Why Australia is the best in ODI finals, and India the worst

The Australians struggled more than they normally do in the DLF Cup - primarily due to their penchant for experimentation - but in the end normal service was resumed as they romped to their 18th win out of 22 matches in finals of one-day tournaments involving three or more teams over the last seven years. The Aussie juggernaut is a formidable one at normal times, but when the stakes get higher, they bring out a facet that is only the preserve of champions, lifting their game to an even higher level. The ruthless manner in which they demolished West Indies by 127 runs at Kuala Lumpur wasn't a one-off: in the last two World Cup finals, for example, they were so utterly dominant that the games were as good as over even before the half-way stage.

The List had earlier this week looked at players who come to the party in knockout matches; The Numbers Game analyses how teams as a whole handle the pressure in tournament finals. The tables below list the performances of the top eight teams in ODI finals since June 1999.

Australia's record is outstanding, while India are a distant last with a shockingly dismal success rate of 5% (though optimists will point out that India have at least played 19 final games, only three fewer than Australia).

The next couple of tables attempt to analyse how the batsmen and bowlers handle the pressure of a final - does the big occasion gee them up to play above their normal standards, or does it act as a weight which bogs them down? Australia's batsmen clearly relish the big stage, but the same can't be said of the South African, Indian or Pakistani batsmen, who score more runs, and at a quicker rate, in the lead-up matches than in the finals.

What about the bowlers? England and South Africa push Australia to third place in terms of the difference in runs conceded per wicket between the pre-final matches and the finals. Take a look, though, at India: while the bowlers of all the other teams have better stats in finals, the Indians concede a whopping 48 runs per wicket, almost 17 runs more than their bowling average in non-final games.

The two tables above indicate how the batsmen and bowlers of both teams perform in finals compared with earlier games. In most cases, the batsmen seem to struggle to replicate their pre-final form, while the bowlers perform much better to rectify the imbalance somewhat. By adding the difference between the batting and bowling averages for each team, we can check just how much the sides have lifted themselves for the title clashes. The next table does just that.

The Australians are well clear of the rest of the field, as you'd expect: both the batsmen and the bowlers contribute almost equally - another example of just how solid and consistent a team they are - to give them a plus of 12.36 in the runs-per-wicket category, eight ahead of the second-placed Sri Lankans. The bowlers for England and, quite surprisingly, West Indies, make up for their batsmen's poor performances in finals, but for India, it's another story altogether. They have a combined negative of nearly 25 runs per wicket in terms of runs per wicket, while their run rate factor is the worst among all teams as well. It's hardly surprising, then, that India have won only one of their last 19 final matches.