Anantha Narayanan

Using night-watchmen as a tactic has existed down the ages. The night-watchmen regularly padded up an hour before close, and would walk in at the fall of a wicket. If he survived, great. Else, send another one hoping that at least he would survive. I have seen matches in which two such night-watchmen had failed and the regularly scheduled player was forced to bat, this time with his team having lost two more wickets. However, there have been many cases where the night-watchman survived that day and for quite some time the next day.

The Australians, led by Steve Waugh, changed things. A top-order batsman was expected to bat whatever be the time of the day, be it 10.47am or 16.53pm. There is no denying that this worked. Overall this seems to me to be the correct approach. Most other teams, for that matter even the Australians now, take the nigt-watchmen approach.

Our interest here is analytical. Let us first define a night-watchman. This is very difficult especially as there is very little data available on things like the time of the day when a batsman came to the wicket. So we can only take an algorithmic approach using the BPA and the batting position the batsman batted in. We may get it right 95% of the time, but that is enough.

A simple starting definition may be that a night-watchman is one who bats (somewhat) higher than his intended position. But we have to take care of situations such as an accomplished batsman like Gilchrist opening for Australia or Wasim Akram/Dhoni coming in earlier to speed up the scoring. Gilchrist's Batting Position Index in Tests is 6.68, indicating that he is a batsman who has batted at No.7 most of his career. Wasim Akram, scorer of three Test centuries and a BPA of 8.1, batting at number 3 or 4, would have to be taken care of. In order to do a correct job of selecting true night-watchmen for our analysis, it is necessary to define a number of related parameters other than batting position alone.

1. First our knowledge, research and intuition lets us decide who is not a night-watchman. Any batsman whose career-to-date batting average is higher than 25.00 cannot be classified as a night-watchman. No captain is going to risk a batsman of the calibre of Vettori (ave 26.65) to protect Styris (36.05). His wicket is too valuable to risk losing. In this regard, we also have to take care of genuine batsmen like Wasim Akram (22.64), Benaud (24.46) etc who have batting averages between 20 and 25. A slight tweak takes care of such batsmen.

• Career-to-date average rather than career average is taken since by now I have realised the importance of taking this value as against career figure in certain situations. I have also realised the readers' preferences and have anticipated their inputs. It is also true that I have developed the Career-to-date figures and incorporated in my data base because of suggestions relating to earier postings making my task that much easier.
• In this case there is perfect justification. A player's cumulative measures keep on changing. A captain who decides to use a player as a night-watchman at a certain point in his career may not do so at another point depending on changes. For instance, in match 1486 against India, Nicky Boje was used as a night-watchman when the first wicket fell late in the day. His career-to-date batting average at that time was only 14.00. Hence we have treated this correctly as a night-watchman innings even though his end-career average was 25.23. If the career figure was used, this match-winning innings of 85 would have been missed out. This is just an example.

2. We should also ignore players whose BPA is less than 7.00. If a player normally bats in positions 1-6, and he moves up, he cannot be treated as a night-watchman. For instance a batsman with a batting average of 24 and BPA of 5.2 opens the batting, this is not an example of a night-watchman.

3. We have to look at it the other way as well: only innings in which tailenders have batted at positions 1-6 will qualify as night-watchmen innings. A no.10 batsman batting at no.8 is certainly not a night-watchman instance.

4. Finally, the key criterion. An innings will be considered as a night-watchmen innings if the difference between the batsman's BPA (rounded to nearest integer) and the one he actually bats in is greater than or equal to 3. Examples, a no.8 batsman batting at 5 or above, a no.10 batsman opening, a no.9 batsman sent at the fall of first wicket and so on.

• A note on the need to round off BPA. A BPA value of 7.86 indicates a batsman who has batted at no.8 or below more often than at no.7 or above. Similarly a BPA value of 5.18 indicates a batsman who has batted at no.5 or above more often than at no.6 or below. It is necessary to round up 7.86 to 8.00 and round down 5.18 to 5.00. This is how the rounding off is effected.
• The difference criteria of 3 was arrived at after many trials. If the difference was set up at 4, many a true night-watchman innings, such as a batsman with BPA of 9 batting at no.6, would be lost. A change to 2 would mean inclusion of many normal innings, such as a batsman with BPA of 7 batting at no.5.

5. There are situations when a batsmen such as Irfan Pathan or Derek Murray might genuinely have been asked to open a few times for strategic purposes. These are clearly non-night-watchman situations. However there is no way I can separate out these since their rounded BPA might be 7.0 and they have batted at no.1. The only way out seems to take a courageous decision that if a lower level batsman bats at the opening position, it is not a night-watchman situation. It is reasonable to expect that no captain would send his no.9 batsman to open, solely to protect his opening batsman, however late in the day the innings starts. This will also take out quite a few pre-WW1 batsmen such as Blackham who have opened at will. A total of 127 opening batsman innings have been handled by low order batsmen with BPA greater than or equal to 7.

It is true that many of the above criteria may seem arbitrary. However, before readers rush to comment after a 10-minute perusal of the article, I would like to remind them that I have been studying this fascinating aspect for over 2 years and have run programs with varying parameters many times before settling on the methodology. However, I am certain that by the time all readers' comments are received, the analysis would be improved considerably based on their feedback.

A. Analysis results

A total of 563 innings qualify under these criteria. It is possible that we might have missed a few genuine night-watchman innings and included a few non-night-watchman innings. I have aimed for 95% accuracy and am confident that I have achieved that. This works to slightly less than one in three tests. A perusal of the recent Test scorecards will indicate that this is a fairly accurate proportion.

These 563 innings are analysed in different ways below.

B. Runs scored

The top 10 individual scores are listed below.

Year MtNo Batsman            For Vs  Bat BPA Runs(BallsFaced) Batting Avge
Act  Calc   CTD*   Career
2006 1799 Gillespie J.N      Aus Bng  3  9.0 201*(425) (425) 15.69 [18.78]
1977 0811 Mann A.L           Aus Ind  3  7.0 105 (n/a) (214) 18.33 [23.62]
1999 1455 Tudor A.J          Eng Nzl  3  8.0  99*(119) (119) 22.33 [19.08]
1933 0224 Larwood H          Eng Aus  4  9.0  98 (n/a) (221) 16.12 [19.40]
1983 0944 Hemmings E.E       Eng Aus  3  9.0  95 (n/a) (174) 12.88 [22.53]
1978 0832 Wasim Bari         Pak Ind  3  9.0  85 (n/a) (125) 15.33 [15.88]
2000 1486 Boje N             Saf Ind  3  8.0  85 (198) (198) 14.00 [25.23]
1885 0018 Jarvis A.H         Aus Eng  5  8.0  82 (n/a) (322) 16.83 [16.83]
1948 0302 Bedser A.V         Eng Aus  4  9.0  79 (n/a) (183) 15.06 [12.75]
1959 0478 Nadkarni R.G       Ind Eng  4  7.0  76 (n/a) (223) 21.78 [25.71]

• The top innings has been the double-century scored by Gillespie. Coming in at 67 for 1, he lasted nearly 10 hours and remained unbeaten on 201 while 514 runs were scored, including a stand of 320 with Michael Clarke. This must be the leading contender for the most amazing innings in Test cricket history.