Andy Zaltzman's Blog, page 8

England to win 1-0. Or 2-1. Or tie

Azhar Ali, pictured here in Uncharacteristically Unseemly Haste mode
© AFP



As I write, Pakistan and England are hours away from resuming a rivalry that has sparked some of our great sport's most cantankerous cricket and least savoury squabbles. This time, hopefully, tempers will be tempered, and the cricket will not be an incidental curtain raiser to the controversy.

Provided that the Gulf pitches are not unremittingly somnolent ‒ and they have had a tendency to display the spritely vigour of a hypnotised and hibernating walrus ‒ the cricket should be compelling. Pakistan have been stable and steady, if not resurgent, and are unbeaten in six series since the legal blooper at Lord's, although of those series, only one was against a team ranked in the top five in the world (a not-especially-thrilling nil-nil draw with South Africa in the Gulf late in 2010, the highlights of which have not been challenging the top of the DVD bestseller charts).

England, meanwhile, have had a prolonged Test break after a nine-month period in which they annihilated two of their greatest rivals. For the previous couple of years, England had veered between brilliance and debacle, as if they had read Rudyard Kipling's smash-hit poem "If", taken on board his suggestion that they should seek to treat the two impostors Triumph and Disaster just the same, and therefore attempted to spend plenty of quality time with both of them in turn. They then decided that Triumph was the preferable impostor to hang around with, and have since scaled peaks of performance dominance untouched by English cricketers for generations.

This dominance has been founded principally on high-class swing bowling ‒ which will be a less potent force in the billionaires' sandpit that is Dubai ‒ supported by a batting line-up that has pulled off one of the most startling collective improvements of recent times, feeding off each other's successes and confidence like lions at an all-you-can-eat zebra buffet.

Some stats: In England's three major series before last winter's Ashes (v Australia in 2009, South Africa in 2009-10, and Pakistan in 2010), only Jonathan Trott averaged over 38, with Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen below 30. In England's three major series after that (Ashes 2010-11, and against Sri Lanka and India last summer), five of England's regular top seven have averaged over 50, with Cook and Ian Bell close to 100. Were they underachieving wildly before, or are they overachieving wildly now? Probably a little bit of both. This year should provide a reasonably reliable answer, and Pakistan in the UAE should offer a stern challenge for a side that is reaching for greatness.

The official Confectionery Stall series prediction: England to win 1-0, provided they are not distracted by wondering how and why Dubai came to be full of so many empty skyscrapers. Or scuppered by the wiles of Saeed Ajmal. Or neutered by the heat and pitches. Or about to embark on a startling collective dis-improvement. Or possessed by a sudden urge to abandon the seven-batsman-four-bowler strategy that has served them so well. In which case, they will win 2-1. Possibly. Or it might be 1-1. Depending on what happens, and who does what, and when they do it.

One to watch (England): Monty Panesar
He has been out of the England side for so long that it is easy to forget that Panesar was once much more than a bizarrely (and very intermittently) stylish No. 11 batsman, who in effect won the 2009 Ashes single-handedly. He was for a couple of years, against everyone other than India, a bowler of skill and penetration, and England's most consistently effective spinner since Derek Underwood. He was then surpassed by the new England's most consistently effective spinner since Derek Underwood, Graeme Swann.

Panesar is 29, with 125 Test and 500 first-class wickets under his specialist belt. With away series in the UAE, Sri Lanka and India, 2012 is a good year for him to be entering his tweaking prime. (Although his record in Tests in Asia is hopeless.) (But those Tests were quite a long time ago now.) (And England might not pick him anyway.) (Predictive punditry is pointless.) (What am I doing with my life?)

Play it again, Samaraweera

Andy Zaltzman and Daniel Norcross discuss the Sri Lankan colossus, the world's greatest living batsman (statistically, of the last five years); propose cricket's newest innovation, for the Olympics - the Super Javelin Over; debate whether Vernon Philander should retire now; and wonder why it took cricket 140-odd years to discover that pitching the ball up nearly always guarantees success.





