Hampshire in Print

The first bulky history of Hampshire, a county formed as long ago as 1863, appeared in 1957, from the pens of the men best qualified to write it, Harry Altham, John Arlott, Desmond Eagar and Roy Webber. The next history was in the Christopher Helm series, written by Peter Wynne-Thomas and published in 1988. One more writer to have tackled the subject is David Allen, although he didn’t go all the way back, dealing with the post war years in Hampshire County Cricket Club: 1946-2006 Entertain or Perish.

Without delving into cricketing pre-history the first Hampshire cricketer to be the subject of a biography was a military man, Robert Poore, always known by his military rank of Major. Poore enjoyed one stunning English summer with the bat, 1899 and, a sportsman of many talents, he must have been a fascinating man for author Jeremy Lonsdale to research. The Army’s Grace was published in 1992.

There were a handful of matches in which Poore appeared with another remarkable amateur cricketer, Hesketh ‘Hex’ Hesketh Pritchard. A fine fast bowler Hex was another military man and also an explorer and writer. He has been the subject of two biographies, one by Eric Parker, Hesketh Pritchard, published as long ago as 1924, and a much more recent and accessible book in the ACS Lives in Cricket series by Simon Sweetman. HV Hesketh Pritchard: Amazing Stories appeared in 2012.

A more permanent mark in the record books was made by Phil Mead, who began a career that lasted for more than thirty years in 1905. A prodigious run scorer throughout his career Mead was also, in the early years, a far from negligible slow left arm bowler. He was, finally, the subject of a biography, CP Mead, by Neil Jenkinson, a book published in 1992.

A long time teammate of Mead, George Brown, was one of cricket’s most versatile performers. A class act with the bat, behind the stumps and as a fast bowler Brown, who appeared in seven Tests was a notable character and, in 2018, the subject of a self-published biography by Michael Stimpson.

Hampshire cricket breeds characters it would seem, and the next man to be considered is the former England Captain Lionel Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, who debuted for the county in 1913. A swashbuckling batsman and captain, and in his youth rumbustious fast bowler, Tennyson wrote two autobiographies and, in 2001, was the subject of a fine biography by Alan Edwards, Regency Buck. His autobiographies were From Verse to Worse and Sticky Wickets, published in 1933 and 1950 respectively.

Between 1919 and 1923 Harry Altham played for Hampshire. A modest batsman Altham is much better known as a cricketing historian, author and administrator and was the subject of a book, The Heart of Cricket, that was published in 1967. Neither autobiography or biography the book is a collection of writings on or about Altham that was edited by Hubert Doggart. Altham was also the subject of a slim monograph that was published by EW ‘Jim’ Swanton in 1960, and he is the subject of a new book just published by Christopher Saunders and written by grandson Robin Brodhurst, The Altham-Bradman Letters.

From Altham we move on to a cricketer with a famous name, but only four county appearances, all in 1933 and with no great achievement. The Reverend GLO Jessop was the son of the Gloucestershire all-rounder of the ‘Golden Age’, and in 2020 the story of his life, Jessop’s Son, was told by David Battersby.

Jessop was the only Hampshire player who debuted between the wars who has been the subject of a book, but there were a number written about those who began their careers in the years after World War Two ended. The first was Derek Shackleton, who bowled with metronomic accuracy from 1948 to 1969. A big hearted right arm medium fast bowler Shackleton, with 2,857 wickets, lies seventh in the all time list. His biography, On The Spot by David Matthews, was published in 1998.

Alan ‘Punchy’ Rayment made his first appearance a year after Shackleton. A modest batsman but interesting character who played for Hampshire for nine summers Rayment produced a bulky autobiography, Punchy Through The Covers, in 2013. Beware though those whose only interest is cricket as the book covers only that part of Rayment’s life that takes him up to the start of his cricket career. Sadly Rayment died last year at 92 without seeing a follow up volume into print but, Stephen Chalke assisting, it is hoped that the rest of Rayment’s story, including his cricket career, will emerge later this year.

