Conditions shrink India's chances

India going into this World Cup not only as the defending champions but also as one of the only three teams that have won it more than once. Had they won the World T20 final against Sri Lanka in April 2014, they would have held all three big limited-overs international trophies. In the lead-up to the World Cup, they have either been the No. 1 ODI side in the world or thereabouts. Yet you wouldn't put them among the two or three big favourites to win the tournament.
A lot of this has to do with the venues. The last time India played ODIs in Australia and New Zealand, they failed to make the final of a triangular series in Australia and went winless in a five-match bilateral series in New Zealand. India are half the side when their spinners cannot dictate terms and their spinners are unlikely to be too effective on pitches in New Zealand and Australia, though the big grounds in Australia will give them some breathing space.
Between World Cups, spin bowlers have averaged the worst - 50 - in New Zealand, with an economy rate of 4.97, which is second only to 5.02 in South Africa. Little wonder that India have struggled in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
India will face another unique challenge. By the time the World Cup starts, most of their players will have played without a proper break for almost a year. If they make it to the final of the World Cup, most of them will have been away from their homes for a stretch of 144 days, starting with a Test series and triangular series in Australia.

The odds might not be stacked in India's favour, but the field is limited and the format soft. There is no way a big team can be knocked out in the league stages unless things go nightmarishly wrong, repeatedly, and after that it is a matter of three good days. Temperament has not really been an issue for this side under MS Dhoni, the only major captain from the 2011 event to survive so long. It is not going to be easy with the conditions not in India's favour, but with the nature of the format and shrinking competition in world cricket, don't rule India out.

World Cup pedigree

Until June 25, 1983, India were nobodies in limited-overs cricket. Since that day, when Kapil Dev's team fashioned India's most famous success to date, they have entered every World Cup with high expectations, winning the last one, thus joining Australia and West Indies as the only repeat winners. They have come close on three other occasions: losing the 2003 final and two semi-finals at home, in 1987 and 1996. The alternate editions, 1992, 1999, and 2007 have been strictly forgettable. The law of averages then doesn't make for good news after their 2011 success.

X-factor

The oldest member of the side, one of the few survivors from the 2011 win, MS Dhoni might be the most familiar face in cricket today, but he still has it in him to surprise. With his tactics, with his field placements, with his batting. It is hard to imagine India doing well in this World Cup without Dhoni being at his best as a batsman, wicketkeeper, and captain.

Players in focus

Virat Kohli
Virat Kohli began to believe he belonged in international cricket when he last toured Australia, scoring a hundred in the Adelaide Test and then following up with an 86-ball 133 in an ODI in Hobart ODI that propelled India to 321 in 36.4 overs. Now - despite a lean 2014 - he is India's batting mainstay. How well he comes out of this inevitable bad patch will have a big bearing on how well India do in the World Cup.

Suresh Raina
To the spirit of the team, Raina's worth is far more than the runs he scores. He is India's best slip fielder. He bowls handy part-time offspin. He is selfless, in that he bats in difficult positions. And he doesn't look at his own average, which, while not great, is on the mend after he returned to the side with a Man-of-the-Series performance in the ODIs in England in mid-2014.

Ravindra Jadeja
India's best one-day bowler since the last World Cup. He is excellent in the field too; his rocket arm will be required in Australia. He was picked despite a shoulder injury. That shoulder, which the selectors expect to be fine in time for game one, will be needed. On India's last trip to New Zealand, he single-handedly tied a game off his bat. Against all expectations, Jadeja has carved himself a place as a successful international cricketer; now he enters the biggest stage.

Fact box

Previous World Cups
               1975: Group Stage
               1979: Group Stage
               1983: Winners
               1987: Semi-finals
               1992: Group Stage
               1996: Semi-finals
               1999: Super Sixes
               2003: Finalists
               2007: Group Stage
               2011: Winners

Squad
MS Dhoni (capt & wk), R Ashwin, Stuart Binny, Shikhar Dhawan, Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami, Akshar Patel, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Umesh Yadav


Fixtures
         February 15, v Pakistan, Adelaide
         February 22, v South Africa, Melbourne
         February 28, v UAE, Perth
         March 6, v West Indies, Perth
         March 10, v Ireland, Hamilton
         March 14, v Zimbabwe, Auckland

Game style

 India's pace attack is the weakest among major teams. If their spinners are not effective, almost every match will bring extra pressure on the batsmen. Since no target is deemed safe, India normally prefer chasing; they don't want the bowlers to crumble during the decisive moments. Contrary to popular opinion, India will need spicy pitches to bring their bowlers into the game.
Otherwise they will remain spectators.

Prediction

It is hard to predict when the format is as relaxed as this World Cup's. All you need is three good matches - because your qualification for the knock-out rounds is all but a foregone conclusion - but if one were to stick one's neck out, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka will be the favourites for the semi-final.

World Cup stats

• India's batsmen have scored most ducks in World Cup matches - 48, followed by 47 each by England and Pakistan
• India is likely to enter the tournament with no batsman with 300 runs in World Cup matches. Virat Kohli has the highest with 282

Most expensive Pakistani bowler

Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor have been in red-hot ODI form since the start of the home series against India last year

Stats highlights from the second ODI between New Zealand and Pakistan, in Napier

4Number of scores higher than the 369 that New Zealand hit in this match in ODIs. The highest they have scored in ODIs is 402 for 2, against Ireland in 2008. New Zealand's total today is their highest against any team other than Ireland and Zimbabwe. This is also the fourth-highest total scored in ODIs in New Zealand.
12 Number of fifty-plus scores Kane Williamson has managed in just 18 innings since the beginning of 2014. During this time he has got out without scoring at least 40 only four times. Only Sangakkara has hit more fifty-plus scores during this period. Williamson has scored 2452 runs at an average of 46.26 from his 60 ODI innings. While in his first 30 innings he had hit 827 runs at a modest average of 31.80, his last 30 innings have produced 1625 runs at an average of 60.18.

Kane Williamson - career split

	Runs	Ave	SR	100s/50s
First 30 inns	827	31.80	74.37	2/3
Last 30 inns	1625	60.18	87.83	4/12
Career	2452	46.26	82.78	6/15

66.63 Ross Taylor's average against Pakistan in ODIs - his best against any of the Test teams. This was Taylor's third century against Pakistan, which is also the most he has hit against any team. Taylor was playing his 150th ODI, becoming only the 12th New Zealand player to do so.
0 Number of times New Zealand's Nos. 3 and 4 had both scored hundreds in the same ODI before this match. They had come closest to achieving this way back in 1994-95, when Adam Parore got out for 96 batting at No. 3, with Ken Rutherford getting his century at No. 4 against India.
93 Runs conceded by Bilawal Bhatti in this match; this equals the most any Pakistani bowler has conceded in an ODI. Wahab Riaz had also conceded 93 against South Africa in 2013.
15 Boundaries conceded by Bhatti in this match - the most any Pakistani bowler has conceded in an ODI since 2001. Five of those boundaries were sixes, which equals the most sixes any Pakistani bowler has conceded in ODIs since 2001.
18.80 Younis Khan's batting average in ODIs in Australia and New Zealand. He has hit only one fifty in 16 innings in these countries, back in 2002 against Australia.
0 Number of times Pakistan's openers had put up a century partnership while chasing a target of 300 or more before this match. The highest their first wicket had added was 97 against Bangladesh in the Asia Cup last year.

How effective are left-right batting pairs?

Australia have been the only side in the last 15 years to have had consistently dominant left-handers in their batting order

                 

In cricket, being left-handed comes with some peculiar advantages (and disadvantages). Bowlers, on the whole, tend to be right-arm bowlers and find it difficult to get lbws against left-handers if the ball isn't swinging. On the other hand, this same predominance of right-arm bowlers means that lefties invariably face a massive rough outside their off stump as a Test match progresses.
The desire for a left-right batting combination has produced many a change in batting orders. Commentators often argue that in ODI cricket, left-right combinations might find it easier to score quickly, as the bowler has to keep adjusting his line and length and bowl to different fields if the strike is rotated regularly. This increases the chance that the bowler may bowl a bad ball. To take a hypothetical case, should this extend to promoting JP Duminy ahead of Faf du Plessis to join Hashim Amla at the wicket? Is there any evidence to suggest that left-right stands are more prolific than others?

 © Kartikeya Date

Enlarge

I looked at all ODI partnerships since 1979 in ODI games featuring only Test teams (excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe). I have considered the top seven batting positions only. For most of the 1980s and early '90s, one out of four batsmen in the top seven was a left-hander. Starting in the late '90s, this has increased to one in three.
Except for a short period in the late '90s, there has been no significant difference in the run-scoring abilities of left- and right-handers in ODI cricket. From the start of 1995 to the end of 2000, 70 left-handers batted in the top seven of an ODI innings in matches featuring only the top eight Test teams, and averaged 33.6. In these games, 199 right-handers averaged 29.3 batting in the top seven. You can imagine the names - Ganguly, Bevan, Kirsten, Jayasuriya, Lara, Gilchrist, Thorpe, Knight, Twose, Fleming - every team had a top left-hander, if not two, in those years.

 

Now that we have some idea of how left- and right-handers have performed over the years, let's see if the partnership record is a variance. In other words, if, despite the overall quality of left- and right-handers being more or less equal, left-right stands are more prolific, perhaps there is something to the idea that teams should try and play left-right combinations whenever possible, even if it means shuffling the batting order at short notice.

 © Kartikeya Date

Enlarge

First, let's look at how frequently the three types of partnerships occur - two right-handers, two left-handers, and left-right pairs. In the 21st century, two right-handers have been as likely to bat together in an ODI as a left-right pair. This change from the 1980s, when right-hand pairs predominated, is understandable given the overall increase in number of left-handers in international teams.
Next, let's look at partnership averages. The evidence suggests that left-right partnerships have done better than right-right partnerships only during periods when left-handers have been better than right-handers overall (prominently so in the late 1990s). In the 21st century, two right-handers have batted together 5984 times in for the top six wickets in an ODI and produced 35.3 runs per stand. Two left-handers have batted together 1317 times and averaged 34.4 runs per stand. Left-right pairs have batted 6767 times and averaged 36.3. So left-right pairs have done two runs better than two left-handers, and one run better than two right-handers. During this time, 154 left-handers have averaged 32.8 in ODIs, the same as the 341 right-handers have. So perhaps there is some minor benefit to left-right pairs. If you look at median stands, the median left-right stand in the 21st century has been worth 23 runs. The median left-left and right-right stands have been worth 22 runs each.

