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Cricket geekery epitomised
By Will 2 months ago, No Comments; be the first!
It’s a wonder Andy Zaltzman is still a married man. Outstanding cricket geekery:
No Comments »Happy New Year, Confectionery Stallers, and welcome to a new year, a new decade (or the last year of an old decade, depending on your decade-defining proclivities). I am firmly in the New Decade camp, and so, I assume, is Jacques Kallis, if only so he can claim to be the 29th member of the highly exclusive club of players who have scored Test hundreds in three different decades.
(I have a full list of these 29 cricketing legends, but will not list them here for fear of antagonising my wife, who is anxious for me not to join the equally exclusive club of husbands who have spent excessive parts of two decades working out things on Statsguru. But a special mention for the great Indian batsman Vijay Merchant, who is the only man in the history of humanity to have scored just one Test century in three separate decades. Throw that little fact into your next conversation at work and see how people react. Hang on, I’m not quite finished with this one yet. If Kallis can somehow muster another five-wicket innings from his creaking limbs, he will become only the eighth bowler to take a five-for in three different decades, and join Kapil Dev as the only player to have both scored hundreds and taken five-fors in three decades. I’m done now.)
Brett Lee: 300 and counting
By Will 2 years ago, at the start of December, 7 Comments »
I have to admit that I never thought he’d get there. Steve Waugh labelled him, unfairly so, as a “once in a generation” bowler, right when he couldn’t control his ludicrous pace. Anyway – a stat attack for you, courtesy of Andrew Miller. Did you know Lee is the only bowler to have taken 300 Test wickets yet has never taken more than five in an innings?
Me neither. Geek-tastic.
7 Comments »Ned Flanders uses Statsguru
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of January, 3 Comments »
Ned Flanders – aka John Buchanan – uses Cricinfo’s flagship geek-ahoy app, Statsguru. No great surprise I suppose, given that Buchanan makes Bill Frindall look vaguely hip and groovy. But it’s always interesting hearing it being used by coaches, and for what application.
3 Comments »Alert to all statto geeks
By Will 3 years ago, at the end of December, 3 Comments »
If you’re even remotely interested in cricket, chances are that there’s a lurking geek within you. Don’t worry – we’ve all got it and flaunt it. I notice that Cricinfo’s new statsguru, which has been under wraps for ages, has been let loose on you ‘orrible lot. It is a thing of total, unabashed brilliance…where you can find out such must-have things as the best five-fors conceding 10 runs or less, or spinners who have opened the bowling on the first day of a Test match.
Pub quiz masters: go forth and splutter.
3 Comments »Geekery on Hussey
By Will 3 years ago, mid-November, 1 Comment »
Outstanding geekery from Patrick this morning:
Even I wouldn’t dare put this up on the blog – would look like I am far too sad – but I did some number crunching and I reckon that Hussey needs to average just under 109 per innings between now and the Ashes (assuming he plays in every game scheduled and gets not outs at the present rate) in order for him to be averaging 100 over his career by the time the Ashes start!
Update: the geek is out of the closet!
1 Comment »The geek in all of us
By Will 3 years ago, at the end of August, 6 Comments »
When I was a rather pathetic geek of a teenager, I used to pass the time during advanced mathematics AS level classes, which I had somehow fluked my way into, by developing a system of calculator cricket, using the random-number generator button. Immense charts were drawn up to reckon the probability of dot-balls, run outs, even the odds of bad weather intervening. It used to take about one hour of advanced maths to play 90 overs so during the course of a term, several Test or first-class series could be completed and that meant conjuring teams to take on each other while I was pretending to be solving quadratic equations.
So says our chum Patrick Kidd in his greatest county XIs piece last week. Reminded me that we used to play Howzat using HB pencils, scratching modes of dismissal with our compasses onto each of the six sides. Simpler times. Let your inner geek out via the comments…
