www.inside-cricket.org

Analysis of and commentary on South African cricket

Month: July, 2012

31 July 2012

Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis: When to let go

FEATURE: How do ‘great’ players know when to retire? It’s a tough call. Tougher still for selectors. One helpful tool is to look at a player’s cumulative career average over time. The longer a career (and the greats play for a long time these days), the easier it is to see when one’s form is improving or declining. In the piece below I set out some examples, before looking at Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis and seeing in what fashion their careers are likely to end.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
26 July 2012

Busting the ‘Anderson’s as good as Steyn’ myth

FEATURE: In the run-up to the England-South Africa series and, indeed, during the first test, many commentators have made the claim that Dale Steyn and James Anderson are equals – on the basis of their records over the past three years. Looking at their total averages over that period, however, is misleading. If you break those statistics down by season, you arrive at a different conclusion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
24 July 2012

The awesome Kallis and Amla

FEATURE: If Graeme Smith’s and Hashim Amla’s 259 2nd wicket run-fest remorselessly eroded away England’s confidence, Kallis’s and Amla’s subsequent 377 unbeaten run partnership rendered them shattered, physically and mentally. But it’s not the first time these two have produced that kind of collaboration, on that kind of scale. In fact, when it comes to big partnerships, there is a case to be made no two batsmen in the history of test cricket boast a better record.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
23 July 2012

Kallis versus ‘Flintham’

FEATURE: There is a tired old analysis that, thankfully, is doing the rounds less and less these days: that Jacques Kallis is boring – not a real ‘great’ because he never does anything memorable. It has recently been rehashed by Michael Henderson, writing in the Independent newspaper in Britian. He even suggests Ian Botham was superior. What nonsense. Here is why Kallis is better than not just Botham, but Botham and Flintoff combined – a new character I have created called ‘Flintham’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment