Where does Ravindra Jadeja rank among the best bowlers in home conditions?

An in-depth study of bowlers at home, comparing them with other bowlers in the country; and home and away comparisons

11-Oct-2024

Ravindra Jadeja in delivery stride, India vs Australia, 3rd Test, Indore, 1st day, March 1, 2023

This article is about bowling on home grounds - by all bowlers, including visiting ones. A similar article on batting was published a couple of months back. The areas I have covered here are:

How bowling at grounds has varied across countries and time periods.
How individual bowlers have fared with respect to other bowlers while playing in their home country. It is important to customise this to each bowler's exact career span.
How bowlers have fared at home as against away.

One major difference in my coverage of the bowlers vis-a-vis of the batters is that I have covered the three interlocking aspects of bowling - the bowling average, strike rate (balls per wicket - BpW), and accuracy (runs per over - RpO) separately. This is warranted since these are distinct measurable components and will throw up many significant insights when they are handled separately. The other notable difference is that the batting article considered only batters in the top seven. This bowling one, on the other hand, looks at all wickets that fell to bowlers.

Let us first consider how tough or easy bowling in each country was, by period.

The batting analysis article had graphs by country. Here, I have provided only a summary graph, since the shapes of the bowling graphs are more or less similar to the batting ones. There is a difference of between 10% and 15% between the two values. There are two reasons for this variation. The batting average is only for Nos. 1-7. The bowling average recognises all dismissals, including those of Nos. 7-11. Also, the batting average takes run-outs and the similar methods of dismissals as dismissals. The bowling average only considers dismissals credited to bowlers.

Here are a few randomly picked values for comparison, to illustrate this.

Across all Tests, the batting average is 36.1. The bowling average is 31.7
Between 2000 and 2012, the batting average in Australia was 41.1, while the bowling average was 36.0
Between 1877 and 1939, the batting average in England was 32.1, while the bowling average was 28.1
Between 1970 and 1984, the batting average in New Zealand was 33.6, while the bowling average was 29.5
Between 1945 and 1969, the batting average in the West Indies was 42.1, while the bowling average was 36.9

The difference in all these instances is around 14%. Very few difference values exceed 15%.

The bowling averages are around 15% less than the batting averages for the top seven batters, and more importantly, follow similar movement patterns for most countries. The overall average is nearly 32, with the highest point for most countries coming in the first decade of the 21st century; batting flourished everywhere during this period. In the West Indies, the highest bowling average came just after World War II; over the last couple of decades the averages there have dropped, largely due to the decline in the batting quality of the host team in this period. In New Zealand, the highest bowling averages were in the years before and after World War II - in both those periods, the home team was quite strong.

The two highest home bowling averages ever, of 37.7 and 38.2, were achieved in Pakistan, in the first two periods of the millennium. Here is a sampling of scores in the country in this period: 546 for 3, 528, 643, 675 for 5, 600, 679 for 7, 410 for 1, 636 for 8, 588, 603, 599 for 7, 591, 644 for 7, 765 for 6, 606, 555 for 3, 476 for 4, 252 for 0, 556 for 9, 657, 579, 612 for 9, and 565 - these 23 tall scores in 47 Tests do tell a story.

Overall, bowlers had their best era in New Zealand during the post-war period. A sampling of sub-150 scores from the country then reveals the story - 42, 54, 125, 125, 132, 26, 74, 145, 77, 142, 133, 89, 149, 48 for 8, 129, 140, 101, and 148 - all 18 coming in 35 Tests. It was a tough time and place for batters (however, it must be said that most of these scores were those of the home team).

Arguably the most balanced pitches are in Australia. Note the numbers. Leaving out the initial period, the averages are nicely grouped between 30.5 and 36.0. England has a similar grouping, but with slightly lower values. India too is similar, but with slightly higher numbers than Australia. Barring their first periods, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have the best numbers in terms of balance between ball and bat.