 

 

Batting Average against each bowling opponent in the 21st century

OPPONENT	LEFT-LEFT	LEFT-RIGHT	RIGHT-RIGHT
Australia	34.47	30.09	39.26
England	38.8	38.5	36.75
India	36.66	39.61	35.77
New Zealand	33.62	37.24	36.53
Pakistan	27.82	36.7	36.8
South Africa	35.47	34.89	32.14
Sri Lanka	34.39	34.93	35.74
West Indies	36.18	40.5	39.84

Let's look at how teams have done against different opponents in the 21st century. The record in the table below does not, in my view, provide any clear evidence to suggest that left-right pairs have done better than right-right or left-left pairs. If anything, it suggests that weak bowling attacks have struggled against left-right pairs. New Zealand have not had a strong attack for much of the decade. Their current attack is perhaps their best since the days of Shane Bond. India have fared best when they haven't been faced with a left-hander. Pakistan on the other hand have dominated left-left pairs.
Finally, let's look at batting teams in the 21st century. In general, teams with strong left-handers have done well with at least one left-hander at the wicket. Australia have been the only side to have consistently dominant left-handers in their batting order in the last 15 years. India have had Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Shikhar Dhawan, Suresh Raina, and to a lesser extent, Sourav Ganguly.

Batting average by combination

TEAM	LEFT-LEFT	LEFT-RIGHT	RIGHT-RIGHT
Australia	41.58	40.15	41.64
England	33.19	33.3	34.36
India	31.76	40.05	39.14
New Zealand	24.96	32	31.68
Pakistan	31.64	32.73	32.55
South Africa	31.08	38.41	40.32
Sri Lanka	33.46	36.58	34.67
West Indies	35.4	32.48	28.37

The record does not suggest that there is any advantage to sending a left-hander in to join a right-hander (or vice versa), compared to sending a right-hander in to join a right-hander, or a left-hander to join a left-hander. Further, it shows that bowlers should be used to bowling against left-right pairs since such pairs are as common as right-hand pairs in contemporary international cricket. This raises an interesting point when one is comparing bowlers from the 1970s and early 1980s with bowlers from more recent times. The latter have had to be just as effective against good-quality left-handers as they have against good-quality right-handers.
Left-right pairs have no systematic advantage over other types of batting pairs in the ODI game. If the choice is between a left-hander and right-hander, the batsman in better form ought to be selected, regardless of how many other batsmen of that type are already present in the line-up. In Test matches, the story may perhaps be different.

When will we see the first truly freelance cricketer?

                                       

Buy my book, check out my instructional video, hire me to play in your T20 side

Jon Hotten

Grand Slam tennis champ Andy Murray had what was generally accepted as a bad year last year, undergoing surgery on his back, losing his coach, Ivan Lendl, and then restructuring his "backroom team", apparently after they found it hard to accept Lendl's replacement, Amelie Mauresmo. Murray's assistant coach and his fitness coach took their leave.
Considering that Murray travels the world with his girlfriend and sometimes his mother, also a distinguished coach, his career has the dimensions of a mini-business - lucrative, sure, yet dedicated to the kind of fine margins that separate the very best players from the pack. Murray has won more than $34m in prize money, so his investment in micro-management is worthwhile.

It's a situation that occurs regularly in golf too. At the time of Justin Rose's US Open win two years ago, he credited his caddy, his swing coach, his manager, his psychologist and his wife as vital members of his entourage. Rose has won more than $41m in his career to date.
These vast sums exceed those currently available to elite cricketers, but you wonder how long it will be until the truly freelance player begins to build something similar around their career.
Kevin Pietersen finds himself in such a position, not retained by Surrey and perhaps restrained by the salary cap in finding another county. His immediate future is one of jet-hopping to franchise tournaments, a slave to their calendar. How should he manage a lifestyle no longer geared to consistency? The maintenance and improvement of his skills falls beyond the usual support systems of a central contract or a county set-up. Essentially he is on his own until he gets to his franchise, where he may or may not have worked with the coaching staff before.
Pietersen noted how hard he found playing in England's T20 Blast last season, where he batted just once a week and most of his team-mates were engaged in other competitions in the meantime.
It's easy to step a little further into the future, when such players are perhaps younger and the money on offer in franchise cricket is more substantial, and see the idea of an individual coaching set-up beginning to emerge.
T20 is a specialist game, and as its roles become increasingly defined, the specialist freelance - a guy who rocks up and bowls four overs at 95mph, for example, or a dedicated finisher - may envision a career where he arrives at his franchise as a fully realised package, his training, fitness, match planning and preparation all part of the service he offers.
Such specialist coaches, attached to a single player rather than a group, could mean a deepening of technical thought in very specific areas, resulting in the kind of marginal gains that separate the great from the very good and the merely good.
Golfers and tennis players carry entourages because they believe that they will pay for themselves in the end. Individual sports have always been lonely places too, a constant grind of travel, hotels, training, preparation, play, and the long hours of waiting. While the franchise cricketer may not be quite as isolated, constant team-hopping makes its own demands; endless adjustments to new regimes. The stable base of a permanent coaching environment may improve performance too. And where else should the franchise player turn in the event of injury, especially long-term?
Ultimately such a notion would come down to finance. It seems fanciful at the moment. Yet when a tournament catches the public imagination, as this year's Big Bash has, the sums available to a match-winner will begin to escalate. It may make sense for both players and franchises to provide and buy off-the-shelf solutions.
Now maybe I'll set up a management company to kick it all off.

The last of Sanga

Kumar Sangakkara's stellar ODI career is approaching its final denouement. He has already played his last ODI in Sri Lanka. It is very much hoped that he will continue to grace Test cricket yet a while, but after the current tour of New Zealand and the small matter of a World Cup, his ODI adventure will be over.
It has been quite some ride. As Sangakkara has grown into his game, his performances have reached stratospheric levels. The statistics are mind-boggling. In 2014, he scored 2868 runs across the three formats of international cricket, beating Ricky Ponting's record for runs scored in a calendar year. He has scored over 1000 runs in ODIs in a calendar year for the last four years running, and has done so six times in total. He has accumulated 13,580 ODI runs, which puts him third on the all-time list. He has 20 ODI hundreds and a staggering 93 ODI fifties. He has 472 ODI dismissals to his name, 376 as wicketkeeper, including 96 stumpings. He has won, among others, the ICC's ODI Cricketer of the Year award in 2011 and 2013, and the Man of the Match in the 2014 World T20 final.

Sangakkara is a cricketer created rather than born. He was, in fact, a schoolboy tennis prodigy, and concentrated on cricket relatively late in the day. He might lack the natural talent of Aravinda de Silva or the intuitive brilliance of Mahela Jayawardene, but through sheer will and an immense capacity for hard work, Sangakkara has made himself the most successful batsman Sri Lanka has produced.
Much in the vein of Younis Khan, another master technician, Sangakkara is a remorseless accumulator of runs. He scores steadily, without fuss or spectacle. He is not above beauty, demonstrated by his unfurling cover drive, but he is at heart a pragmatist. He plays more often than not in crisp straight lines, eschewing the delicate cuts and the wristy brilliance of his more aesthetically pleasing countrymen.
Paradoxically, for a man who is a fiercely proud Sri Lankan, his batting style is curiously un-Sri Lankan. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he has taken those elements of Sri Lankan style that work for him and eliminated the more extravagant aspects. For Sangakkara is a fine calculator of risk, an expert judge of probabilities, his senses keenly calibrated to sniff out the tiniest advantage or the merest suspicion of danger. He is always looking for any innovation that will keep him ahead of the opposition, as when he spurned IPL riches to prepare for the tour to England with a stint in county cricket with Durham. His preparation is always meticulously planned, his practice relentless. It's exhausting simply to think about the amount of work that must have gone into maintaining those standards over such a long period of time.

He plays more often than not in crisp straight lines, eschewing the delicate cuts and the wristy brilliance of his more aesthetically pleasing countrymen

The cornerstone to his success has been self-belief and will power. Perhaps where he and Jayawardene will be most missed is in the attitude they bring to the Sri Lankan team, and the example they set, of expecting to win, of not taking a backward step, of truly believing that they are more than good enough to compete with the best in the world. The other example he and Jayawardene set is in their charitable works. Sangakkara's Bikes for Life project, under the auspices of Kushil Gunasekera's Foundation of Goodness, has gifted 3000 bicycles to needy villages in war-affected northern Sri Lanka.
Sangakkara, like all the greats, has a sense of occasion. He ensured he scored a Test hundred on his last appearance at Lord's. In his last ODI match in his home town (if not on his home ground), Sangakkara proceeded to yet another hundred, against an enervated England attack. The occasion demanded it, and Sangakkara delivered.
He will undoubtedly seek a fitting send-off in the upcoming World Cup. The 2011 World Cup final is probably the failure he feels most hurt by. Sangakkara, then the captain, was a helpless figure behind the stumps, as Gautam Gambhir and MS Dhoni casually dismembered the Sri Lankan bowling attack. It is the only time Sangakkara has looked lost on a cricket field. He will, however, need a lot more from his team than they have demonstrated in New Zealand, notably from the middle order and the bowling attack, if he is to achieve that ambition.
Perhaps we should with on a quixotic moment that epitomises the enduring charm of cricket. In his last ODI on home soil, at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, a match in which Jayawardene also made his final appearance in Sri Lanka, both men were upstaged by Tillakaratne Dilshan, the master of cricketing theatricality. With victory assured, Angelo Mathews demonstrated that there is still, even at this level, romance in cricket. He tossed the ball to Jayawardene. When James Tredwell obligingly trotted past a ripping offbreak, the last wicket to fall recorded a new partnership for the old firm: "st Sangakkara b Jayawardene". Champions always find a way to make their mark.

