Andy Zaltzman goes where no man has gone before to get stats that prove who the world's best allrounder is, while also finding time to answer other readers' questions.

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For those of you unable to stream or download the audio of the World Cricket Podcast, here is a link to a transcript of this month’s show. However, it is supposed to be listened to, not read. So I would prefer that you listened to it. Or played it on your sound system during a party, to make your guests think there is a strange man wittering on about cricket in the corner. Or, at least, read it with either my voice or Richie Benaud’s voice in your head. Thanks. AZ.

Hello Cricket fans, and welcome to the May 2012 edition of Andy Zaltzman’s World Cricket Podcast.

I am Andy Zaltzman, and although I have few credentials as a cricketer, I can claim that I would have been WG Grace’s nephew, if my dad had been born 100 years before he was and had hit it off with one of WG’s four sisters. Although if that had happened, I would probably have been born in around 1860, and by now I would be a very cranky old man complaining that all my friends had died 80 years ago or more and that Twenty20 isn’t real cricket, and going on about how WG’s beard was obviously a fake and he hid a mouse in it that had psychic powers that could tell what ball a bowler was going to bowl at him and convey the information through coded squeaks.

In fact, if you look at old photos, you can see that, at drinks breaks, when other players were brought a glass of lime cordial or methylated spirits, depending on whether they were amateurs or professionals, WG would be brought some small cubes of cheddar, which he would ferret away in his fake beard for little Mookie The Magic Mouse to nibble upon in between overs.

I digress. On this month’s podcast: I will exclusively reveal the result of the 1972 Ashes – it was 2-2. I will reveal who was responsible for the gruesome murder of England legend Wilfred Rhodes. It was old age. He was 95. Case closed. And I will tell you all about my own first game of cricket as a player for over two years, last Sunday. Cancelled. Waterlogged pitch.

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Well, I appear to have covered everything I wanted to cover in this podcast. That’s me done. Just time for a quick Question and Answer session, with the questions you submitted to my @ZaltzCricket twitter feed.

A couple of IPL-related questions first. The IPL is cricket’s golden goose, and it’s been honking about its business quite perkily of late, with a series of dramatic finishes, not to mention Danny Morrison’s continued expansion of human understanding of what can come out of a person’s mouth when you stick a microphone in front of it.

@diggoblick asks: “Was Shaun Tait's recent at-the-death bowling the worst such example in professional cricket?”

Well, I assume you’re referring to Tait’s bowling in the Rajasthan Royals’ spectacular defeat to the Chennai Quite Super Kings in Jaipur last week, rather than their convincing win over the Pune Worriers on Sunday, in which Tait bowled the 17th and 19th overs at a combined cost of eight runs for one wicket, albeit with the game already more in the bag than a kleptomaniac glutton’s tub of ice cream on the way out of the frozen food aisle in a supermarket. Whatever you think of Tait, to call 1 for 8 off two the worst example of death bowling in professional cricket would seem a little harsh on the lad.

However, his spell of 0 for 12 off one ball against Chennai was, certainly, less good. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that, when the other team needs 12 to win off two overs, being smashed for six then bowling a no-ball followed by flinging a wide to the boundary is, at best, tactically questionable.

In fact, being a rocket scientist would be of no help in that matter. You would probably have no interest in cricket, being focused quite rightly on the more pressing matter of how to fire dogs into space, or whatever it is they put in rockets these days. (Incidentally, did you know that when the Soviet Union fired Laika to cosmohound into space in 1957, they fired another rocket just beforehand with a stick in it?) (You learn something every day.)

However, in Tait’s defence, the damage had been done by Pankaj Singh and Shane Watson conceding 35 in the previous two overs, enabling Chennai to turn a near-perfect demonstration of how not to chase 126 to win a T20 match – combine scoring bafflingly slowly with hitting the ball in the air straight to fielders and a sub-infantile run-out, and bingo, you suddenly need 12 an over off four overs ‒ into a near-perfect demonstration of how to score those 12 an over off four overs. And the best way to do that is by scoring 22 an over off 2.1 overs. Bingo. Sure, Tait supplied the final coup de incompetent grace, but Pankaj and Watson’s death bowling provided the CPR to jot CSK back to life.

And it’s nice to just see Tait bowl. Like several of his fast bowling contemporaries, he hasn’t played enough cricket. And anyone that can wang it down at 150kph is worth watching. Particularly when he might go for 12 off one ball.

@glyncunningham asks: “‘He bats like no-one else. Chris Gayle is cricketing porn.’ Discuss.”

Well, I imagine he makes the IPL’s accountants quite excited, if that’s what you mean. He is a majestic sight in full flow, a man who can hit a cricket ball as if trying to recreate the Big Bang. It’s just a shame that full flow won’t be seen in the Tests in England. Filling that flow would of course be much more difficult against the swinging ball on soggy pitches in May against one of the finest seam attacks England has ever fielded, but still. Cricket’s calendar is a mess. The Tests are without Gayle, the IPL is without Pietersen, and both contests are poorer for it.

Please sort it out, whoever’s running cricket. It would help if the IPL didn’t keep expanding like Inzamam’s tummy, but something has to be done. That golden goose might get stroppy, and might peck all the other geese to death. And then you’re just left with one cocky, obstreperous golden goose laying shiny but inedible eggs.

Moving on…

@nintendo_jones asks: “Do you think the rise of R&B music in the Caribbean is directly responsible for the fall of West Indian cricket?”

Well, no. I think it has nothing to do with it. I admit I am a bit out of the loop on contemporary R&B, and it is always worth blaming music for something. A recent British government minister blamed hip hop music for gun crime. Which, in a way, was a bit like a 19th century politician blaming JMW Turner for stormy seas. There you go, not many cricket podcasts with a JMW Turner joke. You’re welcome.

But let’s hope the impending Test series between England and the once-great West Indies is competitive. West Indies have been roundly hammered on their last three tours here, and recent form suggests they are going to struggle again, particularly if Chanderpaul and Bravo keep having to rebuild at 25 for 3.

Recently, the West Indies top three have been not so much vulnerable as ceremonial, a vestige of cricket tradition where you feel obliged to have three batsmen coming in before your No. 4.

