The best against top West Indian & Australian bowlers

A statistical analysis of the best batsmen against the top West Indian and Australian teams

25-Feb-2013

Greg Chappell pulls Mike Hendrick, England v Australia, Centenary Test, Lord's, 1st day, August 28, 1980

The last two articles on the two wonderful golden periods of West Indian and Australian domination were received very well and elicited over 300 comments. This blog almost became a forum for discussion amongst the interested readers. It is obvious that the bowlers were the key players during these periods of domination, more for the West Indies teams than the Australian ones. A number of readers also commented and initiated discussions on the batsmen who did well against these bowlers. So I have decided to complete this informative series of articles by doing an analysis on the teams and batsmen who performed well against the West Indian and Australian bowlers.

The cut-off Tests are more or less similar. For the West Indians, I have tweaked the cut-offs to start with Test # 764 (1975) in which Holding made his debut. This ensures that at least two of the selected bowlers are there. Similarly I have since modified the the cut-off at the end to Test # 1371 (1997), the one just before the 3-0 whitewash in Pakistan. In other words I have excluded those last few Tests in which only Walsh played.

The Australian cut-off starts with Test # 1121 (1989), the first Ashes Test. The last match is Test # 1879, during 2008, against West Indies. I have excluded those last Tests in which Johnson was the leading bowler.

I have weighted the runs scored by the batsmen with two relevant measures. The first is the Test venue, home/away as far as the batting team is concerned.

However more important, I have weighted the runs scored by the weighted bowling quality. This is an important adjustment and the relevant points are explained below.

- This is based on career-to-date figures.
- I have also used reciprocal method suggested by Arjun Hemnani, so as to reduce the impact of the weaker fifth bowler.
- The adjustment factor is based all-tests bowling average during the respective cut-off years.
- This works to 29.96 for the West Indian bowlers and 30.74 for the Australian bowlers.

The weighting with bowler quality is essential since the West Indian and Australian attacks have had 4, 3, 2, 1 and even 0 bowler out of the top bowlers. The last instances occurred during the World Series Tests.

Given below are examples of how these calculations have been done. I have presented these examples since these are quite compilcated and readers might be interested in knowing the workings.

Against West Indies

Test Year Batsman Loc H/A-Idx BowQty BQ-Idx Runs Adj-Runs

0862 1979 G.S.Chappell Aus 0.95 25.47 1.18 74 82.9 0835 1978 S.M.Gavaskar Ind 0.95 39.67 0.76 205 148.0

1142 1990 G.A.Gooch Win 1.05 34.56 0.87 84 76.7 1171 1991 G.A.Gooch Eng 0.95 24.78 1.21 154 177.0

BQ-Idx = 29.96/BowQty.

Against Australia

Test Year Batsman Loc H/A-Idx BowQty BQ-Idx Runs Adj-Runs

1405 1998 S.R.Tendulkar Ind 0.95 33.32 0.92 155 136.1 1479 1999 S.R.Tendulkar Aus 1.05 27.67 1.11 116 135.2

1208 1993 B.C.Lara Aus 1.05 37.79 0.82 277 238.5 1453 1999 B.C.Lara Win 0.95 24.06 1.28 153 186.0

BQ-Idx = 30.74/BowQty.

Finally I have also done an analysis on the teams which did very well against the two concerned teams. The methodology is similar to the one used for individual batsmen. The runs scored are weighted by home/away factor and bowling quality.

To get a reasonable number of batsmen into the table I have set 800 runs as the cut-off value for batsmen against West Indies and 1000 runs for batsmen against Australia. Readers can ask for the figures of other batsmen.

First the batsmen who have done well against the 1975-2000 West Indies' bowlers.