The James Anderson factor

In the last couple of years Anderson has been the most-feared new-ball bowler in ODIs, but over the course of an entire innings South Africa have been the best bowling unit

James Anderson averages 16.40 at an economy rate of 3.22 when bowling in the first ten overs of ODIs over the last couple of years

One of the key features of the 2011 World Cup was the number of overs bowled by spinners. In 49 matches, they bowled 1983.3 overs; the previous-highest in a World Cup was 1350, in 51 matches in the 2007 tournament in the West Indies. Spinners bowled plenty of overs with the new ball too - 402.2 within the first 15 overs of an innings, up from 86.2 in 2007, and 105 in 2003.
In 2015, though, things are likely to be different. With two new balls around, and pitches which offer a little more pace and bounce, fast bowlers are likely to be more influential, especially at the start of the innings. Teams with a more potent new-ball attack should be able to impose themselves on matches more often, and in that aspect, England should be well served this time around, with James Anderson leading the way.
In 2011, England were the least incisive team with the new ball, among the top sides. They managed seven wickets within the first ten overs, conceding 54.57 runs per wicket, and 5.45 runs per over. In terms of average and economy rate, the only side that did worse than England was Netherlands, taking four wickets at 86.75 and an economy rate of 5.78 runs per over. South Africa were the most incisive bowling team in the first ten, taking 14 wickets at 22.14, while Pakistan were the most economical, conceding 3.71 per over. England were far away from those benchmarks on both counts. Tim Bresnan was the only England bowler to make a mark with the new ball, taking four of England's seven wickets, at an average of 22.50. Anderson took a solitary wicket, conceding 93 runs in 17 overs, while Stuart Broad went wicketless, conceding 47 in eight overs. James Tredwell, the offspinner, picked up two wickets in two overs.
In the two years leading to this World Cup, though, England have been the best bowling team in the first ten overs, taking 79 wickets at an average of 28.54, marginally better than South Africa's 76 wickets at 28.82. Anderson has been at the forefront of England's new-ball attack, taking 22 wickets in 112 overs at an average of 17, a far cry from one wicket in 17 overs during the 2011 World Cup.
England's problem - and South Africa's advantage - has been their bowling in the rest of the innings. In the middle overs (between the 11th and 40th), they concede almost 40 runs per wicket, which is among the highest of all teams, while in the last ten they go at more than eight runs per over, worse than all teams except Zimbabwe. South Africa, on the other hand, average less than 30 runs per wicket in the middle overs, and concede 6.91 per over in the last ten, the best among all teams.
Chris Woakes has been England's most regular bowler in the death overs, and has taken 15 wickets in 222 balls, but has also conceded 336 runs, an economy rate of 9.08 per over. Bresnan, Broad and Steven Finn have all gone at more than 8.3, and they've all contributed to England's poor economy rate at the end of an innings.
South Africa, on the other hand, have had three outstanding bowlers at the death: Dale Steyn has taken 15 wickets at an average of 18 and economy rate of 6.94, Morne Morkel has 20 wickets at an economy rate of 7.16, and Imran Tahir's ten wickets have come at an average of 20.20 and an economy rate of 5.29.

Break-up of bowling stats for teams since Jan 2013

		First 10 overs		10.1 to 40		Last 10 overs
Team	Inngs	Average	Econ rate	Average	Econ rate	Average	Econ rate
England	50	28.54	4.51	39.40	5.21	24.53	8.02
South Africa	51	28.82	4.29	29.55	4.95	18.47	6.91
Sri Lanka	68	30.93	4.54	33.90	5.11	23.02	7.60
Australia	47	33.47	4.46	32.71	5.06	20.42	7.32
West Indies	42	33.66	4.57	41.30	5.15	24.05	7.46
New Zealand	43	35.46	4.45	37.49	5.29	18.67	7.62
Bangladesh	27	36.32	4.66	29.57	4.90	30.17	7.88
Pakistan	52	36.55	4.56	34.47	4.64	23.62	7.45
India	60	37.63	4.57	32.45	5.00	22.58	7.29
Zimbabwe	29	51.04	4.40	46.65	4.93	28.01	8.21

All of those numbers in the second part of an innings combine to make South Africa the best bowling team over the last couple of years: they average 27.72 runs per wicket, almost four runs fewer than the next-best side. They are also one of only two teams to concede less than five runs per over. Clearly, their ability to perform well at all stages of an innings makes them especially formidable, as it's a skill that some of the other teams lack.

Overall bowling stats for teams in ODIs since Jan 2013

Team	Matches	Wickets	Average	Econ rate	Str rate
South Africa	53	410	27.72	4.95	33.5
Australia	47	318	31.41	5.11	36.8
India	62	447	31.78	5.17	36.8
Bangladesh	27	174	32.57	5.10	38.3
Sri Lanka	69	455	32.63	5.19	37.7
New Zealand	44	310	32.87	5.35	36.8
England	51	352	33.36	5.33	37.5
Pakistan	52	351	33.43	4.91	40.7
West Indies	42	266	36.35	5.25	41.4
Zimbabwe	30	165	44.28	5.25	50.5

Coming back to the first ten overs, it's obvious that England have a champion performer in Anderson. His ability to swing the new ball both ways with no discernible change in action, plus his impeccable control against both right and left-handers makes him a handful, especially in favourable conditions. Among the top wicket-takers in the first ten overs in ODIs over the last couple of years, Anderson's numbers stand out. He averages 16.40 at an economy rate of 3.22, while the next best average is 25, and the next best economy rate 4.1.
The other England bowlers aren't in the same league: Finn has 11 wickets in the first ten overs at 33, Chris Woakes has eight at 39.50, and Broad has seven at 40.70. The gulf between Anderson and the other England bowlers was again painfully apparent in the tri-series in Australia over the last couple of weeks: in the four matches he played, Anderson took 3 for 52 from 20 overs in the first ten - an average of 17.33, and economy rate of 2.60; the other England bowlers - Woakes, Broad and Finn - had combined figures of 1 for 176 from 30 overs.

Bowlers with the most wickets in the first 10 overs in ODIs since Jan 2013*

Bowler	Overs	Wickets	Average	Run rate	Str rate
Mohammad Irfan	162.0	28	25.28	4.37	33.52
Nuwan Kulasekara	159.5	24	27.45	4.12	39.96
James Anderson	112.0	22	16.40	3.22	30.55
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	202.0	22	37.90	4.24	52.70
Lasith Malinga	116.2	20	26.35	4.53	33.24
Jason Holder	112.2	18	28.00	4.48	35.47
Clint McKay	115.5	16	29.06	4.01	38.61
Mohammed Shami	129.0	16	36.06	4.47	48.38

The opening-partnership stats against each team is further indication that facing England's new-ball attack - Anderson, particularly - is one of the most challenging tasks for an opening pair. The average opening partnerships are the least against England and South Africa, while it's one of the highest against India.
For opposition teams, the message when playing England is clear: while Finn was excellent in a couple of games against India in the tri-series, the consistent threat in the line-up is Anderson. See him off, and especially in the first ten overs, and life will get considerably easier thereafter.

Opening partnership stats versus each team since Jan 2013

Opposition	Inngs	Ave stand	Run rate	100/ 50 stands
Zimbabwe	30	49.63	4.67	6/ 5
India	60	39.90	4.89	6/ 11
West Indies	42	39.28	4.96	3/ 8
Australia	47	37.62	5.21	6/ 8
Bangladesh	27	35.57	4.96	2/ 5
New Zealand	43	33.88	4.92	1/ 14
Pakistan	52	32.44	4.87	3/ 9
Sri Lanka	68	29.97	4.93	3/ 10
England	50	28.78	4.97	3/ 5
South Africa	51	28.01	4.70	2/ 7

Some numbers were changed in the table to exclude extras (lb, b) which had been attributed to the bowlers.

Rohit or Rahane for overseas opener?

Rohit Sharma has been outstanding as an opener in home ODIs, but his overseas numbers don't look quite as good

As things stand at the moment, Shikhar Dhawan is the frontrunner to open the batting for India in the 2015 World Cup. However, the question over his opening partner has already evoked a furious debate, with opinion divided over who between Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane will be the better option.
Rohit was clearly the frontrunner till the end of last year year, but a finger injury in England cut short his tour and gave Rahane an opportunity which he grabbed, scoring 106 off 100 balls in the fourth ODI of the series at Edgbaston. Since getting the chance to open the batting on that England tour, Rahane has scored two hundreds and a fifty in ten innings, averaging 43.30 at a strike rate of 89.
However, in his first international innings since that injury, Rohit swung the scale back in his favour with a scarcely believable score of 264 in Kolkata, tearing the Sri Lankan bowling apart in making the second-highest score in all List A games. He was dropped on four, but made the most of that opportunity, while Rahane started more fluently and made 28 at faster than a run a ball, but couldn't kick on and get a big score.
The table below compares the ODI stats for Rohit and Rahane, and in almost all aspects Rohit is ahead, in some cases by a substantial margin. Rohit's overall ODI average is eight more than Rahane's, while his average as opener is 17 more than Rahane's - it went up from 43.74 to 49.33 in just one innings. When opening at home, Rohit averages 93 at a strike rate of 110 (up from 74 at a rate of 99.70 before the Kolkata innings) compared to Rahane's 30.52 at a strike rate of 77.
Had the 2015 World Cup been held in India, there would've been an overwhelming case in favour of Rohit Sharma, based on the stats available. When batting at home, Rohit converts his starts, and goes on to make big scores: out of 12 innings as opener in India, he has touched 20 seven times, and on six of those occasions he has scored more than 70. His three centuries are 264, 209 and 141 not out. Rahane, on the other hand, has fairly ordinary numbers in India, and one of his problems has been the tendency to get starts but not convert them: nine times in 17 innings he has scored 20 or more, but only thrice has he gone past 50, and his one century was a small one - 111, against Sri Lanka earlier in the series. In innings when Rohit scores 20 or more as an opener in India, he averages 148.33 at a strike rate of 116; Rahane, in similar innings, averages 51.33 at a strike rate of 86.
However, the one parameter when Rahane's stats look better than those of Rohit's is when opening the batting outside India. The averages are similar, but Rahane scores his runs much faster - he has a strike rate of 84, compared to Rohit's 66. Both have had some success in England, but Rohit has struggled in South Africa - 66 runs in five innings - and has been average in New Zealand - 145 runs in five innings. (Rahane hasn't opened the batting in New Zealand or South Africa, but in six innings in other positions in these countries, he has scored only 59 runs.)