There have been shoots of recovery, but there have been more false dawns in West Indian cricket than there have been through the window of an insomniac who lives next to a lighthouse. They have now got half a decent side, if not yet a half-decent side, if that makes sense. But if their top order can somehow lay a couple of reasonable platforms, they might be able to build a station from which a train of success might chug. Although, my prediction is 3-0 to England, unless it rains.

@Yandisa asks: “When was the last time that England didn't have a South-African-born player in their starting 11?”

The answer, for Tests, is April 2004 in Antigua, and for ODIs, November 2003 in Dhaka, respectively the last Test and ODI before the South African-born but obviously English Andrew Strauss made his debuts in each format. Since then, one or more of Strauss, Pietersen (a bit less obviously English), Prior (who moved to England aged 11, and has an English daddy), and Trott (not the most English of Englishmen, but not the least either) have been in the side.

But remember: what happened last time England took the field with no South Africans in the team? Brian Lara smashed 400 and West Indies racked up 750 for 5. Since then, no batsman has scored a quadruple-century against England, and no team has scored 750 against them. Point proved. Admittedly, neither of those things had happened before, but point proved. Merely having South African-born players in England’s team, even if none of them are bowlers, clearly inhibits opposition batsmen and stops them scoring all the quadruple-hundreds they used to score so regularly. That’s good enough for me. Plus the fact that the ECB have recently tightened the qualification rules. That helps too.

But, overall, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Other teams have far more South African-born players in than England do. South Africa, for example. Besides, if it wasn’t for the English arriving in South Africa in the first place, they wouldn’t even play cricket. They would only play the sports the Dutch settlers took with them in the 17th century ‒ traditional Dutch pastimes such as Tulip Waggling, Windmill Whizzing, Clogball, portrait painting, and canal snouting. Technically, we should be allowed to pick any South African we want. Can we start with AB de Villiers, please?

The second half of England’s summer, though, should be much closer. Which brings me neatly to this question:

@momobaig: “Alec Stewart claims Kallis is in same class as Sobers as an all-rounder. Therefore my question is: what recreational drugs is Alec Stewart on?”

Ohhhh, I tell you what this question needs. Captain Stat, the indefatigable Numerical Cricketing Superhero.

But he’s pulled a hamstring, so you’re going to have to put up with me instead.

Their Test career stats are eerily similar. Sobers scored just over 8000 runs at an average of 57.78; Kallis’ currently has over 12000 at 56.78 (although if you take out matches against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, where Kallis has cashed in big, his average drops to 54.2) (that is still a useful average) (and even if you do that, he’s still averaged 60+ against everyone else combined over more than a decade since 2001) (hasn’t he done well?) (the answer to that question is, yes he has done well).

As bowlers, again they are well matched. Sobers took 235 wickets at 34, Kallis has scalped 276 at 32. However, Sobers’ averaged 2.5 wickets per match compared to Kallis’ 1.8, and taking out Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, the South African’s bowling average shuffles up to 35.

Still not much between them. How about in the field? Sobers averaged 1.17 catches per Test; Kallis’ figure is… wait for it… 1.19.

In ODIs, Kallis has unquestionably has the edge. Sobers’ 0 runs at an average of 0 in one ODI and one career wicket, compare unfavourably with Kallis’ 11500 runs at 45 and 270 wickets at 31, but I think we can probably excuse Sobers for that, and assume that, if his parents had waited another 40 or so years before having their little baby Garfield, as Kallis’ parents waited before bestowing baby Jacques upon the world, then Sobers would probably have averaged rather better than 0 in ODIs, and would as we speak have been on the gun-toting grandmother of all IPL contracts. And probably be unavailable for the forthcoming Test series in England.

So far, so close. We’re going to need more evidence. Let’s look at the peaks of these two great cricketers’ careers. Both came into Test cricket young, Sobers as a 17-year-old spinner, and both took time to come into their own. Sobers hit his straps in the Pakistan early in 1958. And those straps stayed hit. Up to that point, the Barbados Beethoven had averaged 30 in 15 Tests. Over the next 13 years, until the end of the series against India early in 1971, Sobers played 67 Tests, and averaged 66. He was, comfortably, the greatest batsman in the world – five runs an innings ahead of his nearest challengers, Graeme Pollock and Ken Barrington, and almost 12 ahead of the fourth best of that timespan, the young early-peaking Australian whippersnapper Doug Walters.

Kallis exploded into life in the New Year’s Test of 1999, before which he had also averaged just 30, in 22 Tests. The Cape Town Colossus scored 110, his third Test 100, and 88 not out against West Indies. In the 13 and a bit years since then, he has averaged 61, also top of international list for that time period, just ahead of Andy Flower and surprise package Darryl Cullinan (neither of whom played anywhere near as many Tests in that period), and six runs an innings ahead of his fellow modern legends Tendulkar, Ponting, Sangakkara, Lara and Inzamam.

So I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that both men have proved themselves to be handy operators at the top level of cricket. Both have been statistically pre-eminent in their eras. But Sobers has been more pre-eminent. Only six players averaged over 50 in that 1958-1971 period of Sobers’ pomp (out of the 171 who played 10 or more Tests), compared with 22 in the Kallis 1999-now era (out of 339 players) – so, pro rata, twice as many Kallis contemporaries as Sobers simultaneites (is that a word?) (it is now) have averaged over 50. Sobers was more extraordinary, in an era less dominated by the bat.

Also, stats fans, whilst Sobers was averaging 66, the rest of the West Indies top six averaged 41; and the rest of the world’s top six batsmen 37. Whilst Kallis has averaged 61, the rest of South Africa’s top six has averaged 43, and the rest of the world’s top six 38. So allowing for the slight vagaries of nightwatchmen piddling around with my stats, as a top-six batsman at his peak, Sobers was 61% better than his team mates and 79% better than all of his global contemporaries combined. Kallis has been 42% better than his team mates and 58% better than his collective contemporaries. Making Sobers around 40% more pre-eminent amongst his peers than Kallis has been amongst his. And making the last 90 minutes that I’ve spent working that out, amongst the most pointless of my life. And that, friends, is an extremely hotly contested title.

