Jayawardene, Clarke & Hussey among those with lop-sided overseas records

There is a popular perception that batsmen of the subcontinent – particularly Indians – are tigers only at home, while the ones belonging to the champion teams perform consistently around the world. Arunabha Sengupta looks at the numbers to find that in modern cricket the truth is drastically different.

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Cricket is riddled with popular perceptions – and many of the fallacies that do rounds in the fan-world take the form of gospel across boundaries.

One very common trait is to rampantly bestow the sobriquet “flat-track bully” on batsmen from the subcontinent, primarily the Indians. There is an overwhelming tendency to look for collapses abroad, to act as confirmation bias for the “Tigers at Home” tag. The other side of this prevalent belief is that batsmen of champion teams score runs all over the world with impeccable consistency.

However, as so often happens, if we evade the pitfalls of popular belief and take an unbiased look at the figures, the results emerge as shockingly counter-intuitive.

Some of the Australian batsmen seem poor travellers as well

When we consider the modern batsmen – who have donned the national colours and plied their trade at home and abroad in this millennia – it is not surprising to find Mahela Jayawardene as the one whose performance undergoes the most pronounced dip when the action shifts overseas. This Sri Lankan stalwart has an impeccable average of 61.12 at home which plummets to 37.35 abroad, resulting in a difference of 39%.

However, when we look down the table of modern men with over 5000 runs (the second table at the end of the article), it is revealing that the next three positions are taken up by Australians. Michael Clarke, Michael Slater and Michael Hussey turn out to be poor travellers, each with more than 30% decline in their numbers when faced with the vagaries of foreign conditions. And after the trio with the same first name, Matthew Hayden is ninth on the list of nose-dives away from home.

At number seven, Marcus Trescocthick’s figures perhaps underline the well-known psychological afflictions he had to suffer while touring abroad.

The first Indian on the list is predictably Virender Sehwag, who comes in at number 13 with 20% decline of average. But the names that follow close behind him are seldom uttered in the same deprecating breath as far as fluctuation of fortunes in foreign shores is concerned. Kevin Pietersen is at number 16 with a 19% dip, Ricky Ponting one place below him, his august average also affected similarly. Brian Lara’s figures take a hit by 18%, Justin Langer’s by 15%.

The second Indian on the list is VVS Laxman with 18% drop. This is also surprising since we have always marked him as one of the better performers abroad.

Often what we remember emerges on top of plenty of submerged performances that are lost in the recesses of memory –and hence the tables given below may be quite unbelievable.

The two great Indian batsmen of the era, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, actually improve their figures abroad very slightly.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Proteans seem to enjoy batting away more than they do at home. Graeme Smith’s average climbs by 22% when Tests are played in foreign lands, Hashim Amla improves his figures by 32%, while AB de Villiers hikes it up by a mammoth 41%.

It seems that among the great Australians, only Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist relished batting on foreign soil.

If we extend the list to cover batsmen of all eras – keeping the 5000 run cut off – Dilip Vengsarkar tops the list with his incredible home average of 55.59 slipping to 32.73 abroad, marking a drop of a whopping 41%.

Finishing as close second with a 40% dip is the opening batsman of the champion team of that era, Desmond Haynes. Of the modern men, Jayawardene, Clarke, Hussey and Slater do enter among the all-time list of greatest declines away from home. A couple of revered names like Denis Compton and Doug Walters also surprisingly make their way into the top ten.

Batsmen worst affected by foreign tours (minimum qualification 5000 runs)

 

No	Batsman	T	Runs	Ave	Runs at Home	Ave at Home	Runs Away	Away Ave	Dip abroad
1	DB Vengsarkar (India)	116	6868	42.13	3725	55.59	3143	32.73	41%
2	DL Haynes (WI)	116	7487	42.29	3868	56.05	3619	33.5	40%
3	DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	138	10806	49.56	6846	61.12	3960	37.35	39%
4	DCS Compton (Eng)	78	5807	50.06	3963	60.04	1844	36.88	39%
5	MJ Clarke (Aus)	89	6989	52.54	4156	64.93	2833	41.05	37%
6	Zaheer Abbas (Pak)	78	5062	44.79	2444	58.19	2618	36.87	37%
7	M Azharuddin (India)	99	6215	45.03	3412	55.93	2803	36.4	35%
8	MJ Slater (Aus)	74	5312	42.83	2842	52.62	2470	35.28	33%
9	MEK Hussey (Aus)	79	6235	51.52	3794	61.19	2441	41.37	32%
10	KD Walters (Aus)	74	5357	48.26	3065	57.83	2292	39.51	32%

 

Modern day batsmen with 5000 plus runs - in the order of their dipping averages abroad