Cty Batsman        Career  M I No   Runs-Avge   Runs -  Avge   % to
Avge         (Unadjusted)   (Adjusted)   CarAvg

Aus Chappell G.S 53.86 12 23 5 (1058-58.78) 1020.4 - 56.69 109.1% Eng Gooch G.A 42.58 26 51 2 (2197-44.84) 2465.5 - 50.32 105.3% Eng Smith R.A 43.67 19 35 5 (1333-44.43) 1469.1 - 48.97 101.7% Ind Gavaskar S.M 51.12 21 36 3 (1867-56.58) 1594.3 - 48.31 110.7% Aus Waugh M.E 41.82 19 32 2 (1317-43.90) 1407.8 - 46.93 105.0% Aus Waugh S.R 51.06 20 33 4 (1208-41.66) 1303.5 - 44.95 81.6% Eng Stewart A.J 39.56 13 24 2 ( 829-37.68) 935.6 - 42.53 95.3% Aus Border A.R 50.56 31 59 7 (2052-39.46) 2205.4 - 42.41 78.0% Aus Boon D.C 43.66 22 40 4 (1437-39.92) 1518.1 - 42.17 91.4% Ind Vengsarkar D.B 42.13 24 40 4 (1596-44.33) 1470.4 - 40.84 105.2% Eng Atherton M.A 37.70 16 30 0 (1077-35.90) 1194.1 - 39.80 95.2% Eng Gower D.I 44.25 19 38 3 (1149-32.83) 1324.4 - 37.84 74.2% Eng Lamb A.J 36.09 22 42 3 (1342-34.41) 1452.5 - 37.24 95.3% Ind Amarnath M 42.50 17 30 2 (1076-38.43) 1028.2 - 36.72 90.4% Aus Wood G.M 31.83 17 33 1 (1077-33.66) 1075.5 - 33.61 105.7% Aus Taylor M.A 43.50 20 37 2 ( 984-28.11) 1065.8 - 30.45 64.6% Ind Shastri R.J 35.79 18 33 5 ( 847-30.25) 847.5 - 30.27 84.5% Pak Javed Miandad 52.57 16 28 0 ( 834-29.79) 832.8 - 29.74 56.7% Ind Kapil Dev N 31.05 23 39 4 (1079-30.83) 1011.4 - 28.90 99.3% Aus Healy I.A 27.40 24 40 5 ( 907-25.91) 997.2 - 28.49 94.6% Ind Gaekwad A.D 30.08 19 32 1 ( 812-26.19) 709.4 - 22.88 87.1%

Greg Chappell leads the table comfortably from Gooch. His raw average is 58.78 and is slightly reduced with adjustments to 56.69. Interestingly, during this period, Greg Chappell never travelled to West Indies. Gooch has been truly outstanding against West Indies. He averages 44.43 but scored many of these runs against very tough and fearsome West Indian attacks (a la 154 (out of 252) at Headingley). These adjustments have boosted his average to 50.32. These two being the only two to exceed 50. R A Smith is in third place. Gavaskar's high average of 56 is reduced considerably because a number of these innings were against below-par West Indian attacks. His average is 48.31. Mark Waugh averages 46.93 and is slightly ahead of Steve.

The adjusted averages of the first four batsmen are higher than their career batting averages. Vengsarkar and Wood are the only other batsmen to have a better batting average against the powerful West Indian bowlers than their career batting averages.

Now for the Team analysis.

Australia      658  50 20605 33.89
India          420  36 12189 31.74
England        657  39 18782 30.39
New Zealand    178  15  4863 29.83
South Africa    14   0   410 29.29
Sri Lanka       39   4   935 26.71
Pakistan       273  17  6653 25.99

Australia have done the best against West Indies with an overall average, for the top 7 batsmen, of 33.89. India follows with 31.74. England is the only other team with an average exceeding 30.

Let us now see how the top batsmen fared against Australia between 1985 and 2008.

Cty Batsman        Career  M I No   Runs-Avge   Runs -  Avge   % to
Avge         (Unadjusted)   (Adjusted)   CarAvg

