India tour of Eng, June 20 - Aug 4

[andy]

Woakes has been impressive in this second innings, three huge wickets for him here! Still think jadeja and Washington will have it in them to hang it out until the final session maybe

[Arthur Crabtree]

BBC scoreboard says Archer got the wicket? Whoever, a huge breakthrough.

Salute to Gill for the 6hr knock.

[sussexpob]

Yes, sorry Archer... Root then drops jadeja first ball, how much will that cost.

[Arthur Crabtree]

In an earlier Test, the BBC scorecard had Nair chalking up two wickets which it later turned out Reddy took. But they are sticking with Archer....

[bigfluffylemon]

Pant not being there is huge. It's in the balance again.

[andy]

It was definitely archer my bad haha! Either way huge wicket just before lunch....the root drop could be huge....it's mad yes he has the record for most catches which is impressive but he also drops a lot! Imagine how many he could have! He does have a tendency to drop a lot

[sussexpob]

We are talking two different things. I have mentioned individual averages whereas you are talking about team percentage wins

If a golfer wins a major championship with a score of +7, is he worse than a person who finishes 20th the next major but scores -21? You could be inclined to think so, but the smart money would say that one was average in unchallenging conditions, the other was excellent faced with the most hostile, difficult ones. The individual score is relative to the performance of others when taking account conditions and circumstances, on their own they are meaningless. The paradox of Indian cricket is, despite the Fab 4's legendary output, they didn't win as much as when their batting significantly declined. So while you can compare individual performances and try to take those figures as comparable, something does not add up here - it appears the value of one does not equate the other.

Why could that be? Well, there are two potential reasons.

1. High proportion of draw games, which is statistically true. I argued this point above in detail above.

2. Relative performance to other teams in the exact same conditions is not actually that high, hence why these high averages dont outscore other teams. Lets look into that second point. Taking Laxman/Dravid's debut year to the end of 2012, and checking batting output in Indian games by team you can see the stats below. In this time they pretty much always have at least a 5th batter who averages over their own average to supplement the total (Dhoni, Sidhu, Azha, Gambhir, Ganguly, etc).

India score 36 runs per wicket lost.

Sri Lanka.... 43
England ...40
Pakistan...38
Australia...38
South Africa ...36

So yes, they are equal 5th best run scorers in matches they actually play in. They outperform only WI, BD, ZIM and NZ, all of which jostle to be the worst team of the era. Since 2013, India average just under 35 per wicket lost. No one comes close. England at 31, Australia at 30 and then huge drops to 27/23 with SA and NZ, before we get into the teens. Irrespective of total runs scored, modern Indian bats are unquestionably on average better than anyone else in matches they play compared to the big run scoring Fab 4 era. Its not even close, not remotely.

In the end the paradox is one of self-creation. India didn't win as much as you expect in earlier eras because their batting wasn't actually that good compared to their peers. And by contrast, they won every series in 12 years and beat Australia twice because now it actually is.

[sussexpob]

Maybe going to get to the point where runs become a factor in this match. Would be amazing entertainment if England ended up needing 40 with 3 overs left or something

[sussexpob]

Jadeja doesnt have the bad luck of Siraj from the last test, but that could have gone anywhere.... just bounced over.

Jadeja wants to push on and get this target down. Playing his shots

[Arthur Crabtree]

Need at least a couple of wickets in this session.

[Durhamfootman]

How many catches have England put down? Every time I look at the headlines they seem to include references to another drop

[Durhamfootman]

and given that everyone who wasn't out in the first over has made runs, I'm guessing they've all been costly

[sussexpob]

and given that everyone who wasn't out in the first over has made runs, I'm guessing they've all been costly

Well Jadeja was dropped by root first ball, he's now passed 50.

India lead. Draw now highly likely with tea approaching. England will have to knock some round off even if they bowl India out

[Arthur Crabtree]

Blimey, that was grim.

[sussexpob]

I hope England get reprimanded for that. Just embarrassed by it. How damn well entitled are they? As if a guy in the 90s is accepting a handshake before he reaches a maiden ton, he bats at 8 usually, he might never get another chance....even asking was embarrassing, and then the blue language being thrown around from England being heard clearly on TV.

Really poor behaviour. I expect Stokes to apologise after