Ajit Agarkar: the man whose shrine can be found in one C Martin household © AFP

I sat down this morning to write about the phenomenal conclusion of the Mumbai Test. However, a trawl for some tasty statistics sent me a little off-piste. I could have returned to the piste, but I did not, and I will therefore discuss the match not in this blog, but in the relaunch episode of my World Cricket Podcast, due out later this week.

Instead, I have another Confectionery Stall XI for you, arising from investigations into R Ashwin’s Wankhede hundred – a historically momentous innings which means that Sachin Tendulkar and Ashwin between them have now scored 100 international centuries. No wonder the crowd went noisily berserk.

Ashwin became the fifth frontline Indian bowler this millennium to score a Test hundred, after Harbhajan (twice), Irfan Pathan, Kumble and Agarkar. In the two previous millennia, the only Indian bowler to have scored a hundred batting at No. 8 or lower was Kapil Dev, who scored two of his eight Test tons there.

Ashwin’s was far from the most unexpected of these lower-order successes. Ajit Agarkar can safely claim that honour. He might have had one first-class hundred under his belt when he walked to the wicket at Lord’s in 2002, but he also had nine runs in his previous six Test innings under the same belt, plus a shining belt-buckle engraved with details of a frankly heroic eight ducks in 18 Test innings to date.

Half of that quacky flock of eight ducks constituted a world-record-breaking sequence of four consecutive first-ballers in Australia in 1999-2000, a run of instantaneous ineptitude broken when he defiantly stodged out for a marathon two-ball duck in his next innings, enabling him to complete back-to-back pairs totalling five balls at the crease. It takes something special to record a King Pair. It takes something almost divine to follow it up with a three-ball pair.

At Lord’s, the game was already lost, but Agarkar defied both a useful England attack and his own career average of 7.4 to plank a statistically gobsmacking 109 not out. It remained Agarkar’s only Test score of more than 50. Few Test hundreds can have emerged so unexpectedly from a seemingly inescapable swamp of statistical precedent.

He later launched a similarly ingenious cricketing ambush with the ball. In the Adelaide Test of 2003-04, having lulled the Australians into a mathematically-justified sense of false baggy-green security by never having taken more than three wickets in an innings in 17 previous Tests over five years, Agarkar kebabed his way through them with 6 for 41, to set up one of India’s finest victories. He never took more than three wickets in an innings again – in fact, after that series, he never took more than two wickets in a Test.

Agarkar, a consistently effective ODI performer, thus established himself as unquestionably the greatest all-round one-off-flash-in-the-pan Test player of all time: 26 Tests – one major success with the bat, one major success with the ball. Of the 41 cricketers who have converted their only Test fifty into a century, Agarkar played more than twice as many Tests as the next man on the list. And of all the bowlers who have taken 50 wickets or more in Tests, only Agarkar can claim that on the one and only occasion on which he took more than three wickets in an innings, he turned that success into a six-wicket masterclass.

Agarkar’s hit-and-run Test career, and in particular his monumental, gravity-defying run of rapid-fire ducks, has inspired the Confectionery Stall Players Of My Cricket-Watching Lifetime Who Have Been Out For Pairs Lasting A Total Of Just Two Or Three Balls XI.

(I have selected the batsmen based on the quality of their careers, and the bowlers for their all-round ineffectiveness of the specific match in which they harvested their double-quick-time pair. At its best, this is a well-balanced XI that could challenge most teams, particularly with the bat. At its worst, it would be all out for 0 in 2.2 overs in both innings.)

Mike Atherton: 3 balls, v South Africa, Johannesburg, 1999-2000

Four years earlier on the same ground, South Africa had failed to dismiss the Lancashire Limpet in 10 hours 43 minutes and 492 balls of match-saving resistance. This time, they did so twice in nine minutes of batting, encompassing three balls, only one of which did not result in Atherton trudging off to the sound of Fate giggling to herself about what a neat line in irony she can peddle when the mood takes her.

Virender Sehwag: 2 balls, v England, Edgbaston, 2011

An uncharacteristic match strike-rate of 0 for the Delhi Devastator proved one of the most immutable rules in the scientific universe: if you are thrown straight into a Test match after four months out of the game following a major operation, against the world’s strongest pace attack in swinging conditions, in a crumbling team, you will probably struggle, even if you are, in different circumstances, capable of hitting a run-a-ball triple-century off Steyn, Ntini, Morkel and Kallis. And Harris.

Kim Hughes: 3 balls, v West Indies, Melbourne, 1984-85

It is fair to say that resigning the baggy-green captaincy did not help Kim Hughes rediscover the twinkling form that had helped him score an eye-popping undefeated hundred against Holding, Roberts, Garner and Croft, scored whilst Australia were being skittled for 198 at the MCG on Boxing Day 1981. In his first Test after his tearful departure from high office, Garner and Marshall dismissed him for a golden duck and a seven-ball 2 (a perfectly respectable innings against the mid-1980s West Indians, to be fair). In the next match, back at the scene of his previous triumph, Walsh snared him second ball, and Garner condemned him to another first-ball blob, and Hughes’ Test career was over.

Mark Waugh: 3 balls, v Sri Lanka, Colombo, 1992

Probably the most elegant three-ball pair of all time. The marginally younger Waugh bounced back in the following Test in Moratuwa, improving considerably to register an equally elegant nine-ball pair.

Alec Stewart: 3 balls, v Australia, Brisbane, 2002-03

England began the 2002-03 Ashes with miniscule hopes of victory, after a generation of baggy-green pummellings. By the end of day one of the series, those hopes were barely visible with an electron microscope, and England’s humiliation was complete when Stewart, one of England’s doughtiest servants through those lean Ashes years, suffered a Warne-induced golden duck to complete his three-ball pair.

