Crucket

Cricinfo has analysed the Black Caps’ recent batting performance and have revealed what must the most obvious fact in world cricket today – our batting sucks.

Since April 2006, our batsmen have average 23.22 runs (excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe). This is easily the worst of any team; the West Indies, now ranked higher than us, have an average of 27.89 for the same period. There are numerous other appalling statistics in the article that demonstrate that we really are in a terrible slump.

However, amongst the gloom, there are some very encouraging facts. Firstly, our bowling during this period has been outstanding. Our bowlers have averaged 32.56, not far off South Africa at the top of the table with 30.13, and our economy rate has actually been the best of all. Most interesting though is that our batting average during the whole of the 2000s to date has been 27.67 (ex. Bang/Zim), which by our standards is pretty awesome.

This got me wondering about the date that the statistician has chosen to begin his analysis from. April 2006 is not even the beginning of a season, it’s before the end of the 05/06 season. It is clear that this date was chosen because the series immediately before it would mangle his statistics. Immediately before this cut off date, we played the Windies at home, beating them 2-0, and before that we beat Zimbabwe 2-0 and Sri Lanka 1-0 (a series where our batsmen averaged 45.55). The period chosen by the statistician includes the following series: 2 away series vs South Africa, 1 away vs Australia, home and away vs Bangladesh (which are excluded from the stats), home and away vs England and home vs Sri Lanka (as well as nearly a whole year where we played no tests). While there is a fair range of opponents there, any period that includes 2 series in fortress South Africa has been a rough period.

We don’t need statistics to tell us how bad our batsmen have been of late and I’m not going to use stats to try and convince you otherwise. However, there is nothing in any of this to suggest that we have a serious long-term problem with our batting. We just need to push our batting up a few points, maybe even less than 5, and we should be able to hope for the sort of success we had in the early half of the 2000s. (Push it up by about 20 and we can challenge the Aussies next time we meet them.)