The Thirteenth Man

Mathematics, dear boy, Mathematics.

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With England’s middle-order making muppets of themselves yet again, it’s time to take a closer look at the achievements of one of those whose place must surely be subject to challenge - Ian Bell. He averages 42.13, with 7 hundreds to his name. Seems all well and good. Here’s his hundreds:

What closer inspection reveals is that, in every single one of those innings, another England batsman made a hundred. The fact is that Ian Bell has not made a hundred when it was really needed - when everyone else was failing to push on, when the team needed someone to shoulder the mantle of responsibility themselves. Here’s the points in the innings at which Bell came in at:

Ian Bell came in with a well-set batsman on his way to a hundred on all but one of those occassions (it was Pieterson who made the other century in the second listed innings). He entered the crease with England’s score above a hundred, in most cases, well above. Twice he came in with very big scores already being compiled, with centurions at the crease. These are the circumstances in which Bell scores his hundreds - not ones in which grit is required, but times when England are going good and he can play freely.

It’s quite extraordinary for all 7 of his centuries to have only come with another centurion in the innings, and surely says a great deal about his ability to produce meaningful innings for England, innings that change a match. His average of 39.66 in the 15 tests since the 2006/7 Ashes doesn’t inspire much confidence either.

Everyone must watch this man. You do want to see him happy again, don’t you?

Simon’s (scant) two County Champtionship matches for Worcestershire have him topping the averages for that county, with 6 @ 15.66, including a five-for against Gloucestershire. His stiff neck has kept him from playing several matches, but he still notched up a five-for in the Friends Provident trophy against Hampshire. Best of all, those watching reckon he’s got his pace right back; Steve James writes in The Telegraph:

“.. the more important pointer was that the venom appeared to be back. A couple of slippery bouncers to Glamorgan skipper David Hemp showed that. The accuracy will come, just as it suddenly appeared in 2004/05 after his wayward early years.

More England caps for Jones? Far too early to say. But there is at last some promise in the signs. Not since 2005 has that been the case.”

He’s not back, but he’s on his way. Andrew Flintoff now has arguably as bad an injury record as Simon Jones, but we keep focusing on him and awaiting his return. Why not the same for Jones?

It’s a fact much trumpeted by England’s batsmen whenever any criticism of the batting line-up is voiced - for the first time in years (if ever?), all of England’s top six batsmen average over 40, the mark of a very good international batsman. That’s not the whole story, however. If their careers are divided into two, the English batsmens’ figures in the second half of their career are not so special.

Angus Fraser has raised the issue before and did so again today on Test Match Special.

Here’s the raw numbers. Figures up to England vs New Zealand 2nd Test.

On the Up

Just two England batsman have a higher average in the second half of their career - Alastair Cook and Kevin Pieterson. Both are also the only two to average above 40 in that second half. Cook’s nascant career makes this analysis means very little - it’s simply too short to draw any inference from. Pieterson’s very slight increase similarly shows little - he has consistently averaged around the 50 mark, only briefly poking above it when he battered the West Indies last summer.

On the Down

The other four batsmen have all declined in the second half of their career.

Andrew Strauss’ fall is clear to see - he’s averaged just 38.52 since England were away to India in 2006. Given that that period contains his great batting successes as captain against Pakistan, his fall since then is especially pronounced.

Ian Bell, surprisingly, has an ever greater fall than Strauss, but does end up averaging slightly more than him in the second half of his career. This fall is most likely due to Bell’s early cash-in against Bangladesh, a gift of a series to make your Test debut in.

The real concerns are Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood. Vaughan has had the longest career of any of England’s batsman, so dividing his career into two halves makes for a better and fairer analysis than for players whose careers are marked more by who they have played, rather than how they have played. Vaughan, by contrast, has played every test nation.

Since the Sri Lanka series in 2003 - that’s five years of cricket - Vaughan has averaged just 38.44. Is that good enough to play for England? The England team seem to operate on a +10 run bonus for captaincy! scheme at the moment. Personally, I think Michael Vaughan is a quality player, but it is astonishing how often he gets out whilst looking in wonderful touch. If he weren’t captain, he would not be playing for England today.

Paul Collingwood is perhaps even more of a concern. He has the biggest run drop of all, falling 12.59 runs. Since his mammoth double-hundred at Adelaide, the late-middle-order batsman has averaged just 35.83, with two centuries in thirty-two attempts.

The lesson of all this is: England’s selectors hate Owais Shah.

England have named an unchanged line-up for the Old Trafford Test. The same four bowlers will start the second Test against New Zealand. Matthew Hoggard was England’s twelfth man for the match at Lord’s, but had his thumb broken - by fellow drop-ee Steve Harmison. The Durham fast-bowler has only served to highlight his own downfall, however - the twelfth man for the Old Trafford test has been named as Chris Tremlett. This focuses the mind on Harmison’s current ranking within the England set-up. Here’s the bowlers now ahead of him in the pecking order:

• Ryan Sidebottom
• James Anderson
• Stuart Broad
• Monty Panesar
• Matthew Hoggard
• Chris Tremlett
• Andrew Flintoff (he would have played, remember)

That’s right - Steve Harmison is now England’s 8th-choice bowler. If he can’t get a match at Old Trafford, a ground where he has 24 wickets @ 19.83, where can he get one?

