Wicket drought

England persisted with their new-ball bowler James Anderson for the first four one-day internationals in India despite his poor performances. When they finally dropped him in Cuttack, he had gone six matches on the trot without a wicket. Anderson's dry spell would have been ten games had he not taken a solitary wicket against South Africa at The Oval in August. This week we look at players who played the most consecutive matches without taking a wicket.

Anderson's team-mate Andrew Flintoff once took part in 14 ODIs in a row without taking a wicket. The major difference between the two, though, was that Flintoff didn't bowl in any of those games, between July 2000 and March 2001, because of injuries to his back and ankle. The table below includes players who bowled, on average, at least 30 balls per match (to filter out the bit-part bowlers).

Most of them are allrounders, like Flintoff, who played several games as a batsman alone. Some of them, unlike Flintoff, have bowled regularly during those wicketless patches. The table leader Andrew Symonds, for instance, played 19 ODIs in a row between September 2007 and March 2008, and bowled in five of them, without taking a wicket. Viv Richards bowled in nine out of his final 16 ODIs but did not add to his career tally of 131 wickets. Ironically his wicketless run began immediately after he had taken career-best figures of 6 for 41 against India in Delhi in 1989.

Sourav Ganguly did not appear in the table above because he did not average 30 balls per ODI. However, if we relax that restriction and merely look at those who went wicketless in the most consecutive innings, then Ganguly's 16 is right on top. Those 16 innings were spread out over 45 matches, spanning three years between January 2004 and February 2007.

Leaving aside the qualifications, to include everybody who has ever played one-day cricket, who has played the most games without taking a wicket? It's got to be a batsman or wicketkeeper. Or it could be Adam Gilchrist, a hybrid of both. Gilchrist played 287 ODIs and never bowled and therefore never took a wicket. What about the specialist batsmen who played more games than him, though? Inzamam-ul-Haq, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting and Brian Lara are likely candidates but they've all taken wickets at some stage of their careers. Inzamam's last wicket was against Bangladesh in 2002; Dravid's was against South Africa in 2000; Ponting's came against Zimbabwe in 2001; Lara's was also against Bangladesh in 1999. So Gilchrist's 287 matches are indeed the most for a player without a wicket. Mark Boucher, currently on 272, is closing in.

In Test cricket, Alec Stewart's 133 matches is the most for anyone without a wicket. Lara is second with 131. It's difficult to remember Dravid, who has played 129 Tests, ever taking a wicket, but he has: Ridley Jacobs in Antigua in 2002, a match in which all 11 Indians bowled.

Chandu Borde's 18 Tests between 1965 and 1969 are the most consecutive matches without a wicket for a bowler who, on average, bowled at least 90 balls in a match. Borde, however, did not bowl in any of those matches because of a shoulder injury. He ended his career as a specialist batsman even though he was used for as many as 160 overs in two Tests against England in Chennai and Mumbai in 1964.

Ponting and Virender Sehwag have often come on to bowl when their team is looking for a wicket against the run of play in a Test. However, both players failed to provide that breakthrough in 21 consecutive innings - the longest streak in Tests for all bowlers without a qualification. Ponting's wicketless run was between 1999 and 2005 (when he dismissed Michael Vaughan at Trent Bridge), and Sehwag's was between 2003 and 2006.