The Friday Column

Big wins, bigger defeats, and Sehwag's jinx

S Rajesh

April 9, 2004

Perhaps numbers never do reveal the full story, but they tell a large part of it. Every Friday, The Numbers Game will take a look at statistics from the present and the past, busting myths and revealing hidden truths:

Swinging high and low
The runs that Parthiv Patel and Ajit Agarkar stitched together on the fourth morning at Lahore only delayed the inevitable, but in the process they helped India avoid the ignominy of being beaten by an innings immediately after winning the previous Test of the series by a similar margin. Through the entire history of Test cricket, such a feat has only happened three times, and never in the last 38 years. The last instance of such an occurrence was in 1966, when England did the comeback act against West Indies. After losing the fourth Test, at Headingley, by an innings and 55 runs, they returned the favour in final Test, at The Oval. However, those were the days when West Indies weren't the whipping boys of international cricket like they are today: West Indies had already won three of the first four matches of the five-Test series, making the last result rather redundant.

Australia had turned the tables on England a few months earlier, but the first time such an incident occurred was when India and Pakistan clashed in their inaugural series, in 1952-53. After India clinched a resounding win by an innings and 70 runs at Delhi, Pakistan struck back at Lucknow, winning by an innings and 43. India sealed the series in the next Test with a 10-wicket victory at Bombay. Which way will the Rawalpindi Test go?

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The second-innings jinx
Virender Sehwag entered unchartered territory when he scored 90 at Lahore: it was the first time in his Test career that he went past 50 in the second innings. His previous highest second-innings score had been 47, at Adelaide, during India's tour to Australia earlier this season. Sehwag's firstand second-innings stats provide a stunning contrast: more than three-quarters of his total runs have come when batting first, and while he records one fifty-plus score every two tries in the first innings, that ratio drops to one in 14 in the second innings.

Sehwag's difference of almost 48 between his firstand second-innings averages is the highest among all batsmen who have played more than 20 Tests. If we look at the record of other batsmen at a similar stage in their careers - after 22 Tests - then Sehwag leads on that front as well, marginally ahead of Brian Lara, whose second-innings average at that stage was a mere 28.

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Trescothick's travails
One opener who hasn't got too many runs in either innings of late is Marcus Trescothick. His 42 in the second innings of the third Test broke a rather sorry sequence of scores - 0, 7, 6*, 1, 4 and 2 - 20 runs in five completed innings. In his last seven Tests, Trescothick has managed a mere 290 runs at less than 25 per innings. It's a slump which has brought his career average down from the mid-40s to just above 40. However, he's almost certain to keep the average above 40 in the near future: even if he gets out in both innings in the fourth Test at Antigua, Trescothick only needs three more runs to stay on the right side of 40. Even given his lean trot, that's something he should manage without too much trouble.

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