Few draws, spinners to the fore, and gigantic ODI scores

More results, quick results
For the second time in successive years, the draw percentage hovered around 20% - nine out of 43. Going all the way back to 1960, there have been only two years when this percentage has been lower: 2002 and 2014. Among the top ten years with the least draw percentage, eight have been since 2002, which again shows that the trend of results in Test matches continues to be strong. Of the nine draws this year, four were clearly due to the weather - the two Tests between Bangladesh and South Africa, one between Bangladesh and India, and one between India and South Africa. Of the five remaining draws, the Jason Holder rearguard against England in North Sound was memorable, as were the final moments in Abu Dhabi when England nearly pulled off a win. The really high-scoring and dull draws were rare in 2015.

On the other hand, there were some rather short Test matches in the year. The Trent Bridge Test of the Ashes series lasted all of 176.5 overs, while the Edgbaston game finished in 215.1 overs; India's victory against South Africa in Nagpur came in 247.5 overs, while Australia beat West Indies in 220.3 in Hobart. In all, there were 14 Tests that finished in under 300 overs, and only five that went beyond 400 (among the games that produced a decisive result). In comparison, only five out of 33 result Tests in 2014 ended in less than 300 overs. The average length of a decisive Test match in 2015 was 316 overs, which ranks 13th in terms of shortest result games in the last 56 years (since 1960). In recent years, 2013, 2007, 2006 and 2005 have all had fewer balls bowled, on average, for Tests that produced decisive results.

The batting average this year dropped as well, from 35.96 in 2014 to 32.81, which is quite similar to the averages in 2013 and 2011. That suggests the bowlers had more to cheer in 2015 than they had the previous year.

With five wins and a defeat each, Pakistan and India had the best win-loss ratio in Tests. India's bowling average of 23.50 is their best among the years when they have played at least five Tests, and that made up for the fact that their batting average was only 32.72. The 11 five-fors they took in the year is their third-highest ever, after 13 in 2004 and 12 in 2001. They also had 11 five-fors in 1977. Bowling was India's strong suit, batting was Pakistan's - they averaged 41.07 runs per wicket, and had 13 hundreds in just eight Tests, their fifth-highest in any calendar year.

The team that had a year to forget in Tests was South Africa: they lost four Tests, which equals their fourth-highest in any year, and their batting average of 20.33 is easily their worst since their readmission to international cricket - it's 27% worse than their previous lowest of 27.81 in 1996, a year that also included a tour to India.

In terms of home-and-away stats for teams, the numbers were still skewed in favour of home teams, though not as strongly. Home teams had a 22-12 win-loss record in Tests in 2015, compared to 22-11 in 2014 and 30-3 in 2013. (UAE has been considered as a home venue for Pakistan.) In 2015, Sri Lanka lost four home Tests, England and West Indies three each, while South Africa and Bangladesh lost one.

Good year for bowlers, particularly spinners
The bowlers averaged 32.46 runs per wicket in Tests in 2015, an improvement of almost 9% over their 2014 average. Their strike rate improved even more, from 67.2 to 60.4, which is their best in a calendar year since 1923.

Fast bowlers had a pretty good year, taking 783 wickets at 32.06, but for spinners it was an unusually strong year: they finished with 554 wickets, their second-highest ever in a calendar year; the only year when they had more was in 2004, when they took 577. In terms of wickets per Test, the spinners averaged 12.88 in 2015, their highest in any year since 1975.

It helped, of course, that India hosted South Africa in a home series on pitches that offered plenty for spinners: they ended up taking 95 wickets in the series, 30 more than the next-best series for spinners in the year; it's also the best haul for spinners in any series of four or fewer Tests. Even without including that series, though, spinners took 11.77 wickets per Test in 2015, good enough for fourth place during this period.

Ashwin was the leading wicket-taker among all bowlers for the year with 62, but Yasir Shah and Nathan Lyon also took 45-plus wickets for the year, and there were five spinners among the top ten wicket-takers for the year. Among the fast bowlers, Stuart Broad (56 wickets at 23.82) and Josh Hazlewood (51 at 23.35) were the two leading wicket-takers, while James Anderson and Mitchell Starc also shone with 46 wickets each.

The batting stars
Six batsmen scored 1000-plus Test runs in the year, and though Steven Smith was the leading run scorer among them, Kane Williamson was inarguably the most impressive of the lot, scoring five hundreds in 16 innings - Smith had six in 24 - at an average of 90.15. He finished the year in style too, with an unbeaten 108 in a chase of 189 against Sri Lanka.

Bowlers had a relatively good time in 2015, but the batsmen still had their say, scoring 11 double-centuries in the year, which is the fifth-highest in any calendar year. Six countries were represented in the list, with India, South Africa and West Indies missing out.

South Africa had a year to forget with the bat, not managing even a single century partnership in Tests, the first time this has happened since their readmission into international cricket. Their top two stands of 97 and 96 both came in the beginning of the year, with the third-best being 86 in the Boxing Day Test against England. AB de Villiers was involved in each of the three partnerships, which is quite fitting given that he was the one South African batsman who scored consistently, averaging 49.20 in ten innings. Hashim Amla had a terrible time in the second half of the year, as his career average fell from 52.78 to 50.05 in just seven Tests.