And all this before we have weighed into the equation the fact that Sobers was unfeasibly cool ‒ one of the most stylish sportsmen of all time, and a cricketer who made you get down on your knees and give thanks to any available god who happened to be listening for the invention of cricket. All of which, with respect to one of the greatest exponents of the game and arguably the finest all-round technician the game has ever seen, Kallis struggles to match.

So, in answer to your question, @MomoBaig, Alec Stewart is, as you would expect of Alec Stewart, on no form of recreational drug whatsoever. Kallis is in the same class as Sobers as an allrounder. The highest class. But Sobers is slightly higher up that class. A class in which there have not many pupils throughout cricket history.

A few more quick questions…

@magicdarts: “Which is uglier? The hell of war, or Graeme Smith playing an on drive?”

Close call. On balance, I probably go for the hell of war, but I’ve never actually seen it first-hand. Whereas I have seen Graeme Smith’s on-drive first-hand, and required several weeks of counselling before I was prepared to accept there was still the possibility of beauty in the universe.

@post2sharath: “What do you think would happen to state of "Test Cricket" in next 15 years?”

I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it right now. I’m feeling a little delicate and emotional. Don’t take my one true love away. In cricketing terms. In case my wife is listening. I’ll address this question in more detail in a blog in a couple of weeks.

@osamaakram: “Doesn't Socialism appeal to you because of its promise of reduced labour hours? All the time for #heavenlytestcricket… aahhhh.”

I think that is what was on Karl Marx’s mind when he scribbled out Das Kapital in his 1860s London home – “how can I develop a system of economics that maximises my chances of nipping down to The Oval for a couple of hours?” I guess it also depends what kind of Socialism. The Stalin kind wouldn’t have left many hours for Test cricket, once you’d taken out all the time you had to spend trudging around a Siberian prison camp, and dying. And personally, I’d back myself to make time for “heavenly Test cricket” whatever the prevailing economic model of government. As I think the last 30 years of my life would testify.

@alec_everlone: “Is bodyline acceptable in back-garden cricket with my two-year-old niece?”

Yes. A win’s a win. Toughen the girl up. She’ll thank you for it later in life. Although bodyline for a two-year-old basically works out as leg stump half-volleys, so I wouldn’t recommend it from the point of view of your own bowling.

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Thanks for all your questions, and I am deeply and eternally sorry if I did not have time to answer your one. But life is a cruel mistress, and we must rebound from such heartaches stronger and more determined. Chins up.

That’s it for this edition of the World Cricket Podcast. Enjoy the closing stages of the IPL. To be honest, it’s not my bag, but it is a bit more my bag than it was a few weeks ago. I don’t mind it in itself, although it lacks much of what I truly love about cricket. It’s just I don’t want it to ruin everything. Which I think is a legitimate concern.

And enjoy the England-West Indies series. Although I fear the people who will enjoy it most are those who enjoy the sight of maroon helmets looking mournfully backwards towards an exultant slip cordon.

Bye bye. Thanks be to cricket. Amen.

Comments (51)

The West Indies must have arrived in England in confident mood for their three-Test tour, buoyed by optimistic historical precedent. They would have read that England is, officially, in the midst of a drought ‒ and thought instantly of the sun-baked summer of 1976, when the parched outfields of this land were scorched by the blazing strokeplay of Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge and Roy Fredericks, and by the scurrying footsteps of England’s batsmen fleeing to the pavilion after being volcanically obliterated by pace of Andy Roberts and Michael Holding. “This could be our year,” they must have thought as they flew across the Atlantic. “Ignore all the form lines, Dr Drought could swing it for us.”

They landed a few days ago to find a country thoroughly marinated by rainwater and ensconced in thermal underpants, with Worcestershire County Cricket Club looking over the New Road outfield and anxiously checking eBay listings for an affordable-looking ark. This is not the most obviously droughty of droughts. If the current West Indies batting line-up – into which Greenidge and Richards must have been close to being recalled, despite being in their sixties ‒ rack up 687 for 8 declared in a damp green-pitched early-season series, as the 1976 vintage did on the brown-grassed desert of The Oval, with Richards scoring an unmatchably majestic 291, then suspicions may arise that Allen Stanford’s accountant has been operating the scoreboard.

For one of the 1980s West Indian touring parties to have lasted an entire day without losing a wicket, or indeed without conceding a run, against county opposition, would barely have raised an eyebrow. However, in 2012, yesterday’s wash-out against Sussex will not have helped Darren Sammy’s alarmingly inexperienced and institutionalised-bickering-depleted batting line-up to learn about the unfamiliar conditions that face them.

That is one of the six days of cricket before the first Test already washed down the plughole of history. Narsingh Deonarine’s and Assad Fudadin’s acclimatisation period has been further curtailed by visa problems delaying their arrival. (If only English cricket had formulated this cunning strategy when Bradman first toured here in 1930. “I’m sorry Mr Bradman, but your visa application has been rejected. Why? Er, well, it’s because we have reason to believe you have links to Al-Qaeda. Can’t go into details, Official Secrets Act. Off you pop. See you in the Bodyline Series.”)

Deonarine and Fudadin are two of the several batsmen on their first Test tours of England, as Greenidge and Richards were in 1976. The difference is that Greenidge had played five seasons of county cricket, and Richards two, so they were probably rather better equipped to deal with the challenges ahead. Aside from them being quite good at hitting little red balls with flat bits of wood. If Chanderpaul ‒ who is a close neighbour of Sir Viv in terms of Test average, whilst inhabiting opposite ends of the galaxy in terms of style ‒ can score 291 in every innings, West Indies will stand a good chance in this series. If not, all-day washouts may be their most effective strategy.

● A quick Zaltzman Household IPL Update. I wrote a couple of blogs ago about how my daughter had selected the Royal Challengers Bangalore as our IPL team to follow, as they cruised to victory over the Rajasthan Royals in Jaipur. Since then, they have had a washout against the Chennai Super Kings, been hammered by the Kolkata Knight Riders, and almost pulled victory from the jaws of defeat against the Kings XI Punjab before dropping it back down defeat’s throat into the oesophagus of failure. During the frantic final overs, both my children were shouting animatedly for the Royal Challengers (or, as my three-year-old son has unilaterally renamed them, the Rolly Janglers).

