Test Cricket Puns

Play abandoned for the day

Updated below.

The most significant moments of NZ cricket history (feel free to add)

• first test (1930 v Eng)
• first win (1956 v WI)
• first significant away victories v test sides (e.g aus 1985/86 2-1, eng 1999)
• Champions Trophy 2000
• world cup finals 2015/19

As a cricket tragic, those world cup finals... hurt. The first one wasn't so bad. Some of us wouldn't have minded bowling first as we won the toss and chasing gave us a sniff for a bit longer. We garnered a good reputation of chasing and proved it again with that block buster semi v south africa. But we batted first and BMac, and the whole country, were stunned in the first over by a Starc thunderbolt that was like blundering our queen in the opening. The momentum never shifted fully back. We had a chance around the 35th to post a more defend-able total but lost a few too many quickly.

As for the 2019 final... Boy that stung. Honestly, that convinced me that gods do exist.

Our only silverware of world class value is therefore just that 2000 champions league trophy. Chris Cairns, talk about a hero to villain story, saved the day with an iconic tonne versus a stacked india team with the likes of Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Khan, et co. That was the inaugural champions trophy, by the way...

My favourite odi series was actually the 2001/02 VB series v Australia and South Africa in Australia. We didn't win the tournament but we beat a great Australian side a couple of times on the back of a kid by the name of Shane Bond terrorising the aussie top order. If you go on YouTube, there's a funny thing you run into on Shane Bond videos - about half a dozen bloody comments are jizzing over his bloody action! I mean it is beautiful but those comments are worth checking out lol

The Black Caps have regularly over achieved in world cups and other comps - batting above our average as we approach the game with balance; never weak in an area, but never the world's best in another.

So, here we go, at another juncture in NZ's decorated yet nevertheless overwhelmingly bare trophy cupboard. Always the bridesmaid on so many occasions now.

A venue change, a covid pandemic, a confident india coming off that compelling win in Australia, an india that has suffered mightily in 2021 due to covid, a one-off test for the inaugural Test Championship.

I await another act of the gods (seriously, that 4 off the bat from the outfield shouldn't have counted!)

Edit/update: thanks for the awards. Many comments on 1992 W

In May 2018 South Africa were at No 2 In the ICC Test Rankings but currently the test team is at All time low career ranking of 7th in the ICC Test Rankings. The past 3 years has been South Africa's worst test performance since re-admission.

They have been in a transition period since the Retirement of Ab de Villiers and Morne Morkel in 2018. Since then Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Faf du Plessis have also retired. Probably a lot for any test team to handle and recover from. But the issue has been the fact that their already stabilized stars in the test team has been very inconsistent resulting in a dismal performance.

I so dearly wanted to blame everything on the Quota system, "They can't play their best team because of that it's clearly got to be the issue" But the truth is quite different, South Africa just haven't played good cricket in the last 3 years. the Superstars in Quinton de Kock and Kagiso Rabada have also been quite average(Or even below average by their standards). When the most experienced players in the team has not been performing well then it's really difficult for that team to do well.

Let's look at the Performances of the South African Test Team since May 2018 and their Players

Performances of All the Teams since May 2018

South Africa are 9th interms of the Win/Loss ratio having won 6 and lost 12 games. All those 6 wins came in home games. 3 against Pakistan in 2018-19, 1 Against England in 2019-20 and 2 against Sri Lanka(A team that had some freakish injuries during the series) in 2021. They have lost all their away games. All have been in Asia (2 in Srilanka, 3 in India and 2 in Pakistan). All their lo

https://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/117675/i-thought-i-wasnt-good-enough-for-test-cricket-james-anderson

I ask this question to you all. Is test cricket the most popular format of cricket? I think the answer would be unanimously a no.The Big three organise 4-5 test match series' between them,you know they are the money matches but can't even play a three match series against New Zealand,West Indies or Sri Lanka.As a result of the lack of big matches for these other nations,their boards have little to none money in order to sustain test cricket in their countries. What is the point of recognising Ireland, Afghanistan as test playing when all they don't play against the big cricketing nations.

So, I want you all to give your ideas so as how can test cricket be popularised among all the 12 test playing nations and don't forget about the 92 associate teams.

Many members of this sub might be aware of the RTG (Random Team Generator) meme that is associated with Kohli. It originates from this post. Needless to say, it was really intriguing, and a big shout-out to u/onion_uthappa for the idea. When Kohli finished 33 matches with Team India as captain, India had fielded 33 unique teams. What many might have known is that he never played the same XI consecutively, but he never played the same XI twice at the time. In Kohli's defence, some of the changes were forced.

As Kohli has completed 60 matches as captain for the Indian team in test cricket, I thought that it might be time to revisit the meme again.

After going through the playing XIs, I found out that Kohli has played 56 unique teams in the 60 matches that he has captained. This could very well be some kind of record.

