Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting, Kallis & Steve Waugh prove 20 Tests eligibility criterion is flawed in evaluating greatness

Graeme Pollock and George Headley usually follow Don Bradman when the greatest batsmen are listed according to career averages. Normally 20 Tests is considered as the eligibility criterion when preparing such lists. Arunabha Sengupta points out that this method is flawed because careers are prone to major fluctuations during the early stages, and 20 Tests is a very poor indicator of the final quality of a batsman.

 

Graeme Pollock and George Headley usually follow Don Bradman when the greatest batsmen are listed according to career averages. Normally 20 Tests is considered as the eligibility criterion when preparing such lists. Arunabha Sengupta points out that this method is flawed because careers are prone to major fluctuations during the early stages, and 20 Tests is a very poor indicator of the final quality of a batsman.

 

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If we look at the list of highest averages in Test cricket, we come across an unsettling realisation that three of the top five played very few matches.

 

Most often, 20 Tests is assumed to be the minimum criterion to qualify to enable batsmen to get on this list. As a result, while Don Bradman’s phenomenal 99.94 unequivocally heads every such list, we find Graeme Pollock (23 Tests), George Headley (22 Tests) and Eddie Paynter (20 Tests) waltz into the top five.

 

While a stratospheric average after 52 Tests, as in the case of The Don, is indeed a sign of greatness, and Herbert Sutcliffe’s presence at number four with 60.73 from 54 Tests also seems justified, does a high average after 20 Tests really signify greatness?

 

The answer seems to be an unequivocal ‘no’.

 

We have conducted a simple exercise to analyse the batsmen with the highest averages (all Test cricketers with averages over 50) considering the same 20 Test criterion.

 

And we have followed it up by finding the average of the same batsmen at the completion of the 20^th Test of their career. The results are tabulated in the table below.

 

It indeed is an eye-opener. We find plenty of examples of batsmen who had mediocre careers till the 20^th Test and then gradually evolved to become great batsmen. And on the other hand, we have others who were exceptional in their first 20 Tests and then their career averages plummeted to regions of normalcy.

 

For example, Ken Barrington, 6^th on the all time list, averaged just 42.80 after 20 Tests and improved his performance by 37% by the time he completed his 82 Test career with 58.67. If he had retired after at the 20 Test mark, he would have been remembered, at the most, as a useful batsman.

 

Of the modern greats, Jacques Kallis averaged just 31.73 in his first 20 Tests, Sachin Tendulkar 37.41, Mohammad Yousuf 34.14 and Steve Waugh a strikingly low 26.25.

 

On the other hand, Bradman would have ended his career with 2798 runs at 111.92 if he had decided to call it a day after 20 Tests. Javed Miandad would have landed up in the top most group with 67.32, Denis Compton and Jonathan Trott likewise in their 60s – and the position after Bradman would have been usurped by Michael Hussey with a phenomenal 84.80.

 

It is indeed revealing that Compton and Hussey just manage to break into the 50 plus club now, with their initial brilliance tempered down by the effects of time.

 

We also find interesting examples among people who could not make the 50 plus list.

 

Doug Walters averaged a stupendous 67.46 at the 20 Test mark although he ended with 48.26 from 74 Tests. Neil Harvey scored at 58.10 during the same tenure, and finished with 48.41. Perhaps the most remarkable of all is Jimmy Adams, who nosedived from 68.73 in 20 Tests to 41.26 in 54.

 

On the other hand, Zaheer Abbas averaged in the low thirties for the first 20 Tests before hauling it up into the mid-40s by the end of a sterling career. Similarly VVS Laxman dragged his figures up from 27 to 45.

 