Defeat was a bitter pill to swallow. Or perhaps that was the overcooked broccoli I was feeding them for dinner. My daughter can barely sleep at night with the trauma of it all. Defeat to the Deccan Chargers in their next match on Sunday could spark a full-blown existential crisis.

I can only apologise to all connected with the RCB franchise for this disastrous downturn in form. I have a disastrous track record when it comes to my early days of supporting sports teams. I started following the mighty Gillingham Football Club late in 1992 after a friend introduced me to the burger-scented joys of lower-league professional football. They promptly sacked their manager and spent the rest of the season battling against relegation into non-league oblivion, narrowly escaping that fate in their final home game thanks to a 2-0 win over the footballing powerhouse that was Halifax Town, in an awe-inspiring performance that has gone down in the annals of sport as one of the greatest moments in the history of humankind and arguably the high-water mark of post-Renaissance European culture. Albeit in a seldom-read unauthorised appendix to the annals of sport. Preceded by the words: “The next sentence is a lie.”

Mrs Confectionery Stall and I both like rugby, so in 2004 we bought season tickets to watch the professional club geographically closest to us – the multi-coloured wizards of Harlequins. They lost their first eight games of the season, before, in their final match, missing a last-minute penalty kick and being relegated out of English rugby’s top division.

(I should also add that I started following cricket in the halcyon days of 1981 ‒ sparking the worst decade in England’s cricketing history.) (And I put money on golfer Dustin Johnson to win the Augusta Masters this year. Less than an hour later, he pulled out injured.)

Fortunately, my kryptonite effect on teams does not last for ever. English cricket, give or take the occasional 3-0 unscheduled whitewash by Pakistan, is in the midst of one of its finest periods. Harlequins this season topped the league table and are two play-off games away from becoming English champions. And Gillingham are currently doing marginally better than they were 19 years ago. Nevertheless, the Rolly Janglers are in for a rocky ride for the rest of this IPL season. Sorry. The golden helmets look great, though.

Comments (3)

The engrossing 2011-12 Test season came to an end last week, as Australia sealed a 2-0 win in the West Indies. The series could have had a different result had West Indies not been undermined by IPL clashes, selectorial squabblings, and top-order batting with the solidity of a blancmange in a 1950s nuclear-weapons test. History will probably judge those three factors to have been interlinked.

Standing defiantly amidst the wreckage was Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the best batsman in the series by a significant margin, who became the tenth batsman to pass 10,000 Test runs, returned to the top of the Test batting rankings, and edged his career average back over 50. There may be few cricket lovers who drift off to sleep at night fondly reminiscing about the day they saw Chanderpaul stroke the ball effortlessly around the park, but he has been one of the most remarkable batsmen in an age of remarkable batsmen, a craftsman of infinite resource, capable of breaking out of his physics-defying stance with outbursts of truly sublime timing.

Chanderpaul will be remembered primarily as a dogged accumulator, but he was responsible for one of the most extraordinary innings ever played in Test cricket. On day one of the April 2003 Test against Australia in Guyana, he came to the wicket with West Indies wallowing in an especially sludgy mire at 47 for 4. Lara was soon dismissed at the other end to make it 53 for 5.

Chanderpaul, ever the man for a crisis, might have been expected to try to graft his team towards a moderate total. Instead, he plumped for an unexpected Plan B – he hammered a 69-ball century, batting as if someone had spiked his morning cornflakes with industrial-strength fireworks, and flaying the Australian bowling attack as if he had just discovered they had each eaten one of his beloved squad of pet terrapins, leaving behind only empty shells graffitied with the word “yum”.

For a man with a career strike rate of 40, who less than a year before had ground his awkward way to 136 not out off 510 balls in an 11-hour megavigil against India, to slap what was then the third-fastest Test hundred of all time against the world’s No. 1- ranked team has to go down as one of the most out-of-character innings in Test history. He has compiled some of the most remarkable individual series performances of recent times, but that one innings stands out on his CV like a freshly powerdrilled thumb.

At the other end of the “What on Earth Got Into Him?” scale of out-of-character batsmanship is Aravinda de Silva’s epically unproductive performance against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo in October 1994. He followed a 14-ball first-innings duck with a staggeringly negative 27 off 191 balls ‒ the second-slowest recorded innings of 25 or more in Test history ‒ as Sri Lanka ground their way to a draw on the fifth day. It must have felt like watching Michelangelo paint a chapel ceiling in an especially featureless shade of beige.

Only Jack Russell’s unbeaten 29 off 235 in Johannesburg in 1995-96 ‒ the Robin of Resistance to Atherton’s Batman of Block ‒ has ever out-turgided de Silva’s innings, and that was an innings that was certifiably in-character, a magnum slow-pus by one of cricket’s most infuriating batsmen.

De Silva, on the other hand, was a cavalier and magician, one of the most bewitching batsmen of his era, capable of destroying the best attacks while under the utmost pressure, in a flurry of untouchable strokeplay. In Bulawayo, the cavalier became a roundhead, and the magician downed his magic wand, gave his rabbits the day off from appearing out of his top hat, and did his accounts.

Furthermore, he was up against a bowling attack none of whom had taken more than 16 Test wickets. And three of whom (Jarvis, Rennie and Peall) were so traumatised by the ordeal of bowling to him that they played a combined total of two more Test matches and took a collective one further Test wicket in the rest of their careers.

Behind de Silva on that list of epic grinds are some of the all-time legends of strokeless negativity ‒ Chris Tavaré (35 off 240), Trevor Bailey (68 off 427), Trevor Franklin (28 off 175), and the renowned snooze-inducing West Indian stodgemeister, Chris Gayle.