Bowler comparisons at home

Here I compare the numbers of a specific bowler in his home country, and the numbers all other bowlers achieved in that country during his career span, irrespective of the length of the bowler's career - be it 188 matches or 14.

Readers might justifiably ask me why I have put all bowlers, home and visiting ones, in one basket for this. Would it not have been better to separate the home and visiting bowlers? Let me answer it this way: There have been times when the bowling of the home team has been weaker - New Zealand in the 1950s, India in the 1980s, and so on. There have been times when the home team has been stronger - Australia around 2010, India recently, etc.

Putting all bowlers together lets me take care of all such situations. Also, I do not want to make statements like "XYZ was better in comparison to his fellow bowlers, but not when compared to visiting bowlers", which do not convey much. The bottom line is: how does a bowler's performance at home compare with all bowlers who bowled there from his first Test there to his last? And that has been done effectively in this exercise.

The table below is ordered on the ratio between the average of other bowlers in the bowler's home country and the home average of the bowler. The qualification cutoff is 60 home wickets. Why 60? Because that number allows for a good chance that the bowler will have played around 15 home Tests. A total of 172 bowlers qualify.

Unlike batting, where Don Bradman was miles ahead of the others, with bowlers, it is an evenly spread field. Indeed, an unlikely bowler tops this table. Australian left-arm spinner Bert Ironmonger, with a ratio of just over 1.73, is at No. 1. He played 14 Tests, all at home, and took 74 wickets at a very low rate of 18. He outbowled his peers by a huge margin. Ironmonger was the bridge between two great legspinners - Clarrie Grimmett and Bill O'Reilly. Not many will have foreseen this specific entry.

The second bowler is more predictable. Imran Khan, who was a master at home, is a hair's breadth away from Ironmonger in second place. He averaged 19.21 and the others 33.11. Then comes Sydney Barnes. Another master at home, with amazing numbers: 13-plus, against 23 by the other bowlers. A modern great, Pat Cummins, is in fourth place, with a sub-20 average, which is way below 33, the value his peers have managed in Australia during his career. An underrated tall fast bowler, Bruce Reid, rounds out the top five with a 1.68 ratio. Muthiah Muralidaran is only a third decimal point behind. The next four bowlers will not surprise anyone - all were outstanding at home.

Devon Malcolm achieved almost perfect parity in this comparison (with an average of around 34.4). As also S Venkataraghavan (30.4). An interesting, and expected, point is that 150 of the 172 bowlers have performed better than their peers.

Carl Hooper, the batting allrounder; Trevor Bailey; and Ashley Giles are at the bottom of the table. No surprises there. Giles and Bailey were usually their sides' fifth bowler, and Hooper was used to give rest to Wes Indies' fast bowlers. He bowled a lot, though, and picked up a sizeable number of wickets.

The next table is ordered on the ratio between the strike rate (BpW) of other qualifying bowlers in the country concerned and the bowler's home strike rate and the strike rate of the other qualifying bowlers. the same cut-off of 60 home wickets is used.

Waqar Younis was a destroyer at home, requiring only 39 balls per wicket. That is a huge contrast to the 64 balls that all other bowlers, including Wasim Akram and Imran Khan, needed per wicket in Waqar's time in Pakistan. Colin Croft was an equal, only fractionally behind; their figures are almost identical.

A surprising entry is legspinner Walter Robins. He was leaps and bounds ahead of the other bowlers when he bowled at home - which was almost his entire career. Then comes Fred Trueman, a devastating fast bowler at home, who needed only 45 balls per wicket. Completing the top five is Imran. Let us not forget that his peers included Waqar for a certain period. The other end of the table is populated by Hooper and a couple of English spinners who needed a fair number of balls to take a wicket.

Moeen Ali needed almost the exact number of balls per wicket as the other bowlers, around 55. In this table, 135 bowlers have performed better than their peers.

