Lara's runs, and West Indian ruins

Perhaps numbers never do reveal the full story, but they tell a large part of it. Every Friday, The Numbers Game will take a look at statistics from the present and the past, busting myths and revealing hidden truths.

Lara's runs in West Indian ruins
Throughout West Indies' four-Test series in South Africa, Brian Lara was involved in a familiar pastime - scoring plenty of runs while the rest of the team floundered. Lara piled up 531 runs at 66.37. The 202 he scored in a losing cause in the first Test at Johannesburg made him the only player to score two double-centuries in defeats: he had earlier notched up 221 against Sri Lanka in 2001-02. Thanks to the inept West Indian team, Lara is the owner of a record that other batsmen will find rather difficult to break - the highest aggregate in lost Tests. Among the top six in that list, only one - Sachin Tendulkar - is still playing, and given India's improved performances of late, even Tendulkar will have little chance of catching up with Lara.

Top run-getters in lost Tests

All these runs by Lara has also put him in third place in the all-time list of captains with best batting averages. Interestingly, just above him is Graeme Smith, with an average of more than 60. However, Smith has only played 13 matches - will he be able to sustain his record like Lara has?

Best batting average as captain (Qual: 1000 Runs)

Most of the South African attack didn't trouble Lara much, but one bowler who did achieve astonishing success against him was Andre Nel, who nailed Lara five times in eight tries, including all four times in the last two Tests. Nel was the only bowler to return respectable head-to-head figures against Lara, averaging less than 19 against him.

It wasn't the first time Lara struggled against the third seamer of a team after dominating the two main bowlers - jog your mind back to West Indies' home series against Australia in 2003, when Lara negotiated Jason Gillespie and Brett Lee, but kept falling to Andy Bichel.

Lara v South African bowlers

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Gibbs and Smith on the rampage
In only 18 Tests when they have opened together, Herschelle Gibbs and Graeme Smith have already racked up an awesome record: the 301 they added in the fourth Test against West Indies was their third triple-hundred partnership, making them the only opening pair to achieve the feat three times. No other first-wicket combination has managed it more than once.

The Gibbs-Smith triples

Smith and Gibbs are currently the second-most prolific opening pair in the history of Test cricket: they average more than 83 runs per partnership. Among openers who have batted together for at least 20 innings, only Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe have done better. The all-time top-five list includes another pair from the current era - Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, in fourth place. It's perhaps an indication of the quality of opening batsmen today, but more likely, it's a telling comment on the lack of firepower in the pace-bowling department around the world.

Best opening pairs in Test history (Qual: Min 20 innings)

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The Caribbean collapse
Nowhere is the decline in bowling standards more apparent than in West Indies' woeful slide from the most devastating pace attack to a pathetic bunch of trundlers. In the four Tests in South Africa, the West Indian bowlers' stats made for awful reading: Adam Sanford averaged almost 49 per wicket, which was the best of the crop. Fidel Edwards (81), Merv Dillon (89.75) and Vasbert Drakes (91.80) all ended up with shocking figures. It's hardly surprising, then, that the South African batsmen mostly converted their starts into big scores: they scored 12 hundreds - with Jacques Kallis getting one in each of the four Tests - and only four fifties.

In contrast, the South African seamers returned superb figures, with Makhaya Ntini, Nel and Shaun Pollock all averaging less than 30.

S Rajesh is assistant editor of Wisden Cricinfo.