Adam Gilchrist: 2 balls, v India, Kolkata, 2001-02

The world’s most destructive bat hit the ball two fewer times than its owner’s pads managed to in the momentous Eden Gardens epic. After a characteristically annihilative hundred in the series opener, Gilchrist was trapped in front in the middle of a hat-trick by Harbhajan late on day one. Four wild and crazy days later, he was pinned again, this time by Tendulkar, as the little Master ‒ who has averaged two Test wickets a year over his 22-year career ‒ took three in 13 balls. I was following the drama on Ceefax in my flat in London. Despite the drawback of only being able to see the scorecard change every five minutes or so, it remains one of the most exciting cricket matches I’ve ever watched.

Gilchrist was out lbw for 1 in both innings of the final Test. He had only been leg before once in his first 15 Tests before Eden Gardens. He was not out in this manner again for another 34 Tests. He had clearly learnt the valuable lesson that hitting the ball with his bat was a better tactic than hitting it with his legs.

Andrew Flintoff: 3 balls, v India, Headingley, 2002

Having ploughed through 27 overs for the solitary and distinctly unglamorous wicket of Sanjay Bangar, the Lancashire Leviathan would have hoped for more than three balls’ worth of batting. But Flintoff was still some way from cracking Test cricket, and he became another Harbhajan first-ball lbw victim, before, in England’s follow-on, being snaffled second ball by Zaheer Khan to register his eighth duck in 21 Tests. It would be almost a year before Flintoff reappeared in the Test arena. In the interim, he had acquired some crackers. And he started cracking things.

Justin Kemp: 3 balls, v West Indies, Jamaica, 2001

Not only did Kemp somehow contrive to be comfortably out-batted by Courtney Walsh in his final Test, but he also picked up only one wicket in 34 overs on a seamer-friendly pitch. Kemp was promptly dispatched into the Test match undergrowth by the South African selectors, whence he would emerge only four-and-a-half years later, for a solitary valedictory Test.

Ajit Agarkar: 3 balls, v Australia, Sydney, 1999-2000

Selected for his three-ball Sydney double-bloop rather than his king-pair pratfall in Melbourne on the anti-strength of his SCG bowling – 0 for 95 in 19 overs of persistent uselessness as Australia clonked their way to 552 for 5. Next time he faced the Baggy Greens, Agarkar backed-up his five-innings-in-six-balls nano-batting heroics with another pair of quacks in Mumbai, although this double dud took a stately 27 balls to complete. He finished his career with eight ducks in 16 Test innings against Australia – no one has scored so many noughts in so few innings against any opposition.

Rangana Herath: 3 balls, v Pakistan, Galle, 2000

In his third Test, Herath gave the cricket world one of its least impressive all-round personal performances – his one-ball first innings and two-ball second sandwiched a 36-over trundle of 0 for 115, making him the only player ever to score a pair with the bat and concede a wicketless century with the ball in the same match. The Sri Lankan selectors took note of the history being made before their eyes, and did not pick Herath again for almost four years.

Maninder Singh: 3 balls, v Pakistan, Karachi, 1982-83

In a strikingly ineffective debut, Maninder began as he meant to go on – on a mission to become statistically the worst batsman ever to play 20 or more Tests. Sadly, his average of 3.80 in 35 Tests has since been eclipsed by a man with an even greater devotion to being unable to hit cricket balls, the immortal Chris Martin (2.47 in 60 matches), but Maninder’s international bow also featured 23 wicket-free overs as India were mercilessly pounded by their arch rivals.

Remarkably, Maninder was batting as high as 10. The selectors, understandably, had assumed that they could not possibly have found a less capable batsman than the 4.6-averaging Dilip Doshi. They were wrong. Doshi outshone his tail-end compadré. His pair lasted four balls.

Comments (43) | XIs

The answer is: Cummins is in third place, behind JJ Ferris and Craig McDermott. What's the question?
© Getty Images

Years since an 18-year-old Australian last took a Test wicket. In Johannesburg, Patrick Cummins became the 45th 18-year-old to take a Test wicket, but the first baggy green one to do so since Tom Garrett in the first ever Test series in 1877.

Cummins’ 6 for 79 were the fourth-best innings figures by a teenage debutant in Test history, behind post-war South African greenhorn Cuan McCarthy, Indian legspin whizzlet Narendra Hirwani in 1988, and Indian legspin whizzlet Narendra Hirwani in 1988 (again).

After one Test, Cummins is already in third place among teenaged wicket-takers for Australia, behind 19th-century swing king and Boer War fatality JJ Ferris (18 wickets), and Cummins’ current bowling coach, Craig McDermott (10 scalps before entering his third decade).

Also: The number of years for which the record of three Test debutants taking five-wicket hauls in a single month had stood, before November 2011 roared into the history books.

Cummins became the fourth bowler this month, after Doug Bracewell, R Ashwin and Vernon Philander, to take five wickets in an innings on his debut – no other month in the entire history of the universe has provided so many honours board-adorning debutant Test bowlers. This historic, unforgettable, numerically immortal month thus beats the previous debut five-fors record of three, which has stood since March 1877, when Billy Midwinter, Alfred Shaw and Tom Kendall all adorned the inaugural Test match with five-fors (a record that was jubilantly equalled by March 1889 and December 1927).

When you factor in Elias Sunny’s successful introduction into the Bangladesh attack in late October, the last five weeks have seen as many five-wicket-innings debuts as any previous entire year – 2003 boasted five such debuts, but has now been cast into the landfill site of statistical history by 2011. Five of the 13 debutants to have bowled since 21 October have taken five wickets on debut – maths fans will bark at you that this equates to 38%, compared with a figure up that pivotal date in human history of just 8.6% of debut bowlers taking five-fors (131 out of 1528). Truly, readers, these are great times in which to be alive.