ODI stats for Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane

	Player	Inngs	Runs	Average	Strike rate	100s/ 50s
Overall	Rohit	119	3743	38.19	81.03	5/ 23
	Rahane	41	1228	29.95	78.01	2/ 7
As opener	Rohit	40	1776	49.33	83.93	3/ 11
	Rahane	30	960	32.00	80.20	2/ 5
As opener - at home	Rohit	12	696	93.00	110.58	3/ 3
	Rahane	17	519	30.52	77.23	1/ 2
As opener - away+neutral	Rohit	28	846	32.53	66.35	0/ 8
	Rahane	13	441	33.92	84.00	1/ 3

The tables below further elaborate on the differences between Rohit the ODI batsman at home and Rohit the ODI batsman overseas, and also compares his stats with those of Rahane's. At home, Rohit tends to make up for slow starts by dramatically increasing his rate of scoring boundaries later in his innings, exactly like he did in his stunning innings of 264: he went from 200 to 250 in 15 balls, but his first 50 took 72 balls. When playing at home, Rohit hits a four or a six every eight balls, though in the first 15 overs he hits one every 11 balls. When playing overseas, Rohit's boundary rate over his entire innings drops to one every 15 balls, which is almost half the rate of his home innings. In fact, his overall boundary-scoring rate is marginally lower than his corresponding rate in the first 15 overs, whereas at home he is able to get more boundaries after the first 15.
In overseas games, Rohit also tends to get dismissed far more often within the first 15 overs: at home, he has scored 366 runs and been dismissed seven times in the first 15, but overseas he has scored 767 runs and been dismissed 30 times, giving him an average of 25.56. Rahane, on the other hand, averages 38.50 in the first 15 overs (385 runs, ten dismissals), and has a better scoring rate, primarily because of a higher boundary frequency.
Rahane's poor conversion rate is a worry, but a comparison of overseas stats shows him in a better light than Rohit. On the other hand, Rohit has more ODI experience, and with runs and matches behind him, he could well turn around his relatively poor overseas numbers. At the moment, though, the jury's still out on who should open the innings for India in ODIs in the 2014-15 overseas season.

Dots and boundary stats for Rohit and Rahane in home ODIs

	Runs	Average	Strike rate	Dot-ball %	Balls per 4/6
Rohit - entire inngs	1434	68.28	99.50	48.47	8.00
Rahane - entire inngs	519	30.52	77.17	57.29	10.84
Rohit - first 15 overs	366	52.28	68.67	63.98	11.10
Rahane - first 15 overs	350	29.16	70.00	63.20	11.11

Dot and boundary stats for Rohit and Rahane in away ODIs

	Runs	Average	Strike rate	Dot-ball %	Balls per 4/6
Rohit - entire inngs	2309	32.06	72.50	54.36	15.28
Rahane - entire inngs	709	29.54	78.50	56.65	11.14
Rohit - first 15 overs	767	25.56	60.00	67.68	14.52
Rahane - first 15 overs	385	38.50	71.00	64.39	10.84

Pakistan's hunt for a wicketkeeper-batsman

In the last four years, Pakstan's wicketkeepers have averaged 19.44 in Tests, with no centuries in 59 innings - the worst record among all teams

A couple of decades ago, wicketkeepers in Test cricket were judged by how well they kept wicket; their batting skills were useful, but their place in the team didn't depend on it. An average in the mid-20s, or even lower, was acceptable. Rod Marsh played 96 Tests and scored only three hundreds, averaging 26.51; Godfrey Evans averaged 20.49 in 91 matches. India's Syed Kirmani did better, managing 27.04 runs per dismissal, but for Wasim Bari it was only 15.88 in 81 matches, and England's Bob Taylor averaged 16.28 in 57. Most of these players only had average skills with the bat, but they were all outstanding behind the stumps, because of which they enjoyed long careers.
In the last couple of decades, though, the batting skills of wicketkeepers have come into far greater prominence. Adam Gilchrist, Andy Flower, and more recently Matt Prior and MS Dhoni, have gradually changed the job description for wicketkeepers: from a role that required excellence behind the stumps and merely passable skills with the bat, it's now a role which needs more-than-adequate batting skills, to go with clean glovemanship.

As the graphic shows, from an average of 20.60 in the 1950s, the batting average of wicketkeepers has gone up to 31.81 in the 2000s, and 33.74 since the beginning of 2010. In the 1980s, wicketkeepers scored only 14 centuries in 773 innings - an average of one every 55 innings; in the 1990s that rate came down to one every 36 innings, with 30 hundreds in 1086 innings; in the 2000s it reduced further to 23, as 65 hundreds were scored in 1490 innings. 
In terms of batting averages by decades, wicketkeepers have never had it as good as since 2010, averaging 33.74 from the beginning of that year. However, it seems no one has told Pakistan's wicketkeepers that this is supposed to be their best period with the bat: in these last four years, they've averaged a miserable 19.44, which is their second-lowest in any decade; the only decade in which they averaged lower was in the 1970s, when, in 69 innings, they scored 17.98 runs per dismissal. That's also the only decade, apart from the current one, when there was no century scored by a Pakistan wicketkeeper: the highest in the 1970s was Bari's 85 against India in 1978; their highest since 2010 is 88 by Zulqarnain Haider at Edbgaston.

Compared to the poor batting numbers for Pakistan's wicketkeepers, some of the other countries have done remarkably well. South Africa lead the way with five hundreds and a superb average of 45.15, while Bangladesh, thanks to Mushfiqur Rahim, have done very well too. England, India and Sri Lanka are the other teams whose wicketkeepers have averaged more than 35 with the bat.

Team-wise batting stats for wicketkeepers in Tests since Jan 2010

Team	Tests	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s
South Africa	35	2032	45.15	5/ 10
Bangladesh	20	1399	39.97	2/ 8
England	52	2579	38.49	5/ 16
India	43	2231	35.98	3/ 12
Sri Lanka	33	1553	35.29	4/ 6
Australia	47	2513	33.95	4/ 17
New Zealand	33	1661	33.89	4/ 8
West Indies	33	1230	27.33	3/ 5
Zimbabwe	10	424	22.31	0/ 2
Pakistan	36	1050	19.44	0/ 5

Pakistan have been getting very few runs from their wicketkeepers in these last four years, but it wasn't always so. During the five years from 2005 to 2009, the batting average for Pakistan's wicketkeeper - there was only one during that period, Kamran Akmal - was 38.98, twice the average over the last four years. (The problem for Pakistan during that period, though, was the number of runs Akmal gave away by dropping crucial catches.)
Among the regular Test-playing teams, only Australia had a better batting average by their wicketkeepers, and even there the difference was marginal - just one run separated Australia and Pakistan. The two top teams in this aspect over the last four years - South Africa and Bangladesh - were in the bottom half during that period: South Africa averaged 30, and Bangladesh less than 23.

Team-wise batting stats for wicketkeepers in Tests between 2005 and 2009

Team	Tests	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s
Zimbabwe	8	607	43.35	1/ 5
Australia	56	2999	39.98	7/ 12
Pakistan	38	2300	38.98	6/ 11
India	51	2557	36.01	3/ 19
Sri Lanka	45	2229	35.38	4/ 6
England	64	2712	30.13	3/ 19
South Africa	52	2100	30.00	1/ 13
New Zealand	39	1850	29.83	2/ 10
Bangladesh	27	1062	22.59	0/ 4
West Indies	47	1556	21.02	1/ 9

In the recently concluded series against Sri Lanka, Sarfraz Ahmed, Pakistan's wicketkeeper, scored 134 runs in four innings at an average of 33.50, with a highest of 74. Those aren't outstanding stats, but Sarfraz's performances were encouraging simply because they were much better than those of other Pakistan wicketkeepers in the last few series: in the two-match series against South Africa in the UAE, the average was 12.33; on the tour to South Africa it was 13.83 in six innings; against England in the UAE in 2011-12 it was 17.80 in five innings; and against England in England in 2010 it was 14 in eight innings.
Sarfraz himself did much better against Sri Lanka than he had in his previous Test opportunities: in eight Test innings before this series, he'd scored 89 runs at an average of 11.12. Compared to those numbers, what he achieved against Sri Lanka was encouraging, and perhaps not a complete surprise to Pakistan fans given that he has already scored seven first-class centuries, and averages 40.11 in those matches.
However, in the period since 2010, there isn't a single Pakistan wicketkeeper in the list of top ten batting averages (with a 15-innings cut-off). AB de Villiers tops the list with an incredible average of 60.21 in 25 innings, while New Zealand's BJ Watling has been superb too, beefing up their lower order with some solid performances. Matt Prior had two wretched Ashes series recently, but his overall average during this period is still a healthy 40.15, thanks to his consistency from 2010 to the early part of 2013. Mushfiqur Rahim falls just one run short of an average of 40, with ten 50-plus scores in 37 innings.
Pakistan's wicketkeepers during this period have done little of note with the bat. Adnan Akmal has scored the most runs - 591 - but it's taken him 29 innings to make them, at an average of 24.62. Haider's played only two innings, but the others have nothing to recommend themselves.

