Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
In the first test against Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad, looks like when India bat again they will face a lead of around 200-250 runs with somewhere around 150 overs remaining in the match.
It’s quite known how India generally gives up when faced with a big target in the fourth innings. Recent exceptions like Chennai 2008 are there of course, but I wanted to find out how the team has performed in the situations where it’s batting third against a big lead. So after going over last 10 years records at Cricinfo Statsguru here is what I notice:
Of the experienced players, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman average 36.54, 36.52, 45.28 and 45.95 respectively in such innings. Laxman has 2 and Sehwag, Tendulkar and Dravid has one centuries in such situations.
In each case some of these scores do not reflect their corresponding first innings scores which were much bigger. I am not sure that should matter. In general we have seen this tendency in most Indian players to not make two consecutive big scores (for example except Dravid doing it two times, nobody else in the current team has scored two centuries in a test)
For Dravid and Laxman some of these scores are when they had opened the innings
Of the younger generation, Gambhir, Yuvraj and Dhoni have been in such situations only twice so far. Except a 69 from Dhoni in one case there are no big innings from any of them so far.
In the last 10 years India ended up in this situation (batting against a big lead in second) 17 times of these 12 times they lost the match, drew it 4 times and won once. But overall there have been very few of these situations in the last 5 years - meaning whenever India batted first they either took a lead or did not concede a big one (won 11 of 26 matches batting first in last 5 years)
Now some of the memorable performances in recent years in such situations:
Nottingham 2002. India lost the earlier test at Lords and was trailing in the second test here by 260 runs. At this point the series turnaround began - Dravid scored 115, Tendulkar 92 and Ganguly 99. The match was drawn. But these three took it further in the next test at Leeds -all three scored centuries and India won that match to level the series.
Kolkata 2002-03. It was a dead rubber as India had already won the series. But in the third test India was trailing by about 140 with two full days to go. Then Tendulkar (176) and Laxman (154) came together to save India.
Adelaide 2007-08. After the resurgence at Perth in the earlier test India scored 526 in the first innings here. But late on the fourth day they could have collapsed to give Australia another chance. Sehwag hadn’t scored a century in the second innings before, but here he scored 151 and more importantly played 236 balls to shut Australia out of the match.
Sydney 1999-00. Laxman gave Australia a glimpse of things to come by scoring 167 in just 198 balls with 27 fours.
Posted in cricket, Australia, India, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, West Indies, Dhoni, England, Sri Lanka, Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Laxman | 1 Comment »