Hang on, is that the same Chris Gayle widely regarded as the best Twenty20 batsman in the loud history of the format? The Chris Gayle who hit a 70-ball Test hundred? Who flambéed 117 off 57 balls to register the first-ever century in a T20 international? Against South Africa? Who is third on the all-time list of Most-Sixes-Clonked In International Cricket? Who is one of only two players to have twice hit seven or more sixes in a Test innings (the other being Chris Cairns)? Who in his last two IPL matches has chunk-hammered 86 off 58 and 71 off 42, hitting one in every ten balls over the ropes and endangering innocent passers-by in the streets of Bangalore with his leviathan power? The Chris Gayle who can make bowlers inwardly beg for their mummies with one muscular flick of the shoulder? Yes. That Chris Gayle. That very same Chris Gayle.

In April 2001, early in his Test career, at the end of a testing series against South Africa, as West Indies battled towards a consolation fifth-Test victory against the potent Protean pacemen, Gayle anti-bludgeoned his way to a sub-Boycottian 32 off 180 balls. It remains the slowest Test innings of 25 or more ever played by a West Indian. If he batted at the same rate in the IPL, he would carry his bat for 11 not out.

Gayle did not find Test cricket an easy game in his early years. In his first 20 Tests he averaged under 30, and it was only in his 37th Test that his strike rate rose above 50. If he found Test cricket difficult then, however, now, he finds it impossible. Albeit for off-the-field reasons. Which is deeply regrettable. In what seem likely to prove his final 18 Tests, between December 2008 and December 2010, Gayle averaged 58, and hit 36 sixes.

Would England rather be bowling at Adrian Barath and Kieran Powell when the first Test begins at Lord’s in two weeks’ time? Was Don Bradman good at batting? And would world cricket rather be watching England bowl at Gayle? Ditto.

● Strap in for some curious stats. Since Brian Lara retired from Tests at the end of 2006, Chanderpaul has averaged 66 in Tests – the highest average of any Test batsman over that period. In the matches he played with Lara, Chanderpaul averaged 43. Was he cowed by Lara’s presence?

Lara, in Tests when he played alongside Chanderpaul, averaged 47. In all the Tests he played without Chanderpaul in the team, Lara averaged 62. Was he cowed by Chanderpaul’s presence? Maybe each was inspired by the extra responsibility of not being able to rely on the other. Maybe it is just coincidence. Maybe not.

Conclusion: West Indies should have played and dropped Lara and Chanderpaul in alternate Tests throughout their careers. Leaving out one of their two best players every match might not have been especially popular with the supporters, or with Lara or Chanderpaul, but you cannot argue with statistics. In any case, West Indian cricket has recently shown a relentless determination not to pick its strongest team anyway, so it might as well have done so from the mid-1990s.

Comments (23)

The dust is settling on England’s fascinating, and, until Colombo’s belated redemption, spectacularly unsuccessful Test winter. And that dust is confused. Very confused. Is it covering a landmark underachievement, or an unfortunate blip? Has 2011-12 shown how vulnerable this supposedly world-leading England side is, and how the weaknesses in it had been camouflaged by an unprecedented collective burst of form and some fractured, sub-standard opposition; or has it strangely proved, as suggested by my World Cricket Podcast compadre Daniel Norcross, quite how good they are?

They were, after all, not far from winning four Tests out of five despite having batted for most of the winter like a long-forgotten salad in an abandoned fridge, and they bowled persistently superbly (statistically far better than in 2000-01, when they returned from Asia with two series victories). As soon as the batsmen for the first time applied themselves correctly, they waltzed to a resounding victory. Albeit that the sound that resounded was the echo of the words, “Where the hell was that in the Gulf in January?” rebounding back from outer space.

So many questions remain to be answered. Which was the batting blip – the first four Tests or the last one? Will the Pakistan whitewash remain a scar on this excellent England team’s record, or will it prove to be an open wound in which the maggots of doubt have laid out their towels for an interesting year’s sunbathing ahead?

Your witness, history. Get back to us in nine months’ time with some supporting evidence from (a) this summer’s series against an increasingly-determined-but-almost-entirely-unacquainted-with-early-season-English-conditions West Indies, and a probably-should-be-No. 1-side-in-the-Test-world-if-only-they-didn’t -keep-tanking-one-nil-series-leads South Africa, and (b) the four Tests in India at the end of the year.

Personally, my expectation is that England will beat West Indies comfortably, draw 1-1 with South Africa, and win narrowly in India, guided by their freshly printed multi-volume Encyclopaedia Of Lessons Learned, which they are no doubt busy scribbling down from their failures this winter.

However, my expectation was that they would win in the UAE against Pakistan, and they managed to avoid doing that in some style, in much the same way that the Titanic managed to avoid overshooting America on its maiden voyage.

And, just as they had not faced high-class spin for a lengthy period before subsiding to Ajmal and Rehman, so they will not have faced the calibre of swing bowling they can expect from Steyn and Philander since Amir and Asif brilliantly hooped them to distraction two years ago before. Just as facing Xavier Doherty in Brisbane, or Mishra and Raina at The Oval, was not ideal preparation for encountering Pakistan’s crafty tweakmen in the Gulf, so seeing off Lakmal and Prasad in Colombo, statistically one of cricket history’s least penetrating new-ball attacks (their career figures suggesting they offered the incision of an ice scalpel in a sub-Saharan operating theatre), will not have honed England ideally for the South African pace and swing barrage. As preparation for that task, it was about as appropriate as Neil Armstrong training for his rocket trip to the moon by hanging a cantaloupe melon from his bedroom ceiling, saying “5-4-3-2-1-blast-off” and throwing a dart at it.

Luckily, Strauss and his men have time and the West Indies series in which to reactivate their facing-swing-bowling heads. And hope that they work better than they did in 2010. And that England’s bowlers continue to provide the grip and penetration of a Viagra-addled boa constrictor, as they have done consistently for the last two years.

Then, in November, England’s batsmen will have to switch heads back to the spin-oriented ones that only started showing signs of neural activity briefly in Galle, and only uttered coherent sentences in Colombo. India will enter that series with scores to settle, both with England and, more specifically, with themselves.

