The case for Jonathan Trott: dropping him is as pointless as every episode of Jackass © Getty Images

I’m confused. England crunched India like a birthday biscuit in the Tests during the summer, then beat them conclusively in the one-day series. But now, just weeks later, they have been unceremoniously counter-crunched by the same opposition, honked 5-0 in a fiesta of grumpy ineptitude, by an Indian team that was as focused, calm and efficient as it wasn’t in England. What does it all mean?
It is too early to say definitively. I think we can safely say that, on the evidence of this series, England will struggle in the 2011 World Cup. Subcontinental conditions do not suit their game. India, meanwhile, will be desperately trying to remember not to begin the 2019 World Cup in England (a) with much of their first-choice side absent, (b) after a long, exhausting and humiliating tour that followed hot on the heels of another Test series, the IPL and a World Cup, and (c) in a rainy September.

It is probably also fair to say that England have not entirely cracked ODI cricket yet, but that MS Dhoni has.

Does it matter that England’s batsmen keep getting out after making a start?
Strap in, stats fans, I’ve been digging again. Don’t tell the wife. (I’ll give you a couple of paragraphs to brace yourselves for the stat. Gather your family round, I think they should all be told.)

On a global scale, humanity probably has more significant issues to address than England’s batsmen playing themselves in and then playing themselves out again with alarming rapidity. And for Britain as a nation, this matter resides below staving off economicageddon, wondering if we can start exporting our old people to ease the pensions problem, and bickering over whether we should leave Europe and catapult ourselves into the mid-Atlantic instead. However, in the realm of one-day cricket it certainly does matter.

In Mohali, Ravi Bopara played arguably the archetypal modern England ODI innings – 24 off 32. It was not a dismal failure, but it was as close to unhelpful in the circumstances as he could have managed. Admittedly England could have done with a few more archetypal 24s off 32s in Kolkata yesterday, but of the impressive selection of Achilles heels they have flashed at the cameras during this series (historians are reassessing whether Achilles was in fact a centipede, not a man), the infuriating habit of batting quite well for a bit and then getting out was the most swollen.

STAT ALERT. Here it comes. It’s about batsmen getting out in the 20s and 30s. 5-4-3-2-1. Blast Off.

In ODIs since the end of the 2007 World Cup, top-seven England batsmen have been out between 20 and 39 on 152 occasions, compared to the 196 times that they have gone on to reach 40. So 43.7% of the times an England batsman has reached 20 (and has not finished not out between 20 and 39), he is out before he reaches 40. Of Test-playing nations in that time, England are only sixth best at top-seven batsmen not getting out in the 20s and 30s, just behind New Zealand (43.4%). The top four is as follows: South Africa in first (32% dismissed between 20 and 39), Australia in second (36.7%), India in third (38.5%), Sri Lanka in fourth (39.5%).

In this period, the highest ODI win percentage table is: South Africa in first (68.1%); Australia in secnd (67.7%), India in third (62.7%), and Sri Lanka in fourth (57.3%).

Have a glass of water.

The only significant mover between the two charts is Pakistan – seventh-best (44.3%) at not getting out in the 20s and 30s, but with the fifth-highest win rate (56.8%) ‒ nudging England (49.0%) down one to seventh, just behind New Zealand (50.0%).

I am not a professional statistician, and I don’t have the certificates to prove that, and I am sure other statistics could be found that produce a similar correlation. However, this mega stat does suggest that telling your top-order batsmen not to get out in the 20s and 30s, and those top-order batsmen following that instruction, is, as has long been suspected, a good idea.

Judging by the crowds at the matches, this series captured the Indian public’s imagination in the same way that a baby spider catches an Apache helicopter in its web. I love cricket. Should I be concerned?
Yes. The cunning formula of overpriced tickets and a less-than-entirely-cordial match-day experience successfully kept crowds down at the neutral matches in India during the World Cup. That scheme has now been rolled out to cover India’s own matches as well. If cricket has not quite killed its golden goose, then it has certainly tied it to a radiator in a dungeon, punched it repeatedly in the beak, pointed a gun at its head, and screamed: “Lay more eggs, you feathery idiot, or I’m going to stuff you with sausage meat and roast you to the other side of Christmas.” The goose, understandably, is finding it hard to relax into its most productive egg-laying form.

Should Jonathan Trott be in the England ODI side?
Presumably for the England selectors this is not a matter of much debate. Unless they are easily influenced by internet message boards. I imagine that, when picking their ODI batting line-up, they start with a blank sheet of paper, write Trott’s name on it, and then start thinking about the other players to fit alongside him. They might write Eoin Morgan’s name down first, but have sadly spent too much of the last year crossing it out again when they remember that he is injured.