How the best batsmen fared

Batsmen	Full Career					After 20 Tests				Post 20 Test Deviation
	Tests	Runs	Ave	C	F	Runs	Ave	C	F
DG Bradman (Aus)	52	6996	99.94	29	13	2798	111.92	13	2	-11%
RG Pollock (SA)	23	2256	60.97	7	11	1838	57.43	6	9	6%
GA Headley (WI)	22	2190	60.83	10	5	2171	65.78	10	5	-8%
H Sutcliffe (Eng)	54	4555	60.73	16	23	1927	68.82	7	9	-12%
E Paynter (Eng)	20	1540	59.23	4	7	1540	59.23	4	7	–
KF Barrington (Eng)	82	6806	58.67	20	35	1284	42.80	2	9	37%
ED Weekes (WI)	48	4455	58.61	15	19	1715	53.59	6	8	9%
WR Hammond (Eng)	85	7249	58.45	22	24	1919	61.90	7	5	-6%
GS Sobers (WI)	93	8032	57.78	26	30	1663	57.34	4	6	1%
JB Hobbs (Eng)	61	5410	56.94	15	28	1828	57.12	5	10	0%
JH Kallis (ICC/SA)	155	12641	56.94	43	55	952	31.73	2	5	79%
KC Sangakkara (SL)	111	9872	56.73	30	39	1537	53.00	4	7	7%
CL Walcott (WI)	44	3798	56.68	15	14	1279	42.63	4	5	33%
L Hutton (Eng)	79	6971	56.67	19	33	1763	55.09	5	6	3%
SR Tendulkar (India)	190	15533	55.08	51	65	1085	37.41	4	4	47%
GS Chappell (Aus)	87	7110	53.86	24	31	1332	45.93	5	6	17%
AD Nourse (SA)	34	2960	53.81	9	14	1787	54.15	5	9	-1%
BC Lara (ICC/WI)	131	11953	52.88	34	48	1828	55.39	3	10	-5%
RT Ponting (Aus)	165	13346	52.75	41	62	1183	39.43	2	7	34%
Javed Miandad (Pak)	124	8832	52.57	23	43	1683	67.32	5	8	-22%
R Dravid (ICC/India)	164	13288	52.31	36	63	1528	52.68	1	14	-1%
Mohammad Yousuf (Pak)	90	7530	52.29	24	33	1195	34.14	2	10	53%
Younis Khan (Pak)	79	6565	51.69	20	26	1344	44.80	5	6	15%
J Ryder (Aus)	20	1394	51.62	3	9	1394	51.62	3	9	–
A Flower (Zim)	63	4794	51.54	12	27	1198	41.31	2	9	25%
TT Samaraweera (SL)	76	5283	51.29	14	29	1092	54.60	3	6	-6%
SM Gavaskar (India)	125	10122	51.12	34	45	1733	50.97	6	10	0%
SR Waugh (Aus)	168	10927	51.06	32	50	709	26.25	0	6	95%
ML Hayden (Aus)	103	8625	50.73	30	29	1251	37.90	3	4	34%
V Sehwag (ICC/India)	98	8306	50.64	22	32	1513	45.84	5	5	10%
AR Border (Aus)	156	11174	50.56	27	63	1655	51.71	5	9	-2%
IJL Trott (Eng)	34	2676	50.49	7	12	1863	64.24	6	6	-21%
DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	133	10540	50.43	31	42	1245	40.16	2	7	26%
IVA Richards (WI)	121	8540	50.23	24	45	1890	57.27	7	6	-12%
S Chanderpaul (WI)	144	10342	50.20	25	61	1396	51.70	1	13	-3%
MEK Hussey (Aus)	73	5708	50.07	16	28	2120	84.80	8	8	-41%
DCS Compton (Eng)	78	5807	50.06	17	28	1668	64.15	7	7	-22%

 

Indeed, the first 20 Tests is not at all a good indicator of the final returns of a long career. The correlation coefficient (+1 positive, -1 negative, 0 neutral) between the average after 20 Tests and the finished career yields a value of 0.63 – which is positive but not in any way fool-proof.

 

The above can be underlined by looking at two careers with identical end statistics that have traced very different paths on the way to their final destinations. For example, Dilip Vengsarkar finished scored at 42.13 from 116 Tests while Sourav Ganguly averaged 42.17 from 113. In the first 20 Tests, however, they had drastically different averages – Vengsarkar a pedestrian 34.74 while Ganguly a high 51.13.

 

That early in a career a single big innings can change the average by a great degree. It is evident from the career of George Headley whose average came down from 65.78 to 60.83 in the course of just two Tests. Similarly a couple of failures can also cause immense fluctuations with so few Tests to balance things out. Norman O’Neill’s average was shot down from 59 to 54 in his 20^th Test.

 

If we look at Brian Lara, he managed a high average of 55.39 at the 20 Test stage even though he had just three big innings till then. Fortunately for him, two of them were huge – 277 and 375.

 

As a career progresses, single innings have less bearing on the end average and consistency gets more and more weightage.

 

A list of batting greats across generations is inevitable as adherents discuss and dissect performances, and the game has a rich storehouse of data for us to analyse and interpret.

 

However, it will perhaps be prudent to exercise caution while attributing greatness to batsmen who have played very few Tests.

 

In a list of all-time greatest batsmen Graeme Pollock, George Headley and Eddie Paynter can be included only if accompanied by big asterisks, lengthy footnotes and exhaustive disclaimers.

 

(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)

 

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