This post is an extremely belated follow-up to my earlier analysis of streakiness among batsmen. This time, the focus is on bowlers. I've used exactly the same methods as before – analysing and graphing moving averages (calculated over a 20-innings window, in my base case); for details, please see the batting form column.

As before, an example should help to clarify the approach and, because it's always helpful to use as much data as you can get your hands on, let's start with Muttiah Muralitharan. Murali's Longitudinal Career Graph (LCG) is shown in Figure 1. It shows, in the shaded area, his 20-innings moving average (i.e. his bowling average for every consecutive 20 innings in which he bowled). The moving average is shown relative to the average with which he finished his career: whenever the black area is above the axis, he averaged more over the previous 20 innings than he did over his whole career and, whenever the black area is below the axis, his average for the last 20 innings was worse than he achieved in the long run. The innings-by-innings progress of his career average (what StatsGuru calls the cumulative average) is shown by the red line.

Looking at the red line, we can see that, from the beginning of 1996 until the end of 2008, Murali's career average showed a pretty steady improvement (it fell from 33.89 to a low-point of 21.26). But, if we were to concentrate on that career average alone, we'd probably be tempted to infer that Murali was getting better and better during this period. However, the LCG helps us to understand that wasn't exactly the case: what actually happened was that he got quite a lot better fairly suddenly, then got a bit better again, and then maintained the level of achievement for a number of years while his long-run average slowly caught up (in lengthy careers, long-run averages will only ever catch up slowly, and they'll never catch up completely). At his best during this period, Murali achieved a 20-innings streak of 89 wickets at 15.13.

It should be clear that, the greater the black area on a bowler's LCG, the streakier his performance over his career. In the same way, a single streakiness statistic can be calculated that is directly related to the area of black on each bowler's LCG. [Technically, the measure is the root mean squared deviation of the moving average relative to the long-run career average, which is then scaled by the overall average, to provide CV(RMSD).] Table 1 gives a list of the most and least streaky bowlers in Test history, sorted according to this measure.

Table 1: Streakiest bowlers in Test cricket, according to variation [CV(RMSD)] in 20-innings moving average

	Name	M	I	W	Ave	20-Inns Min	20-Inns Max	20-Inns Rng	CV(RMSD)	p
1.	W Rhodes	57	90	127	26.97	15.58	74.60	59.02	0.498	0.021
2.	TM Alderman	41	73	170	27.15	19.25	58.45	39.20	0.435	0.001
3.	Intikhab Alam	47	78	125	35.95	23.42	81.83	58.41	0.429	0.010
4.	N Boje	43	72	100	42.65	26.00	95.38	69.38	0.398	0.073
5.	AV Bedser	51	92	236	24.90	13.84	43.58	29.73	0.384	0.004
6.	DL Underwood	85	151	297	25.84	14.26	58.12	43.86	0.375	0.017
7.	Mushtaq Ahmed	52	89	185	32.97	22.33	65.60	43.27	0.372	0.006
8.	GAR Lock	49	88	174	25.58	9.40	37.90	28.50	0.368	0.048
9.	GS Sobers	93	159	235	34.04	24.28	75.58	51.30	0.363	0.011
10.	TE Bailey	61	95	132	29.21	15.84	66.14	50.30	0.346	0.206
	...
13.	IT Botham	101	168	383	28.40	15.56	54.21	38.64	0.305	0.031
14.	A Flintoff	77	135	219	33.35	22.31	60.05	37.74	0.296	0.014
	...
16.	SF Barnes	27	50	189	16.43	11.85	24.29	12.45	0.289	0.004
17.	SM Pollock	108	202	421	23.12	14.85	48.50	33.65	0.288	0.011
	...
21.	Imran Khan	86	142	362	22.81	13.15	34.87	21.72	0.277	0.023
	...
30.	JH Kallis	144	238	269	31.99	18.27	59.93	41.66	0.260	0.536
	...
48.	RJ Hadlee	86	150	431	22.30	15.48	37.34	21.86	0.228	0.068
	...
52.	M Muralitharan	130	228	795	22.67	15.13	36.42	21.29	0.219	0.040
53.	Waqar Younis	86	154	373	23.56	15.95	35.97	20.02	0.217	0.111
	...
57.	Z Khan	79	144	273	31.78	22.46	54.80	32.34	0.213	0.183
	...
67.	SK Warne	144	271	702	25.53	17.96	43.17	25.21	0.195	0.215
	...
70.	Kapil Dev	131	227	434	29.65	17.54	42.29	24.75	0.194	0.458
	...
75.	DW Steyn	46	85	238	23.22	15.14	31.55	16.41	0.186	0.187
	...
92.	AA Donald	72	129	330	22.25	17.38	31.65	14.27	0.160	0.361
	...
96.	GD McGrath	123	241	560	21.69	15.20	33.26	18.06	0.156	0.770
	...
106.	GP Swann	36	66	153	28.82	21.40	37.62	16.22	0.146	0.425
107.	MD Marshall	81	151	376	20.95	15.44	32.39	16.96	0.146	0.680
	...
115.	FS Trueman	67	127	307	21.58	16.56	28.33	11.78	0.127	0.787
	...
124.	CEL Ambrose	98	179	405	20.99	15.67	26.81	11.14	0.122	0.945
125.	DK Lillee	70	132	355	23.92	20.00	33.97	13.97	0.121	0.751
	...
127.	MG Johnson	42	80	181	29.71	23.22	37.56	14.33	0.120	0.745
	...
131.	J Srinath	65	121	236	30.49	22.75	40.00	17.25	0.114	0.925
	...
140.	SL Malinga	30	59	101	33.16	28.90	39.80	10.90	0.101	0.817
141.	DE Malcolm	40	72	128	37.09	31.23	45.03	13.81	0.100	0.961
142.	S Ramadhin	43	76	158	28.98	24.61	38.67	14.06	0.095	0.962
143.	DA Allen	39	65	122	30.98	26.30	36.84	10.54	0.094	0.854
144.	GR Dilley	40	65	138	29.76	25.58	36.12	10.54	0.087	0.892
145.	PR Adams	45	76	134	32.87	27.08	38.55	11.48	0.084	0.977
146.	RC Motz	32	55	100	31.48	27.42	37.57	10.15	0.084	0.913
147.	NAT Adcock	26	46	104	21.11	17.86	24.23	6.36	0.083	0.838
148.	AN Connolly	29	55	102	29.23	23.40	33.08	9.68	0.077	0.931
149.	WJ O'Reilly	27	48	144	22.60	19.87	25.88	6.00	0.070	0.889
qual. = 100 wkts, 40 inns, 1.5 inns bowled per match; stats correct at 14-Aug-2011; full list with links to each bowler's LCG available here

Wilfred Rhodes's position at the top of the list reflects the very different ways in which his skills were deployed during his career: in his first Test, he batted at no. 10 and opened the bowling; a decade later, he was routinely opening the batting and his bowling had become occasional. Little wonder, then, that his bowling average fluctuated enormously: he achieved a 20-innings average of 15.58 in 1900–05 whereas, in 1909–13, the same measure sank to 74.60 (note how many did-not-bowleds there are in the latter sample, underlining Rhodes's change of role).

It's little surprise to see Andrew Flintoff high on the list of streaky bowlers. His LCG (Figure 2) gives a clear depiction of the well recognised tripartite nature of his career record. In the worst 20-innings period of his distinctly unimpressive first 50 or so innings, Flintoff managed just 21 wickets at an average of 60.05. Just a couple of years later, he achieved his best 20-inns streak, averaging 22.30 (although note that he only amassed 42 wickets – without a single five-fer – in that period).

Shift that whole profile down by the best part of ten runs, and you have something eerily similar: Imran Khan's career as a Test bowler (Figure 3). Again, you have the (relative) famine followed by the (relative) feast, with an unhappy coda where the body could no longer do justice to the ability. In Imran's case, the highlight was an amazing 79 wickets at 13.15 from these 20 consecutive innings in 1982–83. His worst 20 innings were the last 20 in which he bowled but, as worst runs go, 31 wickets at 34.87 is very far from an embarrassment.