Trott is not the ideal modern ODI player, but not many teams in any format have 11 ideal players, and he is still very good. In the two years since his debut, his average (51) has been excellent, close to the top of the international tree, and his strike rate (78) has been unspectacular but adequate – similar over the same period to Yuvraj Singh, Michael Clarke, Ross Taylor, Graeme Smith and Ponting.

The problem is that Trott has been surrounded by other batsmen whose strike rates have also been adequate but whose averages have been close to useless. Dropping Trott would be like firing your accountant after you spent your life savings on a giant inflatable Darrell Hair, left it tied up outside the Sri Lankan embassy, and found it repeatedly punctured the following morning. The accountant is not to blame.

How should Trott bat in ODIs?
In Mohali, Trott scored 98 off 116, a soundly constructed innings that lacked a definitive final flourish, but which facilitated a strong team score. Clearly it would have been preferable if he had scored 198 off 116. In Mumbai, Trott made a brisk start. But again he made the mistake of not converting his 39 off 48 into 198 off 116. It is starting to look like a behavioural pattern. Some critics also seemed to think that it would have been even more preferable if he had hammered his first ball for four, then smashed his stumps down and marched off proudly announcing that he had given the innings some early impetus. And boosted his career strike rate in the process. Moreover, he would have allowed England’s volcanic middle order more time to Vesuvius it about at 12 an over as they always do.

Is it fair to criticise England for being a bit stroppy in the field?
No. They are all worried sick about the Greek financial crisis. It is a tense time for everyone. However, results suggest that the somewhat inexplicable strops have not aided performance. This could, of course, be coincidence. Maybe a study could be done to analyse the effects of grumpiness on cricketing success. Perhaps Donald Bradman’s Test innings could be cross-referenced with his personal diaries to calculate whether his rare failures coincided with him being particularly unhappy at a new shade of paint in which his wife had just painted their kitchen, or irritated that the wi-fi in the Australian dressing room was not working, or generally feeling that life was ultimately pointless and we are all just dust in the winds of history.

Comments (37) | England in India 2011-12

Number of balls faced by Geoffrey Boycott in in Perth in 1978-79. How many did he hit over the boundary rope for four? (a) 439 - he really went for it after being knocked unconscious at breakfast on day one when Ian Botham unexpectedly flang a croissant at him at high speed; (b) 5 - not exactly bums-on-seats batting, more bums-off-seats-to-go-to-the-bar-for-a-beer-to-numb-the-pain batting; or (c) 0 - what had the boundary rope ever done to him? Why should he inconvenience it by sending a ball hurtling towards it?

Think about your answer carefully. No conferring.

Concentrate.

Pens down. The answer is - brace yourselves, Twenty20 fans ‒ (c) 0. In nine hours 42 minutes of batting, the Yorkshire legend managed a solitary all-run four. The Packer-ravaged 78-79 series was by no means Boycott's career highlight - he averaged fractionally under 22, his strike rate was fractionally over 22, and, in all, he smote five scintillating boundaries in more than 24 hours at the crease - fractionally more than one fence-blasting hammer-blow per day's play. In fact, if a team made up entirely of 1978-79 Boycott clones batted at both ends for an entire 90-over day, they would end on 122 for 5. And all this happened to the lilting background tones of Kerry Packer giggling wildly to himself and asking, "Anyone want to watch some guys in silly clothes whacking it about a bit?"

Boycott proudly resides in third place in the slowest-recorded match-scoring rate of anyone who has faced at least 400 balls in a Test - narrowly behind Brearley's defiantly strokeless 17 off 64 and 74 off 344 against Pakistan in 1977-78, but way adrift of the career masterpiece of the Plato of Plod himself, Trevor Bailey, who brought humanity to the precipice of spiritual permafrost in scoring 27 off 116, followed by 68 off 427 (match figures of 95 runs off 543 balls, equivalent to two entire days' batting in a modern Test, and a strike rate of 17) at the Gabba in 1958-59.

It is now widely accepted by experts that it was Bailey's second innings, rather than competition with the Soviet Union, that prompted America to invest heavily in space travel, in order to offer the people of the world a viable escape route from having to witness similar innings in future.

Also: The percentage increase in sales of coffee reported by hot drink stalls at the Perth Test in 1978-79 whilst Geoff Boycott was at the crease.

Also: The percentage increase in sales of champagne reported by bars at the following Test in Melbourne after Boycott was out 13th ball for 1.