The ODIs
With 2015 being a World Cup year, the format hogged the limelight for the first quarter of the year. The tournament itself was littered with centuries, huge totals, and a crazy number of sixes. There were 463 sixes in 48 matches in the 2015 World Cup; the next-best in a World Cup was in 2007, when 51 games produced 373.

Over the entire year, the average scoring rate in ODIs was 5.50 runs per over, the highest in any calendar year; last year the rate was 5.29. There were also 19 totals of 350 or more, which is more than twice as many as any other year. Six of those scores went past 400, which is more a third of the total instances of 400-plus totals in ODIs - there have been 17 in all. Also, for the first time, more than 100 ODI centuries were scored in a calendar year: there were 107 in 2015; the next best is 79, last year.

Bangladesh's remarkable year
Australia expectedly had the highest win-loss ratio in ODIs, winning 15 games and losing only three, but the surprise packet of the year was Bangladesh, whose win-loss ratio for the year was next only to Australia's. They were superb in the World Cup, reaching the quarter-finals after beating England and losing narrowly to New Zealand, and then were utterly dominant in the home season, blanking Pakistan 3-0 and winning 2-1 against India and South Africa. Bangladesh had never previously won more than five ODIs in a year against the top eight teams; in 2015 they won eight. Their batsmen scored seven centuries in 2015, with Mahmudullah, Mushfiqur Rahim and Tamim Iqbal getting two each; before 2015, their batsmen had never scored more than four hundreds in a calendar year.

Afghanistan had a year to remember as well, entering the top ten in the ICC rankings and performing creditably in the World Cup, but Pakistan disappointed in ODIs - unlike in Tests, where they were at the top of the table, in ODIs their win-loss ratio was poorer than all the top teams.

The top players
As many as 11 batsmen scored 750-plus runs at an average of 50 or more in ODIs in 2015, which is the highest in any calendar year. There were three South Africans in the list, in de Villiers, Amla and Faf du Plessis - the team clearly did much better in the shorter format in 2015 - while New Zealand had three as well (Martin Guptill, Williamson and Ross Taylor); Sri Lanka had two, while Australia, Bangladesh and India had one each. This is the highest number of batsmen who have met this qualification in a calendar year; the next highest is nine, in 2013.

Among these 11, Kumar Sangakkara and de Villiers were the outstanding ones: Sangakkara scored hundreds in four successive innings in the World Cup, while de Villiers played some outrageous innings in the year, scoring the fastest fifty and hundred in ODIs, and thrice making 100-plus runs at a strike rate of more than 190.

The ODI bowling stars of the year were Mitchell Starc, Trent Boult and Imran Tahir. All three had excellent World Cups, with Starc and Boult being the joint leading wicket-takers. Tahir's 37 ODI wickets in the year was easily the best among spinners. The next best was Shakib Al Hasan with 24. Apart from those three names, there was one more who made his mark in the second half of the year: Bangladesh's Mustafizur Rahman took 11 wickets in his first two ODIs, and ended the year with another five-for, against Zimbabwe. In all, he took 26 wickets in nine games at an average of 12.34, and was the only bowler to take three five-fors in the year. He'll be one to watch out for in 2016.

More numbers from 2015

2692 Runs scored by Williamson in all international matches in 2015, the third-highest by any batsman in a calendar year. Only Kumar Sangakkara (2868 in 2014) and Ricky Ponting (2833 in 2005) have scored more international runs in a calendar year.

58 Sixes in ODIs for de Villiers in 2015, the first instance of any batsman hitting 50-plus sixes in ODIs in a calendar year. The previous highest was 48, by Shahid Afridi in 2002.

39.08 The batting average for captains in Tests in 2015, down from 49.40 in 2014. Though Smith, Alastair Cook and Misbah-ul-Haq all put up fine numbers, the overall numbers suffered due to the poor form of Michael Clarke and Amla, who averaged less than 23 from 12 innings, and Brendon McCullum (30.35 in 15 innings).

3 Pakistan batsmen who scored double-centuries in Tests in 2015 - Shoaib Malik, Azhar Ali and Mohammad Hafeez. This is the first time Pakistan have had three double-centurions in Tests in a calendar year.

1999 The last time, before 2015, that a spinner didn't top the wicket-takers' list in Tests in a calendar year for Sri Lanka. In 2015 Dhammika Prasad led the way with 41 wickets, followed by Rangana Herath (37); in 1999, Chaminda Vaas topped the list with 25, followed by Muttiah Muralitharan (24). Since then and before 2015, Muralitharan topped the charts for nine years in a row (from 2000 to 2008), Ajantha Mendis in 2010, and Herath in the remaining five years.

35 Years and 242 days - Adam Voges' age when he scored an unbeaten 130 on Test debut against West Indies, thus making him the oldest to score a century on Test debut. Voges also became only the third batsman to score 1000-plus Test runs in his debut year, after Mark Taylor and Cook.