With Flintoff and Imran as our clue, we might notice that there are a fair few allrounders at the top of the streakiness league. Sobers (another whose bowling was pretty ordinary through his first 50 innings), Botham (whose "streakiness" was actually a fairly linear deterioration), Shaun Pollock (pretty constantly great for most of his career, but suffered an extended horrible streak at the end of it), and Jacques Kallis (up and down throughout) are all amongst the 30 most identifiably streaky, as are Trevor Bailey, Ravi Shastri, and Monty Noble. Conversely, it seems like those at the bottom of the list have a tendency to be pretty poor with the willow. In fact, there is a noisy but identifiable statistical correlation between a bowler's streakiness (CV[RMSD]) and his batting average (r²=0.102; p<0.001). The most likely explanation for this finding, it seems to me, is that bowlers who bat are more likely to endure prolonged streaks of poor form with the ball without getting dropped (it's fair to assume that Flintoff would have been given up as a lost cause long before his 50th innings if he had no capacity to contribute with the bat). As a result, bowlers with extended poor streaks – be that true underperformance or just a run of bad statistical luck – are under-represented in this dataset. If everybody was allowed to play 100 test matches regardless of how well they were doing, then I wouldn't expect allrounders' bowling figures to be any different.

When judged according to these methods, the least streaky bowler in Test history is Bill O'Reilly. His LCG (Figure 4) illustrates the serenely excellent progress of his career. In his worst 20 innings, he took 54 at 25.87; in his best 20 innings, he took 54 wickets at 19.87.

According to the maths, the least streaky bowler with at least 100 innings under his belt is Javagal Srinath but, for me, it's Dennis Lillee's numbers that really stand out, with a career record almost as smooth as his bowling action. As his LCG (Fig 5) shows, it was only really his last few Test matches that spoiled what was otherwise an incredibly consistent career. Aside from his last six innings, his 20-innings moving average never left the twenties.

Mitchell Johnson's low position in the streakiness table may be a surprise to some; after all, he doesn't have much of a reputation for steady results. However, it turns out that, over periods of 20 innings, any real or perceived fluctuations in his performance tend to even themselves out, and the range over which his moving average oscillates (23.22 to 37.56) is, in comparative terms, not so great. On average, across this dataset, a bowler's performance in his best and worst 20-innings streaks are 72% and 150% of his career average, respectively. If Johnson were entirely typical, in this respect, his best and worst streaks would be 21.40 and 44.62, which confirms that his performance has been a bit less variable than average. You don't get a very different picture when you use shorter windows, either (I also looked at 10-innings averages and 5-innings averages; see Technical Appendix for a brief description and links to the results). I conclude that Johnson has a bit of an unfair reputation for wildly varying performances, though one thing these stats can't confirm or deny is that he goes through phases of conspicuously looking terrible and brilliant.

Immediately following what may be the most famous 1-wicket match-haul in Test history (at Old Trafford in 1956), Tony Lock achieved something almost as exceptional as his partner's feat: during his next twenty innings, he became the only bowler amongst those analysed here to average less than 10.00 over a period of that length, taking 54 wickets in the process. He even managed to get dropped during this streak although, to be fair to the selectors, the man they preferred – Johnny Wardle – was in the middle of a sub-20 streak of his own. With Laker's 20-innings moving average dropping to 11.86 in the same period, it's fair to assume England's spin-bowling resources of that time are unlikely ever to find a statistical equal.

There are only ten bowlers in the history of Test cricket who never averaged over 30.00 in any 20 consecutive innings. Most of them belong to an era of pervasively lower averages, but there are two modern-day exceptions – Curtly Ambrose, whose highest 20-innings moving average was just 26.81, and Mohammad Asif, who never did worse than the 28.19 he averaged in his last 20 Test innings (it's probably appropriate to speak about Mohammad Asif in the past tense, now, right?).

As with batsmen, there is no association between streakiness (or the lack of it) and success, either in terms of average (r ²=0.007; p=0.298) or win-rate (r ²<0.001; p=0.993). Some bowlers achieved great figures with up-and-down performance; others were closer to their long-run average throughout; there's no evidence that one profile or another leads to more wins or better stats at the end of your career.

What does it all mean?

As ever, though, this story only really gets interesting when we question the patterns underlying the data. Statisticians like to make a distinction between descriptive statistics (those that simply present observed data) and inferential statistics (those that seek to make sense of it). In this case, what we need to do is account for the play of random variation in bowlers' careers. It is inevitable that chance alone will lead to variation in each player's figures, and we need to distinguish this from real swings of performance.

I investigated this in exactly the same way as with batsmen – shuffling each bowler's career into a purely random order 10,000 times, and seeing how often a career as streaky as the real one emerged (the technical term for this technique is bootstrapping). This way, we get to quantify how likely it is that their careers would have happened in a world where form didn't exist (this is the figure marked p in the table – technically, it is a one-tailed empirical p-value).

The results provide a very similar picture to that which I found when analysing form amongst batsmen. The key finding is that there are surprisingly few bowlers whose careers give a convincing picture of variation in form over and above that which would be expected by chance.

One example is Terry Alderman. There are only two possible explanations for his career showing as much variation as it did: (i) for one reason or another, his essential wicket-taking ability varied over the course of his career (i.e. he really did have runs of good and bad performance), or (ii) a statistical event with probability 0.0007 (1-in-1,429) has occurred. In this circumstance, we can probably conclude with some confidence that there's some non-random variation afoot and, indeed, looking at Alderman's LCG (Figure 6), it's hard to imagine that horrible 1984 and that dazzling 1989–1990 could have happened to the same bowler.

However, bowlers whose careers show such an identifiably streaky pattern are the exception rather than the rule. The relatively small number of very low p-values suggests that random variation around a career-long mean is very often a pretty plausible explanation of the peaks and troughs we tend to think of as form. Turning back to Mitchell Johnson, we can see that shuffling his career into a random order produces at least as much up-and-down as we've seen in his actual career about three-quarters of the time. Similarly, the prevailing wisdom is that a career like Steve Harmison's has been massively influenced by swings of form. However, when I took form out of the equation by putting his career in a random order, something that was – on the whole – every bit as streaky emerged nearly a quarter of the time (although less than a twentieth of the virtual careers featured a single streak as hot as Harmison's 50 wickets at 18.64 in 2003–2004). In any other field, a statistician faced with such numbers would be very unlikely to conclude that there was anything other than random variation at play.

However, one interesting finding is that Muttiah Muralitharan – although his streakiness stat (CV[RMSD]) is nothing out of the ordinary – has a pretty low p-value (much lower than those around him on the list). One reason for this is that, because his career is longer than most, it provides more data and, hence, more opportunity to distinguish signal from noise (a statistician would say that, when we look at Murali's career, we get a more powerful analysis, meaning it is less susceptible to Type II error). This raises the possibility that, if we had more data on other bowlers, we'd be able to detect streakiness in their careers more easily (in the same way that it's a lot easier to tell whether you've got an unevenly weighted coin by tossing it 200 times than it is when you toss it only 20).

Conclusions

One thing it's important to emphasise is that, although I've used the word form throughout this analysis, that's really just a shorthand term for variation-of-performance-for-whatever-reason. The methods described here can identify up-and-down results, and can account for the play of chance in contributing to apparent hot and cold streaks. What they can't do is explain the causes of any non-random variation in performance. It may be that a bowler really was worse at taking wickets in a given period, but it's equally likely that he was bowling in unfavourable circumstances beyond his control. Above, we saw that Terry Alderman's Test career appears to have more than a hint of up-and-down about it. However, that monstrous hump in his LCG just happens to coincide with a period during which he spent a disproportionate amount of time bowling at a pretty formidable West Indies side. Maybe he would have done just as badly against other opponents at this time, or maybe he would have achieved a level of performance that was more consistent with the rest of his career; nothing in the numbers alone helps us to guess.

One way or another, though, the findings described in this blog – in conjunction with my earlier analysis of test batting form – lead me to question whether, as cricket fans, we read rather too much into apparent peaks and troughs of performance. I'm quite sure few bowlers would dispute the assertion that their figures are susceptible to dumb luck; they'd certainly acknowledge that, in any individual innings, their best balls may beat the bat while they pick up wickets with deliveries that they wouldn't otherwise have wanted to remember. So it's maybe not so great a leap to conclude that the fact that bowlers end up with figures that can be quite variable across sequences of matches does not necessarily imply that there was fundamental variation in their wicket-taking capacity over those periods. In this way, it's not so surprising to see that, in a substantial majority of cases, you get just as much peak and just as much trough if you rearrange test bowlers' careers in any old order. One thing's for certain: every bowler who gets dropped after a bad trot feels certain he was on the verge of a performance that would have redressed the balance. Maybe more of them are right than we would've guessed.

---

Technical appendix

1. As before, I should start by acknowledging that the approach set out in this blog is heavily influenced by an excellent baseball stats book, Curve Ball by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett.