Comments (0) | Multistats

After the exertions of 1983-84 series against West Indies, Kapil checked into an army boot camp for some much-needed R&R © AFP

Welcome to Part 2 of the Official & Unarguable Confectionery Stall All-Time Great Series Performances In Comprehensively Defeated Teams XI ‒ The Bowlers. Please note that, for the sake of clarity, I have added the word “comprehensively” to the team name, thus ruling out, for example, Warne’s mesmeric 2005 Ashes, Imran Khan’s brilliance in narrowly failing to haul his Pakistan team to victory in England in 1982 (17 wickets at 14, 200 runs at 67, in the two defeats in a 2-1 loss), and Courtney Walsh’s 34 wickets at a nostalgia-fuelled average of 12 in a close-fought 3-1 defeat to England in 2000. All brilliant performances, all ultimately unsuccessful. But none for teams that were being battered like a suicidal haddock in a chip shop.

There was much deliberation around the family breakfast table over the make-up of the bowling attack. My four-year-old daughter eloquently put the case for Alec Bedser’s 1950-51 Ashes heroics earning him a place in this most illustrious of XIs, but was shouted down by my two-year-old son, who thought that having the 1924-25 Maurice Tate alongside his team-mates Hobbs and Sutcliffe would help engender a suitably defiant team spirit, and made his point forcibly, and with projectile baked beans. The final selection, to add to England’s long-dead opening legends, Dravid, Lara, Walcott and Flower (wk) is as follows:

No. 7 and captain: Kapil Dev, India v West Indies, 1983-84

The stats: 29 wickets in six Tests, average 18. Next highest Indian wicket-taker: Shastri (12 at 47); next best average: Maninder Singh (10 at 33). Result: clonked 3-0. In the three defeats, Kapil took 18 wickets at 18; no other Indian bowler managed more than six. In the West Indies batting line-up: Greenidge, Haynes, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd, Dujon, and more.

As a bowler, Kapil Dev was often magnificent in defeat – 10 of his 23 five-wicket Test hauls came in the 31 matches he lost with India (placing him third on the all-time list of five-wicket innings in losing causes, behind Murali (15) and Richard Hadlee (11)). By comparison, Kapil took five wickets three times in 24 wins, on 10 occasions in 75 draws, and a forgivable zero in one tie. (Hang on, Dr Fact, that is a large number of draws, isn’t it?) (What was cricket trying to do to itself at that time?) (Was there a curious belief that the best way to nurture Test cricket was to slowly pile-drive spectators into a numbed torpor of listlessness, whence all they could think about was the endless glories of their team not losing and the ultimate pointlessness of life?) (75 draws in 131 Tests.) (That is utterly ridiculous.) (I digress.)

He never galloped down a more magnificent road to defeat than when leading India to a 3-0 home clubbing by the mighty West Indies in 1983-84, most especially in the third Test in Ahmedabad. With India 1-0 down in the series and 40 runs behind after the first innings, Kapil took 9 for 83 in an unbroken 30-over spell that winched his team into contention. Any fast bowler attempting a 30-over spell in the current 21st-century science-enhanced era would be surrounded by physios, coaches, agents, psychiatrists, biomechanical gurus and mothers screaming at him to pull himself together and feign a chin injury in order to escape the field of play for a rubdown, a chinwag and a cup of tea. But Kapil bowled West Indies out for 201, and India were left needing just 242 to win.

Unfortunately for Kapil, the key missing words in that last sentence are (a) “off the bowling of Marshall, Holding, Daniel and Davis”. And (b) “on a pitch so spicy even a drunken British stag party wouldn’t eat it”. Meaning that the word “just” had no business appearing in this blog. India duly sank to 39 for 7, then 63 for 9, before Maninder Singh’s greatest day as a batsman – scoring 15, holding out for 81 minutes against a barrage of high-octane mega-pace, heroically bumping his career average up from the disappointing low-to-mid-3s to solidly into the entirely respectable high-3s, and being described by no less an authority than Wisden as being “relatively undaunted”) ‒ edged his team over 100.

Kapil was left with some sore legs, a princely moustache, the consolation of having pocketed the best Test innings figures by a losing player, and the comforting knowledge that, in the next Test, his opening bowling partner would be the fire-breathing bouncer-flinging monster that was Ravi Shastri.