They will be hoping by then that they still have a left-arm spinner who can remember how to bowl anything other than four overs of balls speared in at leg stump. Not only has this been England’s worst ever winter or summer season against spin (they lost 77 wickets to spin in the five Tests, at a little under 19 runs apiece), but Abdur Rehman and Rangana Herath both returned series hauls of 19 wickets against them. That is more than any left-arm spinner in a series against England since India’s Dilip Doshi took 22 in a six-Test rubber 30 winters ago, and more than any non-Indian left-arm spinner since Alf Valentine twirled England to post-war befuddlement in 1950. England are likely to face legspinners Devendra Bishoo and Imran Tahir this summer. I never thought I would write this, but Pragyan Ojha could hold the entire future health of Indian Test cricket in his fingers.

EXTRAS
● Excuse me for largely skipping over the first half of England’s Test summer, despite West Indies’ impressively cussed all-round performance in the first three days against Australia in Barbados. The Caribbean team’s last two early-season tours to England have been pointlessly one-sided and deeply depressing. Darren Sammy’s team seems unlikely to cave in as readily as Chris Gayle’s did in the two-Test-total-waste-of-time in 2009, but West Indies have lost 12 out of 14 matches in England since they last won a Test here 12 years ago. Excluding tours of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, West Indies have played 65 away Tests since 1997. They have won two of them. And lost 50. I just hope for something resembling cricket to occur.

● Is there a more underrated bowler in world cricket than Sammy? As I write (in between days three and four of the Barbados Test), the West Indian skipper’s Test bowling average stands at 29.60. This means that, of all West Indian bowlers to have taken more than 20 Test wickets, Sammy has the best average of anyone who has made their debut since Ian Bishop in 1989 (albeit only by a very slim margin over Jermaine Lawson, which a single boundary at the start of play today would wipe out).

Sammy currently has a better career average than Jimmy Anderson, Morne Morkel, Brett Lee, Zaheer Khan, Umar Gul and Andrew Flintoff. That does not mean he is a better bowler than them, but Sammy’s statistics suggest that he is a far better bowler than his action and speed-gun readings suggest he is.

● How much longer can West Indies continue to carry their captain, Sammy? His continued presence in the team, and the fact that he is not a good enough batsman to bat above No. 8, means that only two of a decent crop of Caribbean pacemen can play alongside Sammy and a spinner. Do not be fooled by his Test average of 29.60. It has been boosted by some cheap wickets against Bangladesh, and, excluding a home series against a weak Pakistan batting line-up, and a debut haul of 7 for 66 in England five years ago, in series against major opposition Sammy has not averaged under 34 runs per wicket, and has taken a wicket on average once every 14.2 overs. He might be forging a more dogged and disciplined West Indies team, for which all cricket fans should be wiping their brows in relief, but his limitations as a bowler are negating what could be their strongest attacking suit – an improving and increasingly potent pace attack.

● Stats are confusing.

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After a prolonged sabbatical spent worrying about its future whilst watching its younger siblings charge around like banshees, Test cricket roared back into life with a low-scoring thriller between West Indies and Pakistan. Admittedly, that roar raised the age-old philosophical question: if something roars in an empty cricket stadium, and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a noise?

It was a gripping match of 19th-century-style scoring, played out in front of a 17th-century-style crowd, in a 21st-century-style stadium – nicely made but pointlessly remote. One day, a high-ranking scientist or Nobel Prize-winning genius will work out on a high-powered computer that if you build soulless modern stadiums, without history or character, far from civilisation, you may on occasion struggle to attract crowds to watch cricket in them. It will take a brain of formidable power to reach this conclusion, a thinker of rare perspicacity, who is prepared not only to think outside the box, but to set fire to the box whilst his head is still inside it to accelerate the thought process.

Low-scoring games have provided some of cricket’s all-time classics, from the umbrella-chewing mayhem of The Oval in 1882, when the 19th-century proto-Lillee, Fred Spofforth, demonised the Ashes into existence with brilliant bowling and an intimidating moustache, to England’s back-from-the-dead-but-with-hindsight-still-feeling-quite-ill World Cup group win over South Africa in Chennai in March.

Misbah’s 52 was the highest score in the Providence Test (which itself sounds like something the cricket community should insist wealthy tycoons pass before being allowed to land at Lord’s in a helicopter with a Perspex box full of cash). This is the sixth-lowest highest score, if that makes sense, in a completed Test match since the First World War, and enabled the game to narrowly avoid becoming only the third Test since the Second World War to produce a positive result without featuring any half-centuries.

The previous fifty-free Test was in Hamilton in December 2002, when New Zealand dismissed an Indian batting line-up containing Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman for 99 and 154, with Daryl Tuffey taking 8 for 53 in the match. It seems scarcely conceivable now, and that sentence might read as if it has been generated by a seriously malfunctioning internet automatic translation programme trying to convert a Swedish recipe for salmon fishcakes into English, but it is in fact 100% true.

Before that, there had only been one other such match since before Neville Chamberlain was waving his piece of paper around, declaring “peace in our time” – a declaration that now looks dodgier than Hansie Cronje’s at the Centurion Test in January 2000, and proves that there was a precedent for high-ranking English officials being duped by confident men with moustaches long before the Stanford debacle. The game in question was Edgbaston 1981, when Botham swung England to victory by marmalising Australia’s tail, spreading them on toast, and eating them in one mouthful, with 5 for 1 in five overs of legend-solidifying brilliance.

There is something deeply engrossing about a match in which an innings of 25 is a potentially game-winning contribution rather than a frustratingly wasted start. I find there is also something nostalgic about such games, as they recall early school matches when runs were scarce and boundaries seemed like hypothetical barriers halfway to the horizon. In the second game I played, my school Under-9 team bowled out the opposition for 63. I remember thinking: “That is an imposing total. Not many teams in world cricket could hope to chase that down.” Despite the loss of totemic opening batsman Zaltzman, harshly adjudged bowled first ball, my school battled bravely, but fell short. Thirty-nine all out. A match-winning total in some games, but a 24-run thrashing on the day.