2. As I did for batsmen, I undertook a series of sensitivity analyses, varying the size of the window over which the moving average is calculated. I looked at longer and shorter windows; here are the results for 5 innings, 10 innings, and 30 innings. Once again, none of these analyses is very different from the 20-innings version. Funnily enough, the six bowlers with the most successful 10-inns streaks are all Englishmen – Lock, Barnes, Laker, Wardle, Statham, and Bedser – five of them achieving the feat in the 1950s! Most of them are also amongst the best 30-inns streaks, where they're joined by the likes of Imran, Hadlee, and Muralitharan. I also saw what difference it makes to use a different type of moving average – the exponentially weighted moving average – in which innings are never completely discarded; they just receive ever-decreasing weight as they recede into the past. The weighting coefficient I used was 0.066967, which dictates that the weight applied halves every ten innings. The results table is here. By and large, there is very little difference between these results and those calculated according to the simple moving average. I notice that a couple of bowlers whose career had a distinct upward or downward trend rise up the list (Richard Hadlee is a good example of someone who got better and better). On the whole, though, I can't tell much difference between them.

3. In the comments of my column about batting streakiness (which used an identical statistical approach to this analysis), there was some interesting discussion about p-values and multiple testing. This is an important issue in statistical analyses which look at the same thing repeatedly – in this case, the streakiness of 149 different bowlers. For example, when we say Terry Alderman appears to be a significantly streaky bowler because he has a very low p-value of 0.0007, we mean that there are only two possible explanations for his career showing as much variation as it did: (i) for one reason or another, his essential wicket-taking capacity varied over the course of his career (i.e. he really did have runs of good and bad performance), or (ii) a statistical event with probability 0.0007 (1-in-1,429) has occurred. At first glance, 1-in-1,429 seems very long odds, so it's tempting to conclude that we have a robust finding of streakiness. After all, you'd be amazed if you rolled four dice and got four sixes, and that's a slightly more likely event. However, we need to remember that there are 149 separate bowlers being analysed, here; if we repeated our dice-rolling experiment that many times, would we be very surprised to see 6-6-6-6 come up at least once along the way? So we need to be careful before assuming that something unlikely couldn't have happened when it had many opportunities to do so. There are several methods for adjusting p-values for multiple comparisons, but I chose not to extend and complicate my analysis by applying them (not least because I'm not much of a fan of obsessive p-value-spotting, in any case).

4. So, if we have to be a bit hesitant about identifying individual bowlers as especially streaky, can we tell whether there's any streakiness going on? One way to get a handle on that question (thanks to Russ and Dave, whose comments on my last column led me in this direction) is to calculate a global p-value – that is, an estimate of the weight of evidence that there's at least some streakiness somewhere amongst all the bowlers analysed. This can be done by counting the number of individual p-values below a certain level, and estimating the probability that that many bowlers (or more) would have streaky-looking records if there were nothing but random variation at play. In this instance, we can say that, with a global dataset of 149 bowlers, we would expect roughly 7 of them to have a p-value of 0.05 or less, just by chance, if there were no such thing as streakiness amongst bowlers (149 × 0.05 = 7.45). In fact, there are 21 such players in the dataset. Comparing this observed frequency to a Poisson distribution, we can calculate that the probability of getting 21 streaky players when you expect 7.45 is 0.00004. In other words, the amount of streakiness observed across all bowlers is extremely unlikely to have occurred by chance alone (in technical terms, we are likely to reject the global null hypothesis that there's no such thing as a streaky bowler).

I have embarked on a major project. This has been triggered by a few comments on performance of all-rounders in series. I have extended the scope of the same and will cover, over three articles, the performance of batsmen, bowlers and all-rounders in series. I am aware that Cricinfo statistics section gives you an insight into the runs scored and wickets captured in Test series. However those are raw numbers and also do not show the results by series types. Even Statsguru might not provide that. What I intend to do is to weight the individual player performances in series with various relevant parameters. It is necessary to recognize where players performed (home or away), how did the performance measure against those of the other bowlers, what were the quality of wickets captured, was there a critical series situation et al. That would let us judge performances at their true worth.

My previous article was on the batting performances in series. Now I look at the bowling performances in Test series. The wickets captured are weighted by the following factors.

1. Where the series was played: Home, away or neutral locations. Instead of penalizing home performances I have left the home wickets at no additional weight and weighted wickets captured at neutral locations at 5% and away at 10%. One could raise endless queries on the subjectivity or not of these weights. However there is no better solution on offer. As far as bowler friendly tracks are concerned, the visiting bowlers might get the extra weight, playing away, but will lose out on the Pitch type. And vice versa.

2. Series situation: I leave the other Tests as they are. An additional weight of 5% is given for the deciders only. As far as I am concerned there is no dead rubber Test. Over the past 10 years every Test is important, because of Test Rankings. The Oval Test, technically, is a dead rubber. However, for England there is a chance to widen the gap at the top and effect a 4-0 whitewash, for India the no.2 rank is at stake and the chance to finish the series at a respectable 1-3 instead of a humiliating 0-4. So the idea of dead rubber will remain only in the minds of some cricket followers/analysts, not with this analyst. Readers should not forget that if India had taken the challenge of 70-plus runs at run-a-ball against West Indies in the last Test, the no.1 position would never have come up for grabs and might have needed a 3/4 match difference.

3. Quality of wickets captured: This is best explained with the following example. Which performance is better. This happened in the Pakistan first innings of last year's Edgbaston Test (Test # 1972).

Anderson 14.3 6 20 4.
S. Broad 17.0 7 38 4.

Without further information, Anderson's looks much better. Well, you will change your mind if I say that Anderson captured the wickets of Shoaib Malik, Md. Aamer, Umar Gul and Md. Asif, a poor collection indeed. Broad captured the wickets of Imran Farhat, Azhar Ali, Umar Amin and Z Haider, a much better collection of batsmen.

This is done by determining the quality of wickets captured. In two ways: The first is the position of the batsman (it is very important to capture top wickets) and the second is the batting average of the dismissed batsman (equally important to dismiss the better batsmen). The weight ranges from 75% to 150%. The range is quite wide since the situations vary very considerably. I have got the weight for this measure go below 100 so that low order and lesser batsmen's wickets count less.

To weight at a higher level, the dismissal of a specific batsman (because of his beyond-the-zone performance) against a specific team, a la Laxman against Australia, is a great idea, suggested by my tough editor, but is too complicated and beyond the scope of this exercise. It would have more value in Bowling performance rating analysis.

4. Pitch type: This is determined by the Runs per Wicket value for the match. This value ranges from 10 to 100 and the weight ranges from 80% (for 10) to 120 (100). Here also I have got the weight for this measure to go below 100 so that wickets captured on seaming/spinning bowler-friendly tracks are weighted less and on flat tracks, weighted more.

5. Bowler's average vs Teams' series average: This is a completely new measure which has been introduced based on the readers' comments for the batsmen article. The ratio between the series bowling average (for both teams) and Bower bowling average is worked out. This ranges from 0.94 (for the considered 25-wickets plus performances. Can go way down for others) to 3.32 (the bowler out-performs his compatriots by 3-plus times). The weighting ranges from 0.99 to 1.33. I have used the average for both teams rather than for the bowler's team since I felt that would be a correct comparison, incorporating some form of peer performance concept.

The overall effort is that the runs scored in each innings are weighted by the five factors leading to an overall weighting ranging from a theoretical low of around 75% to a theoretical high of 200%. However these are theoretical values and in practice, the range is from 90% to 130%. Stray spells might be weighted down or more. The results are, to say the least, stunning. The true value of bowler performances in series unfolds before us.

The other decision I have taken is that the performances in a series is not going to be influenced by the number of Tests played. Whether a player was dropped or injured is outside the purview of this analysis. A 6-Test series is what it says, whether 4 or 5 Tests were played by a player. The other point is that a series has to have a minimum of 3 Tests to be included in this analysis. Also, the three Triangular tournaments, the 1912 one and the two Asian Championships are not included. This is because these are not bi-lateral series.

The tables are shown for 6, 5, 4 and 3 Test series. These are ordered on the base information, which is the wickets captured. The weighting factor and weighted wickets are also shown. Later in the article similar tables are shown, this time ordered on the weighted wickets. I have stayed away from superfluous information, at least for this analysis, of bowling averages (used however), best bowling, 5/10 wicket hauls et al. When someone captures 30 wickets in a 3/4/5 Test series, it really does not matter whether the average was 15 or 20. At the end I have also shown the top 5 and bottom 5, in terms of weighting, of the wickets captured table (over 500 runs).

First the 6-Test series table. Those who have captured 33 wickets in the series have been shown.