Download the podcast here (mp3, 38MB, right-click to save).

Multistat: 1

Should have quit 30 runs before
© Getty Images



The number of times in the documented history of mankind that a Test team has scored two 250-plus partnerships in the same innings. Until 2012, that total was zero. Now it is one, thanks to some fine batting by Clarke, Ponting and Hussey, and some minimum-intensity cricket by an Indian team that, just a very-long-seeming year ago, was ranked No. 1 in Tests (and about to embark on a victorious World Cup campaign).

All summits must be descended from. Preferably with due care and attention. As a Test team, however, India have tobogganed back to base camp at alarming velocity, like an over-excited Edmund Hillary desperate to get home to tell his mummy about how he had just conquered that really big mountain that she had promised him a new bicycle for climbing.

In their last two away series, in England and Australia, India have been mostly careless and uncertain with the bat, listless with the ball and snoozy in the field. Does their creaking batting line-up of ageing legends have it in them to rouse themselves to greatness again? Can Dhoni bring the toboggan skidding to a controlled halt, turn it around, and cajole his team to start shoving it back uphill? Does the IPL care? As Hussey and Clarke helped themselves to some of the least challenging runs of their long careers on day three, against opponents playing with the fierce and unrelenting intensity of a three-day-old bowl of half-eaten porridge, it was hard to be optimistic.

Also: The number of batsmen who have been left stranded on 299 not out in Tests. That man was Don Bradman ("A useful accumulator of runs" – International Society for Understatements). Clarke, as captain, had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join Bradman by declaring when he was one run short of his triple-hundred, in the ultimate cricketing self-prank. It would have been worth it just to see the look on his team-mates' faces. Bradman was also the only player before Clarke who had scored a Test triple-hundred when batting at No. 5 or lower – he did so in Leeds in 1934.

Also: The number of (a) pairs and (b) scores of more than 201 that Jacques Kallis has scored in his illustrious Test career. These have come in his last two Tests, meaning that Kallis, the very embodiment of cricketing reliability for a decade and a half, has become the most inconsistent cricketer in the universe. With the possible exception of Clarke, whose last 13 Test innings have been 13, 6, 112, 151, 2, 11, 2, 139, 22, 0, 31, 1 and 329 not out. On current form, he is a good man to dismiss early.

Also: The number of Test teams that have conceded two individual scores of 290 or more within a six-month period. Clarke's mammoth score followed hot on the heels of Alastair Cook plinking India to distraction with 294 last summer. Incidentally, in case any of you want a stat to impress / distract / annoy / confuse a potential employer at a job interview, there have now been as many 290-plus Test innings in the last four years as there were between 1939 and 1989 – seven (by Virender Sehwag, Younis Khan, Sarwan, Sehwag again, Chris Gayle, Cook and Clarke; between Len Hutton's 364 in 1938 and Graham Gooch's 333 in 1990, only Hanif Mohammad, Garry Sobers, Bob Simpson, John Edrich, Bob Cowper, Lawrence Rowe and Viv Richards passed 290).

New blood. Yum

Graeme Smith reveals how the wicked witch was to blame for South Africa's loss to Sri Lanka in Durban
© Getty Images



When historians sit down at their special historical desks in decades to come and compose their unarguable histories of the year 2011, they will scratch their history-loving chins, twiddle their retrospectivising pencils, and wonder to themselves: "What was the most important thing that happened in that famous year? Was it the wave of popular revolutions around the Arab world? The forces of technology-enhanced democracy unleashed around the planet? The European economy Titanic-ing itself into an iceberg of idiocy? The violent deaths of some of the universe's least desirable dinner companions? Or was it the rebirth of Test cricket, as a new generation of star fast bowlers emerged, and groundsmen around the world remembered that their principal purpose in life is not to bore spectators to tears and make fast bowlers wish their parents had never met?"