However, a successful start with the ball is no guarantee that the bowler will Botham or Lillee his way to cricketing immortality. Before Philander picked up his second five-wicket haul in just his second match, and Ashwin did likewise in his third, none of the previous 12 five-wickets-in-an-innings debutants, dating back to mid-2007, have so far gone on to record a second five-wicket haul (some, admittedly, have had few opportunities to do so). Philander and Ashwin are also the first bowlers to take two five-wicket hauls in their debut series since Hirwani’s ludicrous 16-wicket maiden Test, and the first to do so in separate games since Nick Cook in 1983.

Of the 46 bowlers to have taken five or more in an innings in their first Test in the last 30 years, only Cork, Lee, Anderson and Edwards have gone on to take 100 Test wickets. Some still have lively ambitions to do so, whilst for others time is fast running out – it now looks increasingly unlikely that 50-year-old England seamer Neil Mallender will get many more chances to add to his five-wicket blitz against Pakistan at Headingley in 1992.

What does all of this mean for Cummins’ future career? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’ve just had a bit of time to kill, and access to Statsguru.

Also: The number of years, as of 5pm UK time on 24 November 2011, during which international cricket has been played without anyone scoring 100 centuries.

Also: The likely minimum number of decades that will pass before anyone else scores 100 international centuries.

Comments (15) | Multistats

Sure, he can take a six-for on debut at the age of 18, but can he convince his parents to hand over the car keys for the weekend? © AFP

As the Johannesburg Test slalomed in a spectacular way towards its baggy-green denouement, the TV cameras pick out a placard in the crowd which posed the question: Is Test cricket dead? Perhaps on the reverse side, there was a range of multiple-choice answers, ranging from: (a) yes, it died the moment Australia won at The Oval in 1882; through (d) no, but it has been taken hostage by some angry-looking goons wearing IPL replica shirts and they do not seem especially keen on negotiating a civilised resolution to the stand-off; to (g) who cares, Mozart is dead too and his tunes are still damned catchy.

The cameras then resumed their more important regular task of zooming in annoyingly close as the ball is bowled to ensure that the viewer cannot fully see what happened until replays are shown, several of which have also been zoomed in to the point of perspective-obliterating meaninglessness, all the while prompting the watching cricket fan to ponder from the comfort of his or her sofa: Why is that, as televisions become bigger and bigger and better and better, TV cricket seems intent on showing a smaller and smaller part of the action?

I digress. Anyway, the evidence of the contest being played out in front of the placard suggests that the correct response was: “Is Test cricket dead? Is the Pope an aubergine?”

This was close to the perfect Test match, a game of constantly shifting momentum which contained more twists and turns than an ice-skating snake’s high-risk Olympic final routine.
Innings of 30 or 40 were valuable, partnerships of 50 felt match-changing, every session saw the balance of the game wobbling from one side to the other like a drunken tightrope walker on a windy day.

On the evidence of the game, if not the crowd at the ground, Test cricket clearly is not dead. It might be in a nursing home, but, frequently, its faculties seem as sharp as ever. Admittedly, it does wish more people would come to visit it. And it is not entirely sure that it can trust all of its family members, some of whom seem to be scrabbling over its inheritance before it has even made its will.

Nevertheless, it was a little sad to see the final day this all-time classic match played to a stadium so sparsely populated that you wanted to give it a cuddle and tell it to keep its chin up. What can cricket do to attract fans to Test matches, without using military threats, or paying people twice their daily wage to attend?

I have met almost no cricket fans who do not claim Test cricket is their favourite form of the game (although I don’t get out of my house very much, so that is not the most scientific of opinion polls). There is clearly a healthy passive following for Test cricket, but in a world swamped by infinite competing distractions, coercing people to physically place themselves in a stadium for some or all of a five-day contest is a Herculean task. Given that cricket has still not worked out how to adequately police bad light and somnolent over-rates, I think even Hercules himself, the celebrity former 12-time Greek Labourer Of The Year, might balk at taking on the task of refilling its empty stadiums.

Australia showed remarkable skill and resolve, amidst outbreaks of their now trademark carelessness, to recover from their Newlands Nightmare, aided by Patrick Cummins making one of the most striking Test debuts of recent years (more of which in the next Multistat blog, later in the week). I cannot remember exactly what I was doing when I was his age, but I am fairly confident that it was not taking 6 for 79 on my Test debut and calmly slapping the winning runs in one of the most tense finishes in cricket history.

However, just as Australia tossed away a winning position in Cape Town, so at the Wanderers South Africa flung their superiority out of the window like an unwanted motorway banana skin.

The Proteas’ World Cup bid was fatally undermined by a middle-order megabloop that exposed a tail longer that the one Kate Middleton was so desperately trying to hide under the train of her wedding dress. They lost in Johannesburg for the same reason, flunking in the first innings from 241 for 4 to 266 all out, and then in the second from 237 for 3 to 339 all out. This followed their first-innings Cape Town calamity when they alchemised 49 for 1 into 96 all out, before being decisively out-calamatised by Australia’s brilliant counter-calamity.

In this series, the South Africans’ sixth to 10th wickets totalled a startlingly useless 138 runs in 15 partnerships ‒ 9.2 runs per wicket, the Proteas’ rubbishest lower-order series performance since 1907, and their fourth cruddiest of all time.

Since readmission, the lower middle-order had been one of South Africa’s great advantages over their rivals. Not anymore. Since 2006, South Africa’s Nos. 8 to 11 have collectively averaged 15.8, placing them sixth of the 10 Test nations, with no hundreds (all other teams have at least one, except Zimbabwe, who have only played three Tests), and just seven fifties in 55 Tests ‒ and three of those were by Boucher after a nightwatchman had bumped him down to No. 7.