Top batting averages for wicketkeepers in Tests since Jan 2010 (Qual: 15 inngs)

Player	Innings	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s
AB de Villiers	25	1385	60.21	5/ 5
BJ Watling	17	698	46.53	2/ 5
Matt Prior	76	2530	40.15	5/ 16
Mushfiqur Rahim	37	1399	39.97	2/ 8
Denesh Ramdin	27	816	38.85	3/ 3
MS Dhoni	65	2166	37.34	3/ 12
Matthew Wade	22	623	34.61	2/ 3
Brad Haddin	53	1603	33.39	2/ 12
Prasanna Jayawardene	37	1017	31.78	2/ 3
Mark Boucher	24	647	29.40	0/ 5

Between 2005 and 2009, Pakistan had Kamran Akmal to represent them among the top wicketkeeper-batsmen, in terms of batting at least. His glovework was often questioned, but as a batsman his numbers were up there with those of Prior, Haddin, Dhoni and Gilchrist. He scored six centuries in 65 innings, but since then Pakistan have had none in 59.
However, Sarfraz's batting displays against Sri Lanka were encouraging, and his first-class stats suggest he clearly has some batting skill. Adnan Akmal was the first-choice keeper for the series before he injured his finger in the first Test, but his first-class batting stats aren't as impressive as Sarfraz's: an average of 25.72, with 22 fifty-plus scores in 173 innings. The wicketkeeping skills will obviously be the key aspect, but Pakistan will hope that whichever player they opt for will contribute a little more with bat in hand as well.

Top batting averages for wicketkeepers in Tests between 2005 and 2009 (Qual: 20 inngs)

Player	Innings	Runs	Average	100s/ 50s
Matt Prior	40	1390	42.12	2/ 11
Brad Haddin	38	1404	41.29	2/ 5
MS Dhoni	62	2176	40.29	3/ 16
Adam Gilchrist	44	1574	39.35	5/ 7
Kamran Akmal	65	2300	38.98	6/ 11
Kumar Sangakkara	29	1080	38.57	2/ 4
Prasanna Jayawardene	37	1035	33.38	2/ 2
Brendon McCullum	62	1823	30.38	2/ 10

The first World Cup classic

             

Andy Roberts added a tournament-deciding 64 with Deryck Murray for the tenth wicket at Edgbaston 

                              

It seems logical to assume that since a World Cup final features the two top-performing teams of the tournament, it will be an exciting and relatively close affair. However, history has shown that often the final is quite one-sided and that the best, often pivotal games that went on to determine the winners have been played in the group stages.
In 1975, West Indies, led by Clive Lloyd, beat a gallant New Zealand in the semi-final before defeating Australia in the final. But perhaps the turning point of the tournament was West Indies' second game, against Pakistan, at Edgbaston.

West Indies were placed in Group B - four teams in two groups each playing in round-robin format to determine the semi-finalists - with Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Australia. Sri Lanka lost all three of their matches and Australia had beaten Pakistan convincingly in the opening pool match, so Pakistan needed to beat West Indies to stay alive.

Going into the game, Pakistan were missing their captain, Asif Iqbal, who was in hospital following a haemorrhoid operation, and Imran Khan, who had to take exams at Oxford. The absences allowed a young cricketing prodigy named Javed Miandad to make his international debut. Pakistan's stand-in captain, Majid Khan, won the toss on a sunny day and chose to bat first on a good batting pitch.
West Indies chose to field a four-pronged pace attack but it was not yet the intimidating battery that would dominate cricket for the next few decades. Andy Roberts was both a great bowler and genuinely quick, but while his bowling colleagues, Keith Boyce, Vanburn Holder and Bernard Julien, were skilful, their pace was simply not comparable to that of Roberts - or their successors, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Croft and Joel Garner.
Majid top-scored with 60 and was supported by scores of 55 by Mushtaq Mohammad and 58 by Wasim Raja. Miandad made a respectable 24 from 32 balls. After the fifth-wicket dismissal of Raja, Pakistan could only add 17 more and finished their 60 overs with 266 for 7 - a defendable score even though West Indies' line-up was full of talented strokemakers.
Nevertheless West Indies' openers would have fancied their chances against Pakistan's bowling line-up in what were still very good batting conditions. But any sense of complacency was rapidly lost when Sarfraz Nawaz took three quick wickets. Bowling with delightful control and subtle movement, he got Gordon Greenidge and Alvin Kallicharran caught behind, and trapped Roy Fredericks lbw. West Indies had slumped to 36 for 3.
Rohan Kanhai and Lloyd took the score through to 84 before Kanhai was bowled by Naseer Malik for 24. A young Viv Richards came in to bat at No. 6 but was quickly dismissed to leave West Indies at precarious 99 for 5. When Lloyd was given out, somewhat contentiously according to West Indian fans, for 55 as the seventh wicket, the match appeared to be out of West Indies' reach.
Deryck Murray was a useful keeper-batsman, and though Boyce, Holder and Roberts were all handy with the bat, a West Indian victory appeared highly unlikely with 116 needed and three wickets in hand. Things looked grimmer when Boyce was bowled with the score at 166.
Murray and Holder batted sensibly - Murray taking a more aggressive role, while Holder provided valuable support. Majid brought back his strike bowler, Sarfraz, to get the breakthrough, which he did, having Holder caught for 16.
The final pair now needed to get 64 runs from 14 overs. Majid decided to bowl out Sarfraz in the hope of picking up the final wicket, but Murray and Roberts held firm. Sarfraz finished with 4 for 44 off his 12 overs.
Pakistan were simply not able to take that final wicket and West Indies gradually whittled down the target. While Roberts was playing carefully, he was quick to jump on to anything overpitched. Murray remained aggressive and the two kept the run rate to between four and five an over.
With two overs to go, West Indies needed five runs to win. Majid gave medium-pace bowler Pervez Mir the penultimate over, which worked: he bowled an excellent maiden.
Murray was undefeated on 61, but the No. 11 batsman Roberts was on strike at the start of the last over. Sarfraz, Asif Masood and Naseer had all bowled their 12 overs. Majid now had to gamble on whether to give the final over to legspinner Mushtaq Mohammad or part-timer Raja. He chose to go with Raja, who decided bowl medium pace rather than his usual leggies.
The first ball went for a leg-bye, and in the enthusiasm to get a run-out, Pakistan conceded an overthrow. West Indies now needed three. The second ball was knocked away through midwicket and the batsmen managed two runs, drawing level. Roberts pushed the fourth ball to the leg side and they ambled through for an easy single. The final pair had scored an unlikely 64 runs from 14 overs to secure a West Indies win with just two balls to go.
In a somewhat bittersweet but now humorous moment, the Man-of-the-Match award was given to Sarfraz rather than Murray. The story goes that the adjudicator of the award, Tom Graveney, had left the game early after the loss of the ninth West Indian wicket, assuming that Pakistan would win easily. So on returning he gave the award to Sarfraz for his excellent spell.
West Indies went on to easily defeat Australia in their final group game, so if Pakistan had beaten West Indies, as they probably should have done, all three teams would have been locked on equal points and run rates would have decided who went into the semis. Which means the eventual West Indies versus Australia final may never have happened.

De Villiers sets breathtaking new century record

South Africa 439 for 2 (Amla 153*, de Villiers 149, Rossouw 128) beat West Indies 291 for 7 (Smith 64, Ramdin 57) by 148 runs


AB de Villiers ripped up the record books with the fastest century in ODIs, off just 31 balls to beat the previous quickest set by Corey Anderson off 36 balls little more than a year ago, as South Africa beat their own record at the Wanderers and racked up 439, four shy of the world record total of 443.

De Villiers' was the third hundred in a towering South African total - the first time three had been scored in an ODI innings - which also saw Rilee Rossouw register his maiden century and Hashim Amla his 18th, a career-best 153 not out, in the highest opening stand South Africa have ever posted of 247.
In less than an hour, de Villiers took an innings which was building well and turned it into a skyscraper. He clobbered 16 sixes, the most by a South African and the joint-highest number of sixes overall in an ODI innings, and dominated a 192-run second-wicket stand with Amla which lasted just 67 deliveries and in which runs were scored at 17.12 to the over. Amla only faced 30 balls and contributed 33. Such was de Villiers' dominance.
None of the the West Indian bowlers were spared as de Villiers put on his full range of strokes. There was the pull, the scoop, the lofted drive and the good old slog and Jason Holder, given the toughest of examinations as a young captain, was hardest hit. De Villiers plundered 45 runs off the nine balls he faced from him, including six of his sixes.
By the time Holder could even consider launching a counter-attack of his own, West Indies' challenge was over. Although they may have had hopes of pulling off something similar to what they did on the same surface last week, when they successfully chased the highest T20 score of 232, West Indies lost Chris Gayle in the fifth over and even though Dwayne Smith and Denesh Ramdin both scored half-centuries, the South African attack were much more difficult to get away than the West Indian one.
Jerome Taylor had the most expensive return for a West Indian bowler in ODIs when his 10 overs cost 95 and Holder was not far behind. His nine overs went for 91. Dwayne Smith also took punishment and finished with an economy of 17 after one of his overs went for 30. Contrastingly, Dale Steyn's 10 overs went for just 29 runs and Morne Morkel's for 43 as the pair demonstrated how to operate on a batsmen-friendly surface. They used the short well sparingly and bowled at good pace but ultimately West Indies did not have the same structure to their innings as South Africa did.
Rossouw and Amla were circumspect upfront with Rossouw feeding off Amla's patience to script a knock he really needed. A yo-yo start to his international career saw Rossouw collect as many ducks as he did starts and he could count them both on one hand. Five noughts would not have infused the man who may be tasked with opening at the World Cup should Quinton de Kock be unfit at the start with confidence but a century will change all that.
After seeing off a testing early period, in which he was given out lbw to a ball he bottom-edged off Sulieman Benn and successfully reviewed, Rossouw showed his ability off the backfoot with a selection of strong pulls and a good understanding of timing and placement. Amla kept the scoreboard moving while Rossouw settled and South Africa had 100 inside 20 overs before they began to accelerate.
Samuels helped them in that cause. Twelve runs came off each of his first and third overs as South Africa took 41 off the five overs between 20 and 25 and took the Powerplay two overs later. Benn enforced a squeeze and South Africa managed just 29 with the fielding restrictions on but the opening stand was unbroken and both batsmen were closing in on centuries. Rossouw's came first off 102 balls and Amla's three deliveries later, off 103.
More worryingly for West Indies, it was only the 35th over.
Rossouw chipped a catch to mid-off shortly after that to bring de Villiers and carnage to the crease. At No.3, with a platform laid, de Villiers dictated terms and knocked West Indies off their lines, lengths and plans. His 50 came up in 16 balls, the first world record, before he raced to 100 after facing just 15 more. The bigger he hit, the fewer answers West Indies had and they couldn't find them in the second half either.
Gayle tried to force the pace of the chase but ran out of luck early on when he miscued a pull. Farhaan Behardien had to move quickly but judged the catch well to immediately dent West Indies' already slim chances. At least they did not fold and ended nine runs short of 300, which in different circumstances would be considered a decent total. But against the backdrop of the de Villiers show it paled in comparison as South Africa took centre stage and best of all, they did it pretty in pink. It was the third match dedicated to breast cancer awareness in the country and to date, South Africa have won all of them.

