Today we welcome new writer Jack Surtees to TFT. Peter Moores would absolutely love this…. Primarily, what exactly is meant by ‘largest run contributor’ and, secondly, what we might expect a ‘typical’ contribution to be.
We can clearly see that both teams had two major contributors: Mitchell, Blundell, Root and Bairstow.
To be clear, that means a player could score the most runs individually in a test but still not be the largest run contributor if their team significantly outscores the opposition.
The team I’ve chosen to use as our benchmark is the 2005 Ashes England Men’s XI (the XI from the first four tests anyway) and there are a number of reasons why: they have a fairly traditional composition – three out-and-out seamers, one spinner, one (dyanmite) ...
...all-rounder and six batters; they’re all now retired so the data won’t be skewed by any ongoing purple patches; and, though they were a very good side, they’re not one of the greatest of all time so we’re unlikely to be skewed by any anomalous careers.
They also happen to be the reason I love cricket. Unless, that is, that first contribution was truly extraordinary in and of itself. There were 43 test matches over the course of 2022.
The first came in the drawn Ashes test at Sydney when he scored twin hundreds during his first return to the test XI since 2019.
But over the previous 12 months both players have firmly dispelled any such debate through consistent dominant displays, achieved in both cases by bringing their more aggressive white ball mindsets to the test arena.
Overall he averaged 50 at a strike rate of 81. Bairstow, meanwhile, averaged slightly more (66) while striking at slightly ...
...less (76). In fact, in every match that either of them finished as the largest run contributor, their team won.
I generally associate extreme run contributions with one player excelling while their team flails around them (probably on account of me being an England ...
...fan during the Root era) and was therefore of the belief that a more well distributed collection of contributors would triumph more times than not.
This was a truly special effort that will be recalled often in years to come. For, in terms of batting performances, 2022 belonged to him.
Mahmudul Hasan Joy who, as previously mentioned, found himself out of the XI only a few months on from this display, was the one spark of positivity in an otherwise drab Bangladesh showing back in spring.
Tom Latham vs Bangladesh in Christchurch – 252 Runs – 48.37%. There is one other cricketer featured in our dataset that somehow hasn’t had a mention yet, but I feel would be remiss to ignore.
The highlight being the performance that put his name in our list.