The drivers, and Kaneria's case

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:

Jacques Kallis: a supreme driver © Getty Images

On the drive
Moving ahead with the analysis on various strokes, this week's column explores the drive in the V. This category includes three strokes - the off-drive, the straight-drive and the on-drive - and two of the batsmen who figure in the top four of the cover-drivers' list feature prominently here as well. Among batsmen who've scored at least 300 runs in the V between mid-off and mid-on, Jacques Kallis sits on top of the list by a long way: his average of 659 is more than 300 clear of Scott Styris, who is an unlikely name in the second spot, while Rahul Dravid's impeccable technique on the drive helps him to No. 3.

Styris may be an unexpected name in the list, but his numbers are impressive: not only has he been dismissed just once playing the stroke - which obviously helps his average - he also has an excellent strike-rate, and the strokes in the V fetch him a huge chunk of his runs - 27.33 per cent. The only player who tops that percentage is Matthew Hayden, who has amassed a massive tally of 1246 runs in that region (28.31 per cent of the total runs he's made during this period). In fact, Hayden tops the aggregate list for the off-drive (487 runs) and the on-drive (660), and is pipped to second spot only in the straight-drive list (99 to Ricky Ponting's 130).

The sight of Hayden standing well outside the crease as he prepares to smash the ball down the ground must be an unnerving one for bowlers, but Hayden does give them a chance as well - he has been dismissed playing those drives 11 times, bringing his average down to 113.27. In terms of aggregate, Ponting follows Hayden with 994, but with far fewer dismissals against his name, he easily makes it into the top 10. As in the cover-drive list, many of the big names miss out - Marvan Atapattu is in 13th place with an average of 139.00, one place above Brian Lara (average 133.40). Martyn slips down to No. 19 (101.25), Vaughan is next (93.20), while Tendulkar improves from No. 31 on the cover-drive ranking to No. 22 here (86.20).

	Runs/ Dismissals	Average	Scoring rate	% of total runs
Jacques Kallis	659/ 1	659.00	104.77	15.03
Scott Styris	337/ 1	337.00	142.80	27.33
Rahul Dravid	557/ 2	278.50	95.21	15.21
Marcus Trescothick	476/ 2	238.00	147.37	14.17
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	409/ 2	204.50	84.16	14.56
Ricky Ponting	994/ 5	198.80	117.22	24.13
Virender Sehwag	582/ 3	194.00	118.29	18.90
Inzamam-ul-Haq	384/ 2	192.00	114.97	17.83
Adam Gilchrist	722/ 4	180.50	136.74	23.16
Kumar Sangakkara	471/ 3	157.00	162.41	17.21

(Stats from September 2001, and excludes the recently concluded England-Bangladesh and West Indies-Pakistan series. This piece first appeared in the June 2005 issue of Wisden Asia Cricket.)

How Lara dismantled Kaneria
Danish Kaneria redeemed himself with his five-wicket haul to set up Pakistan's victory at Kingston, but till the second innings in Jamaica, Kaneria had been thwarted by some brilliant attacking batsmanship by Brian Lara. Twinkle-toed footwork, outstanding hand-eye coordination, and an innate ability to spot, and take full toll of, even a marginal error in line and length helped Lara amass the runs and drive Kaneria to distraction.

Over the last seven months, Kaneria has bowled to some of the best batsmen of spin bowling - he was involved in series against Sri Lanka, Australia and India - and no-one has treated him with quite as much disdain as Lara did (though he spoiled the numbers when he tickled one down the leg side in the second innings in Jamaica). It wasn't as if Kaneria was bowling badly either - Ramnaresh Sarwan, arguably West Indies' next-best talent, struggled to read his spin and variations, eking out 15 runs off 72 balls, a rate of 1.25 runs per over.

A comparison of the manner in which the top batsmen from various teams played Kaneria tells the story of just how dominant Lara was. In the home series against Sri Lanka, none of the batsmen managed a strike rate of more than 65 against him; the Australians were a bit better, with Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist managing scoring rates of more than 75 (among batsmen who faced at least 50 balls from him). The Indians struggled to get him away too, as the table below indicates.

	Balls	Runs/ dismissals	Scoring rate
Brian Lara	133	135/ 2	101.50
Justin Langer	121	98/ 2	80.99
Adam Gilchrist	82	62/ 2	75.61
Wavell Hinds	87	64/ 1	73.56
Virender Sehwag	195	142/ 1	72.82
Sanath Jayasuriya	159	101/ 3	63.52
Ricky Ponting	222	131/	59.01
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	168	91/ 3	54.17
Sachin Tendulkar	193	101/ 0	52.33
Rahul Dravid	254	132/ 3	51.97
Mahela Jayawardene	101	39/ 2	38.61
VVS Laxman	133	39/ 2	29.32
Ramnaresh Sarwan	72	15/ 1	20.83

(Stats since October 2004, for batsmen who've faced at least 50 balls)

The lists hints at something else: Kaneria has had outstanding success at keeping things tight against most right-handers (apart from Virender Sehwag), but he hasn't quite figured out the art of bowling to a left-hander. Most of the Australian left-handers got him away with a fair degree of success, as did Jayasuriya and even Wavell Hinds. The table below shows how Kaneria has fared against the right and left-handed specialist batsmen and allrounders (Nos. 1 to 7 in a line-up) over the last four years (since September 2001).

Kaneria versus ...	Runs/ Dismissals	Average	Scoring rate/ 100 balls
Right-handers	1805/ 55	32.82	46.33
Left-handers	1330/ 29	45.86	59.88

(Stats since September 2001, for top seven batsmen in a line-up.)

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