I saw Richards in his prime

In the haze of memory, the world's cheesiest decade has synthesised into something superfreaky and glowing with nostalgia - Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice is perhaps the apogee of this reinvention of its wigged-out wildness, and like most cultural reinterpretations it's probably half-accurate.
Cricket in the '70s can be cast in the same golden light: Thommo the Terror, Lillee's moustache, the Scoop, the Jumbo, button-up shirts, Supercat at cover, and slinky-hipped King Viv sashaying out of the pavilion and into the middle, chewing gum and taking his own sweet time.
They knew how to put on a World Cup in the 1970s, that's for sure. It lasted a fortnight, for a start. My recall of the first, in 1975, is barely there (I was a nipper myself back then, still in single figures), nothing more than a pixellated vision of a final that ended in thrilling chaos with Lillee and Thomson running about 18 as the crowd charged on to Lord's and Dickie Bird flapped his arms and fretted as only he could.
But the second is a different story because my dad got us tickets for the final of what was then called the Prudential Cup: England v West Indies, Lord's, June 23, 1979. Our seats were at the top of the Compton stand. Sixty overs per innings, both sides in whites and not too many selectorial concessions to the "specialist" player - probably because there weren't any specialist players.
England went for some extra batting, with Ned Larkins coming in at No. 7, and West Indies pulled a masterstroke with the inclusion of the mercurial allrounder Collis King, but essentially these were the Test XIs. Mike Brearley and Geoff Boycott were to open for England; West Indies would field Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Colin Croft and Joel Garner.
Play began at 11am and stopped for lunch and tea, just as Test matches did. It may have been the World Cup final, but it was also just the 74th ODI ever played. (They had begun in 1971, which gives an idea of how infrequently they were staged.)

I remember being desperate to get home so that we could see the first showing of the highlights that night, and watch Richards walk across his stumps and flick that last-ball six off Mike Hendrick into the Tavern

Memory is a mysterious and suggestible thing. I have clear visions of the view of the game that we had, and sharp recollections of Garner running in from the Pavilion End after tea and detonating Graham Gooch and David Gower in short order. I recall the shock of West Indies' total - 286, which back then seemed vast in such a short game. And even though Brearley and Boycott began England's reply by putting on 129 - Boycott taking 17 overs to reach double figures - it never felt remotely possible that they would get there. I remember, too, our dash down the stairs and on to the field to gather under the pavilion for the presentation: no fireworks back then, just the cup on a wobbly table hastily erected on the dressing-room balcony.
But when I think of the West Indies innings, especially the famous partnership between Richards and King, the pictures in my head are those from the TV coverage, shown so often since. I remember being desperate to get home so that we could see the first showing of the highlights that night, and watch Richards walk across his stumps and flick that last-ball six off Mike Hendrick into the Tavern. No one did that back then.
Tuesday's New Zealand-Pakistan game was ODI number 3598, and the weight of understanding from the subsequent years and matches bears down on the scorecard from that day. West Indies' scoring rate, which had seemed so dizzying once King and Richards caught fire, was 4.76 runs per over. And when Brearley was dismissed, England's chase, which felt so utterly unachievable, was for another 158 from 22 overs with nine wickets in hand. Those stats are as indicative as any of how far we have come, of how much has changed.
The Wisden Almanack reports that West Indies got £10,000 for winning. England received £4000 as runners-up. That would probably just about pay the roaming charges on KP's mobile.
To paraphrase Harold Pinter:

"I saw Richards in his prime,
Another time, Another time…"

Whatever happened to sportsmanship?

                         

                          The constant so-called banter during the recent Test series in Australia could well be the last straw for some cricket watchers

V Ramnarayan

I thought I would never enjoy watching cricket again when the 15-degree flexion rule was introduced. But the die-hard cricket fan in me resurfaced sooner rather than later, and I learned to enjoy the game selectively. The match-fixing and IPL scandals nearly put me off the game permanently, but I continue to believe in the innate honesty of the majority of cricketers; and my affair with cricket continues. Sledging and "mental disintegration" go against the lessons I learnt at the kness of my parents, mentors, coaches, and senior colleagues. These and other ugly features of the contemporary game sometimes make me wish I had had the talent and training to become not a cricketer but a violinist, poet or engine-driver. (In fact, I retired from league cricket because I grew tired of having to face, once or twice every season, the angry tantrums of someone I had played with or against since boyhood.)

The so-called banter between India and Australia down under could well be the last straw for me as a spectator. Yes, we know all about the Australian way of cricket, and for decades Indians (like other teams) have been at the receiving end of that strange paradigm of playing - and talking - the game hard, but these days the Indians seem to have decided to give as good as they get. It's quite another matter that, unlike the Australians, they tend to collapse like a deck of cards the moment they get all verbal and offensive. The one sane voice in the midst of all the brave talk by the likes of new captain Virat Kohli (whose stance was endorsed by the team director, Ravi Shastri), that of MS Dhoni, will no longer be heard in Test cricket.
Much hypocrisy surrounds the claim often made by the culprits that on-field bad behaviour is merely strategic and stays on the field and should remain there. It rarely does, and much of the acrimony overflows, even into the television studio and the pages of newspapers. For all the objectivity we expect of a commentator like Matthew Hayden, he sometimes sounds like a 12th member of the Australian "verbal assault team" rather than a neutral TV voice. The chirpy and hyper-aggressive David Warner sanctimoniously calls for an end to send-offs to dismissed batsmen, while coyly confessing that he might just have crossed the line sometimes.

Much hypocrisy surrounds the claim often made by the culprits that on-field bad behaviour is merely strategic and stays on the field and should remain there. It rarely does, and much of the acrimony overflows

Who draws the line and who decides when it has been crossed? Did Ramnaresh Sarwan cross it before Glenn McGrath did in that infamous incident in the fourth Test of the 2003 series, in St Johns?
While the Australian team, TV commentators and media were convinced of Harbhajan Singh's wrongdoing, and some even accused Sachin Tendulkar of lying during the Monkeygate incident in the Sydney Test of 2007-08, how many Australians found anything wrong with the way the likes of Michael Slater, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke claimed bump catches at different times and exploded on the field when the umpires disallowed those catches?
When Phillip Hughes died, the whole cricket world was stunned by the tragedy and there were signs the the rude awakening might jolt the community into a more civilised, empathetic form of competitiveness than we have seen in the recent past. That hope too seems short-lived, with teams not only back to snarling at each other on the field but also firing salvos at each other off it, threatening relentless aggression and bouncer wars.
Cricket has been known for the sporting spirit shown by its greatest players. I remember Rahul Dravid's email some time ago to Kevin Pietersen (reproduced in Pietersen's autobiography) in which he addresses KP as "Champ" and gives him advice on playing spin. The English batsman's response to it: "Help through encouragement and wisdom? He had me at Champ. If you love cricket you'll know why I often read that email and smile to myself."
I remember my incredulity as a schoolboy at visiting captain John Reid's magnanimity in asking the New Zealand fielders to run while changing places between overs when rain threatened to spoil the chances of India chasing a target of 70 in the Delhi Test in 1965-66.
I was listening on the radio a season later when Garry Sobers told the umpire he had picked the ball up from the ground after Budhi Kunderan had been given out caught at backward short leg in the middle of a fighting late-order partnership with S Venkataraghavan in the Bombay Test between India and West Indies.
Bishan Bedi helped Dennis Amiss learn to play spin better by bowling to him in the nets in the middle of an India-England series, and gave sage advice to Pakistani spinners Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed, that enabled them to bowl winning spells against India.
Who can forget GR Viswanath's grand gesture of recalling Bob Taylor in the Jubilee Test, with the score at 58 for 5, thus facilitating a 171-run partnership between him and Ian Botham and a thumping win for England?
With the memory of the recent tragedy still fresh in everyone's mind, can we expect some of our Test cricketers to look beyond narrow chauvinistic considerations and read that Dravid email and smile to themselves every now and then, and to not teach young cricketers to resort to nasty behaviour to win matches? If they don't, many like me will want to stop watching the game.

V Ramnarayan is an author, translator and teacher. He bowled offspin for Hyderabad and South Zone in the 1970s

Is cricket really vulnerable to physical altercations?

It's unlikely that the Lillee-Miandad incident would even figure in the top 50 undignified moments list in all sport

Here's something that cricket people never admit in the sledging debate: over the past two decades this sport has spawned an entire literary genre in celebration of sledging. There's stacks of these books. People buy them and people read them, too. Most of them are rubbish, of course, but people do actually buy them in sufficient quantities that they keep getting published. That's not much of a moral high ground to start on.
Fans who don't mind a bit of sledging are always quick to remind us that it's been around since our distant ancestors first picked up bats and balls, but it's actually only been in the last 40 years that it's been written about at length. There is an irony at play here for those who are broadly anti-sledging but still keep track of what's written about it; the more you read, the more wearying it is when each new outbreak of sledging debate occurs. To borrow a John Cooper Clarkism, it bloody gets you bloody down.

