, and was dismissed only twice – once striking out for quick runs with the tail, once by a Bresnan outswinger that would have cleaned up Zeus or Bradman at their very best ‒ whilst the rest of a theoretically magnificent top seven, sprinkled with undisputed greats of the game, combined to average 20. It is hard to imagine Dravid losing his temper in the dressing room. He seems no more likely to smash a television with a cricket bat than Chris Martin is to score a dazzling match-winning double-hundred. But he must at least once have looked at the rest of his team with a “Does anyone else fancy a game?” look in his eyes.

No. 4: Brian Lara, West Indies in Sri Lanka, 2001-02
The stats: 688 runs in three Tests; average 114; three centuries (including one double). Series result: splattered like a steamrollered hedgehog 3-0 (including two losses by 10 wickets). Next highest West Indies run-scorer: Ramnaresh Sarwan, 318. Centuries by team-mates: 0. Combined series average of other top-seven batsmen: 22.

No one has scored more Test hundreds in defeat than Lara. Admittedly no one has had quite the range of losing-hundred-scoring opportunities as the Trinidad Titan, who scored 14, including three doubles and five more over 150 – which is 14 more defeated hundreds than Wally Hammond, Geoff Boycott, Graeme Smith, Sourav Ganguly, Everton Weekes and Alec Stewart have managed between them in 167 losing Tests.

In 2001-02, against Murali and Vaas at their considerable peaks and on their home turf, West Indies were at their hapless post-decline-and-fall worst, and Lara was at his peerless and mesmeric best, a Yehudi Menuhin fiddling out perfect Mozart sonatas to the backing of a low-grade school thrash-metal band. He scored 688 runs in the three Tests, including 351 in the third, the record match aggregate by a batsman on a losing team. Aside from Sarwan, who contributed three half-centuries, Lara received as much support as a plate of foie gras at a vegan cooking competition.

Against Murali, Lara scored 286 runs and was out twice; his team-mates managed to hammer the Kandy Konjuror for 250 runs whilst losing 22 wickets. Facing Vaas, Lara hit 148 for 1. His colleagues defiantly tonked the left-arm schemer for 230 runs in exchange for 25 wickets.

No. 5. Clyde Walcott, West Indies v Australia, 1955
The stats: 827 runs in five Tests; average 82.7; five centuries. Series result: chewed 3-0. Next-highest West Indies run-scorer: Everton Weekes, 469.

Walcott became the only player ever to hit five centuries in a single series, and still contrived to end up on the wrong side of a 3-0 series hammering. In the three Tests West Indies lost, this particular 33.3% of the Three Ws scored 493 runs and three centuries – 300 runs more than his most productive team-mate, and 144 more than the other 66.6% of the Three Ws combined.

No. 6 and wicketkeeper: Andy Flower, Zimbabwe v South Africa, 2001-02
The stats: 422 runs in two Tests; average 211; two centuries. Series result: 1-0 (marmaladed in the first Test, drew the second). Next highest Zimbabwe run-scorer: Masakadza, 153.

Flower became the only wicketkeeper ever to score two centuries in a series in losing Tests, and he did so in one match – the first of a two-Test rubber against a powerful South Africa team, in Harare. Flower began by keeping wicket as South Africa plundered 600 for 4. After conceding precisely zero byes in 10 hours of unrewarding glovework (and having to endure the spiritual heartache of witnessing a Gary Kirsten double-hundred at soul-endangeringly close quarters), he soon came to the wicket at 51 for 3, to face a five-prong pace attack of Pollock, Nel, Kallis, Ntini and Klusener, plus the slightly less stomach-rumbling tweak of Henderson. Almost five hours later, he was last man out for 142 as Zimbabwe were dismissed for 286.

Following on, his top-order team-mates gave him even less respite – Flower barely had time for a cup of tea and a crack at the cryptic crossword before he was on his way to the crease again, at 25 for 3. He proceeded to bat undefeated for 10 hours, before last-man Hondo was irritatingly out, stranding Flower on 199. Which must have chafed a little. South Africa romped home by nine wickets. Flower had scored 341 for 1. His team-mates collectively had managed 301 for 19. He followed it up with 67 and 14 not out in the drawn second Test, for a series average of 211.

The previous year, he had averaged 270 in another series loss in India – but he is selected in this XI for the South Africa series due to the almost total lack of support received in Harare, the quality of the bowling he defied, and the comprehensiveness of the defeat. If only he had joined the England set-up in the early 1990s. We could have done with someone who couldn’t help averaging over 200 in a series.

That is the top order of the Great Series Performances in Defeated Teams XI. A bunch of total losers, I’m sure you will agree.