No	Batsman	T	Runs	Ave	Runs  at Home	Ave at Home	Runs Away	Away Ave	Dip abroad
1	DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	138	10806	49.56	6846	61.12	3960	37.35	39%
2	MJ Clarke (Aus)	89	6989	52.54	4156	64.93	2833	41.05	37%
3	MJ Slater (Aus)	74	5312	42.83	2842	52.62	2470	35.28	33%
4	MEK Hussey (Aus)	79	6235	51.52	3794	61.19	2441	41.37	32%
5	PA de Silva (SL)	93	6361	42.97	3290	52.22	3071	36.12	31%
6	Mohammad Yousuf (Pak)	90	7530	52.29	3067	65.25	4463	46.01	29%
7	ME Trescothick (Eng)	76	5825	43.79	3472	51.05	2353	36.20	29%
8	IR Bell (Eng)	83	5699	46.71	3123	54.78	2576	39.63	28%
9	ML Hayden (Aus)	103	8625	50.73	5210	57.88	3415	42.68	26%
10	RR Sarwan (WI)	87	5842	40.01	3494	45.37	2348	34.02	25%
11	S Chanderpaul (WI)	146	10696	51.67	5496	58.46	5200	46.01	21%
12	MP Vaughan (Eng)	82	5719	41.44	3271	46.07	2448	36.53	21%
13	V Sehwag (India)	102	8559	50.05	4629	55.80	3930	44.65	20%
14	MV Boucher (SA)	147	5515	30.3	3001	33.70	2514	27.03	20%
15	TT Samaraweera (SL)	81	5462	48.76	3123	53.84	2339	43.31	20%
16	KP Pietersen (Eng)	92	7414	49.42	4149	54.59	3265	44.12	19%
17	RT Ponting (Aus)	168	13378	51.85	7578	56.97	5800	46.40	19%
18	BC Lara (WI)	131	11953	52.88	6217	58.65	5736	47.80	18%
19	KC Sangakkara (SL)	115	10045	55.8	5697	61.25	4348	49.97	18%
20	ST Jayasuriya (SL)	110	6973	40.07	4114	43.76	2859	35.73	18%
21	VVS Laxman (India)	134	8781	45.97	3767	51.60	5014	42.49	18%
22	Younis Khan (Pak)	79	6565	51.69	1898	59.32	4667	49.12	17%
23	JL Langer (Aus)	105	7696	45.27	4428	48.65	3268	41.36	15%
24	Inzamam-ul-Haq (Pak)	120	8830	49.6	3709	53.80	5121	46.98	13%
25	MA Atherton (Eng)	115	7728	37.69	4716	38.97	3012	35.85	8%
26	CL Hooper (WI)	102	5762	36.46	2555	38.13	3207	35.24	8%
27	TM Dilshan (SL)	85	5255	40.42	2688	42.00	2567	38.89	7%
28	AJ Stewart (Eng)	133	8463	39.54	4650	40.78	3813	38.13	6%
29	ME Waugh (Aus)	128	8029	41.81	4019	43.21	4010	40.5	6%
30	JH Kallis (SA)	159	13040	56.94	6798	58.60	6242	55.23	6%
31	N Hussain (Eng)	96	5764	37.18	2833	38.28	2931	36.18	5%
32	SC Ganguly (India)	113	7212	42.17	3180	42.97	4032	41.56	3%
33	GP Thorpe (Eng)	100	6744	44.66	3343	45.17	3401	44.16	2%
34	MS Atapattu (SL)	90	5502	39.02	2671	38.71	2831	39.31	-2%
35	SR Tendulkar (India)	194	15645	54.32	6940	53.79	8705	54.74	-2%
36	HH Gibbs (SA)	90	6167	41.95	3055	41.28	3112	42.63	-3%
37	R Dravid (India)	164	13288	52.31	5598	51.35	7690	53.03	-3%
38	AJ Strauss (Eng)	100	7037	40.91	4045	39.65	2992	42.74	-8%
39	AC Gilchrist (Aus)	96	5570	47.60	2936	45.87	2634	49.69	-8%
40	CH Gayle (WI)	95	6691	42.08	3011	39.61	3680	44.33	-12%
41	G Kirsten (SA)	101	7289	45.27	3384	42.30	3905	48.20	-14%
42	SR Waugh (Aus)	168	10927	51.06	5710	47.58	5217	55.50	-17%
43	AN Cook (Eng)	87	7117	49.42	3408	44.84	3709	54.54	-22%
44	GC Smith (SA)	106	8570	49.25	3572	44.09	4998	53.74	-22%
45	HM Amla (SA)	66	5389	50.83	2322	43.81	3067	57.86	-32%
46	SP Fleming (NZ)	111	7172	40.06	2947	33.87	4225	45.92	-36%
47	AB de Villiers (SA)	81	5961	49.26	2643	41.29	3318	58.21	-41%

Note:

While looking at the figures, please remember that the last column is an indication of home-versus-away performance. The ‘Dip Abroad’ column is not an indicator of how great or ordinary a batsman was. To get an indication, the figure has to be considered in conjunction with the home and away averages.

It will also be prudent to remember that any player has to appear in approximately half the Tests on home soil, so a poor home record is as undesirable as a dip of average abroad.

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)