From 2000 to 2005, South Africa’s lower order averaged a world-leading 20.3, with three hundreds and 16 fifties in 67 Tests. From 1992 to 1999, their 8 to 11 were way ahead of the field, averaging 19.8, with four centuries (as many as the rest of the world put together) and 19 half-centuries in 66 matches.

This new-fangled lower-order brittleness is one of the reasons that Smith’s team have let slip a one-Test lead in three series out of their last five, and, having seemingly scaled the peak of world cricket by winning in Australia late in 2008, have won just one rubber (in West Indies) since the start of 2009. Their team is still speckled with world-class players, but it has an Achilles heel visible from space (with a powerful telescope and access to Statsguru).

All in all, Cape Town and Johannesburg have provided the cricket-watching world with two unforgettable Tests, albeit that the memories most people will be not forgetting will be of a TV screen rather than a cricket ground. It has been a compelling start to the series, which is now perfectly set up for the remaining zero Tests.

EXTRAS

● This was the 13th successive Test between Australia and South Africa to end in a positive result. There has been one draw between them in 20 Tests over seven series this millennium, and the lowest overall scoring rate in any of those series has been 3.40. Cricket is showbiz nowadays. And there is a saying in showbiz: “Always leave them wanting more.” Cricket has done that. A third Test would be greedy. A fourth ‒ the height of indulgence. A fifth, and you might as well wake up Lenin and tell him he won the Cold War.

● Perhaps the 21st-century cricket lover should simply be thankful that at least these series happen twice every three or four years nowadays. In 91 years from their first meeting in 1902 to the resumption of southern-hemisphere hostilities after Apartheid, the Australians set their baggy-green feet on the veldt in just seven Test tours, with the South Africans heading over to Baggy Greenland just four times (they also made up a wet and one-sided corner of the 1912 triangular series in England). If there are legitimate complaints these days about cricketing overkill, it could equally be said that our cricketing forefathers were guilty of underkill.

Comments (47) | Australia in South Africa, 2011-12

A West Indian fan tries to please a god to bless his side with powers against spin © Trinidad & Tobago

The West Indies’ collective Test batting average against spin since Brian Lara’s retirement from international cricket in April 2007 – comfortably the worst such figure by any team other than Bangladesh.

In that time, West Indies have averaged 30.5 against pace bowlers – still not world-beating, as their results would vociferously and conclusively testify, but nevertheless 17% better than their average against spin. Since April 2007, all the other Test teams combined have averaged 34.5 against pace, and 39.5 against spin – the rest of the non-Caribbean planet has been 14% better against spin than pace.

Thus, since Lara dragged his magic bat away from the Test match arena for the last time, West Indies have been 11% worse than their peers against pace, but a staggering 34% worse against spin. All in a period when spinners have been collectively less effective in Tests than at any time since the 1940s. Their dedication to not playing spin very well has taken them to statistical troughs that no major Test nation has explored for generations.

No wonder R Ashwin must have punched the air with excitement after being told he would make his debut against them. And you can sympathise with Devendra Bishoo when he wears his “Why am I never allowed to bowl at my own team?” frown.

The decline of Caribbean batsmanship against slow bowling is highlighted by the fact that from 2000 until Lara’s final Test West Indies averaged 27.8 against pace and 34.4 against spin – a 24% margin in favour of playing spin (similar to their performance through the 1980s and 1990s). In electoral terms, there has been a government-toppling swing towards the West Indians playing spin badly.

The major movers in the pace v spin batting market have been England, who had steadily averaged in the mid-to-low 30s against tweakers and twirlers since the 1960s, but who, since April 2007, have led the universe, averaging 47. Their improvement has been built upon hard work, sound planning, and the extremely wise tactic of not facing Warne, Muralitharan and Kumble anymore, and instead taking on Doherty, Mendis and Mishra. Of all the things the ECB have got right in helping the national team to the top of the Test Match tree, this has been one of their most influential moves.

Also: The number of Test centuries scored by Ricky Ponting in 62 Tests between August 2001, when he broke a 20-month century drought, and December 2006, when his 142 after being dropped early on by Ashley Giles sparked Australia’s spectacular/gut-rendingly-harrowing (delete according to allegiance) Adelaide comeback victory over England. In that purplest of five-year patches, the Baggy-Green icon averaged 73.

In his 45 Tests over five-and-a-half-years before this halcyon period, Ponting had scored seven hundreds in 45 Tests, and averaged 40. In 48 Tests in just under five years since then, he has scored six hundreds and averaged 39 (including just one century in his last 23 Tests, none in his last 13, and no half-centuries in his last six) (and that one century would have ended exactly 100 runs before it reached 100, but for Mohammad Amir grassing a chance that most schoolboys would have taken) (given that Amir was the same age as a schoolboy at the time, that is a pertinent consideration).

Ponting’s career has taken on an almost perfect symmetry – and one inverse to Brian Lara’s. Lara averaged 60 in his first 33 Tests over five years, 60 in his final 54 Tests over five years, and over the five years in the middle, he averaged 39 in 47 Tests. Both men have overall career averages of 52, which goes to show that even the greatest players have it in them to impersonate Taufeeq Umar for half a decade.

Also: Faoud Bacchus’ Test batting average. Does this constitute a disappointing average for someone with a highest Test score of 250, or does 250 constitute an amazingly brilliant highest score for someone with a Test average of 26? I will leave that to the philosophers and/or lawyers.

