Wednesday 18 March 2009

Chris Martin 0*, Test cricket 132*

The old girl might be the aforementioned 132 years old, but she's still got it. What a glorious day's Test cricket in Hamilton, the kind of day only Test match cricket can give you.

At green and hazy Seddon Park, Jesse Ryder stared into the abyss. Two short of the maiden Test hundred that will have occupied much of his waking and dreaming life, New Zealand nine down, Chris Martin walking in, Harbhajan Singh, right arm over, five to come. 

Chris Martin: Innings 65, runs 72, ducks 23, balls faced 388, average length of innings 5.96 balls. Everything coming down to the .96. Now that's what Test cricket is about; the drama within the drama. Martin did it, and so did Jesse. It's debatable who actually batted better, given their respective abilities.

Martin's career with the bat is ascending towards the epic. His highest score of 12* represents a sixth of his total runs, compiled over another 64 innings. As a percentage it must be some kind of unbeatable record.

He will probably retire as the worst batsman every to play Test cricket. Sadly he won't play enough one dayers to challenge the most heroic of careers there, the statistically unstoppable GD McGrath. McGrath went through 27 one day series without scoring a run, including the entire calendar year of 2004. That beat his own record of 2001, when he made one in 18 games. He hit an average of one four every two years. He retired with 115 runs, less than a third of his 381 wickets. 

McGrath didn't quite do the double: in tests his 641 runs finally exceeded his 563 wickets, although the wickets were ahead for a long while. Martin probably has enough Test wickets - 146 - to beat that already. At his current average of 2.17, he'll require another 40-odd innings to get close. 

Stats like those and days like these: 132 years old, indomitable and unbeatable. 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've watched Chris Martin blocking those 5 balls (or rather aiming to block them) 3 times today for the fun of Ryder's grin, the crowd's applause, and the smiles on the face of the Indians - even Youvraj! Lovely to see that century - by a bloke who would probably be demoted by the ECB for being a bit of a porker

The Old Batsman said...

Yes, I noticed the Indians laughing. I guess they didn't have to get too stressed - they knew they wouldn't have to wait that long.

Jesse way too fat to play for England of course.

Damith S. said...

Samit Patel should switch his passport to a Kiwi one.

But might struggle to get into the side because of Dans politically correct weight.

cricketanalysisdotcom said...

2.3. Wow. I think to do that poorly you almost have to be trying to get out. Just hanging the bat down in front of the stumps you could survive a couple overs most of the time and maybe pick up a couple streaky boundaries.
Jesse Ryder is carrying on the fat cricketer tradition that seemed lost with the retirement of Inzamam. Virender Sehwag looked like he was going to pick up that torch but he backed out - thanks Jesse for coming to the plate for guys like us.

Unknown said...

Really amazing and interesting to read that,The old girl might be the aforementioned 132 years old, and the facts are also good.

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He will probably retire as the worst batsman every to play Test cricket.

Pay per head services said...

I really think that Chris Martin is awesome, I have been following his career for a few years and he always surprises me!