The next table is ordered on the ratio between the economy rate (RpO) of qualifying bowlers in the country in question and the home RpO of the individual bowlers in question. The cutoff is: a bowler needs to have bowled at least 750 overs at home. A total of 144 bowlers qualify.

Having watched Bapu Nadkarni bowl, with metronomic accuracy, I am happy that he leads this table. Trevor Goddard had an identical home economy rate to Nadkarni, 1.59, but his contemporaries were slightly more successful than Nadkarni's, to push Goddard into second place. Ironmonger is in third and is followed by two great bowlers of the 1930s, Hedley Verity and Bill O'Reilly.

It is interesting to note that the top six bowlers played before 1960. The only modern bowler to feature in this list is Ravindra Jadeja, who is impossible to get away in home conditions. Though he has conceded 2.37, a fair bit more than the bowlers above him on the table, other bowlers in his time have conceded over 3, resulting in a high ratio of around 1.3. Karsan Ghavri brings up the rear with a ratio of 0.83. Two surprising entries in the last three are Bob Willis and Jeff Thomson, both top bowlers for their countries. Maybe the accent in their time was on taking wickets.

Mitchell Johnson is the only bowler to have conceded the same number of runs per over (3.33) as his peers. On the RpO metric, 95 bowlers have been more economical than their peers.

Home vs away comparison for a bowler

Until now we have seen how the individual bowler compared with all the bowlers who bowled in his home country during his career. Now we move on to some relevant comparisons within a bowler's career. These tables provide comparisons between the home and away values for the bowler.

The first table is ordered on the difference between bowler's away average and home average. The cutoff is 50 home and 50 away wickets - 149 bowlers qualify.

Another unlikely bowler heads this table. Bailey is, arguably, not among the first few bowlers you would think of who have the best performance away vis a vis performance at home. He was extravagant at home, conceding nearly 36 runs per wicket. On the road, he was a terror, conceding only 23. He was devastating in South Africa, taking 19 wickets at an average of 12.1. Tony Greig required nearly ten more runs per wicket at home than he did away. He was very effective in the West Indies, taking 24 wickets at 22.6. John Snow needed over eight more runs per home wicket. That is indeed surprising, given his home pitches should have been conducive to pace. Snow took 27 wickets at 18.7 in only four Tests in the West Indies.

Sydney Barnes (17.96) and Joel Garner (19.74) are the only bowlers in this group to have sub-20 away averages. Shoaib Akhtar's home average was almost the same as his away one (around 25.7). Forty-two bowlers have performed better away than at home.

At the other end, Dilruwan Perera was very good at home and ordinary on the road. As were Hooper and Abdul Qadir, who found Australia and India tough, needing well over 60 runs per wicket. Qadir's overseas wickets cost him nearly 50 runs each - the highest in this elite group, barring the true outlier, Hooper.

The next table is ordered on the difference between bowler's away and home strike rates (BpW).

Bailey is in second place here. The leader, O'Reilly, needed over 20 balls fewer away to take a wicket. Bailey clocks in at just over 18 balls. The problems Australian legspinners face at home are underlined when we see that Richie Benaud is in third place, requiring over 17 balls more at home per wicket than he did away. Snow, who was among the leaders on the bowling average metric, is in fifth place; Goddard snags fourth place.

Wes Hall (around 54) and Saeed Ajmal (around 65) have virtually identical home and away strike-rate values. Only 40 bowlers in this analysis have better away figures than home ones.

Vinoo Mankad required nearly seven overs more per wicket while bowling overseas to take a wicket than he did at home. Qadir too was quite ineffective on the road. Hooper figures near the bottom on this table too. If Mankad and Hooper bowled at both ends unchanged in, say, Australia, barely four wickets might fall in a day.

The next table is ordered on the difference between bowler's away accuracy (RpO) and home accuracy. The cutoff is that a bowler ought to have bowled 500 overs each both at home and away. A total of 184 bowlers qualify.

