Batsmen's highest / lowest / final averages
 

Hi,

With the recent reductions in Tendulkar's, Ponting's, and Jayawardene's averages in particular, I was thinking about batsmen's highest averages and how they compared with the final averages they ended up with (Hussey has retired on a high note, but he also is one with a bit of a contrast between his peak average and his final). Ponting was up around 57 at some point wasn't he?

I was wondering if anyone out there has an innings-by-innings record for the top 100 or so batsmen, and could easily put together a table containing :

Batsman;
final (or current) average;
final (or current) no. tests;
highest average;
no. tests after which highest average achieved;
lowest average;
no. tests after which lowest average achieved.

The highest or lowest averages must be 20+ tests - I'm not interested in someone like Gooch whose lowest average was zero after his first test, or Michael Clarke whose highest average would be after his first test I think thanks to a century on debut... though I expect many players (eg Kallis) will have increased their averages since the 20 test mark, so that will be their lowest. And a rare few (Jimmy Adams, Mike Hussey) peaked before 20 tests and so that will probably be their highest averages for the purposes of this exercise.

Just something which interested me. Thanks to anyone who can help.

After 107 test matches Ponting actually had 9239 runs @ 59.99 back in late 2006.

..

Ponting definitely hit 60 in late 2006. Was never the same batsman from 2007 onwards though.

ponting didn't go off the rails until the MJ ****show at Lord's

Hadn't realised just how long it took Ponting to get going. I had a look at his cumulative averages courtesy of statsguru... that 30 match average of 38.62 came after a pair in the home series vs Pakistan (following a duck in his only innings in the first test). Bowled Waqar third ball, lbw Wasim fifth ball... so fairly understandable....

The top 6 was Slater, Blewett, Langer, Waugh x2, Ponting.

He then made 197 in the next test, and lots of runs in the next series vs India. I wonder how close he came to being dropped for Hayden, Martyn, Law, Lehmann or whoever else was on the scene at the time?

Lawrence Rowe once had an average of 336
Ian Bell once had an average of 303

Considering the averages of Blewett and Langer at the time. As well as the declining form of Slater there was more talk about him moving up the order, then getting dropped again.

Ken Rutherford averaged 1.71 after 8 innings

A tad better than Marvan Atapattu's 0.16 after 6

Nah read my post dickwad, 2007 was when he stopped being epic like he was from 05-06. That is different tofanning off the rails, which is what happened to Ponting from 09 onwards.

Around 2007 I was thinking that Ponting was a freak, his average is just going to keep going up and thought people underappreciated him. Remember arguing with Manan, him saying Ponting would need an average of 60+ to be better than Tendulkar (who at the time was in crap form IIRC).

Dravid and Pontings career trajectories were so so similar... great number 3s who were arguably the 2 best batsmen in the world in 2002-06.. then fell away pretty dramatically after that... poor for 3-4 years, then had one final epic series performance, and finally retired after a dire final series.

Think Dravid too averaged over 59 at one point.

I recall as well thinking that Ponting was going to be remembered as the best batsman of the era, just a drastic drop off after though.

Looking at consistancy, Javed Miandad's lowest average was 51.74 after his 45th Test (76 innings) and he retired with an average of 52.57 after 124 tests (189 innings)

However he averaged 57.41 after 100 tests before he dropped 5 runs in his last 24 tests.

my highest average is 41 (this year)