Is he even 8th in the pecking order? Graham Onions and Charlie Shreck are looking good for call-ups in the not-too distant future; whilst Simon Jones, a man by now surely composed entirely of cortisone, is on his way back to form, with successive five-fors just recently.

Harmison, lest we forget, had this to say the other week:

“The prospect of playing for England is what drives me, and if I felt my chance of doing that was gone, the probability is Id retire from first-class cricket altogether. This is not an ultimatum or me trying to impose conditions on anyone. But I am 29 now, and if I felt my England career was over, I would be tempted to say I want to do something different with my life.”

Is this goodbye then?

The question was posed in The Times’ Test Cricket Podcast #2 - who has the best conversion rate from 100 to 107? This was in light of Michael Vaughan’s shocking fifth failure (in the Lord’s test match against New Zealand) to push on from his century to 107. Is Vaughan the worst 107-maker in Test cricketing history? Who is the best? Let’s find out.

The Greatest

The quickest way to find the best 107 conversion rate is to look down the list of all time century scorers until we reach someone who has never been out when on 100-106. Here’s the table, down until we reach our winner.

It’s Graham Gooch! On the twenty times he scored 100, the ex-England captain never, ever failed to make that elusive 107. Furthermore, he’s never even been left stranded not out on 100-106. What a player! If anyone above him in centuries had never been out in that range, but merely left not out, they could conceivably claim to be the ultimate 107-maker, but they’ve all been out at least once on those seven miserable numbers of cricketing despair.

Patrick Kidd hazarded that Wally Hammond would have the best conversion rate. He, however, comes fifth in this list. Andy Zaltzman took a stab at guessing Donald Bradman had the best 107 conversion rate and is left floundering in the dark by Gooch’s brilliance - Bradman’s rate is a mere 96.55%, the second-best behind Gooch. It’s possible someone else has actually has a better conversion rate than Bradman, or even a rate of 100% - certainly those with very few hundreds to their name will - but no-one will have done it as many times as Graham Gooch has. Truly Gooch is the 107 champion.

The Worst

Who, then, is the worst 107 maker in cricketing history? 287 batsmen have been out on a score of 100-106. Here’s the list, ordered by sheer number of times out in that range, down as far as Michael Vaughan’s level.

The man with most overall dismissals in the 100-106 range is Colin Cowdrey - 7 times in all. No other batsman matches that record. Michael Vaughan comes down in seventh place, with his shameful 5 failures to make that big 107 that England so desperately need.

Does this make Cowdrey the biggest 107-choker? Quantitatively yes, but not necessarily percentage-wise. The key figure is who has scored the least 107s whilst considering the total number times they’ve made it past 100 to have a crack at it. Occasions when the batsmen was not out before 107 are not counted as failures, but times where they were not out on or after 107 are counted as successes.

There are 43 batsmen who have scored a century, but never once made it past 107. Of these, Jimmy Sinclair of South Africa has the worst conversion rate - he scored 3 centuries, but was out for 106 or less all 3 times, making for a pathetic conversion rate of just 0%. The rest of the batsmen in this list scored only 1 or 2 centuries. That makes Sinclair statistically the worst 107 maker (once past 100) in the history of cricket. He did score South Africa’s very first test hundred though.

This is rather a shallow analysis however - these chaps can hardly be called failures when they’ve had so few chances at making it to the 107 mark. Let’s dig a little deeper and see who the really epic chokers are - people who have had numerous opportunities to make it past 106, but failed on many occasions. Let’s limit this to batsman who have had 10 chances at converting a 100. A chance is classed as every time a batsmen scored a hundred, minus those occasions when they were not out on 100-106. Ten chances seems a fair cut-off point. Here’s a truncated list of those men, ordered by conversion rate.

And the biggest failure of them all is.. Pakistan’s first superstar and scorer of the longest test-innings in history, Hanif Mohammad! On his 12 times past 100, he was not out on 100-106 twice, but failed to score that elusive 107 on 4 occasions out of 10 chances, making for a shocking conversion rate of just 60% - or to put it another way, a failure rate of 40%.

There are an astonishing five England captains in the top eleven. Peter May is actually the worst at sheer conversion of 100s into 107s if not-outs are not taken into account. Michael Vaughan proves to be eleventh worst, whilst fellow England captains Len Hutton, Colin Cowdrey and Nasser Hussein are present in the top ten. Did the pressure get to these England captains? There’s some big names at the top of this list - maybe getting to 107 isn’t as easy as it seems.

The full list of sorry cricketing failures is here for the desperately stat-beholden and/or for those who want to change the cut-off from 10 centuries to something else.

n.b. An earlier version of this post had Peter May as the worst 107-maker, before not-outs were re-classified as not being a chance to make 107.