Sixteen for six, and other horror stories

Sixteen runs for six dismissals. That stat - the lowest aggregate by England's Nos 3, 4 and 5 in a Test - was born out of a woeful performance by Ravi Bopara, Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood in England's innings defeat against Australia at Headingley, and it is approaching cult status. It has added to the intense speculation over the composition of England's middle order for the deciding Test at The Oval. This week we've looked at other dreadful performances by various segments of the batting order: top, middle, lower; and by the entire line-up as well. We've also identified matches with the worst batting performances from both teams' orders.

The lowest contribution from a team's top order (Nos. 1, 2 and 3) came from South Africa's trio of Jack Siedle, Bob Catterall and Bruce Mitchell against England at Old Trafford in 1929. They added only 14 runs between them (10 in the first innings and four in the second) in six innings.

That undesirable record was very nearly broken in 2007 by Bangladesh's top three against India in Dhaka. India's top order had scored three centuries, but when it was Bangladesh's turn to bat, Javed Omar, Shahriar Nafees and Habibul Bashar managed only 0, 2, 4 and 0, 4, 5 respectively in each innings - an aggregate of 15.

The Bopara-Bell-Collingwood performance was the worst by England's Nos. 3, 4 and 5, lowering the bar set in the first Ashes Test, at Lord's in 1888. On that occasion, however, it wasn't the same set of batsmen who failed in each innings. Billy Barnes, George Lohmann and Walter Read scored 3, 2 and 4 in the first innings, while Bobby Peel, Read and Tim O'Brien made 4, 3, and 4 in the second - a total of 20.

Curiously, the three worst performances by batsmen at No. 3, 4 and 5 all belong to South Africa: 12 runs against England in Cape Town 1889, 15 in Melbourne 1932, and the nadir - a paltry 6 at The Oval in 1955. South Africa went into that fifth and deciding Test with the series level at 2-2, but the failures of Headley Keith, Russell Endean and Roy McLean, who scored 5, 0 and 1 in the first innings and ducks in the second, left the visitors with no chance. Tony Lock and Jim Laker were the destroyers of the South African middle order.

The Hyderabad Test in 1969 had it all - rain, riots, problems with umpires, and the lowest aggregate by batsmen at Nos. 4, 5 and 6. On a grassy pitch - it hadn't been cut for a while - India crumbled for 89 in the first innings, with ML Jaisimha, the Nawab of Pataudi Jr and Ambar Roy contributing no runs. Pataudi and Roy made 13 between them in the second innings after Jaisimha completed a pair, leaving India on 76 for 7 before rain came to the rescue.

The aforementioned collapses involving South Africa, against Australia at the MCG in 1932 and against England in Cape Town in 1889, are at Nos. 1 and 2 in the table of fewest runs scored by a team's batsmen from No. 1 to 7 in a Test. At Newlands, South African opener Bernard Tancred scored an unbeaten 26, but the next six batsmen contributed only 12 between them. Not even Tancred managed double figures in the second, though, as South Africa's top seven mustered only 19 on their way to defeat by an innings and 202 runs. At the MCG in 1932, South Africa's top seven managed only 50 between them for 14 dismissals, scoring 22 in the first innings and 28 in the second.

The table below contains the smallest contributions by a particular section of batsmen from both teams in a match. The most recent game in the top 10 entries for lowest top-order (Nos. 1 to 3) contributions is the Harare Test between Zimbabwe and New Zealand in 2005. New Zealand's top three added 38 in the first innings out of a total of 452. Zimbabwe's top three - Neil Ferreira, Brendan Taylor and Dion Ebrahim - were out for 5, 10 and 0 in the first innings, and a few hours later they were out for 16, 0 and 8 in the second. It was only the second, and last time, a team had been dismissed twice in a single day. The top three batsmen in both teams therefore totalled 77 for nine dismissals at an average of 8.55.

The middle-order batsmen (Nos. 3, 4 and 5) from both England and Australia scraped together only 60 runs from 12 innings between them at Lord's in 1888 at an average of 5 per dismissal. (Click here for the table.) That match also had the lowest aggregate of scores for batsmen from Nos. 1 to 7 from both teams. In 28 innings between them, the top seven from both teams managed only 190 at an average of 7.03 per dismissal. (Click here for the table.)

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