Time will tell which box they tick on their multiple-choice answer sheet. But they will surely give considerable thought to the last of those options. Some may even choose it. They would, of course, be wrong. And, hopefully, fired from whatever professorship they happen to occupy.

However, the last couple of months have been the most exciting for the Test game for a considerable time, a catalogue of engrossing contests in which momentum has shifted with each couple of wickets and each partnership of 30 or more, decorated by individual performances of enticing promise for the future. Test match cricket has been buffeted about like an unwanted penguin in an uncaring tumble dryer in recent years, but that penguin has emerged, flapped its wings, barked, and resolved to give flight another wholehearted attempt.

The year ended with the two teams that had begun the year tussling for the No. 1 Test spot sink to disappointingly supine defeats. India caved too easily in the face of excellent Australian fast bowling, whilst South Africa, for the third series in a row and fourth in six, contrived to lose a 1-0 lead, this time to an inspired Sri Lanka, who claimed their first win of the post-Murali era, at the 16th attempt. In a country where they had never previously won. And where they had averaged 209 all out per innings in their previous eight Tests. Seven of which they had lost (four by an innings), with one rain-aided draw. And with a bowling attack that had not taken 20 wickets in its previous 12 away Tests over three years. It was one of Sri Lanka's greatest wins.

It was also one of South Africa's worst modern defeats, rounding off a deeply disappointing year in both Tests and ODIs, in which a team that has almost all the component parts of a great side consistently proved itself not to be one. Yet. The Proteas can look like a top-end Rolls Royce in one match, but when the clock strikes 1-0, they seem to turn into a pumpkin, with Graeme Smith sitting confusedly at the wheel of the pumpkin like a disappointed Cinderella, banging the pumpkin dashboard and muttering, "Where's the accelerator on this thing? Vroom vroom. Come on. Vrooom. Ah, shucks. I could have really done with more from that Prince."

Dhoni's India picked up where they left off in England, batting with insufficient technique and application against the moving ball. A questionable tactic, at best. From a position of first-innings control, if not dominance, they lost 17 wickets for 237, thus counteracting both their own strong team bowling performance and Australia's own insufficient technique and application against the moving ball.

India should be in a better state to recover from their first-Test blooper than they were in England, whilst Australia have shown that they have the capacity to lose a match from almost anywhere. An intriguing series looms as these two fragile giants trade cricketing slaps with each other.

One of the prominent trends this Test year, and particularly of the 2011-12 season so far, has been the performance of bowlers new to Test cricket. In Melbourne, Pattinson again looked a potential world-beater ‒ how was he allowed to slip through England's global recruitment net ‒ and Yadav confirmed his promise with another muscular and skilful display.

(Strap in, stats fans. I've spent far too long working all this out, to give statistical backing to an already widely observed phenomenon, so you can all damn well read it to justify me staying up well past my bedtime for a prolonged and intimate session with Statsguru.)

Australian batting goes 19th century

Dean Brownlie: featured in a yet-to-be-published chapter of the Argus report titled, "Lessons from the Shield across the ditch"
© Getty Images



Another Test, another scintillating finish. Test matches are supposed to provide greater variety and texture than the limited-over game, but recently all they have given us is a monotonous riot of thrilling dramas, a tediously predictable sequence of wildly fluctuating nail-biters. Yawn. No wonder the crowds have been so small. What Test cricket needs is more high-scoring draws.

The Hobart Test* was a historic one for New Zealand, who overcame both their Antipodean rivals and their own batting indisciplines, to record a landmark victory so exciting that even the dolphins in the Tasman sea reportedly bunked off from fish-eating duties and listened in to the radio commentary on their in-built sonar.