232 1981 ENG-Aus Alderman T.M      (Aus) 21.26 6 42 1.034 43.4 
296 1989 ENG-Aus Alderman T.M      (Aus) 17.37 6 41 1.289 52.8 
213 1978 AUS-Eng Hogg R.M          (Aus) 12.85 6 41 0.988 40.5 
244 1982 PAK-Ind Imran Khan        (Pak) 13.95 6 40 1.257 50.3 
232 1981 ENG-Aus Lillee D.K        (Aus) 22.31 6 39 1.109 43.3 
382 1997 ENG-Aus McGrath G.D       (Aus) 19.47 6 36 1.066 38.4 
331 1993 ENG-Aus Warne S.K         (Aus) 25.79 6 34 1.180 40.1 
232 1981 ENG-Aus Botham I.T        (Eng) 20.59 6 34 0.940 32.0 
250 1983 IND-Win Marshall M.D      (Win) 18.82 6 33 1.206 39.8 
190 1974 AUS-Eng Thomson J.R       (Aus) 17.94 6 33 1.114 36.8 

This table is dominated by Australian bowlers, with two stunning performances by Alderman leading. The later performance by Alderman was more devastating with more top order dismissals. An interesting fact is that 19 out of 41 dismissals were leg-before dismissals. Imran's is the stand-out performance on the sub-continental feather-beds. The 6-Test series were primarily the domain of Australia and England.

Now the 5-Test series table. Those who have captured 35 wickets in the series have been shown.

 37 1913 SAF-Eng Barnes S.F        (Eng) 10.94 5 49 1.111 54.4 
108 1956 ENG-Aus Laker J.C         (Eng)  9.61 5 46 1.091 50.2 
 65 1935 SAF-Aus Grimmett C.V      (Aus) 14.59 5 44 1.120 49.3 
526 2005 ENG-Aus Warne S.K         (Aus) 19.92 5 40 1.121 44.8
 96 1953 ENG-Aus Bedser A.V        (Eng) 17.49 5 39 1.035 40.4 
 43 1924 AUS-Eng Tate M.W          (Eng) 23.18 5 38 1.147 43.6 
 34 1910 AUS-Saf Whitty W.J        (Aus) 17.08 5 37 1.026 38.0 
111 1956 SAF-Eng Tayfield H.J      (Saf) 17.19 5 37 0.918 34.0 
 38 1920 AUS-Eng Mailey A.A        (Aus) 26.28 5 36 1.034 37.2 
 33 1910 SAF-Eng Vogler A.E.E      (Saf) 21.75 5 36 0.959 34.5 
289 1988 ENG-Win Marshall M.D      (Win) 12.66 5 35 1.192 41.7 
177 1972 IND-Eng Chandrasekhar B.S (Ind) 18.91 5 35 0.946 33.1 

Barnes' record will stand forever. There are going to be very few 5-Test series and even in these, one bowler capturing half the wickets that fall is never going to happen. Laker almost beat that record. The stand-out modern performance is that of Warne in the 2005 Ashes series, with 40 wickets.

Next the 4-Test series table. Those who have captured 25 wickets in the series have been shown.

 84 1950 ENG-Win Valentine A.L     (Win) 20.42 4 33 1.134 37.4 
410 1999 WIN-Aus McGrath G.D       (Aus) 16.93 4 30 1.092 32.7 
496 2003 SAF-Win Ntini M           (Saf) 21.38 4 29 1.168 33.9 
 91 1952 ENG-Ind Trueman F.S       (Eng) 13.31 4 29 1.057 30.6 
263 1985 WIN-Nzl Marshall M.D      (Win) 18.00 4 27 1.091 29.4 
509 2004 IND-Aus Kumble A          (Ind) 25.37 4 27 0.998 27.0
282 1987 IND-Win Walsh C.A         (Win) 16.81 4 26 1.109 28.8 
169 1970 SAF-Aus Procter M.J       (Saf) 13.58 4 26 1.084 28.2 
 84 1950 ENG-Win Ramadhin S        (Win) 23.23 4 26 1.073 27.9 
410 1999 WIN-Aus Walsh C.A         (Win) 20.73 4 26 0.962 25.0 
157 1967 AUS-Ind Prasanna E.A.S    (Ind) 27.44 4 25 1.052 26.3 

The 4-Test series are the poor cousins. Not many and even the performances are average. Valentine, on his first tour of England, leads the table. McGrath's 1999 Caribbean performance is the modern classic. An unlikely bowler, Ntini, is next. It will be of interest to note that this was Kumble's only 25-plus wicket capture in a series.

Let us now see the 3-Test series table. Those who have captured 25 wickets in the series have been shown.

 19 1896 SAF-Eng Lohmann G.A       (Eng)  5.80 3 35 1.080 37.8 
267 1985 AUS-Nzl Hadlee R.J        (Nzl) 12.15 3 33 1.241 41.0 
440 2001 IND-Aus Harbhajan Singh   (Ind) 17.03 3 32 1.164 37.2 
459 2001 SLK-Zim Muralitharan M    (Slk)  9.80 3 30 1.182 35.4 
283 1987 PAK-Eng Abdul Qadir       (Pak) 14.57 3 30 1.025 30.7 
306 1990 PAK-Nzl Waqar Younis      (Pak) 10.86 3 29 0.976 28.3 
499 2004 SLK-Aus Muralitharan M    (Slk) 23.18 3 28 1.036 29.0
335 1993 PAK-Zim Waqar Younis      (Pak) 13.81 3 27 0.950 25.6 
494 2003 SLK-Eng Muralitharan M    (Slk) 12.31 3 26 1.210 31.4 
499 2004 SLK-Aus Warne S.K         (Aus) 20.04 3 26 1.101 28.6 
455 2001 SLK-Win Vaas WPUJC        (Slk) 15.42 3 26 1.058 27.5 
430 2000 SLK-Saf Muralitharan M    (Slk) 18.46 3 26 1.056 27.5 
571 2008 SLK-Ind Mendis B.A.W      (Slk) 18.38 3 26 1.050 27.3
423 2000 PAK-Slk Muralitharan M    (Slk) 19.85 3 26 1.044 27.1 
554 2007 SLK-Bng Muralitharan M    (Slk) 10.85 3 26 1.029 26.7
 30 1907 ENG-Saf Blythe C          (Eng) 10.38 3 26 0.977 25.4 
339 1994 NZL-Pak Wasim Akram       (Pak) 17.24 3 25 1.118 28.0 
 26 1902 SAF-Aus Llewellyn C.B     (Saf) 17.92 3 25 0.885 22.1

Even though Lohmann leads the table, Hadlee's was the most devastating of all, coming in an away series against Australia. Harbhajan suffers only in comparison with Laxman. It can be seen that many of these 25-plus wicket performances are modern ones.

I have given below the top bowlers in each of the series types, this time based on the weighted wickets captured. Varying number of bowlers have been shown.

296 1989 ENG-Aus Alderman T.M      (Aus) 17.37 6 41 1.289 52.8
244 1982 PAK-Ind Imran Khan        (Pak) 13.95 6 40 1.257 50.3
232 1981 ENG-Aus Alderman T.M      (Aus) 21.26 6 42 1.034 43.4
232 1981 ENG-Aus Lillee D.K        (Aus) 22.31 6 39 1.109 43.3
213 1978 AUS-Eng Hogg R.M          (Aus) 12.85 6 41 0.988 40.5
331 1993 ENG-Aus Warne S.K         (Aus) 25.79 6 34 1.180 40.1
...
 37 1913 SAF-Eng Barnes S.F        (Eng) 10.94 5 49 1.111 54.4
108 1956 ENG-Aus Laker J.C         (Eng)  9.61 5 46 1.091 50.2
 65 1935 SAF-Aus Grimmett C.V      (Aus) 14.59 5 44 1.120 49.3
526 2005 ENG-Aus Warne S.K         (Aus) 19.92 5 40 1.121 44.8
 43 1924 AUS-Eng Tate M.W          (Eng) 23.18 5 38 1.147 43.6
289 1988 ENG-Win Marshall M.D      (Win) 12.66 5 35 1.192 41.7
 96 1953 ENG-Aus Bedser A.V        (Eng) 17.49 5 39 1.035 40.4
...
 84 1950 ENG-Win Valentine A.L     (Win) 20.42 4 33 1.134 37.4
496 2003 SAF-Win Ntini M           (Saf) 21.38 4 29 1.168 33.9
410 1999 WIN-Aus McGrath G.D       (Aus) 16.93 4 30 1.092 32.7
 91 1952 ENG-Ind Trueman F.S       (Eng) 13.31 4 29 1.057 30.6
...
267 1985 AUS-Nzl Hadlee R.J        (Nzl) 12.15 3 33 1.241 41.0
 19 1896 SAF-Eng Lohmann G.A       (Eng)  5.80 3 35 1.080 37.8
440 2001 IND-Aus Harbhajan Singh   (Ind) 17.03 3 32 1.164 37.2
459 2001 SLK-Zim Muralitharan M    (Slk)  9.80 3 30 1.182 35.4
494 2003 SLK-Eng Muralitharan M    (Slk) 12.31 3 26 1.210 31.4
283 1987 PAK-Eng Abdul Qadir       (Pak) 14.57 3 30 1.025 30.7

Note how much Alderman's 1989 effort has gained, mainly because of the quality of wickets. Imran's wonderful effort of 40 wickets in the subcontinent gets its due. Similarly Hadlee's Trans-Tasman away-haul of 33 moves up to 41 wickets.