The 250 was Bacchus’ only Test century, meaning that he scored more in his single three-figure innings than Tendulkar, Greg Chappell, Boycott, Gavaskar, Border, Kallis and Steve Waugh have done in their 230 collective hundreds, and more than any Englishman scored in 4444 innings between the Lord’s Test of 1990, when Gooch plundered his way to 333, and the Edgbaston Test of last summer, when Cook plinked his way 293.

Comments (17) | Multistats

"Curse these fools, they want to take away every record I possess" © Getty Images

In the 2015 previous Test matches that have adorned the history of the universe, few, if any, passages of play can have matched the barking-mad cricketing melodrama that unfolded in the 2016th in Cape Town on Wednesday. On a lively but scarcely fire-breathing wicket, mayhem reigned as the moving ball and the DRS ran amok like a porcelain-loving bull in a well-stocked china shop.

Australia, from a position of total dominance, lost, in quick succession: a few early wickets; their marbles; and control of the game. Haddin, in particular, seemed to be spooked by the scoreboard (which read an admittedly alarming 18 for 5), and forget the match situation, which was, effectively, 206 for 5. Philander and Morkel took full advantage, and the game was not so much turned on its head as flipped into an impromptu quadruple somersault, before staggering groggily to its feet, muttering: “Who am I and what am I doing here?”

Australia had history and an immortal entry in the annals of sporting ineptitude within their grasp – at 21 for 9 after 11.4 overs, they were within one more inept waft of registering the lowest-ever completed Test innings (New Zealand’s 26 against England in 1954-55), and the shortest-ever completed Test innings (South Africa’s 12.3 overs at Edgbaston in 1924). Siddle and Lyon stapled a small fig leaf of dignity to Australia’s obvious embarrassment with a last-wicket stand of 26, and History mopped its brow and toddled off. But it did not leave empty-handed. Here then, is a multiple-choice quiz about the unforgettable day two of the Newlands Test. Each question has multiple answers. Do not attempt if you are (a) an Australian batsman, or (b) an Australian of nervous disposition.

1. What did Nathan Lyon do on Thursday that no other human being has ever done?

(a) He walked out to bat in a Test match with his team at 21 for 9. The previous worst score facing a No. 11 was 25 for 9, when Lyon’s baggy green predecessor Tom McKibbin marched to the wicket at The Oval in 1896 thinking, “Oh dear. This is a disappointing score. I bet no other Australian will ever come to the wicket with a worse score than this on the board.” He smote a defiant 16 before being caught, taking Australia’s score up to 44 all out, leaving Hugh Trumble chuntering into his moustache at the non-striker’s end that he had taken 12 for 89 in the match and still been on the wrong end of a shoeing.

(b) He broke the 300-mph barrier on a unicycle. Unicycling has been introduced to the Australian training regime by their new coaches, as a means of improving balance and self-confidence. Lyon took a morning pedal up to the top of Table Mountain, lost his balance whilst looking for a yeti, and careered down to Newlands at breakneck speed.

(c) He became the eighth No. 11 to top-score in a Test innings.

(d) He walked on the moon.

ANSWERS: (a) and (c). (b) has not been ratified by the World Unicycling Federation, as it took place outside of official competition.

2. What do WG Grace and Philip Hughes have in common?

(a) Both men are no longer as effective as Test Match batsmen as they once were.

(b) Both have been played by Hollywood actor Val Kilmer in films.

(c) They have each taken part in one of the only two Tests ever played in which 23 batsmen have been dismissed in single figures in the first three innings of the match – Hughes at Newlands this week, Grace in the Lord’s Test of 1888.

(d) Both have featured prominently in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s dreams in the past week.

ANSWERS: (a), (c) and (d).

3. What has Australia as a nation experienced three times in the last 16 months?

(a) An infestation of pterodactyls.

(b) It has watched in gaping-mouthed astonishment as its once-mighty cricket team has been bowled out for under 100, on three separate occasions – 88 all out against Pakistan in Leeds in July 2010, the Boxing Day MCG abomination against England (98 all out), and now 47 at Newlands. Three times in 12 Tests. They had posted a two-figure score just once in their previous 277 Tests over 25 years. They had not been skittled for under 100 three times in two years since 1887 and 1888 – when they had to regroup and take the positives after eight different sub-100 totals. In six matches. It is fair to say that Australian batsmanship improved thereafter.

(c) A creeping sensation that Silvio Berlusconi’s behaviour might not be entirely prime ministerial.

(d) It has seen its cricket team win a Test match – in their previous four series, they won three, drew three and lost six. The previous time they won three or fewer games in a run of 12 Tests was between December 1987 and June 1989. At which point, they ground England into a fine pulp, kick-starting a decade and a half of unremitting Ashes dominance. Is this all part of Cricket Australia’s masterplan?

ANSWERS: (b) and (d).

4. Why might Vernon Philander and Shane Watson have spent Thursday night discussing plans for a massive 30-foot-high commemorative bronze statue of themselves to be erected on the concourse at Newlands?

(a) Because they had just overheard Peter Siddle and Morne Morkel discussing erecting a 29-foot-high commemorative bronze statue of themselves on the concourse in Centurion.

(b) Because they had just become the first pair of bowlers from opposite sides to take five-wicket hauls for fewer than 20 runs in the same Test.

(c) Because 18 wickets had fallen in 23 overs of Test cricket, and they had been the principal agents of batting doom – both took five wickets in 20 balls. Eighteen wickets tumbled for 68 in 138 balls. Think about that. Have you thought about that? What do you think about that? This included 16 for 44 in 115, as South Africa lost their last seven wickets for 23 (their lowest such total since their first Test after readmission in 1991-92), and Australia lost their first nine for 21 (unprecedented at least since before the dinosaurs were still at the crease). Holy smokes. The apocalypse is coming. No doubt. Look at the Eurozone. Then look at the scorecard from Newlands. Then look at Alastair Cook’s Test average over the last 12 months. There is no other conclusion to draw.