(A conversation between two bottlenose dolphins intercepted by an ESPN submarine and translated by Cricinfo's in-house marine biologist proceeded as follows: "Hey, Maureen, that was worth missing out on that shoal of herring for, eh?" "Damn right, Gerald. What a game. Most of the batting was pretty rubbish, but that was sporting theatre of the highest order." "Sure was, Maureen. I never thought I'd live to see the day that New Zealand won in Australia." "More fool you, Gerald. This Australian batting unit has been an accident waiting to happen for ages. And an accident actually happening several times during those ages." "Fair point, Maureen. But I thought that brilliant win in Johannesburg would have given them some good old baggy-green confidence." "No, Gerald, it camouflaged the same old failings. As soon as the ball starts moving around, they're in trouble." "I'm the same with fish, Maureen. If they're going in a straight line, no problem, snap, gulp, yum. But a bit of swing either way, I'm going hungry." "That's because you go at the fish too hard, Gerald. If the fish is moving, you've got to wait for it, try to play it late, with a soft snout. Your problem is that you've had too long eating fish that don't move about, and now the sea has become more conducive to swing again, you don't have the technique to cope with it. Or the patience. Or the discipline. Which I find both strange and disappointing in an experienced dolphin like you." "All right, Maureen, you've made your point. And let's give some credit to the fish, they were the better sea creature on the day." "That's true, Gerald, but you made it very easy for them. The fact is, you're only still in this school because the young dolphins coming through aren't up to scratch yet." "Shut up, Maureen, shut up. I've still got it. I know I'll come good some day soon. I'll catch some mackerel or something. Honest. I'm too good not to. Look at my career record." "Yadda yadda yadda, Gerald. Cripes, we'd better move it. That sounds like a Japanese fishing vessel. We'd better shift or we're going to end up on the wrong side of a bit of wasabi.")

How much does Sehwag matter to India?

Sehwag acknowledges the upward bump in his SIRI percentage with a fist pump
© AFP



Virender Sehwag has blasted his way into the cricketing history books often enough during his captivating career. He has written entire chapters about fast scoring. He has helped his country to the top of the Test rankings, and to World Cup glory. He has set new benchmarks in the illustrious athletic discipline of most-slowly-trudged singles. Now he has clattered the highest ever one-day international innings, becoming the second (a) human being and (b) stocky Indian wizard to score an ODI double-hundred. Of all great batsmen, he has arguably been the easiest to dismiss, but the hardest to contain. When in form, he makes scoring runs appear easier than any batsman of his, and possibly of any, generation. When out of form, he makes scoring runs appear easier than most batsmen do, but not for as long.

His latest assault on the great game's numerical heritage was aided by a pitch that was not so much batsman-friendly as batsman-amorous, and by Darren Sammy shelling a catch so simple that the only explanation was that he was thoroughly enjoying watching the Delhi Demolisher bat. Sehwag had already scored 170, India were well on course for a trunkily elephantine total, and Sammy knew that his entire batting line-up boasted a total of three ODI hundreds (only one of which had been scored since 2007), and that his No. 4 batsman, Danza Hyatt, had passed 50 only once in any List A one-day match. In the circumstances, where the prospect of victory was almost as far-fetched as the stick that Neil Armstrong's dog Mildred brought back from the moon, why not treat yourself to a ringside view of a batting genius in full flow? What better time to drop a player as annihilative as Sehwag than when he has already effectively won the match? As Aristotle himself would have said, had he been a cricket fan, "If you are going to be hammered in a cricket match, better to be hammered with a bit of history."

Despite all this, it was another extraordinary innings by one of cricket's most extraordinary players. In terms of averages, Sehwag has not always been a stellar ODI player. In his first 173 one-dayers, he averaged 31. India won 53% of those matches (excluding ties and no-results). Of the games Sehwag missed in that time, India won 52%. Since June 2008, however, he has averaged 50 in 57 ODIs ‒ India have won 37, and lost 17, a 68% winning percentage in games with a positive result. But in the games Sehwag has missed over this period, India have won 63%. Whether Sehwag is playing or not playing seems to make minimal difference to India's success.