In 1961 Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie led Hampshire to their first County Championship. Ingleby-Mackenzie was an old-fashioned amateur and a flamboyant character and it is something of a surprise that he has never been the subject of a biography. There is however an autobiography, Many A Slip, appeared the year after the county lifted the title.

From 1953 to 1972 a Barbadian, Roy Marshall, was a hugely popular and successful batsman for Hampshire. An opening batsman Marshall never held back and in 1970 published an autobiography, Test Outcast.

Bernard Harrison is an interesting man, and not one most would expect to have been the subject of a biography. A fringe player for Hampshire in the late 1950s and early 1960s he featured in only fourteen First Class matches. More noted as a soccer player he played, over the same period, just over one hundred professional games, mainly for Crystal Palace, before going into teaching. Kevin Smallbone published Harrison’s story in 2001, Brushes with the Greats – The Story of a Footballer/Cricketer.

In 1966 Richard Gilliat first played for Hampshire and between 1971 and his retirement in 1978 he led the county. There is no biography of Gilliat as such, but there is a chapter on him in a book about his family, The Gilliats, written by Ian Foster and published in 2016.

The next three men to feature here were, like Marshall, born overseas, and the first two of whom both first appeared for Hampshire in 1968. The first was a seamer who played for the county for five summers. John Holder has a decent enough record as a bowler but he never played Test cricket and his greater achievement was to reach the top as an umpire. Andy Murtagh, who made his Hampshire debut the year after Holder played his last game for the county, wrote Test of Character in 2016.

In terms of legacy and achievement the other member of the ‘class of ’68’ is one of the very best batsman to have played the game. Barry Richards thrilled county crowds for a decade. There are two books that concern the life of the great man, The Barry Richards Story, that appeared in 1978, and a biography by Murtagh in 2015, Sundial in the Shade. He is also the subject of a recent monograph from Michael Sexton, The Summer of Barry, that looks at his record breaking season with South Australia in 1970/71.

Richards long time opening partner was Gordon Greenidge. The Barbados born but Berkshire raised Greenidge played in over a hundred Tests for West Indies but gets a mention here by dint of spending the best part of two decades with Hampshire. His autobiography, The Man in the Middle, appeared in 1980.

Long time Hampshire captain and now accomplished broadcaster Mark Nicholas published his autobiography in 2016. A Beautiful Game is one of the best of the genre. Of his charges three have been the subject of books, Robin Smith, Sean Udal and Hampshire’s second Marshall, Malcolm.

Smith has written two books that are essentially autobiographical in nature. The first, Quest For Number One, published in 1993, is not exactly an autobiography, but the more recent, The Judge, appeared in 2019 certainly is. It is a thought provoking and engrossing read on the subject of a man at whom life has certainly aimed a few short ones over the years.

Shaun ‘Shaggy’ Udal was an off spinner and an interesting character who, very late in his career, won four Test caps against India and Pakistan. Udal’s autobiography, My Turn To Spin, appeared in 2007, coinciding with his retirement.

Leaving, perhaps, the best until last brings me to the Barbadian fast bowler Malcolm Marshall. During his fourteen years with Hampshire, in 1987, Marshall’s autobiography, Marshall Arts, appeared. In 2000, following Marshall’s untimely death, his collaborator in that book, Pat Symes, updated and republished the book as Maco: The Malcolm Marshall Story.

Which brings the biographies almost to an end, but no bibliophile could leave the issue of Hampshire biographies without a reference to the limited edition essays that John Arlott produced for Hampshire beneficiaries, booklets that are scarce, valuable and highly collectable. They exist, in varying limitations, for Jimmy Gray, Henry Horton, Arthur Holt, Derek Shackleton, Vic Cannings, Danny Livingstone, Roy Marshall, Mervyn Burden, Neville Rogers, Leo Harrison, Peter Sainsbury and David ‘Butch’ White, as well as two very similar publications for amateurs Colin Ingleby-McKenzie and Desmond Eagar.

