Unpredictable Chanderpaul, and England's uphill battle

In the first match of the DLF Cup on Tuesday, Shivnarine Chanderpaul reminded us of just how destructive he can get with cricket bat in hand (even as West Indies showed just how fragile and unpredictable they can be). Chanderpaul cracked 92 from a mere 83 balls, with ten fours and four sixes, and led his team to a magnificent start which was then spectacularly squandered away.

Chanderpaul's crab-like stance at the crease and his tendency to nudge and nurdle in Tests belies a more aggressive streak, one which he has increasingly unveiled in one-day cricket. The surprising aspect of Chanderpaul's batting, though, is his tendency to often bat either in fourth gear or first gear, with no in-betweens. Eight matches ago, on a placid Antigua pitch and against a toothless Zimbabwean attack, Chanderpaul pottered 74 deliveries for 46, with only two fours. It wasn't a one-off either: against South Africa in Kingston last year, he crawled to 36 off 95.

Batsmen can usually be classified as aggressive, defensive, or somewhere in between, but it's difficult to do that with Chanderpaul. Let's look at innings in which Chanderpaul has got starts: he has got 30 or more runs 77 times in ODIs, and on more than 50% of those innings he has either scored at more than a run a ball (18 times) or at a strike rate of less than 65 (21 times). The table below lists some of the other batsmen who have, on a significant number of occasions in ODIs, either clubbed the bowlers out of the park or played out dot ball after dot ball.

Among batsmen who've made at least 50 scores of 30 or more, Chanderpaul is the only one for whom the sum of the ultra-quick and super-slow innings add up to more than 50% of the total number of occasions when he has got starts. The list has a couple of other interesting entries as well: Inzamam-ul-Haq has scored at more than a run a ball 44 times, but has stodged on plenty of occasions as well, while Mohammad Azharuddin and Saleem Malik - two batsmen from the subcontinent with very similar, wristy batting techniques - have very similar stats and percentages as well.

The table above has a qualification of at least 50 innings of 30 or more, but had the criterion been slightly less stringent, Shoaib Malik would have been a shoo-in: out of 38 innings when he has passed 30, Malik has scored at a strike rate of 100 or more 13 times, while on seven occasions his scoring rate has dipped below 65.

A year from that day
It's been a year since England regained the Ashes, and in a couple of months Andrew Flintoff and Co. will attempt the even more onerous task of travelling to Australia to try and retain the urn. In the one year since September 12, 2005, England have had a mixed time in the field, winning five matches (including the controversial Oval Test), losing four, and drawing the rest. The numbers are far worse than they were in the 12-month period before the 2005 Ashes, when they had won eight out of 11 Tests. The table below, which compares their performances over these three periods, clearly indicates that the batsmen and bowlers were in splendid form in 2004-05, but they haven't done too badly over the last one year either. Interestingly, through the Ashes, the runs per wicket for the batsmen was marginally lower than the runs conceded per wicket by the bowlers (taking into account only the runs scored off the bat, and wickets taken by the bowlers).

In the last year, the difference between the batting and bowling averages is marginally in the positive, which is an encouraging sign, but a look at the corresponding figures for Australia during this period might slightly deflate England's supporters: in 12 Tests since the Ashes, Australia have won 11, averaging 43.24 with the bat, and 26.46 with the ball.