Now the top-10, across all series types, whose weight value is the highest and lowest. This is a very interesting mini-table which brings out the value of this type of weighting.

175 1972 WIN-Nzl Taylor B.R        (Nzl) 17.70 5 27 1.303 35.2 
296 1989 ENG-Aus Alderman T.M      (Aus) 17.37 6 41 1.289 52.8 
137 1964 IND-Eng Titmus F.J        (Eng) 27.67 5 27 1.270 34.3 
 62 1934 ENG-Aus O'Reilly W.J      (Aus) 24.93 5 28 1.265 35.4 
197 1976 ENG-Win Holding M.A       (Win) 12.71 5 28 1.262 35.3 
244 1982 PAK-Ind Imran Khan        (Pak) 13.95 6 40 1.257 50.3 
516 2004 SAF-Eng Hoggard M.J       (Eng) 25.50 5 26 1.249 32.5
267 1985 AUS-Nzl Hadlee R.J        (Nzl) 12.15 3 33 1.241 41.0 
447 2001 ENG-Aus McGrath G.D       (Aus) 16.94 5 32 1.227 39.2 
293 1988 AUS-Win Ambrose C.E.L     (Win) 21.46 5 26 1.227 31.9 
...
...
...
 33 1910 SAF-Eng Faulkner G.A      (Saf) 21.90 5 29 0.892 25.9 
 26 1902 SAF-Aus Llewellyn C.B     (Saf) 17.92 3 25 0.885 22.1 
 24 1901 AUS-Eng Noble M.A         (Aus) 19.00 5 32 0.872 27.9
200 1976 IND-Eng Bedi B.S          (Ind) 22.96 5 25 0.834 20.8

Taylor's effort was against a good West Indian side, away, and included quite a few top order wickets. He also achieved this in 4 Tests. I have already talked about Alderman and will do so again later. Titmus' case is interesting. He was playing away, against a good Indian line-up. However the real clincher was the quality of wickets, an amazing 23 out of 27 were those of the top batsmen. Similar was the situation with O'Reilly and Holding.

Finally the top-10, across all series types, whose series average has been the way above the rest of the bowlers who bowled in the series. A true peer performance indicator.

459 2001 SLK-Zim Muralitharan M    (Slk) 3 30  9.80  86-32.57 3.32
554 2007 SLK-Bng Muralitharan M    (Slk) 3 26 10.85  72-34.40 3.17
244 1982 PAK-Ind Imran Khan        (Pak) 6 40 13.95 130-42.17 3.02
 19 1896 SAF-Eng Lohmann G.A       (Eng) 3 35  5.80  98-17.38 3.00
 55 1931 AUS-Saf Ironmonger H      (Aus) 5 31  9.55 155-26.24 2.75
494 2003 SLK-Eng Muralitharan M    (Slk) 3 26 12.31  96-32.58 2.65
115 1958 ENG-Nzl Lock G.A.R        (Eng) 5 34  7.47 135-19.38 2.59
197 1976 ENG-Win Holding M.A       (Win) 5 28 12.71 164-31.55 2.48
267 1985 AUS-Nzl Hadlee R.J        (Nzl) 3 33 12.15  95-30.11 2.48
175 1972 WIN-Nzl Taylor B.R        (Nzl) 5 27 17.70 120-43.69 2.47

Finally let me give my own selection of the top performances in a series. This time ordered based on my preference.

Hadlee's 33 wickets vs Australia, away, during 1985: In my opinion, this was the best ever performance by a bowler in a Test series. There is no denying that Australia were not a great team during 1985. However this was an away tour and Australia are not pushovers in their backyard. Hadlee captured 9, 6, 5, 2, 5 and 6 wickets in the six innings. 5 times out of 6 innings he captured 5-plus wickets. Even Muralitharan in his prime did not achieve this. In a reasonably low-scoring series, he also scored 126 runs. The 2-1 win for New Zealand was the icing on the cake.

Imran Khan's 40 wickets vs India during : This suffered only by comparison to Hadlee's master class. To capture 40 wickets on the flat-bed pitches of Pakistan against a very strong Indian batting lineup was Imran's best ever effort as a bowler and captain. He had 5 five-wicket hauls and helped Pakistan win 3-0. His only support came from Sarfraz Nawaz, with 19 wickets.

Laker's 46 wickets vs Australia during 1956: This has to come in because of the 19 wickets at Manchester. But then there is the small matter of 27 wickets in the four remaining Tests. This was somewhat similar to Richards' 1976 performance, a bowler dominating a quality batting team throughout the series. The Australians, despite McDonald, Harvey, Craig, Davidson, Miller, Benaud, Lindwall et al, had no answers.

SF Barnes' 49 wickets vs South Africa during 1914: Just as I could not ignore Bradman's 974, there is no way I can miss this performance. Barnes achieved this, playing away in South Africa. He captured 49 wickets in four Tests. Then, according to C M-J "S.F.Barnes declined to play after a difference of opinion concerning administrative matters.". If he had played he would have ended with 60-plus wickets and a career tally of 200-plus wickets. He played no more Tests.

Alderman's 41 wickets vs England, away, during 1989: Alderman had captured 42 wickets on the 1981 tour of England. However I selected this one since his overall wicket quality was much better, as evidenced by the significant weight-up these performances have received. 28 of Alderman's 41 wickets were those of 1-6 batsmen. The English batting quality in these two tours was approximately the same. Australia won 4-0 and this was due to two men, Alderman and Taylor.

Warne's 40 wickets vs England, away, during 2005: This is a modern classic. Reminds me of Lara's efforts at Sri Lanka. Warne, coming to the end of the career, captured 40 wickets against a strong English team. That Australia lost 1-2 should not take anything away from Warne's magnificence. If Lee had hit the full toss a few yards to the left or right Australia might have won 3-0. Warne's bowling in the last Test, when his tally of 12 wickets included 9 top batsmen is one of the greatest bowling efforts ever.

I have fixed 3 Tests as the minimum criteria for defining a proper Test series. Let me confirm that, unlike the batsmen crossing 500 runs, no bowler has crossed 25 wickets in a 2-Test series.

Just to complete the Series bowling analysis, I have given below the table of batsmen who have captured 25 wickets or more in a series most number of times. Totally expected results with Muralitharan at the top. Once again emphasises the top quality and class of the West Indian greats, four of them featured here. Grimmett and O'Reilly feature 9 times. Surprises, Kumble, Harbhajan and Wasim Akram just once and Zaheer, not even once.

Muralitharan: 6
Grimmett:     5
Ambrose:      5
Garner:       5
Marshall:     5
Warne:        5
           on 4, plenty (O'Reilly, Lillee, Kapil Dev, McGrath and Walsh).

To download the complete list of players who have crossed 500 runs in a Test series, please right-click here and save the file.

Now for the Bowling hall of fame (or more correctly, shame). While I sympathise with these bowlers, I like this part of the exercise since it throws a challenge to me to identify such performances. The only criteria I have set is that the concerned bowler should have captured 100 Test wickets or more. This is to ensure that the list contains only regular bowlers.