Ind Tendulkar S.R 56.95 25 47 5 (2352-56.00) 2379.2 - 56.65 98.3% Ind Sehwag V 53.43 11 22 1 (1132-53.90) 1171.5 - 55.79 100.9% Win Lara B.C 52.89 31 58 2 (2856-51.00) 3074.6 - 54.90 96.4% Ind Laxman V.V.S 47.32 20 37 1 (1823-50.64) 1933.8 - 53.72 107.0% Win Chanderpaul S 48.99 15 29 4 (1210-48.40) 1271.5 - 50.86 98.8% Eng Thorpe G.P 44.66 16 31 4 (1235-45.74) 1275.1 - 47.22 102.4% Ind Dravid R 52.45 23 43 5 (1740-45.79) 1779.2 - 46.82 87.3% Win Richardson R.B 44.40 14 24 2 (1084-49.27) 977.6 - 44.44 111.0% Saf Kallis J.H 57.44 18 35 4 (1188-38.32) 1334.1 - 43.04 66.7% Eng Hussain N 37.19 23 45 4 (1581-38.56) 1749.3 - 42.67 103.7% Eng Trescothick M.E 43.76 15 30 0 (1013-33.77) 1175.9 - 39.20 77.2% Eng Butcher M.A 34.58 20 40 1 (1287-33.00) 1506.2 - 38.62 95.4% Eng Gooch G.A 42.58 20 39 0 (1527-39.15) 1480.9 - 37.97 91.9% Saf Kirsten G 45.27 18 34 1 (1134-34.36) 1228.6 - 37.23 75.9% Eng Smith R.A 43.67 15 30 3 (1074-39.78) 1004.4 - 37.20 91.1% Eng Stewart A.J 39.56 33 65 6 (1810-30.68) 2008.3 - 34.04 77.6% Ind Ganguly S.C 42.18 20 36 2 (1079-31.74) 1099.5 - 32.34 75.2% Eng Atherton M.A 37.70 33 66 2 (1900-29.69) 1975.2 - 30.86 78.8%

As expected, Indian batsmen dominate the table of performances against Australia. Tendulkar is on top with a base average of 56.00 and improves this slightly through the adjustments. Sehwag clocks in next with an average of over 55. Then comes Lara, who has scored the maximum runs of 2856 against Australians at 54.72. Laxman is in fourth position, again with an adjusted average over 53. Chanderpaul rounds off this table with an average exceeding 50. These five batsmen are the only ones to go past 50. The interesting thing is that the top four batsmen also average over 50 in the unadjusted measure. Richie Richardson averages 52 but loses out heavily on the adjustments.

Laxman has outperformed against Australia considerably. Note also how Izaz Ahmad has outperformed against Australia by 25%.

And the Team analysis, the average of the top 7 batsmen.

India          350  23 11791 36.06
Sri Lanka      221  14  7026 33.94
England        725  41 23134 33.82
West Indies    486  35 14986 33.23
South Africa   318  18  9677 32.26
Pakistan       280  10  8493 31.46
New Zealand    294  15  8748 31.35
Bangladesh      56   1  1569 28.53
Zimbabwe        42   0  1018 24.24

It would have been a surprise if India had not been on top in the team table since, during the 2000s, India have been the most successful team against Australia. They average a huge 36.06 per top-order wicket and are ahead of the next team, Sri Lanka, by nearly 10%. England, buoyed by their twin Ashes triumphs during this period, is next. West Indies also averages over 33. Note the number of teams which have averaged over 30.

To view/down-load the file containing the list of Test matches against West Indies which have been included in this analysis, and the details of players who have scored over 500 runs against West Indies, please click/right-click here.

To view/down-load the file containing the list of Test matches against Australians have been included in this analysis, and the details of players who have scored over 500 runs against West Indies, please click/right-click here.

This is a special request by Yogesh I have done an analysis of his hard classification. Really looking only at the peak years. The cut-offs are given below.

Australia:  1463(1975) to 1879(1990) (100 tests). 76 wins/13 draws - 82.5%
West Indies: 764(1999) to 1158(2008) (122 tests)

No major change against West Indies. Wasim Raja is second and Gooch has slipped a bit.

England has gained a lot against Australia. They are the best side and Pietersen is the best batsman. Michael Vaughan is also right on top there.

To view/down-load the file containing the special tables, and the details of players who have scored over 750 runs against West Indies, please click/right-click here.

To view/down-load the file containing the special tables, and the details of players who have scored over 750 runs against Australia, please click/right-click here.

Greg Chappell

Anantha Narayanan has written for ESPNcricinfo and CastrolCricket and worked with a number of companies on their cricket performance ratings-related systems