list of batsman who you generally consider to be lucky/ unlucky

[Lillian Thomson]

Given his sad decline and relatively early demise fate may have been kinder had that been the outcome

I think his retirement was relatively happy, he certainly remained a jovial character. I saw him at Lords one Sunday when the Gillette Cup (or whatever it was called by then) Final went into the second day. He did quite a bit of Radio summarising for Radio 3 when Northants were playing in the big one-day games.

 

[Tom Halsey]

Unlucky batsmen are exceptionally rare. Virtually no batsman over a long career will have more bad luck than good.

Surely, for luck to be luck, there must be an equal chance of having bad or good luck? If not, you'd have to question whether the good luck really is luck.

 

[fredfertang]

Surely, for luck to be luck, there must be an equal chance of having bad or good luck? If not, you'd have to question whether the good luck really is luck.

Was it Gary Player who said "the more I practice the luckier I get" ?

 

[Spinksy]

The two that spring to mind for me is..
Lucky: Andrew Symonds
Unlucky: Andrew Strauss

These to people have already been said however.

 

[Tom Halsey]

Was it Gary Player who said "the more I practice the luckier I get" ?

Yes, but that's not true. Luck is just that - luck.

 

[SJS]

Lucky : Anyone who ever played cricket.

Unlucky : Anyone who never played cricket.

 

[Smudge]

Lucky: Matthew Hayden in Australia in the early part of his innings

Unlucky: Brendon McCullum in Australia.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Lucky: Matthew Hayden in Australia in the early part of his innings

Unlucky: Brendon McCullum in Australia.

Haha, still remember that caught behind off the crack. Had a look of bemusement on his face about how good the ball was, and how he missed it, then kept that same look when the umpy gave him out.

 

[tooextracool]

Alistair Cook has to be up there as far as lucky batsmen go. Looks like getting out almost all the time and hes had a fair few umpiring decisions and dropped catches in his favor.

 

[sanga1337]

Always consider Damien Martyn to be quite unlucky

 

[Napier16]

Alistair Cook has to be up there as far as lucky batsmen go. Looks like getting out almost all the time and hes had a fair few umpiring decisions and dropped catches in his favor.

Very much so.

At the start of his career it seemed like about 4 of his first 5 "caught more often than not" type chances went down.

Also difficult to forget his LBW let off to Mcgrath, one of the worst N/O decisions I've seen.
Think it was Koertzen in the second innings of one of the later tests, it was also one of those literal cases of middle stump half way up to a stright ball.

 

[Richard]

Alistair Cook has to be up there as far as lucky batsmen go. Looks like getting out almost all the time and hes had a fair few umpiring decisions and dropped catches in his favor.

Indeed, there was a time when both he and Pietersen had a remarkable amount of fortune. With Pietersen he's had less in more recent times, but Cook's has largely remained the same all career.

 

[Richard]

Surely, for luck to be luck, there must be an equal chance of having bad or good luck? If not, you'd have to question whether the good luck really is luck.

Nah, there's really only one thing for a batsman that can constitute what I'd call a considerable slice of bad luck - an Umpire wrongly giving you out. But the inverse, there's dropped catches, missed stumpings, wickets off no-balls and bad n\o Umpiring decisions.

Of course, batsmen do get RUDs, but it's very difficult to say for certain what one of those is. Far more difficult than to say what a dropped catch, missed stumping or Umpiring error is.

 

[Richard]

Was it Gary Player who said "the more I practice the luckier I get" ?

I like this one better:

"The more I practice, the better I get".

 

[NUFAN]

Lucky: Justin Langer.

Unlucky: Dean Jones.

 

[Richard]

Jones?

 

[NUFAN]

Jones?

I don't think he deserved to be dropped, therefore he was an unlucky batsmen.

Langer lucky re: LBWs, so often could have been given, so often not given.

 

[Richard]

I don't think he deserved to be dropped, therefore he was an unlucky batsmen.

Well that's an unlucky player more than an unlucky batsman.

I've re-examined Dean Jones' Test record quite a bit recently, and it flatters him grossly. Did he deserve to be dropped for Stephen Waugh? Possibly not. But was the drop coming soon? Very probably.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Allan Lamb was an unlucky batsman from a piss poor umpiring point of view. He got a poor LBW in his first Test innings, a string of howlers in the 1982/83 tour of Australia (though he wasn't alone there). Incorrect bat/pads and LBW's followed him like two incorrect things in a pod.

 

[Uppercut]

I don't believe over the course of a long career, there really can be batsmen who get an unusual amount of good or bad luck. That's not to say that luck evens itself out, but over a player's career (and life), if you count all little pieces and big pieces of luck one way or the other there'll be little variation between batsmen.

To me, lucky batsmen get their lucky umpiring decision or dropped catch at the right time. Hashim Amla, for instance- surely if it weren't for that McCullum dropped catch on 2 before his 170, he'd be out of form and out of the side by now? Compare with Strauss, whose horrid run of bad decisions in consecutive matches in Australia really threw his career into jeopardy- although it must be said that noone knows whether he'd have just got out the very next ball each time anyway.

Ed Smith did an excellent analysis of luck, how it works and why it matters in his latest book, if anyone's interested.