(d) Because, during the tea interval, they discovered a method of converting the noise of lbw appeals into electricity, thus solving all the world’s energy problems, and rightly believe that their breakthrough should be recognised in artistic form.

ANSWERS: (b) and (c)

5. Before the Newlands Test, what had happened only twice since the First World War?

(a) Another World War.

(b) Both teams had been dismissed for under 100 in the same Test. It happened when India and New Zealand went head-to-head in a loser-loses-all collapse-off in Hamilton in 2002-03, and when South Africa and Australia span each other silly in Durban in 1949-50, and it has happened in Cape Town this week.

(c) A member of the Bush family had won a US Presidential election.

(d) Australia had lost a Test Match after taking a first-innings lead of 188 – their Newlands lead after skittling South Africa for 96. Those two occasions are quite highly regarded matches – Headingley 1981 and Kolkata 2000-01. If Australia lose this match, it will be the eighth highest first-innings lead to have resulted in defeat (excluding the Hansie Cronje’s Magic Jacket match in 1999-2000, when the middle two innings were forfeited and England technically won after conceding a 248-run lead).

(e) A Test team had lost eight wickets for 10 runs or fewer. Australia collapsed like a narcoleptic house of cards on a bobsled going down the Spanish Steps in Rome as they subsided from 11 for 1 to 21 for 9. Only twice before had eight wickets fallen for as few runs in a Test, and both times New Zealand were the untriumphant team involved – when Saqlain and Sami carved them up in Auckland in 2000-01 (121 for 2 became 131 all out); and when, on the first day of post-war Test cricket, in Wellington in 1945-46, the Kiwis celebrated the return of peace by slumping from 37 for 2 to 42 all out. They followed this up by losing 6 for 6 during their second innings, and Australia, so appalled that such ineptitude should be allowed on a cricket pitch, did not play another Test against New Zealand for almost three decades. Will they be hoist by their own petard?

ANSWERS: (b), (d) and (e). And (c). And (a). If you count the international dispute over the UDRS as a World War. Which you should not.

Here endeth the quiz.

What a day. I think cricket needs a cup of tea and a sit-down. For mercifully different reasons than it needed a cup of tea and a sit-down last week after the spot-fixing trial. The third day may provide yet more twists, and after the excellent Test matches in Zimbabwe and India, these crazy Cape Town capers have been a further reminder that cricket is generally far more enjoyable when it is being played and watched on the pitch rather than in a courtroom.

Comments (59) | Australia in South Africa, 2011-12

What will Sanga's Big Four-O unleash onto the world? © AFP

Greetings, Confectionery Stallers. We have decided to incorporate the Multistats into the main blog. So there will be more blogs, but some of them will be shorter, and jam-packed with stats. If you are allergic to stats, or fearful of truth, you are cordially advised to ignore the Multistats blogs, or read them under medical and/or psychological supervision.

The Test average of Sri Lankan top-seven batsmen in their 30s since Kumar Sangakkara entered his fourth decade on this planet on October 27, 2007 – the best by any Test side in that time.

Over the same period, Sri Lankan top-seven batsmen under the age of 30 have averaged 31.6 – sixth best, ahead only of Pakistan and West Indies, and marginally so. (I have excluded Bangladesh, who have had hardly any over-30 players, Zimbabwe, who have played hardly any Tests, and Italy, who have (a) played no Tests at all and (b) been governed by Silvio Berlusconi, a man so naughty that he disqualifies his entire nation from the holy realm of cricket statistics. There. Someone had to say it.)

During this time (Sangakkara’s 30s, not Berlusconi’s rule over Italy), India’s and Pakistan’s top sevens have also registered a significantly higher average by gnarled 30-plus veterans compared with fresh-faced 20-somethings. India’s heavily illustrious 30-plus batting brigade has averaged 50.3, and Pakistan’s 45.5 (second and third best of the Test nations). Their under-30 averages are 37.3 and 31.4 respectively (fourth and seventh best).

West Indies are the only other team whose 30-plus oldies have outperformed their sub-30 youngsters in the last four years (41.7 to 30.7). Australia as a nation, slowly recuperating from the departure of its own generation of greats, pays little heed to baggy-green age (over-30s averaging 42.4, under-30s 44.5), whilst South Africa (43.6 to 52.3), England (39.5 to 47.2) and New Zealand (26.7 to 33.6) all show significantly better returns from their younger players.

Admittedly, Sangakkara’s 30th birthday, joyous occasion though it no doubt was for him and his family, might not be the most scientifically unignorable milestone on which to base a stat. However, the fact remains that, since the Matale Machine blew out those 30 candles on his cricket-bat-shaped cake, not only has the world economy collapsed like St Brian’s Primary School Under-9s in their little-reported match against West Indies in 1984, but it appears than an Asian-cricket lover may have secretly discovered the elixir of eternal youth ‒ since then, Asian batsmen have been 50% more effective when over 30 years of age than when under 30.

The figures suggest that the golden era of Asian batsmanship has left something of a void beneath, and one that will need filling as a matter of increasing urgency.

(By the way, in case you are reciting this stat during an attempted seduction, and the primary stat does not win the heart of your intended, here is a back-up stat to clinch the deal: in ODIs, these figures are mirrored very closely – over-30s versus under-30s ‒ other than by England’s under-30 batsmen, who have been excellent in Tests, but have explored all conceivable crannies of underperformance in ODIs).

Also: The number of times, per hour, that the average Sri Lankan cricket fan wishes Murali was still fit and firing. Since he retired, Sri Lanka have not only failed to win any of their 14 Tests, but their bowlers have collectively averaged 45.