It ended with a good win for West Indies, and a personal triumph for Darren Sammy. West Indian cricket has had more false dawns than an insomniac schoolkid waiting nervously for his exam results to arrive in the morning post. The standard of Pakistan batting – historically, almost heroically, inept in their six Tests in England last summer, and little improved since then - means that we cannot be sure whether this is a genuine dawn, another bogus one, or just a car passing in the street outside with its headlights shining through the bedroom window. After all, the previous apparent new dawn for West Indies cricket, when Jerome Taylor skittled England like a tray of wobbly milk bottles in Jamaica in 2009, turned out barely even to be that. However, after a World Cup marked by brief periods of promise inevitably scythed down by an onslaught of incompetence, at least this was a welcome and hard-won victory, the highlights being Devendra Bishoo confirming his promise and captain Sammy sealing victory with his fourth five-wicket haul in Tests.

Sammy is not yet on many people’s Great Bowlers Of The 21st Century shortlist, but he now has more five-wicket innings notched into his bedpost than Andrew Flintoff, Colin Croft, Lasith Malinga or Stuart Broad, and the same number as Harold Larwood and Frank Tyson. He has played just 12 Test matches, in which he has taken more wickets than the legendary Picasso Of Pace, Malcolm Marshall, did in the equivalent period of his career. In fact, Sammy has taken as many five-wicket hauls in his first 12 Tests as Holding, Garner, Marshall, Ambrose and Walsh managed between them in their first 12 Tests. The logical conclusion to all this is that Darren Sammy is (a) the greatest and (b) the fastest bowler of all time. Ignore the speed gun. It lives only to deceive.

Extras

The ECB have announced that they are working on a new fourth format for international cricket to enable England to appoint a fourth captain. A spokesman explained: “Having three skippers is proving to be a nightmare – whenever we have an England Captains Table Tennis tournament, Strauss always insists on getting a bye directly into the final. This understandably causes resentment amongst the other captains. With four, we can either use a straight semi-final-to-final knockout structure, or a four-prong round robin followed by a first-versus-second final. It has to be resolved, and fast, before Cook and Broad start throwing their toys out of the pram.”

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England’s flawless tour of Australia has continued impressively with two superbly constructed defeats in the opening two one-day internationals, confirming that the England management will leave nothing to chance in their pursuit of ultimate success.

The immaculate, all-encompassing preparation that helped secure the Ashes (where every detail, from sweatiness of fielders’ hands, via Alastair Cook’s four-year undercover operation as a middling Test opener, to injecting psychotropic substances into the Australian selectors’ breakfast sausages) is now being applied to the World Cup campaign. Strauss and his team, well aware that they could not sustain their Ashes form until April 2, have tactically dipped at just the right time. They will be looking to endure at least a 6-1 drubbing in the Commonwealth Bank series, before slowly finding their game again during the month-long group stage of the World Cup, then exploding into form for the crucial quarter-semi-final week at the end of March.

England proved their mastery of the well-timed Test match defeat in Leeds in 2009 and in Perth in December, brilliantly allowing Australia to believe that everything was just fine, that England’s brief and uncharacteristic dalliance with excellence was over, and that normal service had been thoroughly resumed. Then, with the Baggy Greens still high-fiving themselves in delight, they burst out of their tactical Trojan horse like the modern-day Odysseuses they are, and skewered Australia like a cheap kebab.

For their part, Australia will be delighted that, having underperformed with such determined persistence in the Ashes - or, as Cricket Australia has now officially rebranded them, “The Commonwealth Bank Series Official Six-Week Curtain-Raiser” - they are now proving that, at the business end of their international summer, they can still perform like the Australians of old. They too still have plenty of players nicely out of form two months away from the key games, as well as players in form who have not been selected for the World Cup, so whose inevitable drop-off will not affect the team as they push for a fourth consecutive trophy.

India and South Africa are also not quite bubbling under nicely. Both will be happy with not taking a decisive lead in the ODI series, and be hoping that rain in Centurion tomorrow removes the possibility of either of them winning. A notable victory against a strong opponent at this stage is likely to prove fatal for their World Cup hopes.

Both teams also took every available precaution to make sure they did not win the final Test of the three-match series recently concluded, avoiding the EPM (excessive premature momentum) that all coaches fear. (It was a disappointing end to a compelling series akin to Shakespeare writing Act V of Hamlet as a single scene in which Hamlet does a crossword, eats a packet of nachos, and twangs a ruler on his desk, or Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier concluding the Thriller In Manila by spending rounds 14 and 15 filling in their tax returns and phoning their accountants to check what they were allowed to claim as expenses.)

India’s glut of injuries also bodes very well for the tournament favourites. Those players should be in peak condition come March 23.

New Zealand’s win over Pakistan in Wellington (described as “worryingly comprehensive at this stage of our preparations” by Daniel Vettori) should not detract from their expertly crafted 11-match losing streak that preceded it, whilst their opponents know that, such is the fluctuating nature of their cricket, how they are playing now bears no relation to how they will play in late March (indeed, how they play in late March will have no impact on how they play five minutes later in March).

Sri Lanka and West Indies are no doubt practising half-heartedly to make sure they do not hit the ground running in their three-match ODI series beginning on January 31, whilst Bangladesh are keeping a low profile after whitewashing of New Zealand, desperately hoping they will not take that form into the early stages of the World Cup. All in all, the tournament is still anyone’s.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of Baggy Green Selectors, Andrew Hilditch has, after an investigation lasting two weeks, issued the Official Cricket Australia List Of Positives To Be Taken From The 2010-11 Ashes. It reads as follows:

1. Selectors seek consistency from their players. Many of the team provided us with admirably, almost unprecedentedly, consistent performance levels. The captain, as so often, led the way, churning out a series of scores that were so consistent as to be barely discernible from each other. He was ably supported in this by his vice-captain, whilst Ben Hilfenhaus set new standards for reliable, guaranteed consistency with the ball.

2. Sportsmen are never more determined than when they set out to “prove the critics wrong”. By garnering for themselves a record number of critics, Australia’s cricketers will be more motivated than ever, and will play for the next 25 years in an almost hypnotic trance of critic-disproving frenzy.

