Alastair Cook becomes the first player to be part of 50 Test wins for England

The Ashes win at Trent Bridge was England’s 50th Test win involving Alastair Cook. In the process Cook became the first Englishman to be part of 50 Test wins. Bharath Seervi has some statistics on players being part of 50 or more Test wins.

The fourth Test of Ashes 2015 at Trent Bridge, Nottingham had consisted of several milestones for players. One of them was Alastair Cook becoming the first player in England cricket history to be part of 50 Test wins for his country. It was Cook’s 118th match of his Test career. Cook has been part of 35 defeats and 33 draws apart from the 50 wins in his career since he made his debut at Nagpur against India in 2006.

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For both Cook and James Anderson the win in the third Test at Edgbaston was their 49th win as England players. Anderson missing the fourth test meant he missed this milestone, though he should reach there soon in his career. However, he missed out on being the joint-quickest.  The table below lists English players involving in most test victories in their career. Ravichandran Ashwin’s 6 for 46: Best bowling figures for India in Sri Lanka

Involved in most test wins for England (35 and above)

–          Five out of top six players involved in most wins for England have been from this century.

–          Alec Stewart, England’s most experienced player, has been part of most defeats for his team (54). He is the only Englishman player to be a part of more than 50 defeats. Michael Atherton (44) comes next.

–          Geoff Boycott (53) and Colin Cowdrey (50) are the only Englishmen to have been part of more than 50 draws in tests. Dinesh Chandimal: Fastest wicketkeeper to 1,000 Test runs

–          Of the players in above table Tom Graveney has the best win-loss ratio of 2.57 (won 36 and lost 14).

–          Of those who played more than 50 tests for England, Ray Illingworth has the best win-loss ratio of 4.14 (29 wins and 7 defeats).

The first player to involve in 50 Test wins for a team was Viv Richards. He reached there during the fourth test of the 1988 series at Headingley. West Indies won that match by 10 wickets on July 26. The second was Gordon Greenidge at Kensington Oval against India on April 12, 1989. Both men made their debuts in the same Test, against India at Chinnaswamy on November 22, 1974.

Including Cook, 28 players have involved in 50 or more Test victories. Ricky Ponting has been a part of 108 Test wins — the only one above the 100-mark. The table below lists all 28 players. Virat Kohli scores four centuries in his first four Tests as captain

Players involved in 50 or more test wins

–          Mark Boucher, Rahul Dravid, Graeme Smith and Muttiah Muralitharan played one test for ICC World XI against Australia. This is included in the above aggregates. However, ICC World XI lost that Test.

–          Adam Gilchrist has the highest win-loss ratio among the above players — a massive 6.64 (73 wins, 11 defeats). No one else has even 5. Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer, Greenidge and Desmond Haynes have ratios between 4 and 5. India vs Sri Lanka 2015, 1st Test at Galle: Statistical highlights

–          Allan Border has the lowest win-loss ratio of 1.09 with Australia winning 50 of the 156 tests he played in and losing 46.

–          Bangladesh, New Zealand, Pakistan and Zimbabwe have no player with more than 50 wins. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe have not won 50 tests in their history.

–          Out of 28, 13 players are from Australia. India’s defeat against Sri Lanka at Galle and other defeats following big first-innings leads

(Bharath Seervi is a cricket statistician who is obsessed with digging numbers, facts and records related to the game. An active member of Society of Cricket Statisticians of India, he blogs at www.cricketseervistats.blogspot.com. He can be followed on Twitter at @SeerviBharath and on Facebook here)