• The first time Kohli played a XI that he played before was in England in 2018. Again, keep in mind that he never played the same playing XI twice in any of the matches before, but this was when that streak ended (rip). The XI was unchanged between the 3rd and 4th test of that series. In retrospect, India should have left out Ashwin (who played in the 3rd test) for the 4th test because he was literally not match-fit. Funnily enough, Kohli didn't make the change when he was supposed to, and it broke the streak.
• The lucky XI: Shikhar, KL, Pujara, Kohli, Rahane, Hardik, Pant, Ashwin, Shami, Ishant, Bumrah
• The second time was in India's tour to West Indies in 2019 where he played the same XI for the two match series: North Sound and Kingston
• The lucky XI: KL, Mayank, Pujara, Kohli, Rahane, Vihari, Pant, Jadeja, Shami, Ishant, Bumrah
• The third time this happened was in the home series of 2019. Kohli fielded the same XI for three matches. The matches: [IND v SA in Pune](https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/icc-world-test-championship-2019-2021-1195334/india-vs-sout

I had a thought, and I despite the talk about the "legality" of the switch-hit (which is currently legal), I don't believe there is a rule to prevent this tactic.

The idea is that you switch handedness to prevent the opposition from having more than 2 fielders in the slips. This is because you can't legally have more than 2 fielders behind square on the leg side.

So if you start as left handed, and you see more than 2 fielders behind square on what is currently your leg side, just play it left handed and its a no ball 100% of the time and you can't get out. If there is not more than 2, switch hands and play it right handed (or vice versa depending on what your preference is).

While I don't believe there is any rule that prevents this (correct me if I'm wrong), the downside is you can be given out LBW no matter where the ball pitches. So the "pitched outside leg" disappears. However if you're say a natural right hander (so start left handed using this tactic) facing a right arm over bowler, they can't pitch the ball outside leg stump to a right hander and have it hitting the stumps anyway. So would only be a concern for if right arm bowler goes over the wicket - in which case you could just not do the tactic, and start right handed.

Concerningly, this could create a comical situation where a batter says I'm batting left handed, so the bowler goes around the wicket. Which prompts the batter so say, well then I'm playing right handed, and the bowler then decides to go over the wicket. And they just keep switching without ever having a ball bowled.

That being said, that outcome could happen regardless of this tactic or indeed the outlawing of the switch hit - if a batter is capable of batting on both hands, which has already happened to some degree (think of Warner batting right handed facing Gayle), that situation could unfold anyway as the batter adapts depending on what type of bowling they are facing.

Thoughts?

In LOIs there is a pretty common template of

1. Opener (times the ball well and finds gaps in PP)
2. Opener
3. Anchor
4. Middle order specialist (plays spin well)
5. Finisher or someone who can prevent a collapse
6. Finisher
7. All-rounder
8. All-rounder/ bowler
9. Bowler
10. Bowler
11. Bowler

But I don't know how it works in test cricket, so I would love a short explanation

Yes, I know there are many exceptions to the template like England, who practice the art of 'try to cunt every ball out of the park', I just tried to generalise it.

The other day I was curious about which were the best bowling and batting decades in test match history, so taking a look at those stats, personally wanted to identify the top batsman in the decades where the bowling averages were low and also vice versa i.e the top bowlers in the decades where the batting averages were high. I have considered the top 3 bowling and batting decades for analysis. This might be a long post, grab some popcorn, relax and dive in!

First up lets take a look at the Test bowling. I have considered the period from 1870's to the 1910's under one time period.

Table 1: The bowling averages for each decade and their rank

In the early test match decades before the WW1 (1870’s - 1914), the bowling and batting averages were at an all time low. Probably the cricketers themselves were still finding the nuances of the game and the bowling then was dominated by medium pacers SF Barnes , GA Lohmann and CTB Turner having taken 189wkts. @ 16.43 , 112wkts. @ 10.75 and 101wkts. @ 16.53 respectively. Standing over 6 feet, SF Barnes probably one of the games greatest bowler was far ahead of the others by a significant margin during this period.

The decade after the WWII (1950’s) saw a great slump in bowling averages from the period 1920’s – 1940’s. With bowlers like R Benaud, JC Laker, FC Trueman, this decade was certainly was a tough decade for the batsman. The decade of the (1990’s), which continued a similar trend from the 70’s and 80’s, whereby the bowling averages were more of less similar and by most probably considered one of the most competitive decade of test cricket.

Following below are the tables for the top batsman for each particular decade i.e 1870's - 1910's, 1950's and the 1990's.

Decades 1870's - 1910's: Batsman who have averaged over 35 (min. 20 matches)

The overall batting average during this period was a low 23.06. Considering the tough times for run scoring, VT Trumper was one of the prime batsman during the 1900's, later taken forward by JB Hobbs till the late 1910's.

[Decade 1950's: Batsman who have averaged over 50 (min. 20 matches)](https://preview.redd.it/n61mk11qd6z61.png?width=547&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8efe6da92abd11

If it's a draw, then both parties donate, how bout that? I don't think it'll be a draw, seeing both sides' bowling attacks and the swinging conditions. If rain comes tho..

At his peak, Lara was equal to Ponting, if not better. I hope to see another swashbuckling great test batsman from West Indies in my lifetime. When I started watching test cricket, I witnessed the final act of Sachin Tendulkar and majority of Sehwag, but never saw Lara dominate the way I'd heard.