3. The pain of defeat in 2005 and 2009 was exacerbated by the the fact that had one ball happened differently in each series, the result would have been reversed. If Lee had slapped Harmison’s full toss either side of the fielder at Edgbaston in 2005, or if the umpire had given Kasprowicz not out to a marginal caught-behind appeal moments later, and if one of the 35 balls bowled to Panesar in Cardiff in 2009 had, as might reasonably have been expected, cleaned him up, then Australia would have triumphed gloriously. Life is too short for “what ifs”, so, by being obliterated by an innings in three Tests and conceding a record statistical superiority to England, the Australians will now be able to proceed happily with the rest of their lives, unencumbered by nightmares of the ones that got away.

4. Since the retirement of the irreplaceable Shane Warne in 2007, Australia have been trying to replace him, and find a spinner who is indispensably crucial to the side’s success. Over the course of the Ashes, Nathan Hauritz grew into that role.

5. The international game is short of star names. In this series, Australia created a new generation of potential world superstars – Cook, Trott, Bell, Anderson, Tremlett, Bresnan, to name but six.

6. Taking positives from abject defeat is long-established as a method of helping captains avoid breaking down in tears of humiliation at post-match interviews, no matter how spurious and desperate those supposed silver linings dully glistening around the mushroom cloud of defeat may be. Australia helped prove that taking negatives from victory is an equally valid procedure. As Ricky Ponting said in Perth, after leading his team to a thumping victory: “Well, obviously we’re delighted with the win, but let’s not forget we can still take a lot of negatives away from this victory. Our top-order batting was useless, we were bailed out by Hussey yet again, and there is absolutely no way he can do that for five Tests in a row, and only two of our bowlers took any wickets, one of whom blows notoriously hot and cold, the other of whom picks up injuries like Warren Beatty used to pick up women in his prime. So, all in all, whilst we cannot deny that we did win this game, there is still much to be downbeat and pessimistic about, and we’ll focus on that carrying that forward to Melbourne.”

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Benn, Gayle and Co realise how funny their achievement is © AFP

In the first Test in Trinidad, which followed to 100% accuracy an unofficial ICC computer-generated ball-by-ball prediction of what would happen, Chris Gayle’s West Indies came within one Dwayne Bravo delivery of history. Until Bravo dismissed Boucher to conclude South Africa’s first innings – a grave tactical error, as it transpired, which served only to unleash Steyn and Morkel onto a poor, defenceless batting line-up – all nine wickets had been taken by spinners.

Benn, Shillingford and Gayle himself had tweaked themselves to the brink of obscure statistical immortality. One more wicket would have resulted in them becoming just the third West Indian spin attack to dismiss an entire team, and the first to do so without containing both Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine (the former must be close to a recall, at the age of 81, as the West Indies seek greater penetration in their bowling; even the latter, some years after his death, might be worth a squad place).

They would also have become the first spin team to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings outside Asia since Warne and May thoroughly bammed England’s collective boozle at Edgbaston in 1993, and, by my and Statsguru’s reckoning, the first all-fingerspin attack to bowl out an entire side since 1968. Sleep well, Bravo. You have denied Shane Shillingford his slice of immortality.

As it was, it was the most profitable return by West Indies slow bowlers for nearly 40 years. How times have changed. West Indian spinners took more wickets in this single hypothetically five-day Test than the combined might of Caribbean tweakery managed in five years between March 1979 and March 1984. This statistic comes from no less a source that the all-knowing, all-seeing Statsguru herself (although, the great goddess who knows all does classify Viv Richards as “mixture/unknown” rather than “spin bowler”) (but the point basically stands) (and it completely stands if you chuck the word “specialist” in as the third word of the second sentence of this paragraph, before the word “spinner”).

This was also the second time in little over a year that the West Indies opening bowlers took no wickets in a Test match. The previous occasion, last February in North Sound, Antigua, was more excusable, as the match lasted just 10 balls, due to the minor inconvenience of the entire playing area having been constructed entirely out of sand.

Dale Steyn became the 57th bowler to pass 200 wickets in Tests. He sits 11th in the averages on that list, just ahead of Shaun Pollock, Waqar, Wasim, Holding and Lillee, so he is doing quite well for a someone who took 14 wickets at 60 in his maiden stint in English county cricket, outbowled in the Essex attack by, amongst others, Ravi Bopara and James Middlebrook. To this day he still cannot get back into the Essex team – some selectors have long memories − but his Test match strike rate of 38.9 is way out in front of Waqar, and makes legendary spearheads such as Jeff Thomson and Curtly Ambrose look like Derek Pringle and Martin Snedden.

Here is a stat for you that illustrates the state of world bowling. Chew it carefully, and then draw a picture that expresses what you think about it. Of all the bowlers who have made their debuts since 1999, only two – Steyn and Mitchell Johnson – have taken more than 100 wickets at an average of under 30. Of those who launched themselves into Test cricket between 1992 and 1998, 16 achieved that feat, beginning with Warne and ending with Ntini.

In an imminent future blog, I will speculate wildly on the various causes of the Great Great Bowler Drought. It is certainly a shame that Warne has not presaged a deluge of champion legspinners as was hoped. That is because being the greatest legspinner the universe has ever seen is not easy. Believe me, I tried. Briefly. I was, without question, the greatest legspinner in the Zaltzman family for a couple of heady years in the early 1990s, but when my googly started landing with unerring regularity half-way to third man, I decided to focus on becoming the greatest pogo-stick rider of all time. But I didn’t own a pogo stick, so I gave up and started reading books about 1950s Ashes series. There are now no known legspinners in my family, although my 18-month-old son does occasionally stick his belly out, throw his hands into the air and bark something that sounds a little like “Howzat”, so there is hope.

Copying Warne has proved impossible – similarly, when people visit the Sistine Chapel to have a look at Michelangelo’s pretty pictures on the ceiling, they do not, generally, whip out an easel and start painting feverishly whilst muttering: “I could do better than that, no problem.” They tend to take a photo, or buy a postcard, and say to themselves: “Fair play to the lad, he’s done me on painting. One-nil to him. But I’ll get him back at table tennis, the dead-for-446-years little rascal.”

All this panning for statistical gold has delayed my latest Question and Answer session, which I will post instead over the weekend. Please leave any further queries in the comments below.

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