Ser Year Hme Vs  Bowler                   Avge  Wkts

535 2006 PAK-Ind Harbhajan Singh   (Ind) 355.00*  0  ( 83 overs)
281 1987 ENG-Pak Emburey J.E       (Eng) 222.00*  0  (104 overs)
554 2007 SLK-Bng Mohammad Rafique  (Bng) 344.00   1  ( 78 overs)
169 1970 SAF-Aus McKenzie G.D      (Aus) 333.00   1  (111 overs)

384 1997 SLK-Ind Chauhan           (Win) 277.00   1
481 2003 WIN-Aus Collins P.T       (Win) 263.00   1
599 2010 NZL-Aus Martin C.S        (Nzl) 260.00   1
523 2005 ENG-Bng Mohammad Rafique  (Bng) 257.00   1
578 2008 AUS-Saf Lee B             (Aus) 249.00   1
314 1991 AUS-Ind Warne S.K         (Aus) 228.00   1
274 1986 IND-Aus Reid B.A          (Aus) 222.00   1
438 2000 SAF-Slk Vaas WPUJC        (Slk) 218.00   1
487 2003 ENG-Saf Gough D           (Eng) 215.00   1
502 2004 PAK-Ind Saqlain Mushtaq   (Pak) 204.00   1

* To pre-empt readers coming out with comments on the average being infinity.

Harbhajan Singh had, almost certainly, the most nightmarish series ever for a bowler, playing against Pakistan during 2006. He bowled 83 overs in 2 Tests, captured no wicket and had a huge RpO of 4.27. Fortunately for him he was dropped for the last Test. He has had two other forgettable series, each time capturing 2 wickets each at an average of around 150, the last time a few days back.

Emburey at least managed to bowl accurately and kept his RpO to a very good 2.13. Rafique bowled in only 3 innings, but at least managed a wicket, at a high RpO of 4.41. McKenzie bowled in the first two Tests, was dropped for the third, came back in the fourth and successfully claimed a wicket. His RpO was 3.0.

Since the article has already become long, I will keep the all-round analyses to later posts. This will also enable the readers to exchange information in an informed manner.

Readers' selection: I would expect some justification supporting your nomination. Please lighten my task.

Harbhajan Singh (32 in 3 Tests during 2001 vs Aus at home: 37.2 AdjWkts). Arjun.
Marshall (35 in 4 Tests during 1988 vs Eng away: 41.7 adjwkts). Gerry.
Ambrose (33 in 5 Tests during 1992 vs Aus away: 39.9 adjwkts). Gerry.
Larwood (33 in 5 Tests during 1932 vs Aus away: 38.3 adjwkts). Paul.
Davidson (33 in 4 Tests during 1960 vs Aus away: 36.8 adjwkts). Ruchir.
Muralitharan (24 in 3 Tests during 2006 vs Eng away: 31.0 (est) adjwkts) Ruchir.
Alderman (42 in 6 Tests during 1981 vs Eng away: 43.4 adjwkts) Tom.
Hogg (41 in 6 Tests vs Eng at home during 1978: 40.5 adjwkts) Manish/Jerry.
Mendis (26 in 3 Tests vs Ind at home during 2008: 27.3 adjwkts). Ajinkya/Pallab.
Warne (26 in 3 Tests vs Slk, Away during 2004: 28.6 adjwkts).
Marshall (35 in 5 vs Eng, away during 1988: 41.7 adjwkts). Harsh 
Donald (33 in 5 Tests vs Eng, away during 1998: 37.4 adjwkts). Arjun.
Snow (31 in 5 Tests vs Aus, away during 1970: 37.8 adjwkts).Engle+Turner.
Garner (31 in 5 Tests vs Aus, at home during 1984: 33.3 adjwkts. Alex.
Holding (24 in 3 Tests vs Aus, away during 1981. Gerry+Alex
Saqlain (20 in 3 Tests during 1999 vs Ind, away). Arjun+others
Kumble (21 in 3 Tests during 1999 at home). Arjun+others
Bedser (39 in 5 Tests during 1953 at home-5x5 wkts: 40.4 adj). Waspsting.
Tyson (28 in 5 Tests, vs Aus, away: 29.3 adj). Shane
Thomson (33 in 5 Tests vs Eng at home during 1974: adj 36.8 ). Gerry/WS.
Barnes (34 in 5 Tests vs Aus, away during 1911: 38.5 adjwkts). Delmeister.
Waqar Younis (29 in 3 Tests vs Nzl, at home during 1990: adj 28.3 wkts). Del.

I have embarked on a major project. This has been triggered by a few comments on performance of all-rounders in series. I have extended the scope of the same and will cover, over three articles, the performance of batsmen, bowlers and all-rounders in series. I am aware that Cricinfo statistics section gives you an insight into the runs scored and wickets captured in Test series. However those are raw numbers and also do not show the results by series types. Even Statsguru might not provide that. What I intend to do is to weight the individual player performances in series with various relevant parameters. It is necessary to recognize where players performed (home or away), what type of bowling attack runs were scored off (great to poor), what level of support was received, what were the quality of wickets captured, was there a critical series situation et al. That would let us judge performances at their true worth.

First the series batting analysis. The runs scored are weighted by the following factors.

1. Where the series was played: Home, away or neutral locations. Instead of penalizing home performances I have left the home runs at no additional weight and weighted runs scored at neutral locations at 5% and away at 10%. One could raise endless queries on the subjectivity or not of these weights. However there is no better solution on offer. As far as sub-continental flat tracks are concerned, the visitors might get the extra weight, playing away, but will lose out on the Pitch type. And vice versa.

2. Series situation: I leave the other Tests as they are. An additional weight of 5% is given for the deciders only. As far as I am concerned there is no dead rubber Test. Over the past 10 years every Test is important, because of Test Rankings. If it rains cats and dogs at Edgbaston, the fourth Test, technically, is a dead rubber. However the no.1 rank is at stake as also the pride of players. India would very much prefer a 1-2 result and England would go all out for a 3-0 result. So the idea of dead rubber will remain only in the minds of some cricket followers, not in this analysis.

3. Bowling quality faced: This is the weighted c-t-d bowling quality measure determined for each innings. The range is from 19 to 60. The weight ranges from 85% (for 60) to 115% (for 15). I have got the weight for this measure go below 100 so that runs scored against sub-standard attacks are weighted less and against strong attacks are weighted more.

4. Pitch type: This is determined by the Runs per Wicket value for the match. This value ranges from 10 to 100 and the weight ranges from 120% (for 10) to 80 (100). Here also I have got the weight for this measure to go below 100 so that runs scored on flat batting tracks are weighted less and on bowling paradises weighted more.

5. Support provided / % of score: This is to recognize that a 100 scored out of 200 with scant support is valued more than a 100 made out of 500 with ample support. There is no negative weighting and the maximum weight is 10%.

The overall effort is that the runs scored in each innings are weighted by the five factors leading to an overall weighting ranging from a theoretical low of around 75% to a theoretical high of 175%. However these are theoretical values and in practice, the range is from 90% to 130%. Stray innings might be weighted down or more. The results are, to say the least, stunning. The true value of batsmen performances in series unfolds before us.

The other decision I have taken is that the performances in a series is not going to be influenced by the number of Tests played. Whether a player was dropped or injured is outside the purview of this analysis. A 6-Test series is what it says, whether 4 or 5 Tests were played by a player. The other point is that a series has to have a minimum of 3 Tests to be included in this analysis. Also, the three Triangular tournaments, the 1912 one and the two Asian Championships are not included.

The tables are shown for 6, 5, 4 and 3-Test series. These are ordered on the base information, which is the runs scored. The weighting factor and weighted runs are also show. Later in the article similar tables are shown, this time ordered on the weighted runs. I have stayed away from superfluous information, at least for this analysis, of batting averages, highest score, hundreds and fifties. When someone scores 500 runs in a 3-Test series, it really does not matter whether the average was 120 or 150. It only depends on how often the batsman remained unbeaten. At the end I have also shown the top 5 and bottom 5, in terms of weighting, of the runs scored table (over 500 runs).

First the 6-Test series table. Those who have exceeded 600 runs in the series have been shown.

SNo Year Home  Away Batsman               # Runs  Wt  WtRuns

296 1989 ENG vs Aus Taylor M.A      (Aus) 6  839 1.09  910.4
357 1995 ENG vs Win Lara B.C        (Win) 6  765 1.14  875.6
244 1982 PAK vs Ind Mudassar Nazar  (Pak) 6  761 0.95  723.0
264 1985 ENG vs Aus Gower D.I       (Eng) 6  732 1.04  759.3
214 1978 IND vs Win Gavaskar S.M    (Ind) 6  732 0.97  711.8
194 1975 AUS vs Win Chappell G.S    (Aus) 6  702 1.04  731.5
331 1993 ENG vs Aus Gooch G.A       (Eng) 6  673 1.04  700.9
170 1970 AUS vs Eng Boycott G       (Eng) 6  657 1.07  703.0
244 1982 PAK vs Ind Zaheer Abbas    (Pak) 6  650 1.02  664.5
170 1970 AUS vs Eng Edrich J.H      (Eng) 6  648 1.05  683.0
170 1970 AUS vs Eng Stackpole K.R   (Aus) 6  627 1.05  660.5
190 1974 AUS vs Eng Chappell G.S    (Aus) 6  608 1.06  645.9

Both Taylor and Lara scored mountains of runs in away series against England. This is reflected in the good weighting of their performances. Mudassar Nazar's compilation was done at home. The next three players also compiled their 700+ runs at home. However, out of these three, Gower and Chappell did this against much better bowling sides. There seems to be a difficulty in achieving peak level achievements in the six match series as evidenced by the fact that only 12 batsman have averaged over 100 runs per Test.