Everyone had another crack at it in the weeks following Australia's recent Test series against India, which is fair enough, but as far as I could see only Ian Chappell said something I genuinely didn't expect when he warned that an escalation in sledging might soon result in a physical altercation on the field. You can never underestimate Chappell's thoughts on the game, nor the weight they carry, because they are well considered and come from a place of knowledge and passion.
This new angle of his is interesting on two levels, though. Firstly, and of less consequence, it makes you wonder whether Chappell himself feels a degree of either guilt or indignation on account of sledging incidents in his own career and the way they were portrayed in the media.
Cricket publications of the '70s and '80s are full of blustering editorials about Chappell's indiscretions. Here's an irate Peter Philpott in the January 1976 issue of Australian Cricket talking of Chappell's attitude towards sledging: "... most [cricketers] have bitterly resented the damage he is doing to the game" and "I just hope he does not negate his achievements in the game by harming the game to which he has given a great deal."
Or Geoff Prenter in the same publication five years later: "It was Chappell and [Tony] Greig who introduced sledging into the game". None of that disqualifies Chappell from holding an opinion on the current state of sledging, but it is at least an interesting backstory to his stance now.
Secondly, and more importantly, I think Chappell's suggestion that the end point of sledging will be an incident of physical violence is far more interesting and worthy of examination. He's not actually the first one to suggest this, to be truthful. Most notably and in the wake of the Monkeygate affair (or "Bollyline", as it was briefly known) Scyld Berry used his 2008 Wisden editorial notes to make a similar case.
Under the subheading, "The Threat of Violence", Berry starts, "I fear the day is approaching when a high-profile, televised cricket match will see an outbreak of physical violence on the field." Preventing this would therefore require "vision and leadership". This, despite the fact that genuine on-field violence hadn't occurred between players in a Test since the Lillee-Miandad incident of 1981. Berry doesn't go as far as offering conclusions on what form such violence might take, nor what the fall-out would be.
His examples are worthy but not damning; Zaheer Khan pointing his bat at Kevin Pietersen during the Trent Bridge Test of 2007 after accusing the England batsman of stashing lollies in his pockets to assist with shine on the ball; Monkeygate (which never got violent, but Andrew Symonds found catharsis later in the year by shirt-fronting a ground invader at the Gabba) and three relatively minor collisions between running batsmen and bowlers. Cricket would be "so easy to destroy", concludes Berry, though you rather doubt it based on the evidence tendered.
Both Berry and Chappell have seen enough Test cricket to have developed an innate sense of its mood and subtle changes in tone, but I can't help but conclude that international cricketers - particularly the ones from the wealthiest cricket nations - have far too much to lose in a career and financial sense from stepping their arguments up to the physical.

In cricket, there remains a far greater stigma around physical contact with opposition players than in most sports. Does that distort our view?

From the perspective of a player like David Warner, for example, there's never been more to lose from overstepping the line. Surely even he realises that. Even the Joe Root incident, regrettable as it was, remains a red herring in this debate because it occurred in a bar and under the fog of alcohol, not on a cricket field.
In cricket, there remains a far greater stigma around physical contact with opposition players than in most sports. Does that distort our view? Perhaps this is why even the inevitable bumps and brushes between bowlers and batsmen as they follow through and run still seem like a bigger deal than they probably are. Two thousand one hundred and fifty-six Test matches is a reasonable sample size from which to draw the conclusion that actual biffo is probably low on the agenda of most players.
In Test cricket, only one historical incident of violence stands out - Dennis Lillee and Javed Miandad's aforementioned display in the Perth Test of 1981. An awful sight? Definitely. "One of the most undignified events in Test history" was Wisden's disapproving verdict. Lillee ended up with a A$120 fine and two-game ban for his role.
Come with me for a moment though. Consider every awful act you've ever seen perpetrated on the fields of the various football codes of the world. Would Lillee-Miandad even make a Top 50 undignified altercations list? I'm not excusing it or suggesting it wasn't worthy of fuss, but the more I watch it the more convinced I am that Lillee's two other actions - his deliberate bump on Miandad as the batsman completes his run and then lastly using umpire Tony Crafter as a human shield - are far worse than the kick itself. If that was cricket at its worst - and remember that neither player was hurt - we're probably not a bad lot.
Stepping down a level to first-class cricket, the most high-profile example of on-field violence in recent eras was Rashid Patel's fracas with Raman Lamba during the Duleep Trophy final of 1990-91. Bowling to Lamba near the end of his undefeated 180 as North Zone compiled 729 for 9, a frustrated Patel hurled a beamer down at the batsman and then chased him to the boundary's edge with a stump. The crowd duly rioted and Patel and Lamba wore 13 and ten-month bans, respectively. Neither was physically hurt.
"Look," explained Patel years later, "cricketers are generally good guys, but things happen in the heat of the moment, when the pressure gets to you." More recently and strangely not the source of any notable debate beyond initial news reports, there was a near-identical incident in 2005 when Hyderabad's Arjun Yadav - son of current BCCI interim president Shivial - attacked Andhra Pradesh and now India batsman Ambati Rayudu with a stump during a Ranji Trophy match. You can only find half a dozen mentions of it online.
So what am I saying? High-profile professional cricketers have rarely lost control of themselves to the extent of physical violence and the suggestion that they soon will just seems dubious. Chappell's right - it would be a good thing if outright abuse and inane chatter disappeared from the game because they add nothing, but to suggest that the next step for sledgers is physical violence not only ignores history but misinterprets the motivations of modern players.

More numbers, from readers Anantha Narayanan

This is a continuation of the "fun article" theme. A completely irreverent look at cricket numbers. I had earlier come out with my own list of numbers and asked the readers to submit their numbers. They responded magnificently and, barring a few, one being the heart-felt tribute to Phillip Hughes, this is their list.

So now it is time to have a chuckle, laugh, guffaw, and introspect for a moment when you come to 63.
There are well over 100 numbers in this follow-up list. To the extent possible I have done some verification. But there is no guarantee that this article is 100% correct. My apologies for any errors that might have crept in.
0: Number of times that Don Bradman was dismissed in the nineties throughout his Test career.
0: Number of times that Kapil Dev has been run out in his long Test career.
0: Number of runs scored by Garry Sobers in ODIs.
0: Number of times Saeed Ajmal has bowled zero no-balls in an international innings.
0: Number of wickets taken by Pramodya Wickramasinghe in the 1996 World Cup, although he got a winners medal and played as a specialist bowler in the quarter-final, semi-final and the final.
0.5: Number of squash balls Adam Gilchrist placed inside his batting glove in the 2007 World Cup final.
1: Number of bowlers to take three successive five-wicket hauls in ODIs; Waqar Younis is the only one.
1: Number of Test series where Kapil Dev went wicketless.
1: Number of times Nos. 10 and 11 batsmen have hit centuries in the same first-class innings. This happened during a stand of 249 between Chandu Sarwate and Shute Banerjee, for the touring Indians against Surrey in 1946.
1: Number of Test matches Sri Lanka have won against Australia in 30 years.
1: Number of Tests missed by Kapil Dev during his 131-Test career. The one Test he missed was due to a Gavaskar-initiated disciplinary action.
1: Number of match-winning double-centuries scored in the fourth innings of a Test, by Gordon Greenidge against England in 1984.
1: Number of runs scored by Marvan Atapattu in his first six Test innings.
1: Number of occasions where a batsman has made 150-plus scores in both innings of a Test, by Allan Border against Pakistan in 1980.
1.14: Average number of sixes per ODI innings for West Indies' Kieron Pollard. He has hit 97 sixes in 85 innings. Among batsmen who have hit at least 50 ODI sixes, this is the only instance of a batsman scoring more than one six per innings. Shahid Afridi's corresponding ratio is 0.94 (333 in 356).
2: Number of times a debutant scored a century in each innings of a Test: Lawrence Rowe scored a double-hundred followed by a hundred against New Zealand in 1972. Pakistan's Yasir Hameed also scored twin hundreds on debut against Bangladesh in 2003.
2: Number of Robin Singhs to have played for India. Both played one Test each.
2: Number of tied Tests; between India and Australia in 1986 and between West Indies and Australia in 1960.
2: Number of Test matches, though not tied, but where the scores were level at the end of the match (the Test between India and West Indies in Mumbai in 2011 saw scores level with nine last-innings wicket falling. Had it been a tie we would have had three tied Tests, one between West Indies and Australia, one between Australia and India and one between India and West Indies, completing a nice cycle).
2: Number of batsmen who never averaged less than 50 in their Test career: Javed Miandad and Herbert Sutcliffe.
2: Number of times Jim Laker took ten Australian wickets in an innings on the 1956 tour; once for Surrey against the touring Australians and subsequently in the fourth Ashes Test that summer at Old Trafford.
2: The number of run-outs Kapil was "involved" in in his Test career, on both the occasions the dismissed batsman was Syed Kirmani, and just to make up for his "crime" on both occasions Kapil went on to score a century.
2: Number of occasions in an ODI when a batsman scored a hundred and picked up five wickets; Viv Richards versus New Zealand (1987) and Paul Collingwood versus Bangladesh (2005).
3: Number of instances where all four innings of a Test match were played on same day.
- England vs West Indies 2000, Lord's (Win: 267/9 to 267. Eng: 134. Win: 54: Eng: 0/0).
- South Africa vs Australia 2011, Cape Town (Aus: 214/8 to 284. Saf: 96. Aus: 47. Saf: 87/1).
- New Zealand vs India, Hamilton 2002 (Ind: 92/8 to 99. NZ:94. Ind 154 NZ 24/0).
3: Number of times Kevin Pietersen got out on 158 in a Test innings before going past it.
3: Number of times a team has lost after imposing the follow-on.
3: The most batsmen dismissed on 99 in the same Test match: Majid Khan, Mushtaq Mohammad, and Dennis Amiss were all dismissed on 99 during the Test between England and Pakistan in Karachi in 1973.
3: Number of counties (Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire and Somerset) out of 18 that have never won the Championship since 1890.
3.09: Joel Garner's career ODI economy rate, the best for any bowler who has bowled in 20 innings.
4: Number of players who scored centuries in their first and last Test: Bill Ponsford, Reggie Duff, Greg Chappell and Mohammad Azharuddin.
4: Number of match-winning fourth-innings centuries by Graeme Smith.
4: Also, the number of match-winning fourth-innings centuries by all Indian batsmen in 82 years.
4.55: Steve Waugh's win-loss ratio as Test captain.
5: Number of times Michael Atherton appears in the listing of "most times out to a bowle": 19 times to Glenn McGrath, 17 to both Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, 11 to Allan Donald, and ten times to Shane Warne.
8: Number of batsmen who have more centuries than fifties: Minimum 20 tests - Don Bradman, Mohammad Azharuddin, Matthew Hayden, Clyde Walcott, Bill Ponsford, George Headley, Michael Clarke and Les Ames.
8: Number of minutes taken by Clive Inman to score the fastest fifty across all formats.
9: Number of times MS Dhoni averaged more than 100 (or scored at least 100 runs without getting out) in an ODI series.
10: Number of Indians in the top-ten list of batsmen with best first-class average not playing Tests (50 first-class matches): Shows the state of Indian pitches.
10.75: Bowling average of George Lohmann.
15: Hampshire's all-out score. Asked to follow on, they beat Warwickshire by a huge 155 runs. This was covered in the first part with the ridiculously low number of deliveries (53) required to take all ten Hampshire wickets.
16: The Australian juggernaut was stopped twice on this number of consecutive wins.
16: Highest number of wickets in a match by bowler on Test debut: Bob Massie and Narendra Hirwani.
17: Mohammad Sami once bowled a 17-ball over against Bangladesh.
21: Consecutive maidens (131 deliveries) by Bapu Nadkarni, a record in Test Matches.
26: Lowest team score in a Test innings: New Zealand against England in 1954.
27: Most times a batsman has been dismissed in the nineties in Tests and ODIs: Tendulkar.
28: Number of triple-centuries so far.
34: Balls faced by David Hookes to score the fastest authentic first-class hundred.
34: Number of runs scored off Malcolm Nash in an over a year after he conceded 36 to Garry Sobers.
36.29: Percentage of bowled dismissals by Waqar Younis in ODIs.
38.97: Difference between Bradman and Graeme Pollock's averages.
39: Number of balls it took for Nathan Astle to go from 100 to 200 in his 167-ball 222.
40.28: Percentage of target runs scored in fourth innings after the fall of the eighth wicket in the famous Mohali win by India over Australia.
42.98: Percentage of bowleds by Ray Lindwall in Tests.
45: Margin of victories, by runs, in the first and the second centenary Tests.
46: Number of first-class titles won by New South Wales, the most by a domestic team anywhere.
49: Number of wickets by Sydney Barnes in a Test series.
50: Number of balls by Kevin O'Brien to score the fastest World Cup hundred.
52: Cans of lager reportedly downed by David Boon on the 23-hour flight from Australia to London.
52: Number of stumpings by Bert Oldfield in Test cricket.
53.52: Total percentage of match runs scored by Sanath Jayasuriya in a fully completed (both innings completed) ODI (v India in Sharjah, SL 299 for 5 v India 54).
54.20: Vinod Kambli's Test average: higher than Sachin Tendulkar's and Rahul Dravid's.
56.57: Bradman's lowest average in a Test series (Bodyline).
57: Runs added for 10th wicket by Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mushtaq Ahmed to win the 1994 Karachi Test against Australia.
62: Number of fours by Brian Lara in his 501* and by Archie MacLaren in his 424.


