The Lucky Batsmen!!!

[Richard]

Richard..could you /would you post the first chance averages you have for various players (including Dravid, Thorpe...and some of the unlucy players in the article) so we have an idea of how they match up?

I can do it for Thorpe post-1998 easily, but Dravid... like I say, I can't remember every innings even if I have read reports of most of them. I've given you a few for-instances of those I remember clearly on the previous page. tec'd be a better bet.

 

[Richard]

OK, Thorpe since SA 1998 has a scorebook record of 84 innings, 3197 runs at 45.67.
In that time his scorebook-average is 37.01. It's down, of course - as almost all batsmen's are. It shows that Thorpe is no exception to the rule that batsmen usually have more good luck than bad. But 37.01 is still a pretty impressive first-chance average, especially given that he's played on some devilish tricky pitches in that time.

 

[Swervy]

OK, Thorpe since SA 1998 has a scorebook record of 84 innings, 3197 runs at 45.67.
In that time his scorebook-average is 37.01. It's down, of course - as almost all batsmen's are. It shows that Thorpe is no exception to the rule that batsmen usually have more good luck than bad. But 37.01 is still a pretty impressive first-chance average, especially given that he's played on some devilish tricky pitches in that time.

Yeah..well i would say Thorpe is one of the best in the world at surviving on tricky pitches.

How does your first chance scores deal with an innings such as Thorpes hundred vs SA this winter, where he almost played on many times during that innings....I thought it was a great fighting innings, but he could have been considered very lucky to not have played on quite a lot that innings..however I guess if he had have played on, he would have been considered very unlucky to have been gotten out in such a manner

 

[Richard]

No, if he'd played on he'd have played on.
But he didn't.
And I refuse to believe that "nearly playing on" several times is exclusively lucky. He must be doing something right. Once and it's a little bit lucky, but so is a false stroke that goes in the air away from fielders.
You can't count out an innings because it involved false-strokes, otherwise the number of good high-scoring innings would be reduced to 1.
In that innings you referred to, incidentally, Thorpe only made 37, he was very clearly lbw and not given.