Now the 5-Test series table. Those who have exceeded 750 runs in the series have been shown.

SNo Year Home  Away Batsman               # Runs  Wt  WtRuns

 51 1930 ENG vs Aus Bradman D.G     (Aus) 5  974 1.15 1122.9
 47 1928 AUS vs Eng Hammond W.R     (Eng) 5  905 1.07  964.4
 93 1952 AUS vs Saf Harvey R.N      (Aus) 5  834 0.93  778.3
197 1976 ENG vs Win Richards I.V.A  (Win) 5  829 1.16  958.5
103 1955 WIN vs Aus Walcott C.L     (Win) 5  827 1.09  900.7
114 1958 WIN vs Pak Sobers G.St.A   (Win) 5  824 1.03  850.8
 67 1936 AUS vs Eng Bradman D.G     (Aus) 5  810 1.13  916.7
 55 1931 AUS vs Saf Bradman D.G     (Aus) 5  806 1.03  830.1
340 1994 WIN vs Eng Lara B.C        (Win) 5  798 0.97  773.3
 80 1948 IND vs Win EdeC Weekes     (Win) 5  779 1.02  797.5
171 1971 WIN vs Ind Gavaskar S.M    (Ind) 5  774 1.07  827.3
609 2010 AUS vs Eng Cook A.N        (Eng) 5  766 1.11  849.0
 62 1934 ENG vs Aus Bradman D.G     (Aus) 5  758 1.18  892.6
 76 1947 ENG vs Saf Compton D.C.S   (Eng) 5  753 0.91  684.6

This table clearly indicates that the 5-Test series are the best in terms of quality. It can be noted that there are 14 batsmen who have averaged over 150 runs per Test. Bradman's and Hammond's performances are legendary. Bradman achieved this stupendous feat of nearly a thousand runs in 5 Tests as a mere 21-year lad, with 4 Tests behind him. Hammond achieved a similar feat in Bradman's debut series two years earlier. Harvey crossed 800 runs against South Africa. Richards had a wonderful series during 1976. Bradman crossed 750 runs four times in his career. Also note the distinguished company Cook has batted himself in.

Next the 4-Test series table. Those who have exceeded 600 runs in the series have been shown.

SNo Year Home  Away Batsman               # Runs  Wt  WtRuns

496 2003 SAF vs Win Kallis J.H      (Saf) 4  712 0.97  694.0
495 2003 AUS vs Ind Ponting R.T     (Aus) 4  706 0.99  702.4
 50 1930 WIN vs Eng Headley G.A     (Win) 4  703 1.00  700.9
 50 1930 WIN vs Eng Hendren E.H     (Eng) 4  693 1.04  717.4
545 2006 ENG vs Pak Mohammad Yousuf (Pak) 4  631 1.16  730.2
295 1989 WIN vs Ind Richardson R.B  (Win) 4  619 1.08  665.9
495 2003 AUS vs Ind Dravid R        (Ind) 4  619 1.15  712.2
470 2002 ENG vs Ind Vaughan M.P     (Eng) 4  615 1.02  629.8
470 2002 ENG vs Ind Dravid R        (Ind) 4  602 1.12  676.6

Most of the 4-Test top performances are modern probably because not many 4-Test series were played during the earlier years. Kallis leads the field with his performances against West Indies. The one exception has been during 1930 when Headley and Hendren scored either side of 700 runs in the same series. Dravid has crossed 600 runs twice in his career.

Let us now see the 3-Test series table. Those who have exceeded 500 runs in the series have been shown.

SNo Year Home  Away Batsman               # Runs  Wt  WtRuns

305 1990 ENG vs Ind Gooch G.A       (Eng) 3  752 0.96  721.1
455 2001 SLK vs Win Lara B.C        (Win) 3  688 1.17  808.4
547 2006 PAK vs Win Mohammad Yousuf (Pak) 3  665 1.03  684.0
212 1978 PAK vs Ind Zaheer Abbas    (Pak) 3  583 1.01  589.6
163 1969 NZL vs Win Nurse S.M       (Win) 3  558 1.13  630.0
346 1994 PAK vs Aus Saleem Malik    (Pak) 3  557 1.05  583.8
535 2006 PAK vs Ind Younis Khan     (Pak) 3  553 0.98  544.1
440 2001 IND vs Aus Hayden M.L      (Aus) 3  549 1.14  625.5
519 2005 IND vs Pak Sehwag V        (Ind) 3  544 1.00  543.7
559 2007 IND vs Pak Ganguly S.C     (Ind) 3  534 0.95  505.8
348 1994 IND vs Win Adams J.C       (Win) 3  520 1.19  619.8
534 2005 AUS vs Saf Ponting R.T     (Aus) 3  515 1.08  554.2
310 1991 NZL vs Slk Jones A.H       (Nzl) 3  513 0.94  481.7
401 1998 PAK vs Aus Taylor M.A      (Aus) 3  513 1.04  533.1
519 2005 IND vs Pak Younis Khan     (Pak) 3  508 1.18  601.1
306 1990 PAK vs Nzl Shoaib Mohammad (Pak) 3  507 0.92  465.1
198 1976 PAK vs Nzl Javed Miandad   (Pak) 3  504 0.94  476.0
440 2001 IND vs Aus Laxman V.V.S    (Ind) 3  503 1.10  552.3

When one scores 456 runs in a single Test, it is not too difficult to sit on top of the 3-Test performances. That is what Gooch did against India during 1990. However the real striking performance is the single-handed master class by Lara, away in Sri Lanka during 2001. As the youngsters would say, no one else did jack.

I have given below the top-5 batsmen in each of the series types, this time based on the weighted runs scored.

SNo Year Home  Away Batsman               # Runs  Wt  WtRuns

296 1989 ENG vs Aus Taylor M.A      (Aus) 6  839 1.09  910.4
357 1995 ENG vs Win Lara B.C        (Win) 6  765 1.14  875.6
264 1985 ENG vs Aus Gower D.I       (Eng) 6  732 1.04  759.3
194 1975 AUS vs Win Chappell G.S    (Aus) 6  702 1.04  731.5
244 1982 PAK vs Ind Mudassar Nazar  (Pak) 6  761 0.95  723.0
...
 51 1930 ENG vs Aus Bradman D.G     (Aus) 5  974 1.15 1122.9
 47 1928 AUS vs Eng Hammond W.R     (Eng) 5  905 1.07  964.4
197 1976 ENG vs Win Richards I.V.A  (Win) 5  829 1.16  958.5
 67 1936 AUS vs Eng Bradman D.G     (Aus) 5  810 1.13  916.7
103 1955 WIN vs Aus Walcott C.L     (Win) 5  827 1.09  900.7
...
545 2006 ENG vs Pak Mohammad Yousuf (Pak) 4  631 1.16  730.2
 50 1930 WIN vs Eng Hendren E.H     (Eng) 4  693 1.04  717.4
495 2003 AUS vs Ind Dravid R        (Ind) 4  619 1.15  712.2
495 2003 AUS vs Ind Ponting R.T     (Aus) 4  706 0.99  702.4
 50 1930 WIN vs Eng Headley G.A     (Win) 4  703 1.00  700.9
...
455 2001 SLK vs Win Lara B.C        (Win) 3  688 1.17  808.4
305 1990 ENG vs Ind Gooch G.A       (Eng) 3  752 0.96  721.1
547 2006 PAK vs Win Mohammad Yousuf (Pak) 3  665 1.03  684.0
163 1969 NZL vs Win Nurse S.M       (Win) 3  558 1.13  630.0
440 2001 IND vs Aus Hayden M.L      (Aus) 3  549 1.14  625.5

The top two performances in the 6-Test series have retained their places in the weighted runs order. Lara has narrowed the gap a little bit. Mudassar Nazar has moved down the order. There is very little movement in the 5-Test order also. Harvey has moved down. Mohammad Yousuf, playing away against England whose bowling was good, has gained significantly in the 4-Test table and has moved to the top. Kallis has moved way down. As expected, Lara has displaced Gooch because his performance was away, against a very good attack and he received scant support.

