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Over Sixties Club

chasingthedon

International Regular
This feature was suggested following discussions in the CW Forum, when forum member watson posted a thread discussing American evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould's theories on baseball batting averages and its applicability to Don Bradman's outlying average. In a nutshell, Gould posits that there are more better batters now but also that fielders and pitchers have improved, such that what was an achievable milestone some time ago (e.g. a .400 batting average, or "four hundred hitter") is not achieved, and that what was .400 before is now some lower value. That is, .400 is unlikely to be achieved again.


Over Sixties Club (Under Twenties, Too) | Cricket Web
 

Victor Ian

International Coach
That is awesome cthd. I have always loved Steve Waugh. He was the one constant in my growing up watching cricket. I always felt he was better than Ponting and would have personally picked him any day of the week over Ponting and could never find a way of pointing to numbers to explain why. Waugh started off very dire indeed, and it must have taken an exceptional increase for him to have become a 50+ averaging batsmen. I still remember than English series where he finally blossomed. Very surprised to see him rank so highly as an all-rounder as I had thought he stopped bowing very early in his career and that it never coincided with his batting.
 

a massive zebra

International Captain
Gorge Ulyett is in the wrong place for the most 10-match stretches with an average of under 20 (or a 0 is erroneously displayed as a 9).
 
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AndrewB

International Vice-Captain
I may be missing something, or miscalculating, but I can only see 11 stretches of 10 matches where Steve Waugh took 10+ wickets at <25 and had a batting average of >60. The last Tests in these stretches are:
- Cape Town 1993-94 (where he took 5-48) and the 6 Tests after that.
- Adelaide 1995-96 (where he took 4-34) and the 3 Tests after that.

Also, in 5 of these 11 Tests he didn't actually take any wickets. (The problem in those few years more often than not is that he wasn't averaging 1 wicket per match).
 

chasingthedon

International Regular
I may be missing something, or miscalculating, but I can only see 11 stretches of 10 matches where Steve Waugh took 10+ wickets at <25 and had a batting average of >60. The last Tests in these stretches are:
- Cape Town 1993-94 (where he took 5-48) and the 6 Tests after that.
- Adelaide 1995-96 (where he took 4-34) and the 3 Tests after that.

Also, in 5 of these 11 Tests he didn't actually take any wickets. (The problem in those few years more often than not is that he wasn't averaging 1 wicket per match).
Must be an eff-up in the data in that case - will check and get back.
 

chasingthedon

International Regular
I may be missing something, or miscalculating, but I can only see 11 stretches of 10 matches where Steve Waugh took 10+ wickets at <25 and had a batting average of >60. The last Tests in these stretches are:
- Cape Town 1993-94 (where he took 5-48) and the 6 Tests after that.
- Adelaide 1995-96 (where he took 4-34) and the 3 Tests after that.

Also, in 5 of these 11 Tests he didn't actually take any wickets. (The problem in those few years more often than not is that he wasn't averaging 1 wicket per match).
The latest point at which he was averaging a wicket a match was 5th October 1994, by my reckoning, so that would give him a total of six with 60+/sub-25. If he had qualified on a career basis.

Still pretty impressive though re batting.
 

watson

Banned
Looking at all of the above, what we can say with some certainty is that there does not appear to be a trend of reducing averages in cricket in the same way as Gould has noted in baseball – almost all of the players shown in the last three lists are what we would consider modern players. Though in fairness these modern players play far more Tests than did those of pre-World War 2 players, nonetheless those modern players listed above clearly have had no problem achieving the 60-plus threshold.

We must therefore conclude that Bradman is just, well, Bradmanesque – a true one-off. In any case, I’ll revisit this when I look at adjusted averages – possibly Bradman’s dominance will be reduced as a result of taking into account opposition strength.
Really nice analysis Chasingthedon, but I'm confused by the above conclusion.

This is because your data appears to correspond with Gould's theory rather than go against it. As you point out, there are a lot of modern batsman in your list. But wouldn't we expect to see this phenomenon if the general standard of cricket has increased overtime and there are consequently more players clustered near the 'absolute peak' of cricket performance?

But then again it's not as if I've spent hours pulling apart Gould's idea. So I've probably grabbed the wrong end of the pineapple.
 
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chasingthedon

International Regular
Really nice analysis Chasingthedon, but I'm confused by the above conclusion.

