Younis Khan makes yet another 250

Younis Khan, the Pakistan captain as of 3.50 pm IST on 24 Feb 2009, is now the 10th player to make multiple scores of 250 or above. The astounding bit about that list is that Don Bradman, in making 5 scores of 250 or more, hit two sixes while Graeme Smith didn't hit a single six!

Pakistan have made nearly ~ 500 so far and have avoided the follow-on. Since it has been clear for the past couple of days that on that pitch even Pommie Mbangwa & Chris Martin would have scored in double digits, I tried to find out which country's pitches were the most batting friendly.

So I took tests from the last 5 years where the team batting second made 400+ and either had a slim lead (< 50) or were trailing big time (thereby implying that the team that batted first had made something like 550-600). There were a total of 35 instances, out of which 15 were drawn games.

Tests played in England and India contribute 7 instances while Australia and Pakistan have 6 each. The number of tests played in that period in the 4 countries was 35 (England), 30 (Australia), 27 (India) & 17 (Pakistan). This implies that Pakistan has a much higher frequency (35%) of dull dreary tests where the first innings of both teams result in huge scores. The frequencies for the other countries are India - 26%, England and Australia - 20% each.

I guess over the first couple of days of this test, Pakistan's cricketers (& fans) would have been wondering about the need to play tests because after all, if you if you don't play, you can't concede 600+!

Update: Sri Lanka's first innings total of 644 is the highest total to have been overtaken in a test. The previous highest was 588, jointly held by South Africa at Antigua in 2005 (Gayle scored a triple) and Pakistan at Faisalabad in 2006 (Dhoni and Irfan Pathan saving face for India).

Labels: pakistan, statistic, younis khan