However, over the course of his ODI career, whether Sehwag succeeds or fails has had a major impact on his country's fortunes. I have been on a stat hunt, readers. Stat hunts can be lonely voyages, during the course of which you may find yourself questioning what you are doing with your life, and wondering whether your parents would think all the years of nurturing care they gave you were worthwhile if they could see you hunched over a computer squinting at Gary Kirsten's batting average in games South Africa lost away from home during the years 1996 to 2001. Thankfully, I have returned from this particular stat hunt clutching some numerical antlers that I think are worth mounting on the wall; antlers that might interest more people than just myself. Not quite Walter Raleigh returning from the Americas proudly waggling a potato in the air and announcing to Elizabeth I: "I reckon this would be awesome deep fried and slathered in vinegar, ma'am. Awesome." But still, my wife found the stats mildly interesting, so here goes…

Forty-one of Sehwag's 52 scores of 50 or more (including 14 of his 15 hundreds) have contributed to Indian wins – India have thus won 79% of the matches in which Sehwag has reached 50. They have won 86 of his other 188 ODIs – 46%. So, when Sehwag scores a fifty, India are 72% more likely to win than when he does not.

Of the 37 players who have 50 or more half-century-plus scores in ODIs, Sehwag has had the fifth-greatest impact on results with his fifties. Pakistan were 73% more likely to win when Saeed Anwar passed 50; West Indies had 89% more victories when Brian Lara did so; Andy Flower's half-centuries gave Zimbabwe a 92% greater chance of triumph; and, leading the way – any guesses? no conferring… ‒ New Zealand's Nathan Astle. The Kiwis won 70% of the 57 ODIs in which the Christchurch Clouter raised his bat to the crowd, but only 31% of the 166 games in which he did not. When Astle reached 50, New Zealand were 124% more likely to win.

Key batsmen in weaker teams tend to have a higher "Successful Innings Result Influence" (SIRI) – Arjuna Ranatunga, Chris Gayle, Stephen Fleming and Aravinda de Silva are also in the top ten ‒ and good batsmen in strong teams tend to score lower on this measurement, as they are more likely to have their failures counterbalanced by other team-mates succeeding. Australia have won 84% of the games in which Ricky Ponting has scored 50 or more, but have still won 64% when he has not, so his SIRI score is 31%. MS Dhoni's is 30%, Adam Gilchrist's 25%, Javed Miandad's 16%, Viv Richards' and Jacques Kallis' both 13%. Sehwag and Saeed Anwar stand out for being batsmen in good teams whose successful innings have made victory considerably more likely.

(I understand that there will be millions, perhaps billions, of people reading this clamouring for a full breakdown of all the players concerned. I have therefore provided a full list at the bottom of this blog.) (Don't just scroll down and spend the rest of your day memorising it, this blog is not finished yet.)

What can be read into all this? Frankly, I am not entirely sure. SIRI is a flawed statistic for a number of reasons. Fifty is a slightly arbitrary dividing line, because an ODI innings of 30 can prove decisive (Michael Bevan, one of the finest ODI batsmen, has the lowest SIRI of anyone in the list, 8.5%, but batted in the middle order and played many crucial 30s and 40s). It does not take into account the frequency of a player's successful innings, nor the quality of opponents or importance of the match. And due to time constraints and the desire not to further strain the delicate balance in the ménage-a-trois involving me, Mrs Confectionery Stall and Statsguru, I did not take account of non-result matches or games in which the player concerned did not bat. SIRI is not likely to hotfoot it into a player's career stats on ESPNcricinfo. Or ever be mentioned again after this Confectionery Stall post.

Nevertheless, it is I think a statistic that shows how Sehwag is a cricketer who defies conventional statistics. His career is not without its numerical flaws. His Test average is magnificent, his strike rate is otherworldly. But his Test and ODI records in England and South Africa are poor, and his career ODI average is a decent but unexceptional 35. But part of the thrill of watching him bat is that, aside from the simple majesty of his strokeplay and the ceaseless daring of his cricketing soul, an hour of Sehwag will probably decide a match.

