Occupying the crease

The table below lists the 30 batsmen in Test history whose known "balls faced" innings numbers at least 20, and whose average balls faced per innings exceeds 100:

Three things stand out for me. The first is the over-representation of players from days gone by. One has to go to 14th place to find someone (Mark Richardson) who played this century, and in this list of 30, there are only two other, Dravid and Kallis. Test cricket was clearly more a battle of attrition in the past than it is now. But also, there were simply more balls available to be defended in those times than there are now.

Secondly, the obduracy of Herbert Sutcliffe is perhaps understated. His figure of nearly 164 balls per innings is more than 15% higher than the next most obdurate, Bradman. And at a run every 2.89 balls, he was hardly fluent, either. Another player whose high position deserves recognition is New Zealand's Glenn Turner, a very major player in a struggling team

Thirdly, the absence of any West Indians in this list confirms the impression of a carefree approach to batting. The preponderance of Australian and English batsmen is not significant. Many of the Test scorecards involving other countries simply don't have the "balls faced" data available. The highest placed West Indians are Sobers and Chanderpaul, both just over 96 balls per innings. But in the three innings for which we have "balls faced" data, George Headley averaged 139 balls per innings.

Rearranging the table in order of scoring fluency, we have:

In this respect, Bradman (over 20% more fluent than anyone else) and Hobbs show their class, while who would have thought that Ponsford would have rated so highly here? Perhaps we need to re-assess some of these players! Barrington beats Border. Lawry beats Redpath. But Tavare and Bailey are where we expect!

The last table gives the same data for top three most obdurate players at each position in the batting order. The qualification has been reduced to at least ten innings where "balls faced" data is known.

Occupancy of the crease clearly declines as one descends through the batting order, although the figures at number 6 are interesting. It is not only the special character of Trevor Bailey causing this, because Sobers and Chanderpaul also are higher than many players above them in the batting order. I suspect it is a realisation by a number 6 that he is the last specialist batsman, and he sets himself to bat through the innings with the tail.

A study of players at the other end of the scale, those who survive least, is also interesting, but that can wait for another time.