It is a subjective selection, of course, and some magnificent if ultimately futile efforts missed out – Michael Vaughan in Australia in 2002-03, when he scored three mellifluous centuries against, variously, McGrath, Warne, Gillespie, Bichel, MacGill and Lee. However, he only passed 50 once in the first seven innings of the series, by which time England were 3-0 down and following on in the fourth, so he loses out to Hobbs. Plus, I think Hobbs should still be in the England team. There is no substitute for experience.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul has played two phenomenal series in a thrashed West Indies team – 446 runs against England in 2007, 442 against Australia in 2008, in both of which he was only dismissed three times; making 50-plus 10 times in 11 innings and turning four of those into centuries. All whilst his team mates mostly looked on politely and tried to work out which end of their bats to hold. On reflection, he should definitely have been selected, surreally crabby stance or not. But I’ve written it now, and it is well past my bedtime. And there was a contractual dispute with the team’s sponsors, Walcott’s agent said he was available and he got the nod instead. And I didn’t want three left-handers consecutively in the batting order. And Walcott took four wickets in the 1955 series. And could keep wicket if Flower hurt his finger. The selector’s decision is final.

Your own submissions would be warmly welcomed, and discussed at length with my wife, who is fascinated by such matters. The bowlers will be revealed next time.

Comments (50) |

Johnny Bairstow's ODI career strike rate after one match. The Yorkshireman's debut innings of 41 not out off 21 balls was the fastest innings of over 40 on an ODI debut in the history of the known universe. Constable Combustible Shahid Afridi famously splattered 102 off 40 balls (strike rate: 255) in his maiden ODI innings, but it was in his second match, after he registered a disappointingly sedate Did Not Bat in his first. Surprisingly for a nation not universally renowned for the innate flamboyance of its strokeplay, there are five England players in the understandably-seldom-consulted Top Six Fastest ODI Debut Innings Of 40-Plus chart. Not only did Bairstow supplant the previous record holder (Afghanistan's Noor Ali Zadran, who smote 45 off 28 in his first ODI in 2009), but he also overtook his countrymen Luke Wright (50 off 39), Ben Hollioake (63 off 48), Roland Butcher (52 off 38) and John Morris (63 not out off 45). However, before England supporters, redhead fans, and those who see the success of Yorkshire cricketers as inextricably linked to a universally acceptable solution to the Middle East situation, become too excited at Bairstow's brilliant match-clinching debut, it should be noted that Butcher, Morris and Hollioake never surpassed their debut scores, and Wright has reached 50 only once more since his 2007 debut, scoring 52 against New Zealand in 2008.

Also: Balls faced by Peter Burge in scoring 53 in the fifth Test between Australia and West Indies in 1960-61, and by Paul Collingwood during his 135 against South Africa at Edgbaston in 2008. Burge's innings lasted two hours 35 minutes; Collingwood's took four hours 56 minutes. Admittedly, Burge predominantly faced spin, and Collingwood largely encountered pace, but it remains an oddity that, as cricketers have become fitter, stronger and better prepared, aided by modern nutrition and scientific advances, and prompted by the incessant demands of television for non-stop action, they have become increasingly proficient at dawdling back to their bowling markers as if suffering from advanced all-body arthritis. Perhaps cricket's biomechnical experts should be focusing their energies on the brisk walk rather than the repeatable bowling action.

Also: The speed, in miles per hour, at which Andre Nel was convinced he was going to bowl the ball, every time he ran to the wicket. Judging by the look on his face.

Comments (0) | Multistats

"Players these days are just happy with OBEs and MBEs. In our time, winning a Test meant getting to hand out smelling salts round the ground" © Getty Images

Welcome back, Confectionery Stallers, just in time for the official Confectionery Stall preview of the end of the 2011 Indian tour of England. The final match in a damply curious ODI series will bring the curtain of mercy down on one of the most unsuccessful tours ever to fail to grace these shores. It might be a good game, it might not be, and either side could win it and/or lose it. Duckworth-Lewis, in fine form after their spectacular win at Lord’s, cannot be ruled out. No one will mind very much either way, I imagine. The schedule of the English international summer is specifically designed to maximise the chances of a prolonged anti-climax, and the weather has chirped in this year to assist the achieving of this oddly conceived goal.

On then to the official Confectionery Stall review of the 2011 Indian tour of England.

At the start of the summer, there had been rich anticipation for a titanic showdown between two of Test cricket’s leading forces. Titanic showdowns, however, as early-20th-century maritime historians will vociferously testify, can end with something that was widely lauded as indestructible and magnificent sinking rapidly and disastrously. The good ship India rammed repeatedly into Iceberg England, and the rest is now statistically alarming history that will be sifted over by curious students in decades to come. (If there are any curious students of Test cricket in decades to come.)

Back in April, as India briefly celebrated their iconic triumph in Mumbai before looking at their fixture schedules and thinking that they had better get some kip whilst they had the chance, and England recuperated from their Ashes megavictory and their barking-mad World Cup campaign, some mesmerising contests loomed – Zaheer against England’s batting machine; Sehwag against England’s demon swing attack; Tendulkar versus Statistical History.