                                    




64: Number of fours by Hanif Mohammad in his 499.
86.66: Adam Gilchrist's batting average in three ODI World Cup finals.
92.85: Percentage success ratio of Ponting in World Cup ODIs.
95: Number of "c Marsh b Lillee" dismissals.
96: Most consecutive matches since debut by Gilchrist. He retired without missing a single Test.
99.94: The other one! That is, the speed (mph) of Brett Lee's delivery to Craig Cumming in the first over of ODI 2234. Okay, so the speed gun said 160.8 = 99.92, but who's to say that it wasn't actually 160.83 or 160.84).
105: Highest identical score made in both innings by same player; this was by Duleep Mendis.
112: Career average of Andy Ganteaume, over a single Test.
136: Consecutive number of scoreless deliveries in Tests by Hugh Tayfield; South Africa's Tayfield sent down 16 eight-ball maidens.
139: Highest identical score made by captains in a single ODI.
139: Highest identical score by two batsmen in an ODI (Angelo Mathews and Virat Kohli, Ranchi, 2014).
140.5: Batting average of Lance Klusener in the 1999 World Cup.
147: Record for most Tests played as a wicketkeeper, by Mark Boucher.
153: Margins of defeats during Sachin Tendulkar's 200, Virender Sehwag's 219 and Rohit Sharma's 264: each innings becoming the highest ODI innings as at that time.
153: Number of consecutive Test matches played by Allan Border.
155: Lowest score not yet reached by any batsman in ODIs.
173: The longest duckless streak in international cricket (all formats put together): by Dravid.
183: A number special to India. Their total in the 1983 World Cup final. Also, the highest scores made by people who would go on to captain later (Ganguly, Dhoni and Kohli).
229: The lowest Test score never made by a batsman in any Test innings.
234: Highest identical score by two batsmen in a Test innings: Bradman and Barnes.
235: Number of South African Test players before isolation: No. 235 was Athanasios John Traicos, a spin bowler of Greek descent, born in Egypt, who grew up in Rhodesia, played Tests for South Africa and Zimbabwe and is now settled in Australia.
307: Runs conceded by Anwar Hossain Monir (Bangladesh) without capturing a single wicket. Beats Naeem Islam's record mentioned in the first article.
309: Runs scored by Don Bradman in a day's play of Test cricket (1930, Leeds).
355: Number of "c Marsh or st Marsh" dismissals.
355: Number of "b Lillee" dismissals.
393: Runs scored by Steve Waugh before being dismissed in the 1989 Ashes.
408: Most number of international matches in which any two players played together without batting together even once. Jayasuriya and Muttiah Muralitharan played together in 307 ODIs, 90 Tests, and 11 T20s but did not bat together even once.
454: Highest runs scored by a team and then being asked to follow on. India against West Indies in 1948.
456: Maximum runs scored by a batsman in a Test: Graham Gooch.
470: Record fourth-wicket stand for Warwickshire between Alvin Kallicharran and Geoff Humpage against Lancashire in 1982. Warwickshire managed to lose this match by ten wickets.
541: Highest score chased in the fourth innings to win a first-class match (West v South, 2010 Duleep Trophy final).
563: Wally Hammond's average against New Zealand in 1933.
607: Number of match officials (ground umpires, TV umpires and match refs) in Test history. But this keeps increasing.
628: Number of runs scored by AEJ Collins, for Clarke's House against North Town, in a Junior house match at Clifton College, in June 1899, when only 13 years old.
664: Most matches in international cricket played by a single player: Sachin Tendulkar.
790: Minutes Steve Waugh batted before getting out in the 1989 Ashes.
999: Number of international dismissals as wicketkeeper by Mark Boucher.
1000: Number of international dismissals by Mark Boucher.
1072: Ddifference between Victoria's first-innings totals home and away against New South Wales in the 1926-27 season (1107, which was mentioned in the first analysis, and 35 in the return match).
3718.2: Ratio of balls faced to balls bowled in all international cricket for Herschelle Gibbs: = 22309:6.
8-4-63: Alec Stewart's birth date; incidentally, the number of Test runs scored by him were 8463.
36,049: First-class runs by Alan Jones, the highest by someone who never played a Test.
100,024: Capacity at the MCG, the largest cricket ground.
185,742: the number of balls bowled by Wilfred Rhodes in the course of his first-class career.

My initial idea was to associate each comment with the reader but this involved too much of work. Hence below I have given the names of readers who have contributed. My apologies if I have missed out anyone. This is, anyhow, a collective effort by the readers.
Abid Hussain Shah, Ahmad Uetian, Aliraza Alimohamed, Anshul Gupta, Bharath Seervi, James Lawrence, Nadeem Sharifuddin, Navin Agarwal, Pawan Mathur, Ravi Narla, Santosh Sequeira, Sean Michael Matt, Anand_S, Cool_Jeeves, CricketPissek, Deuce03, Steve, Mahendran15, Milind, Pelham_Barton, Rajdev, Pankaj Joshi, Sancho, A123s1l, Anup, Chemshree, Djaarav, David, Hemant Brar, Rachit, Muzika_tchaikovskogo, Riskrao, Rob Heinen, Swarzi.
My favourites amongst these gems.
- The clever play on the number 99.94 by David.
- Very nice interpretation of the Ind-Win runs-equal-draw and the cyclical tie prospect, by Anand.
- The two occurrences of all four innings played on the same day by Anup.
- The half-squash-ball gem from David.
- The "two Robin Singhs and two Tests" classic by Anup.
- The Atherton revelation by Rob Heinen.
- The John Traicos tour around the world by Steve.
- The dogged effort to get some recognition for that great competitor, Boucher, by "Riskrao".
- The Alec Stewart number play by Anup.
- That "Jayasuriya & Muralitharan did not take a single international run together" by Pawan Mathur.
- And finally my own homage to Phillip Hughes, which was also a request by Murray Archer.
Nothing stops you readers from coming out with further numbers. We may very well have a third article, say in 2015.
Now for the Bradman memorabilia. This time I have scanned the photo of the scorecard at the historic moment when Bradman reached his hundredth century in Sydney. This was against the Indian tourists in 1946-47. This was a truly remarkable achievement since Bradman scored a hundred every three innings.