No. 8: Maurice Tate, England in Australia, 1925-25
The stats: 38 wickets in fiv Tests, average 23. Next highest England wicket-taker: Kilner, 17. Bowled 316 eight-ball overs in the series (equivalent to 84 six-ball overs per Test) – next most overs by an Englishman: Kilner, 179. Result: marmaladed 4-1. In England’s four defeats, Tate took 31 wickets at 23, with four five-wicket innings. Of England’s other bowlers in those losses, only Kilner (12 at 27 in two Tests) took more than 10 wickets, averaged under 50, or bowled more than half the overs Tate bowled.

The third member of this team to emanate from England’s comprehensively clouted Ashes losing 1924-25 team, Tate reignites his statistically fruitful but resultistically disastrous combination with Hobbs and Sutcliffe. The Sussex schemer, in his first year of Test cricket, was a staggering mixture of incisive and durable, shouldering the burden for English bowling like a dutiful conservationist carrying an aqua-phobic elephant across the Serengeti.

He was never quite as lethal again, with only one more five-wicket innings in the rest of his Test career. Perhaps there is a reason that most modern doctors that I have consulted now advise that bowling over 2500 balls in a series on hard pitches is not necessarily beneficial for your long-term fitness.

In his next two Ashes series, Tate took far fewer wickets at far higher cost. And England won them both. A true losing-heroically legend.

No. 9: Rodney Hogg, Australia v England, 1978-79
The stats: 41 wickets in six Tests, average 12.85, including five five-wicket innings and two ten-wicket matches. Result: donkeyed 5-1. Next best Australian bowler: Hurst, 25 wickets at 23.

Bowlers relished this Packer-neutered series – non-legendary England tweakman and now selectorial overlord Geoff Miller took 23 wickets at 15 in the 6 Tests, but could harvest only 37 (average 40) in his other 28 Tests. Hogg had some able support, but England fielded a decent batting line-up, and, in his debut series, the Melbourne Motorarm obliterated it with some unremittingly baggy-green pace. Sadly for him, his own batting line-up counter-obliterated itself similarly unremitting persistence, and Hogg emerged with a soaring reputation, a starring role in Australia’s biggest ever Ashes defeat, and a nagging sense that he probably deserved better.

Like Tate, his kettle never boiled quite so bubblily again. He too took only one more five-wicket haul, and never more than 11 wickets in any other series.

No. 10: Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lanka v Australia, 2003-04
The stats: 28 wickets in three Tests, average 23. Next best Sri Lankan bowler: Vaas, 11 wickets at 34. Result: kneaded, baked and eaten 3-0.

Statistically, this selection should be non-contentious – 28 wickets at 23 in a 3-0 home series whitewash. But this whitewash did not wash quite as white as some whitewashes. Three times, Murali bowled his team into a first-innings lead (15 wickets at 15 runs apiece in the three first innings). Three times he was trumped by Warne in the second ‒ Murali took 13 at 32, Warne 14 at 16 to power-whirl Australia to victory on his spectacular return to Test cricket after his diuretic blooper.

Nevertheless, anyone who takes 28 wickets in three Tests deserves better than a 3-0 blooting. And Australia were very good at batting in those days. The Kandy Konjuror is in.

No. 11: Courtney Walsh, West Indies in South Africa, 1998-99
The stats: 22 wickets in four Tests (missed one match through injury), average 18. Next highest wicket-taker: Ambrose, 13. Result: ritually disembowelled 5-0.

Walsh is selected not only for his sterling bowling against a strong South African team during one of the innumerable disastrous away series that have come to characterise modern West Indian cricket, but for his sterling bowling in several other disastrous away series as well. Before this series, he had taken 14 wickets at 21 in a 3-0 horror-show in Pakistan (two defeats by an innings, one by 10 wickets, next highest West Indies wicket-taker: Dillon, with five). After it, he reached even higher peaks of defeated magnificence with the aforementioned 34 at 12 in England (when only Ambrose, with 17 at an average of 18, also took more than eight wickets), before rounding off his career with 25 more victims at 19 in a 2-1 defeat in a five-Test home series against South Africa.

As West Indies became progressively worse, Walsh seemed to become progressively better. In all, he took 186 wickets at 25 in 43 Test losses (more defeats than were suffered by Roberts, Holding, Marshall, Garner, Croft and Patterson combined), making him one of the greatest losers in sporting history. In a manner of speaking.

That is the final XI. A useful team, I think, albeit one with a slightly collapsible tail, and perhaps rendered more vulnerable by the undeniable fact that Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Tate would all struggle to pass a fitness test these days. And a team that I am confident would score multiple centuries and average above 70 with the bat, and skittle their opponents cheaply and repeatedly. And still find a way to lose.

Comments (15) | XIs