Sunday, January 01, 2006

The Punter and the Wall

They both started their careers within 6 months of each other and in similar fashion with scores of 95 & 96 respectively.

When they first came face to face, they had scored 193 & 187 runs respectively (with 2 fifties each).

When they last met (in the ICC-XI Vs Aus "TEST" in 2005), they had both added over 7,000 runs to their names and were playing their 92nd and 94nd Test Respectively. And at the end of last year only 13 runs and 0.90 points in their average seperated the two.

And yes, both bat at Nr. 3, have 58 & 59 Fifty-plus scores in Test cricket, and also captain their respective sides.

Have their been any other players in Test Cricket whose careers have been so closely linked? Lara and Sachin come to mind...

Anyway, will be fun to see who gets to 10,000 first. I am tempted to put my money on Punter, now that he is finally ready to go over the wall, but I wouldn't like to bet against the Wall either...

10 comments:

Saurabh Wahi said...

Hi Nagraj,

Glad you enjoyed these stats. Keep tuned for some more interesting stuff shortly...

I live in UK but these days I am in Italy. So I know how it feels not be able to talk about cricket with your collegues. Especially if they dont speak English...:-)

Anonymous said...

true man people here dont know anything about cricket language also is another thing to manage.
hope we can interact quite often

Saurabh Wahi said...

Actually in continental Europe, people dont know anything but Football :-)

Anonymous said...

yes there is big stadium in Marseille as well

Anonymous said...

Good One Saurabh!!

Anonymous said...

who would you rather as your first drop, and who would you take in your team? the solidness and reliability of Dravid? or the attack and agression but sometimes inconsistancy of Ponting? For a teams point of view...hard to say, but for the audiences point of view (unless your a biased Indian or like very traditional cricket)it's certainly ponting.

Saurabh Wahi said...

I think both types of cricket can be engrossing.

As an example, Pontings Century at Old Trafford to save the Test was as thrilling to watch as Rudolph's Dravid-like innings in the first Test in Perth. I was absolutely glued to my TV set on both occasions.

Sarat said...

Came here from prempanix.
Good work on the graphs. I guess there is a way to predict who will reach 10000 first.
Just fit equations to your data and plug in 10000 and see what times you come up with...

Look forward to more interesting stuff from you. Where in Italy are you. I was traveling there last year.

Saurabh Wahi said...

Sarat,

Come siete?

Sorry; missed your post.

Difficult to come up with a model for Dravid when I dont know how many games India is going to play in the future :-)

I have been going to Vasto, a place on the East coast in the middle of Italy (near Pescara) but I also spend time in Milan and Turin.

Where were you?

Anonymous said...

While they are similar in number of runs and average , one very big difference remains
ponting strikerate 58 runs per 100 balls
Dravid 42
btw Kallis is also has very similar stats to these guys , number of runs , number of tests etc, his strikerate , 42

ponting wins games by scoring quickly and grabbing momentum within the game , thats why he is number 1 imo