Chanderpaul and his average
Chanderpaul carried his bat through to the end of the West Indian innings this morning, scoring 126. However, if it wasn’t for Nash playing beyond himself and scoring 74 in a partnership of 163, he might not have even got his century. Why does he bat at 5?
This innings has pushed his average over 50, and famously he averages over 100 over the past two years – 112.84 actually, from 1467 runs.
He’s scored 6 centuries in the last two years, but he hasn’t gotten huge totals over that 113 average to push it up so high. His secret is the 9 not outs he has from 22 innings.
Each of those not outs was a 50 or a 100, and each one was an innings cut short. How much could he be scoring if he had partners that would let him carry on.
December 21st, 2008 at 12:54 am
I haven’t done a really rigorous analysis of the effect of not-outs on averages, but the stuff I and others have done suggests that if batsmen were able to complete their not-out innings, their averages would go up by a little bit. Well less than a run, on average, though maybe a bit more for someone like Chanderpaul.
Still your main point is right, if he was batting higher in the order he’d probably be scoring more runs, which is more important from the team’s perspective, as well as having the benefit of boosting his average a little bit.
December 21st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Hey David,
A 1-run uncertainty in the average due to not-outs does feel about right. In general at least. I suspect this estimate might fall apart when you start racking up a large number of not outs, which is what Chanderpaul is doing at the moment. And it becomes pretty inaccurate when you start looking at only a restricted period, such as Chanderpaul’s last two years. I’d say his not outs are greatly contributing to his average for the last two years. I don’t think anyone would expect him to score 113 runs in every innings if he could just bat on until he got out.
And his heightened average of late is contributing to his overall average. Two years back, before his current purple patch, he was averaging a pretty happy 45. In two years he has risen that to 50.