The first flickered tantalisingly on the first day at Lord’s before Zaheer’s not overwhelmingly well-honed body rebelled. The second began (a) too late, as injury ruled out the Evel Knievel Of Opening The Batting from the first two Tests, and (b) too early, as he rushed back with insufficient preparation to face brilliant, in-form swing bowlers in swingy conditions. I am sure even Albert Einstein after a prolonged break from science needed to ease himself back into things with some basic physics - a couple of frames of snooker, at least, or juggling some tomatoes – before launching into the serious quantum stuff. The third saw Statistical History fighting a brave rearguard against the Little Master (whilst taking its eye off the majestic Dravid, allowing him to put on one of the finest displays of batsmanship in a losing cause and become only the second player after Bradman to twice score three centuries in a series in England).

India were underprepared, knackered and unlucky, but their response to their misfortunes is unlikely to have the world’s poets wielding their quills in excitement, ready to poet out some stirring tales of steadfast heroism in the face of adversity.

Consequently, as a contest it has been strange and unsatisfying, like eating a plate of high-quality filet steak lathered in a once-delicious lemon mousse that had been left out of the fridge for a couple of weeks. For England, the Test series was unremittingly glorious. Players reached or maintained peaks that a year ago had seemed inconceivable. They were ruthless, dazzling, thrilling. Those are three adjectives that have not always been applicable to English cricket over the last 30 years. They have slap-hammered their opponents for seven innings victories in 14 Tests over 12 months – one more than England managed in 211 Tests over 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s. England have averaged 59 runs per wicket with the bat in 2011 – the best year ever for England batting, and the best by any team that has played more than six Tests in a year. Their pace bowlers have collectively averaged 24 this year – the second-best such figure by England since 1979, behind 2000, when Gough, Caddick, Cork and White eviscerated the hapless West Indians.

England had an almost supernaturally stellar Test summer, to follow a similarly successful winter, and ascended to the official top of the Test rankings with ease. Reaching summits is often considered tricky in mountaineering circles (I am reliably informed). England scaled the ICC Rankings Peak in the the manner of Hillary and Tensing unicycling the last few hundred metres up Mount Everest whilst juggling apples and singing Viking drinking songs.

It is hard to know exactly how good this England team is currently and can become in the future – they have had a happy knack of playing opponents who are in transition, meltdown or need of a holiday, and have exploited weakness, misfortune and fatigue with merciless power and precision. A winter in various parts of Asia will give further evidence, and next summer’s annoyingly brief showdown with South Africa could prove to be the crucial exhibit.

EXTRAS
Lancashire clinched a staggering triumph in the County Championship, with two bone-jangling late victories in their final two matches. Last time Lancashire won the championship outright, in 1934, it heralded a 19-year spell in which Britain fought a World War, saw a king abdicate, and presided over the collapse of its empire, and in which, more importantly, England failed to win the Ashes. So whilst this extraordinary and long-overdue triumph will be rightly celebrated across Lancashire, the rest of the country and the government may be understandably more muted in its response.

When I was a cricket-obsessed boy, I patiently endured a four-year period from 1986 to 1989 when my country won three Tests out of 40. Fortunately, two of those wins were in one Ashes series, so the late ‘80s seldom get the credit they deserve as the absolute nadir of English cricket history. It was often said at the time that county cricket was not producing Test-quality cricketers. This was not entirely true. It was producing them, but they were mostly playing for England’s opponents. County cricket is still producing Test-quality cricketers, and England’s opponents, too busy to allow their players be properly schooled in English conditions, as they once were, are suffering the consequences, trying to learn on the hoof in the Test arena, like schoolchildren trying to cram in some desperate post-last-minute revision after a crucial exam has already started.

Following the trial of a pink ball in a County Championship game, the ICC has announced that in the forthcoming Sheffield Shield season in Australia, umpires’ index fingers will be painted fluorescent green, and topped with a flashing light. “We want to make the moment of dismissal a more spectator-friendly experience,” explained the secretary of the ICC Tinkering Around Committee. A further proposal under consideration is forcing batsmen’s helmets to be coated in a bronze casing, to ensure that a bowler clonking a batsman on the noggin with a bouncer makes the metal clang loud and amusing enough to prevent the crowd drifting off and thinking about gardening.

Apologies for my lengthy absence, which was caused by a range of factors: (1) spending a month telling jokes at the Edinburgh Festival; (2) taking my wife and children on holiday to compensate for spending a month away from home at the Edinburgh Festival; (3) trying to explain the difference between cricket and football to my two-year-old son; (4) Statsguru asking me for some time apart to think about where our relationship is going; and (5) a rest and recuperation period advised by my doctor to help adjust psychologically to the fact that England are now officially the universe’s leading Test Match cricket team, a state of affairs for which cricket supporters in my age bracket in this country have not been adequately conditioned. In fact, medical staff at cricket grounds have reported cricket fans complaining of a range of previously unimaginable ailments, including disbelief, delirium, smugness, an unshakeable suspicion that it is all an elaborate trick, terror that England’s ascent to the summit of the world’s greatest sport is an unarguable sign of impending apocalypse (it is all in The Book Of Revelations, if you read it backwards in John Arlott’s accent), and in several cases “feeling disconcertingly Australian”.

Comments (28) | India in England 2011