Cricket's improbable patterns

With all of the different statistics held on a scoreboard and the vast number of individual contests that take place in a cricket match, it is hardly surprising that cricket throws up the occasional quirky facts and figures. In fact cricket-lovers and commentators thrive on such occurrences.


Rhyming names
Same initials
Coinciding digits
Perfect numbers
High and low ratios


Rhyming names

In 1979, England played Australia in Perth. Playing in that match for England were Peter Willey and Graham Dilley, while Australia included their star bowler Dennis Lillee. 'What would be the chance of these three being involved in one dismissal?', joked the commentators before the match. By a quite freakish coincidence (the odds must have been more than 100:1 against), Dilley found himself bowling to Lillee, who edged the ball to gully where it was caught by Willey. Result - the oddest sounding dismissal of all time:

Lillee c. Willey b. Dilley 19
(Oddly, nobody remembers the 19!)

Same initials

In 1956, Jim Laker famously took 19 of the 20 possible wickets against the Australians at Old Trafford. The other wicket was taken by Tony Lock, meaning all 20 wickets were taken by bowlers with surnames beginning with an 'L'.

A more unlikely coincidence came in 1983 when New Zealand beat England at Headingley. At the time, Richard Hadlee was near the peak of his bowling powers, but the 20 England wickets were all shared by Messrs Coney, Chatfield and Cairns - an all-C combination.

Coinciding digits

A scoreboard or scorecard will occasionally throw up a coincidental set of numbers.

A Test match in 1990 between England and India became known as Gooch's match after he made a record-breaking 333 in the first innings. (Gooch went on to score another century in the second innings, and then to take the catch that finished the match).

Repeated digits like this occur surprisingly often. In the Old Trafford Test earlier this summer, Pakistan was at one stage on 222 for 2. According to an old west country superstition, if the total is 111 or any multiple thereof, a wicket will fall unless all the players except the batsmen have their feet off the ground. This is why Gloucester-born umpire David Shepherd can be seen hopping on one leg when the total reaches these numbers.

A different kind of number coincidence occurred in 1995, when Brian Lara broke the record for any first class innings by scoring 501 for Warwickshire. It would have been perfect if Lara had been sponsored by Levi's jeans. Unfortunately, his sponsors at the time were a rival jeans company, who didn't appreciate the publicity for their competitor.

Perfect numbers

In the same Test match that Graham Gooch scored his 333, England scored 653 for 4. India needed to score 454 to avoid having to follow on, and although they batted well, they found themselves at 430 for 9, needing 24 more runs. There are many ways of accumulating 24 runs, but Kapil Dev selected the most sensational. He went on the attack, hitting Eddie Hemmings for four consecutive sixes. The very next ball, his partner Hirwani was out lbw. Few follow-ons have been avoided as neatly as that one.

There have been several matches in which the results have been tied, albeit only two of them in Tests. The first, and best remembered, was between Australia and the West Indies at Brisbane in 1960. With three balls left, Australia needed three to win with two wickets left, so at that stage all four match results (win, lose, draw or tie) were possible. Ian Meckiff swung at the sixth ball (overs then comprised eight balls in Australia), striking it towards the vacant acres at square leg, a four seemingly a certainty. Instead, Conrad Hunte intercepted and, as the batsmen turned for the third and winning run, his 90-yard return sped straight to wicketkeeper Gerry Alexander, who ran out Grout. Had Hunte's return been a foot either way, Australia would have won. In came the last man, Lindsay Kline, who played the seventh ball to leg and dashed off for the winning run; instead, Joe Solomon, who had only one stump to aim at, such was the angle, threw down the stumps with a direct hit, running out Meckiff. Such was the confusion, the West Indies fielders celebrated, believing they had won – in fact, it was a tie. In the view of most pundits, this remains the finest Test ever played.

High and low ratios

Cricket matches can throw up situations where there is a true team effort with no individual stars, and other times where one or two players dominate proceedings.

One example of the latter came in the very first Test match, between Australia and England in Melbourne on 15-19 March 1877. The first ball was received by Charlie Bannerman, who went on to score 165 for the home team while his colleagues managed just 72 between them. Eight extras were scored in the total of 245. That means Bannerman accounted for 165/245 or 67.35% of the runs, a level of domination that has never been equalled.

Bannerman was at it again in Sydney in March 1882, adding 199 for the fourth wicket with P S McDonnell, the pair combining for 217 of the 246 runs Australia scored off the bat against England - a whopping 88.21%. The other nine batsmen made 29 with a top score of seven.

Sometimes success is spread around a little more widely. Five Australians - Colin McDonald, Neil Harvey, Keith Miller, Ron Archer and Richie Benaud - scored centuries against the West Indies in Jamaica in 1955, the most in a single Test innings. Somewhat symmetrically, five bowlers conceded a century in that innings.

Occasionally all of the batsmen make runs. When England ran up 636 against Australia at Melbourne in the 1928-29 Ashes series, all 11 batsmen reached double figures. The same happened, rather more improbably, when India scored 359 against New Zealand at Dunedin in 1967-68.

Of course, batsmen can also do uniformly badly, and the record for this in a Test match again belongs to Dunedin where in 1955 New Zealand crumbled to 26 all out. Sutcliffe top-scored with 11, and five batsmen made ducks.

Cricket can get dull if bat or ball dominates the game too much. At Delhi in 1955, India made 450-2 and 112-1, to which New Zealand replied with 531-7 declared in their only innings. At an average of 109 runs per wicket, no Test has even been so dominated by batsmen. Contrast that with the Lord's Test of 1888, where England and Australia managed only 291 runs in four innings (40 wickets), which was 291/40 or roughly 7 runs per wicket.