Over the course of his career, Murali twirled his country to 54 wins in 132 Tests, taking 795 Test wickets (excluding the Super Test where he played for the World XI) at 22; Sri Lanka’s other bowlers in those games averaged 36. Even in the 23 Tests Murali missed during his career, his colleagues managed to average 37.

Not only was Murali a more than useful bowler himself (“probably better than Eddie Hemmings” – International Understatement Magazine, January 2008), but since his retirement, Sri Lankan bowling appears to have gone into a prolonged grump at the realisation that he has gone forever, subject to some major age-reversing advances in one or both of science and witchcraft.

In the words of Piglet’s agent during a particularly heated argument over how to split the royalties from the latest Winnie The Pooh film, it has all been too much to bear. Boom.

Comments (31) | Multistats

“As Butt, Asif and Amir disappeared into the unwelcoming bosom of the British prison system, the surgeon at St Cricket’s Hospital woke the corruption iceberg from its anaesthetised slumber. The tipectomy had been successful. The iceberg was released back safely into the wild, and HMS Cricket sailed on serenely for evermore.”
-- From A History Of Cricket, by Gervold H Scralthouse, published 2084

A drawing of the 1844 USA v Canada match reveals, rather suspiciously, that the only spectator present was a horse © ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Perhaps these words will one day be written. Perhaps not. I hope this will prove to be a long-overdue watershed for cricket. Until now the sport has not entirely grasped the match-fixing bull by the horns. It has, to be fair, sent the bull a few sternly worded letters asking it to please remove its horns, or at least file them down a bit so they are not quite so pointy. But the bull appears to have not opened its post. Or has been unable to read.

It is all rather depressing for anyone who loves one or more of cricket, Pakistan, Pakistan cricket, or humanity in general. Open any newspaper, history book or heavily guarded government building and you will be confronted by story after story of greed, corruption, arrogance, dishonesty and the failure of human beings to resist the lure of easy money, all of which played starring roles in the Lord’s 2010 debacle.

Look at the state of the global economy, and the unbridled avarice, short-termist recklessness and morally squalid practices that have left it lying face-down on the canvas, gasping for air and asking for its mummy; look at MPs convicted for fiddling expenses; at all manner of personal, corporate, commercial and national malpractices; at Allen Stanford and his Perspex box of pretend lucre. Sport is supposed to provide an escape from all that. But easy money is a persuasive salesman, and we now can add to that regrettable roll call of its customers the cream of third-millennium Pakistan fast-bowling.

I hope Amir has a future in cricket. I like the idea of redemption. I do not know how I would have reacted in the same situations, under those pressures, and in that dressing room. I like to think I would have had the strength to refuse. And I would probably have been more worried that my slow-medium long-hops and technical weakness with the ball against all forms and qualities of bowling might be shown up at international level. But if I had a captain, an agent, and a large wodge of banknotes all trying to persuade me to do something I thought I could probably do without compromising my ability to take 6 for 30 in 13 overs of mesmeric swing bowling, maybe I would have done it.

I hope not. I hope I would rather have taken 6 for 28, without the two no-balls. But I don’t know. Situations like that did not crop up very often in my days in the West Kent Village League, and on the UK stand-up comedy circuit, gig-fixing is mercifully far from rife. At the moment.

Anyway cricket now has to take a long, hard bath with itself and ruminate on how and why this whole miserable morality tale came to pass, and why it took a newspaper to plumb the depths of cricket’s morality (a newspaper that has now ceased to exist after not merely plumbing the depths of its own industry’s morality, but installing a fully fitted marble bathroom, complete with power shower, in those depths).

The ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (the ACSU, which I hope will soon be renamed the Anti-Corruption and Pro-Security Unit, to clear up any lingering confusion arising over its attitude to Security) would appear not to have been 100% successful to date. It may well now want to look back through cricket history to determine whether the rancid tentacles of naughtiness had wrapped themselves around other games in the past.

The best place to start might be with this game: USA v Canada in 1844, the first-ever international cricket match. It was a suspiciously low-scoring game, in which no batsman scored more than 14, and the USA, cruising to victory at 25 for 0 in pursuit of 82 to win in the fourth innings, lost all 10 wickets for 33.

Admittedly, losing all 10 wickets for 33 was not especially unusual in the mid-19th century, when men were men, moustaches were moustaches, and cricket pitches were discourteously bobbly. But the scorecard and accompanying notes reveal further details that the ACSU simply must investigate.

Four batsmen in the game are recorded as being dismissed “lbw b ?”, with ? picking up another scalp via a stumping by Canadian gloveman Phillpotts. ESPNcricinfo’s match notes highlight that: (a) Canada’s captain was not named, (b) the bowling figures do not add up in any of the four innings, (c) the runs do not tally in the USA’s first innings, (d) the Americans’ key No. 3 batsman Wheatcroft simply did not turn up at the ground on day three and therefore missed his second innings, and (e) it is not clear which of the Wilson and Thompson brothers played for Canada. Every single one of these potentially match-turning factors suggests that some shady betting syndicate was almost certainly involved. And as long as betting in India remains illegal, 1840s cricket matches will be vulnerable.

The 1846 rematch raises further questions. Aside from the in-form ? picking up another key wicket, Canada scoring 46% of their first innings runs through wides flung by the under-suspicion US bowlers (admittedly this amounted only to 13 of an underwhelming total of 28 all out), and further alarm-bell-clanging mathematical inconsistencies in the scorebook, the game was suddenly abandoned with Canada struggling at 13 for 3 in the second innings.

