Dear Andrew,
I have compiled some statistics, for your edification and education. I provide these free of charge so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of having to actually watch any cricket.
Australian bowling stats, England vs Australia, Tests 1-4, 2009
| Statistic |
Without SR Clark |
With SR Clark |
| Tests won |
0 |
1 |
| Tests lost |
1 |
0 |
| Wickets taken (per innings) |
9 |
10 |
| Runs conceded (per wicket) |
40.7 |
18.3 |
At the moment, the only person who needs dropping from the ranks of Australian cricket is AMJ Hilditch.
Regards &c.,
Allow me to present the latest in my series of questionable uses of cricket statistics highlighting why popular Queenslanders should be dumped from prominent sporting positions.
ML Hayden: born October 29, 1971 in Kingaroy, QLD. One of Australia’s greatest openers. High score: 380 at the WACA Ground. 30 test hundreds in 100 matches. 127 catches.
RT Ponting recently stated that Hayden was “undroppable”. However, many in the media have been questioning his performances of late, so I thought that I would trawl the cricinfo archives and put together my favourite misued tool, a graph.
At first glance, you can see that ML Hayden used to be brilliant, but now sucks and should be dropped. Let me explain. I have graphed Hayden’s average counting all tested from each plotted point until the present. So, the end of the graph shows just his last innings, the middle of the graph shows the latter half of his career, and the start of the graph shows his actual average over his entire career.
Legitimate.
The graph clearly shows that, since last summer against India (where he was brilliant), ML Hayden has sucked pretty comprehensively. In fact, he has been in decline since the last home Ashes.
So should we drop him? Yes! Do we have a reliable replacement? Probably not. Is that going to stop me from calling for him to be dropped? No!
Ponting, you’re next on my hit list.
Every three years, we are presented with the chance to cast a meaningless vote for a chump who will mismanage our country for the next little while. We could all do without this pointless exercise.
And yet, when we really need the right man for the job, he is appointed by a faceless committee, with no public consultation process! Usually, they get it right, but when they don’t, the results can be disastrous.
The following people were better captains than Ricky Ponting:
- DW Gregory
- WL Murdoch
- TP Horan
- HH Massie
- JM Blackham
- HJH Scott
- PS McDonnell
- G Giffen
- GHS Trott
- J Darling
- H Trumble
- MA Noble
- C Hill
- SE Gregory
- WW Armstrong
- HL Collins
- W Bardsley
- J Ryder
- WM Woodfull
- VY Richardson
- DG Bradman
- WA Brown
- AL Hassett
- AR Morris
- IWG Johnson
- RR Lindwall
- ID Craig
- R Benaud
- RN Harvey
- RB Simpson
- BC Booth
- WM Lawry
- BN Jarman
- IM Chappell
- GS Chappell
- GN Yallop
- KJ Hughes
- AR Border
- MA Taylor
- SR Waugh
- AC Gilchrist
Andrew Hilditch must go
August 12, 2009 8:53 am | 