Finally the top-5, across all series types, whose weight value is the highest and lowest. This is a very interesting mini-table which brings out the value of this type of weighting.

SNo Year Home  Away Batsman               # Runs  Wt  WtRuns

 33 1910 SAF vs Eng Hobbs J.B       (Eng) 5  539 1.28  688.4
 85 1950 AUS vs Eng Hutton L        (Eng) 5  533 1.28  683.9
232 1981 ENG vs Aus Border A.R      (Aus) 6  533 1.26  673.1
217 1979 ENG vs Ind Gavaskar S.M    (Ind) 4  542 1.25  676.7
475 2002 AUS vs Eng Vaughan M.P     (Eng) 5  633 1.22  770.1
...
...
 93 1952 AUS vs Saf Harvey R.N      (Aus) 5  834 0.93  778.3
244 1982 PAK vs Ind Javed Miandad   (Pak) 6  594 0.93  552.1
306 1990 PAK vs Nzl Shoaib Mohammad (Pak) 3  507 0.92  465.1
 76 1947 ENG vs Saf Edrich W.J      (Eng) 5  552 0.91  501.8
 76 1947 ENG vs Saf Compton D.C.S   (Eng) 5  753 0.91  684.6

Let us look at this table. Why did Hobbs gain so much. An away series, very good South African bowling line-up, low scoring throughout the series increasing the value of Hobbs' scores and Hobbs's high accumulation in only 4 Tests. Similarly Hutton faced a top-class bowling attack away and scored a fair proportion of runs. Border scored the runs, again away, off a top class bowling attack and with no great support.

At the other end, the parameters are tilted the other way. Average-to-poor bowling attacks, fairly high RpW values for the matches and matches played at home. Just to give an idea of what I am talking about, let me sum up the series # 76, the last one in the table. England scored 3050+ runs at a loss of 64 wickets, leading to a high RpW of 48. Also, Compton, despite his massive aggregate of 753 runs did not even score 25% of the total runs !!! Still the maximum down-weighting is less than 10%.

Finally let me give my own selection of the top performances in a series.

1. Bradman's 974 in 5 Tests against England. As already explained, a 21-year old batsmen achieves this during his first tour of England. If nothing else this should silence and convince any critics of the greatness of Bradman.

2. Lara's 688 in 3 Tests against Sri Lanka: Irrespective of what else Lara did, and there is plenty, this is the best single series performance by any batsmen during the past 30 years. The lone warrior, away against the magician and Lara came through. The 3 losses add to the poignancy of the performances.

3. Richards' 829 in 5 Tests against England: This was arguably the most dominating series by a single player over the past 50 years and is bettered only by Bradman's 974.

4. Hammond's 905 in 5 Tests against Australia: I have often put down Hammond's 336 against New Zealand. But this was Hammond at his majestic best. However the series record lasted a mere 18 months.

5. Hobbs' 539 in 4 Tests against South Africa: As I went through the scorecards I realized the impact and value of Hobbs' performance. This was not an ordinary South African side. They had excellent bowlers. Hutton's 1950 series ranks very close.

I have fixed 3 Tests as the minimum criteria for defining a proper Test series. However readers would be interested to know that there are five batsmen who have crossed 500 runs in 2 Test-series. They are Jayasuriya (571 vs Ind), Hammond (563 vs Nzl), Andy Flower (540 vs Ind), Jayawardene (510 vs Saf) and Hayden (501 vs Zim). Andy Flower's is probably the most note-worthy since it was achieved against India, away.

Just to complete the Series batting analysis, I have given below the table of batsmen who have crossed 500 runs in a series most number of times.

7 times: Bradman
7 times: Lara
6 times: Sobers
6 times: Gavaskar
4 times: Hobbs, Hammond, Barrington, Border, Ponting.

To answer the burning question as to why Tendulkar is absent in these analyses and in the complete table, readers may be surprised (or not) to know that Tendulkar has never crossed 500 in a series in Tests. His highest is 493 vs Australia, away, during 2007. In mitigation, let me state that Tendulkar has played in only three 5-Test series, the last one 9 years back.

To download the complete list of players who have crossed 500 runs in a Test series, please right-click here and save the file.

Now for the other end of the performance spectrum. With some difficulty I have unearthed the following total non-performances. With due apologies to Amarnath, CB Fry, Ranatunga and Athey, very good batsmen, they had their great days, but these were their low points. I might very well have missed a few other gems. Readers should note that I have only looked at batsmen with averages higher than 25. Let me remind readers that Amarnath and Ranatunga are two of modern cricket's greatest fighters ever.

SNo Year Batsman       For    Vs   Inns Runs Score sequence

250 1983 Amarnath M   (Ind vs Win)  6    1   0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 
   (8 months back Amarnath had scored 598 in 5 away Tests against a strong 
West Indian attack !!!)
 25 1902 Fry C.B      (Eng vs Aus)  4    5   0, 0, 1, 4
315 1991 Ranatunga A  (Slk vs Pak)  4    6   0, 0, 0, 6
230 1981 Athey C.W.J  (Eng)         4    7   2, 1, 3, 1
The following were 2-Test series. So not real failures.
366 1996 Twose R.G    (Nzl)         4    6   2, 0, 2, 2
380 1997 de Silva P.A (Slk)         4    9   3, 0, 1, 5
473 2002 Taufeeq Umar (Pak)         4    6   0, 0, 5, 1
476 2002 Arnold R.P   (Slk)         4    6   0, 0, 2, 4

Since the article has already become long, I will keep the bowling and all-round analyses to later posts. This will also enable the readers to exchange information in an informed manner.

Finally a comment on what happened at Nottingham.

On Sunday we saw two sets of faces of Indian Cricket. The first, two tough-as-nails and successful captains who, however, would play fair and keep the spirit of the game alive, in the persona of Dhoni and Ganguly. India might have lost but Cricket, in the form of Dhoni, won. Dhoni's gesture, probably egged on by the wiser and older heads in the team, would not be forgotten in a hurry and he is going to stay in the hearts of all cricket followers everywhere.

The other set, those faces of Shastri and Gavaskar.

I have realized that it would be great to have a Reader's selections section. So here we go.

1. Viswanath's 568 runs (593.6 adjruns) vs Win at home in 1974. (Salem Shanker).
2. Amarnath's 598 runs (718.6 adjruns) vs Win away in 1983, (Gerry/Arjun).
3. Manjrekar's 569 runs (640.3 adjruns) vs Pak away in 1989 (Arjun/Nitin).
4. Vaughan's 633 runs (770.1 adjruns) vs Aus away in 2002 (Arjun).
5. Sobers'722 runs (840.2 adjruns) vs Eng away in 1966. (Shrikanth).
6. Bradman 810 runs (916.7 adjruns) vs Eng home in 1936 (Shrikanth).
7. Adams' 520 runs (3T-619.8 adjruns) vs Ind away in 1994 (Ruchir).
8. Lara's 546 runs (632.6 adjruns) vs Aus home in 1999 (Ruchir).
9. Gavaskar's 774 runs (827.3 adj) vs Win away in 1971 (Abhishek/Raghu).
10.Taylor's 839 (910.4 adjruns) vs Eng away in 1989 (Tom/Pallab).
11.Faulkner's 732 runs (855.8 adjruns) vs Aus away in 1910. (Arjun/Alex).
12.Strauss'656 runs (upto 760.2) vs Saf away in 2004. (Arjun).
13.Sutcliffe's 734 runs (841.5 adjruns) vs Aus away in 1924 (Alex/Ruchir).
14.Trumper's 661 runs (upto 702.4) vs Saf home in 1910 (Manasvi).
15.Walters' 699 runs (upto 714.8) vs Win home in 1968 (Manasvi).
16.Boycott's 657 runs (703.0 adjruns) vs Aus away in 1970 (Arjun). 
17.Gilchrist's 473 runs in 3 Tests vs Saf away in 2002 (Alex).
18.Hobbs' 662 (adjruns 769.9) vs Aus, Away in 1912 (Shri).
19.Sobers' 824 (adjruns 850.8) vs Pak, Home in 1958 (Harsh).
20.Walcott's 827 (900.7 adjruns) vs Aus, home in 1955. (Harsh).
21.Hutton's 533 runs (683.9-28% adj) vs Aus, away 1950 (Waspsting).
22.Lindsay's 606 runs (605.2 adj) vs Aus 1966 (Gerry/Shane).
23. Dravid's 422 runs, and counting, vs Eng during 2011 (Ananth).