After nearly pulling of a dramatic win in the first ashes
test match there was a feeling the Australian team was spurred on my Darren
Lehmann and could be competitive against the Poms. But in reality it was
through a cricketing miracle and with a benefit of some luck Australia came so
close. The cracks were visible after the 1st innings at Trent Bridge
but Agar sealed them as quick as Selleys ‘no more gaps’
As a nation Australia went Ga-Ga over Agar but instead we
should have been contemplative on the thought had Agar been given out stumped
the Australia would have been bowled out for 130.
Now it seems like the whole of Australia is diving into
Shield Statistics, CA reports, youth programs, trying to figure out what is wrong
with Australian cricket.
Few statistics have been published over the past few days on
the declining batting numbers in Shield Cricket and the facts reveal some
interesting patterns. The first distinct
one is the number of hundreds in shield cricket last year was one of the worst
recorded in history.
The number of hundreds scored last year was 32. In the
previous years it was 46 and 48 respectively. If you go back another couple of
years it was 56 and 58. Since the turn of the century 50 hundreds were scored
in shield season on each occasion expect for the last three years.
Less individual hundreds have meant teams have struggled to
accumulate huge totals. In the last three seasons combined team total of 500
has been eclipsed only on 5 occasions. Back in 09/10 a team score of 500 was
bettered on 5 occasions. Go back another year and it reads at 7.
|
Season
|
Total Hundreds
|
Team Scores over 500
|
Team Scores Under 200
|
|
2012/13
|
32
|
2
|
28
|
|
2011/12
|
48
|
1
|
15
|
|
2010/11
|
46
|
2
|
20
|
|
2009/10
|
58
|
5
|
12
|
|
2008/09
|
57
|
7
|
17
|
Huge scores are conjured up by virtue of large partnerships.
Even large partnerships we have been accustomed to have vanished. There was only one partnership of over 200
last year. The year before that they were nine and a one triple hundred partnership.
Players have come out in the last week and blamed state of
the pitches. No doubt the pitches have been bowler friendly but the number of
times a team has been bowled out under 200 nearly doubled last season. Yes, Australia fast bowling stocks are overflowing
at the moment but how often have the top three bowlers been on the field
together? This means the bowlers dismissing shield batsmen out cheaply are way
down on the Australian pecking order and yet still having huge success.
Traditionally winning the toss and electing to bat in
Australia is a no brainer on most grounds. Over the past year scoring 400 in
the first innings of the shield match is a rare occurrence. Last year team batting in the first innings
of a match only managed to reach 400 once. In the two previous years it was
only reached three times.
Over the last three years the worrying aspect is the average
totals across all the grounds in Australia have not changed dramatically. There
has been no trend on a particular ground or a specific innings that has been
alarming. It tends to suggest the nature
of the wickets have remained fairly similar but the individual scores,
partnerships, low scores have all skewed downwards.
Usman Khawaja and Matthew Wade have blamed the pitches
rather than the BBL. They might be correct but in Khawaja’s case he only
managed to convert one of his starts into a hundred. Surely, once the batsmen
are set on any kind of wicket he’s goal should be to get a big score. Michael
Clarke elaborated on this point after the Lords test but if it’s not happening
in shield cricket, it is unlikely to occur in the test arena.
Instead of performing health analysis and performance management
on players, Pat Howard and co should have been looking at the glaring concerns
in the Sheffield shield last year. Perhaps if they were then the batting
problems could have been eradicated, at least to a limit.
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