Multistat: 4

Matthew Hayden cracked a thunderous 15 on debut. It was all downhill for Australian openers from there
© Getty Images






The highest score made by an Australian opener in his first innings on Test debut, since Matthew Hayden's unforgettable 15 against South Africa in Johannesburg in 1993-94.

David Warner's dashingly pugnacious third-ball 3 in Brisbane (the shortest recorded innings by an Australian opener in his debut Test innings), followed Phil Hughes' 0 in South Africa in 2008-09, Chris Rogers' 4 against India in 2007-08, Phil Jaques' 2 and Mike Hussey's 1 in the 2005-06 season, and Matthew Elliot's duck in 1996-97.

Debuting Australian openers have thus averaged 1.66 in their maiden Test innings since 1994. Unsurprisingly, this is by far the lowest figure of any Test nation, although the stats show that many debut openers have struggled ‒ none of the 10 Indians and seven Sri Lankans to open on debut since 1994 have reached 50 in their first Test innings.

By comparison, in the same period since Hayden first galumphed to the Test match crease, 15 Australians have made their Test debuts batting at Nos. 3, 4, 5 or 6. Between them, they have scored four hundreds and six fifties, and recorded a collective average of 90.17 (next highest: South Africa, averaging 47). All of this suggests that modern Australian batsmen are 5432% more effective in their debut Test innings when not opening the batting. Which also suggests that Australia should keep picking debut openers until at least one reaches double figures, before flooding the rest of their batting order with randomly conscripted debutants, who will then, with mathematical inevitability, score at least a quintuple-century each. You cannot fight mathematics.

Of course, the likelihood is that these failures have been deliberate. Not, I hasten to add, for any dubious reasons. It is a well-known fact that education in Australian schools consists of little other than sledging and obscure cricket statistics, so Warner, like his immediate predecessors, would have been well aware of the fact that, of the 19 openers to have made first-innings hundreds on Test debut, 11 have never made another century (and only Alviro Petersen has any realistic hope of doing so, unless a more-than-usually fractious contractual dispute in the West Indies gives 90-year-old Andy Ganteaume a chance to add to his 112 in his only Test innings). Eight of these 11 never even passed 50 in a Test again. These facts would, without any doubt, have been coursing around Warner's mind as he plotted the most likely way to ensure himself a long and productive Test career.

Also: The least common place in the batting order for a debutant player to bat: 103 Test debutants have batted at 4 in the first innings of their debut match. (The figures for the rest of the batting order are as follows: 1: 117 debutants; 2: 268; 3: 147; 5: 154; 6: 269; 7: 251; 8: 286; 9: 271; 10: 313; 11: 362.)

Only two debuting No. 4 batsmen have made centuries in their first Test innings – the Nawab of Pataudi, for England in the first Test of the Bodyline series, and Aminul Islam, in Bangladesh's first Test. Neither made another Test hundred. Use that fact wisely. It could open doors for you in one of both of business and romance.

Also: The number of decades (plus a couple of years) from 1928-29 that it took Australia to find the same number of bowlers to take five-wicket hauls on debut as have done so in the last three months. Lyon, Cummins and Pattinson have combined to ensure that there have been as many five-wicket hauls by debutant Australian bowlers since 31 August as there were in the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s combined (or between 1987 and 2008).

Conclusion: He who reads too much into Test debuts is as much a fool as he who wanders into a lion enclosure dressed as a zebra, shouting, "Can we not sort this out with dialogue rather than violence?"

Australia have fluffed their chance at immortality

Also: why Test cricket is like The Wire. And is Phillip Hughes really made out of a chunk of Ayers Rock? Andy Zaltzman discusses these and other thrilling topics (among them: why he is an eternal Chemplast and Napoleon Einstein fan) with Daniel Norcross of Test Match Sofa






Download the podcast here (mp3, 25MB, right-click to save).

Players with pairs lasting two or three balls XI

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Multistat: 134

134

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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