Again, an unexpected bowler tops the table. Max Walker has a difference of more than half a run per over while bowling in Australia against outside. So has Neil Wagner. And one cannot keep out Bailey, who was quite accurate at home but was far more difficult to get away overseas. Two relatively recent English fast bowlers, Willis and Darren Gough, were more extravagant in England. Finally, let us doff our hat to Alan Davidson, who conceded only 2.19 at home and 1.82 away.

It is clear that the differences between the home and away RpO values are somewhat lower than the differences on the other parameters. No fewer than a third of the bowlers have variations of 0.10 RpO on either side.

Three West Indian bowlers are at the bottom end of the table. Shannon Gabriel, Fidel Edwards, and Daren Sammy found the going tough overseas, conceding well over half a run per over more than they did at home.

Javagal Srinath (2.86), Paul Reiffel (2.63), and Morne Morkel (3.11) have identical RpO values at home and away. Seventy-eight of the 184 bowlers have bowled more economically in their away matches than they did at home.

Conclusion

The analyses have thrown up a few surprising names. The top bowlers are not at the top, unlike with the batting tables. Bailey is the standout bowler, when it comes to performing at home compared to away.

A final comment on Jasprit Bumrah. It is clear that he would have been right up there on the first two tables. But as I write this, he does not qualify. At the end of the recently concluded Kanpur Test, he had taken only 44 home wickets in ten Tests.

The complete data files for all the players who qualify for the tables in this article can be downloaded by clicking here.

The quirky stats section
In each article, I will present a numerical or anecdotal outlier relating to Test or ODI cricket. This time the theme is: "The finer points of Test partnership records". First, the records for each wicket, and the duration for which these records have stood.

1st wicket: 415 runs by Graeme Smith and Neil McKenzie vs Bangladesh, Feb 2008 (16y 8m)
2nd wicket: 576 runs by Roshan Mahanama and Sanath Jayasuriya vs India, Aug 1997 (27y 2m)
3rd wicket: 624 runs by Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene vs South Africa, Jul 2006 (18y 3m)
4th wicket: 454 runs by Joe Root and Harry Brook vs Pakistan, Oct 2024 (2d)
5th wicket: 405 runs by Don Bradman and Sid Barnes vs England, Dec 1946 (77y 10m)
6th wicket: 399 runs by Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow vs South Africa, Jan 2016 (8y 9m)
7th wicket: 347 runs by Clairmonte Depeiaza and Denis Atkinson vs Australia, May 1955 (69y 5m)
8th wicket: 332 runs by Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad vs Pakistan, Aug 2010 (14y 2m)
9th wicket: 195 runs by Pat Symcox and Mark Boucher vs Pakistan, Feb 1998 (26y 8m)
10th wicket: 198 runs by Joe Root and James Anderson vs India, Jul 2014 (10y 3m)

The longest-standing record is the Bradman-Barnes one for the fifth wicket, which has stood for over three-quarters of a century, followed by the seventh-wicket stand by Depeiaza and Atkinson. That record is unlikely to be broken in the near future. The recent 199-run Chennai masterclass between Ashwin and Jadeja is a testament to the difficulty in breaking the late-order records.

It is interesting to note that no fewer than six records have been broken this century. In an 18-month period during 2014 through 2016, three were broken, two of them within a month of each other.

The record that is likely to stand longer than Brian Lara's 400 not out is the partnership of 624 runs, the only time over 600 runs have been scored in a stand in a Test innings.

England batters hold three of the records, while Australia, Sri Lanka, and South Africa have two each. Both the Sri Lankan partnerships were in excess of 550 - the only two on the list. No partnership record has been scored against New Zealand nor have they scored one.

Surprisingly, India do not hold any partnership record. The 413-run record between openers Pankaj Roy and Vinoo Mankad against New Zealand in 1956 was broken in 2008.

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Bert Ironmonger Trevor Bailey

Anantha Narayanan has written for ESPNcricinfo and CastrolCricket and worked with a number of companies on their cricket performance ratings-related systems