Apparently John Helliwell, Canada’s opening batsman, confidence rising as he advanced his score to 4 not out (needing only one more to become his team’s highest scorer in the match), skied the ball towards the bowler, the American allrounder Samuel Dudson, who was himself pumping with adrenaline after a dazzling innings of 10. Helliwell, in an outburst of unbridled North Americanism, rushed towards Dudson to try to stop him taking the catch, shoulder-charged him and clobbered him to the ground.

Dudson somehow clung on to the catch, and on recovering from being crash-tackled, chased after Helliwell and hurled the ball at him, no doubt following up with some ripe 19th-century verbals impugning the batsman’s parentage and familial virtue. The bowler was calmed down by his team-mates, who we must assume were by now stifling their giggles, and apologised. Canada, however, refused to continue playing, forfeited the match, and did not play the USA again for seven years. It was like The Oval 2006 all over again, but almost entirely different, and 162 years earlier. In fact, the only link between the two incidents was that Darrell Hair was the umpire in both.

Were the bookies involved in this bizarre moment as well? Was Helliwell acting under pressure from a pushy agent promising him a flashy pocket watch, a mahogany smoking pipe, or shiny new horse? Or, even in this cynical age, can we take his excuse – that he thought shoulder-charging fielders was still legal, as it had been in the early days of cricket ‒ at face value? Perhaps the ICC should consider bringing this spectator-friendly tactic back during the middle overs of ODIs, to spice up the excitement levels for today’s easily distracted fans. This level of violence works in rugby, American football and professional wrestling. It would work in snooker, if given the chance. And it could save ODI cricket. It is about time that skied catches became heartstopping tests of physical bravery.

Of course, some self-proclaimed “historians” might argue that these controversial matters arose only because the game happened 167 years ago, deep in the midst of barely recorded cricketing history, and was not televised, due either to a contractual dispute between the USACB and Cricket Canada over the rights, or to television not having been invented yet. But cricket has been too complacent for too long. The players’ descendants must be questioned and vigorously held to account. If international cricket began in a morass of corruption and wrongdoing, how can we trust anything we see in the game today?

And there is one man who might finally be prevailed upon to give the full story – the crash-tackle opener Helliwell himself. Because, according to no less a source than his player page on this esteemed website itself, Helliwell is alive and well and looking forward to his 189th birthday. We must not let him take his secrets to the grave.

I digress. The point is, match-fixing of any kind is naughty. Very naughty. I think we’re all agreed on that. It is slightly ironic, given the startling extent and depth of the allegations and rumours in the Qayyum Report and elsewhere concerning previous match-fixing schemozzles that the first criminal convictions were for something as relatively trivial as a few no-balls. If half of what was alleged in Qayyum’s report is true (and its findings and punishments were nebulously non-committal), there must have been several well-known cricketers yesterday, watching the three convicts gingerly tucking into their unappetising portions of fresh justice pie in London, thinking: “Phew.”

The punishments seem to me to be tough but fair – Wandsworth Prison might have been built in 1851, but as a property it is not renowned by estate agents for its charming period detail, whilst Feltham Young Offenders’ Institute was described to me by a lawyer friend who has visited several times as “a crushing vortex”. And unconfirmed reports suggest that all televisions in both institutions play nothing but unedited ball-by-ball coverage of Gary Kirsten’s 210 at Old Trafford in 1998 on an unending loop.

Comments (50) | Match-fixing

MS Dhoni's average in 96 innings in ODIs that India have won - the highest average by anyone who has batted more than 10 times in victorious ODI matches. In ODIs India has lost, the Ranchi Rampager averages just 28.4 (the 80th highest average by anyone who has batted more than 10 times in losing ODIs), giving him one of the highest runs-per-dismissal-difference-between-victories-and-defeats of any player in the history of the limited-over universe.

(By way of comparisons: since Dhoni's December 2004 debut, all ODI top-seven batsmen combined have averaged 42.5 in victories and 23.8 in defeats; Michael Bevan, who fulfilled a similar middle-order-finisher role for Australia, averaged 65 in wins and 40 in losses; and current South Africans Hashim Amla and JP Duminy heroically smash 70 and 64 respectively on the train to Triumphtown, but miserably plink just 26 and 17 when on the long road to Losersville.) In the mercifully-now-consigned-to-history ODI series against an alleged England side, Dhoni again proved himself one of ODI cricket's greatest finishers, an ice-veined abacus with forearms stronger than an elephant's hammock, a man who knows (a) where his accelerator pedal is, (b) when to press it, and (c) that his opponents know that he knows when to press it, and how hard he will press it when he chooses to do so. Dhoni has now batted in 47 successful chases, averaging 108 with a strike rate of 90, and he has been not out on 29 of those occasions, closing in on Jonty Rhodes' record of 33 opportunities to be the first batsman to pull a commemorative stump out of the ground at the end of a successful one-day pursuit. The Indian skipper has batted 36 times in unsuccessful chases, hitting five half-centuries, averaging 23, with a strike rate of 71. The massive divergence between his winning and losing averages suggests that Dhoni's wicket is almost as important to a bowling team in an ODI as lungs are to a racehorse. These averages need to be taken with a pinch of salt ‒ he bats lower down the order than most top batsmen, so his high average in successes is boosted by not-outs, and his low average in defeats is diminished because he often comes in having to take risks early in his innings. But that pinch of salt should merely enhance the flavour of the stat, rather than render it inedibly briny. Mmmm. Yum.

Also: The percentage of air made up of nitrogen. Dazzling England gloveman Jack Russell reportedly used to take his own supply of nitrogen on tour with him, in case the local nitrogen disagreed with him.

Also: The percentage of bananas rejected by England's Bodyline skipper Douglas Jardine for being "insufficiently banana-shaped". Jardine was convinced throughout his adult life that only 21.9% of bananas were up to scratch. He preferred bananas to Australians.

Comments (1) | Multistats