This is because your data appears to correspond with Gould's theory rather than go against it. As you point out, there are a lot of modern batsman in your list. But wouldn't we expect to see this phenomenon if the general standard of cricket has increased overtime and their are consequently more players clustered near the 'absolute peak' of cricket performance?

But then again it's not as if I've spent hours pulling apart Gould's idea. So I've probably grabbed the wrong end of the pineapple.
Cheers watson. My thoughts were based on Gould's premise that no one can achieve the .400 threshold anymore, so I was looking to see if cricketers were finding it more difficult now than before to reaching and maintaining the threshold of a 60 career average.

A major difference between cricket and baseball is that baseball players more or less play the same amount of games now as in the past, notwithstanding the increase in games from 154 per season to 162 per season. By contrast, cricketers play far more Tests now that in the early days, so there is also the factor of it being more difficult now to maintain a 60 average over a full career. That's why I added the ten-match average review.
 

the big bambino

International Captain
One of the things people seem to be missing is that Gould's theory (such as it is and such as it is a applicable to cricket) that it probably better relates to cricket bowling averages than batting averages. For a number of reasons averages in cricket have been going up not down. In baseball the trend is the other way. Also Gould's theory comments on seasonal averages. The original thread on this theme misapplied that observation to career averages.
 

chasingthedon

International Regular
One of the things people seem to be missing is that Gould's theory (such as it is and such as it is a applicable to cricket) that it probably better relates to cricket bowling averages than batting averages. For a number of reasons averages in cricket have been going up not down. In baseball the trend is the other way. Also Gould's theory comments on seasonal averages. The original thread on this theme misapplied that observation to career averages.
Depends what you mean by averages are going up or down. Gould actually states that averages in baseball, ie the average batting average for all players, has remained unchanged throughout baseball history, at around .260. What he is getting at is that the highest season averages have reduced, so that .400 is no longer likely, because all players are better. So better pitchers and fielders keep the best players from reaching such high season averages.

So bearing in mind we don't have the same seasonal averages in cricket, what I was trying to do was see if the same difficulty in reaching a higher, short term average has developed in cricket, by looking at the ten test moving average.
 

chasingthedon

International Regular
One of the things people seem to be missing is that Gould's theory (such as it is and such as it is a applicable to cricket) that it probably better relates to cricket bowling averages than batting averages. For a number of reasons averages in cricket have been going up not down. In baseball the trend is the other way. Also Gould's theory comments on seasonal averages. The original thread on this theme misapplied that observation to career averages.
By the way, thanks for reading and commenting. Was there anything from your own review of the 60 average which you wanted to add?
 

watson

Banned
SF Barnes' record of 7 x WPM and a 100% sub-20 average stick out like a sore thumb. Especially the 7 x WPM as no other bowler is even close. I would have thought that the other great bowlers of the time - Foster, Blythe, Rhodes, Hirst, Brearley, Woolley, and Jackson - would have competed more readily for wickets.

Hadlee's record of 5.01 x WPM I can understand because he played most of his cricket with Cairns and Chatfield, and neither of those bowlers were in the same league as Hadlee. But SF Barnes achievement is something else.
 

the big bambino

International Captain
I've only read the first part sorry. I'll get to the balance later. I have a few suspicions as to why Gould's observation might be applicable to baseball but isn't analogous with cricket. Even then he jumps around. He looks at seasonal high averages and compares them with the all time game ave of 260. In cricket decadal averages were getting higher and higher up to the war (first) until they settled around the low to mid 30s thereafter. So if any comparison can be made between baseball and cricket its that in their early years baseball averages were higher while cricket's were lower. In baseball pitching has improved in cricket conditions and batting techniques have.
 
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chasingthedon

International Regular
SF Barnes' record of 7 x WPM and a 100% sub-20 average stick out like a sore thumb. Especially the 7 x WPM as no other bowler is even close. I would have thought that the other great bowlers of the time - Foster, Blythe, Rhodes, Hirst, Brearley, Woolley, and Jackson - would have competed more readily for wickets.

Hadlee's record of 5.01 x WPM I can understand because he played most of his cricket with Cairns and Chatfield, and neither of those bowlers were in the same league as Hadlee. But SF Barnes achievement is something else.
At the risk of being accused of cross-promotion, that's presumably why Barnes' impact per Test is ahead of even Bradman.
 

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