This feature expands on my previous\u00a0articles,\u00a0Zero to Sixty \u2013 Important Runs in Test Cricket<\/a>,\u00a0Zero to Sixty \u2013 the First Hundred from Grace to Worrell<\/a>,\u00a0Zero to Sixty \u2013 the Second Hundred, May to Gavaskar<\/a>\u00a0and Zero to Sixty – the Third Hundred, from Richards to Flower<\/a>. These articles\u00a0summarise the performances of top batsmen throughout Test history when their team\u2019s win expectation was 60% or less when they came into bat, i.e. behind or in the balance – what I’m defining as “important” innings. Below are\u00a0the details of the final hundred batsmen under review.<\/p>\n The tables below are basically split chronologically into groups of five batsmen, showing the Player name, peak ICC rating, Average of important innings (iAvg), total number of important hundreds and fifties (i100\/i50), Average of regular innings (rAvg), total number of regular hundreds and fifties (r100\/r50), the differential between important and regular averages (iDiff) and the difference between the number of\u00a0important runs scored as a percentage of all runs and the number of important innings as a percentage of all innings – the abbreviations may be used in the text for brevity. There are a number of digressions to discuss the achieving of various milestones, etc.<\/p>\n
Player<\/strong><\/td>\n| ICCrate<\/strong><\/td>\n | iAvg<\/strong><\/td>\n | i100\/i50<\/strong><\/td>\n | rAvg<\/strong><\/td>\n | r100\/r50<\/strong><\/td>\n | AvDiff<\/strong><\/td>\n | %iDiff<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | JL Langer<\/td>\n | 780<\/td>\n | 50.27<\/td>\n | 18\/17<\/td>\n | 38.40<\/td>\n | 5\/13<\/td>\n | +11.87<\/td>\n | +6.4%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | V Kambli<\/td>\n | 673<\/td>\n | 68.79<\/td>\n | 4\/2<\/td>\n | 28.00<\/td>\n | 0\/1<\/td>\n | +40.79<\/td>\n | +15.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | MJ Slater<\/td>\n | 774<\/td>\n | 48.76<\/td>\n | 10\/16<\/td>\n | 33.53<\/td>\n | 4\/5<\/td>\n | +15.22<\/td>\n | +8.5%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | GP Thorpe<\/td>\n | 793<\/td>\n | 43.60<\/td>\n | 11\/31<\/td>\n | 47.95<\/td>\n | 5\/8<\/td>\n | -4.35<\/td>\n | -3.4%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | BA Young<\/td>\n | 639<\/td>\n | 33.48<\/td>\n | 2\/9<\/td>\n | 27.69<\/td>\n | 0\/3<\/td>\n | +5.79<\/td>\n | +3.2%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n | Justin Langer<\/strong>‘s iAvg did not exceed 40 until his 44th Test, and did not exceed 50 until his 82nd Test, but once there it never dropped below 50 again. Of those with more than 20 important scores over fifty, only Sobers, Hammond and Bradman had a better conversion rate than Langer. Only Bradman, Sutcliffe and Gavaskar have ever exceeded Vinod Kambli<\/strong>‘s performances in important innings through their first seven Tests, although Kambli’s batting average of 99.75 at that stage shaded even the great man’s 99.67. Kambli’s important average was a phenomenal 110.86 at that point. Graham Thorpe<\/strong>‘s iDiff was still positive after 60 Tests but had fallen to around -14 with 90 of his eventual 100 Tests completed, however an iAvg of 101.33 for those final Tests, including three tons, brought his iDiff back up to -4.35.<\/p>\n When Matthew Hayden<\/strong> hit twin centuries against Sri Lanka in 2004 he had twelve i100s and\u00a0twelve i50s\u00a0with an iAverage over 62 – he barely missed joining the 50\/50 club. Shiv Chanderpaul<\/strong> “enjoyed” a high number of important innings (229), but his ratio of i100s (23 in 229 innings, for 10.0%) to r100s (7 in 52 innings, for 13.5%) and total i50s (76 in 229 innings, for 33.2%)\u00a0to total r50s (19 in 52 innings, for 36.5%) are comparable.<\/p>\n Habibul Bashar<\/strong> had massive numbers of iInns (93%) and almost all of his runs were classified as important, with the result that he shows a massive iDiff; his first regular innings was\u00a0not until his 45th. One ton and seven fifties in his first 15 innings saw his iAvg close to 50. Basically the the opposite of Bashar, with far fewer important innings,\u00a0Shaun Pollock<\/strong>\u00a0was pretty consistent regardless. His iDiff was still in double figures after 79 Tests, but 42 innings where he hit just one fifty changed that.<\/p>\n I highlighted Ricky Ponting<\/strong>‘s performance in important situations in the opening feature, where he showed as being second only to Bradman. In his first 20 innings he only faced an important situation seven times, but still his iAvg was over 54, his two tons to that point coming in such a scenario. Just to get a feel for how he could turn it on, there was a period of 13 Tests during which he was struggling with 13 scores under 18 – even then, his average in the important innings was 86.33, otherwise it was under 20! After his 73rd Test his iDiff was over 50, and was still at that level 15 Tests later – it didn’t drop below 40 until his 128th Test. Below is a table showing all of the players who achieved an iDiff greater than 50\u00a0for at least\u00a010 Tests with an rAvg of at least 20:-<\/p>\n WG Grace also had an iDiff over 50 after 11 Tests, however his iAvg was less than 20. There were other examples of iDiff >50 for Ponting, but the above were the highest per number of Tests. No one else in the list except Bradman managed to maintain an iDiff >50 for more than 14 Tests, and Bradman’s\u00a0best was\u00a019 Tests – Ponting got to 88! The man was simply immense. (See also below the table on inter-1000 innings.)