Off Stump

Amidst all the hoopla around Tendulkar's twenty years, Dravid's return to form, Sehwag's monstrous scores and India's ascent to #1 in the rankings, one man has been quietly forgotten. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has now become (statistically) the best Indian wicket-keeper batsman of all time in Test matches with more hundreds (3) than anyone else and with a better dismissals/innings rate than all Indian keepers with 50+ dismissals. He also has the highest ODI batting average amongst all Indian batsmen (who've played 20+ games), at a strike rate of just under 90. And of course he led India to its only World Cup after the seminal '83 win though it must be said that he hasn't done justice to himself in T20Is yet. Add to that the fact that he's now captained India to Test series wins against Aus, Eng, and SL plus a drawn series against SA at home and their first overseas win in NZ in 30 years and you have a modern Indian great in the making. Funnily enough he see

So I've finally gotten down to doing some real statistical analysis. I will start out with Test cricket because that's the form of the game I find most fascinating. And (as most cricket lovers seem to be) being biased towards batsmen, my first few pieces will probably revolve around batting :-) I should also mention how indebted I am to Cricinfo's "godsend-to-geeks" Statsguru. Its probably what I devote the maximum number of my daily internet pageviews to, sometimes even more than email! Without it, most of the analysis I have ever done would not have been possible. So first up, I thought it would be worth looking at a simple stat that's slightly different from the more traditional batting average or its second cousin, runs per innings. There's a lot of analysis that's been done around number of innings per 100 but not for the number of innings per 50+ score. A look at that stat (using a minimum of twenty 50+scores) reveals some interesting facts. Brad