Cricket Bloggers of Pakistan

For a long time I’ve thought that batting averages don’t quite tell the full story of how good a batsman is. It is my suspicion that too much of a player’s success or failure is based on luck. Their batting average can of course be affected by the standard of bowling they face, the quality of the wicket, the speed of the outfield, the quality of the opposition captain (i.e. does he place his fielder’s in the right place), the quality of the ground fielding, the quality of catching and the quality of the umpiring. Most of these can’t be accounted for – or at least they could be, but it would take a lot of analysis and work. The last two, wrong decisions by umpires and dropped catches can be accounted for pretty easily.

As an example of “real” averages, Chanderpaul’s average in the recent West Indies v England series is severely affected – yes, he’s played well, but if England could catch he wouldn’t have ended up with an incredible official average of 148.7, but a decent average of 44.2.