<\/p>\n Jacques Kallis<\/strong>‘ iDiff of -8.60 may seem to support criticisms that he didn’t take the match situation into account, but his total of 30 important tons is only one behind Lara. He was the 10th to achieve an average of 50+ regardless of the situation, such that his percentage of important innings and important runs are identical. His iDiff was positive for his first 50 Tests, negative thereafter, although during that period his iAvg rose from 41.36 (6 i100s\/9 i50s) to 51.98 – his rAvg meanwhile rose from 40.32 (1 r100\/7 r50s) to 60.57. His 100s\/50s for each category after 50 Tests were respectively 24\/25 and 13\/16; his conversion rate was always better when the situation was important. Rahul Dravid<\/strong>‘s iDiff remained positive for the final 138 Tests of his 164-Test career. He is one of only three players to reach 10,000 important runs, with Tendulkar and Lara. He had the third highest total of scores of 50+ ever, after Tendulkar and Chanderpaul and level with Ponting.<\/p>\n Digression #1 – Important Runs Milestones<\/em><\/p>\n The next lists show those who were quickest to reach milestones in iRuns, namely 5000, 6000, 7000, 8000, 9000 and 10,000, as well as those who were quickest to progress from each milestone to the next.<\/p>\n Innings to reach 5000 important runs<\/strong><\/p>\n Bradman was the first to reach 5000 important runs and remains the fastest to achieve that milestone in terms of important innings played.<\/p>\n Innings to reach 6000 important runs<\/strong><\/p>\n Boycott was the first to reach 6000 important runs, with Ponting well ahead overall. Many of those in the 6000 list don’t appear in the 5000 list for several reasons, partly because many of the players in the 5000 list retired before reaching 6000, but also because some of those in the 6000 list went from 5000 to 6000 very quickly – the latter are\u00a0included in the table below:-<\/p>\n Innings to\u00a0move from 5000 to 6000 important runs<\/strong><\/p>\n Miandad’s progress is astonishing – those nine innings included six tons, two of them doubles. He needed just 99 runs from his final four Test innings to reach 7000 but fell seven runs short. Sehwag is not far behind. Waugh and Gayle shook off slow starts (121 and 124 innings respectively to reach 5000) to surge to 6000 important runs.<\/p>\n Innings to reach 7000 important runs<\/strong><\/p>\n Gasvakar got there first, but again Ponting was miles quicker than anyone else, taking fewer innings to reach 7000 important runs than Kallis, Jayawardene, Amla and Younis Khan (plus a host of others) needed to reach 5000 runs. Steve Waugh nailed it with his final innings, needing 28 he scored 80.<\/p>\n Innings to\u00a0move from 6000 to 7000 important runs<\/strong><\/p>\n Ponting is also quickest to 8000 and 9000 runs, however only Lara (183 innings), Tendulkar (193) and Dravid (198) reached 10,000 runs. Only Tendulkar went on to reach 11,000 (206) and 12,000 runs (232). Notably Sangakkara (7000-8000) and Lara (8000-9000) achieved those 1000 run transitions in just 11 innings.<\/p>\n Returning to our main review:-<\/p>\n VVS Laxman<\/strong> only hit two tons in his first 55 innings, but what a pair they were – first, the 167 out of 258 at Sydney in 2000, then the 281 which helped turn the Kolkata Test and series the following year. Laxman’s iDiff was positive for 90 consecutive Tests from his 38th Test, only dropping below zero for his final\u00a0six Tests. Marcus Trescothick<\/strong>‘s iDiff went positive in his third Test and stayed there for the remainder of his career. It’s notable that his rAvg was over 41 but slowly declined over the final dozen or so Tests, while his iAVg remained constant – which is the opposite to what I would have expected, considering the issues which led to his early retirement from the international game.<\/p>\n To a certain extent these numbers are irrelevant for Shahid Afridi<\/strong> as he just whales away whatever. Still, they’re pretty good in any case. After six Tests Adam Gilchrist<\/strong>‘s iAvg stood at 236! It was still above 60 after 70 Tests and his iDiff never went negative, and though he was fortunate to face an important situation in less than 50% of his innings he really made the most of them. Matt Elliott<\/strong> always struck me as looking more like a night shift security guard than a cricketer; in direct contrast to Gilchrist, Elliott’s iDiff never went positive.<\/p>\n Though Mark Butcher<\/strong>‘s overall numbers are not great, all his tons were made in important situations, one of course being more memorable than the others.\u00a0Michael Vaughan<\/strong>‘s\u00a0iAvg was above 50 until about half way through his Test career (nine i100s\/six i50s), then 33.13 (four i100s\/seven i50s) after that. Vaughan had a penchant for ‘daddy’ hundreds, as his thirteen i100s averaged over 150 despite never logging a double century.<\/p>\n |