And finally, a year after Ingleby-Mackenzie debuted Mike Barnard from Portsmouth made his bow and was a useful batsman over fifteen summers. Barnard also played league football for his home town club for half a dozen seasons. There has not been a biography of Barnard but in 2010 his old school, Portsmouth Grammar, published a polished twenty page monograph by Dave Allen.

As far as collections of biographical sketches are concerned Hampshire followers have several choices. First is Dean Hayes’ Famous Cricketers of Hampshire, published in 1993. There is of course a Tempus 100 Greats book, put together by Neil Jenkinson, Bill Ricquier and Dave Allen in 2003. More recently Dave Allen, this time on his own, produced a comprehensive book covering all Hampshire County Cricketers, which was published in 2019.

Allen and fellow historian Alan Edwards have also produced some interesting booklets. Milestones of Hampshire Cricket came from Edwards in 1983, and he also wrote Hampshire’s First Eleven 1864 in 2015, a detailed look at the county’s first match. As recently as last year Allen wrote Simply The Best, a tribute to Kyle Abbott’s match haul of 17 for 86 against Somerset the previous September.

Which brings me to my brace of choices. They are very similar, being biographies of a couple of all-rounders and contemporaries. Jack Newman first played for Hampshire in 1906 and over all but a quarter of a century scored more than 15,000 runs and took more than 2,000 wickets without ever getting a Test cap. Scot Alex Kennedy started a year later than Newman, but went on six years longer. Kennedy’s contribution to the county’s cause was more than 16,000 runs, and approaching 2,900 wickets. His reward was a trip to South Africa in 1922/23, where he played in all five Tests.

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BJ Watling, An Absolute Gem

The role of a wicketkeeper-batsman has changed over time. There was an era when the primary job of a wicketkeeper was deemed to be keeping. However, with changing times their role has evolved into something akin to an allrounder.

They have donned the parts of shrewd captains (Brendon McCullum, MS Dhoni), explosive openers (Quinton De Kock, Adam Gilchrist), and streetfighters down the order (Moin Khan). Somewhere down the line, there has also been an evolution of keepers whose batting skillset is superior to their role behind the stumps.

Some of them have had to choose concerning their preferred roles in the team. So, legends of the game like Kumar Sangakkara, Brendon McCullum, etc. have given up the role of a keeper to concentrate on giving their best as batsmen for the side.

Bradley-John Watling, the New Zealand Keeper-Batsman, has been a bit of an interesting case in modern times. For the Northern Districts player started as a keeper in the domestic circuit but was very soon turned into an opener by his team.

He made his New Zealand debut in this capacity. However, some games later he was chosen to keep wickets against Zimbabwe. Having impressed in the Test match, he was a regular wicket-keeper batsman for his national side.

What makes BJ Watling special is that he is one of the few players in the modern era who could be selected for his batting alone yet has fulfilled the needs of his side both as a wicketkeeper and a batsman for the majority of his Test career.

He began in the shadows of Brendon McCullum but still managed to secure a regular place in the side.

His Test average of 38.11 is very good for a keeper (MS Dhoni averaged 38.09), and he came into his own batting at no. 6 (average 44.67) and 7 (average 35.3) where he scored the majority of his career runs (3284 out of 3773).

He stands 11th in the list of all-time run-scorers amongst cricketers who kept wickets, however, Andy Flower and Mushfiqur Rahim are the only ones ahead with a lesser number of games to their name.

Going beyond numbers, his impact has been in the crucial runs he has been able to deliver for his side in key games. His debut itself featured a blistering 60 off 62 (New Zealand was chasing a small target and needed quick runs at that moment), however, he would gradually become known for his calm and collected contribution lower down the order.

There was the match-saving 124 against India in Wellington. Up against a deficit of 246 runs, New Zealand had their backs against the wall at 94/5. However, Watling joined hands with Brendon McCullum to stitch together a partnership of 352 runs (The third-highest partnership for the sixth wicket) and ensure that New Zealand was out of danger. His knock came at a strike rate of 33.78 and broke the back of the Indian bowling effort.

Less than a year later, he fished out New Zealand out of trouble with the help of future New Zealand captain Kane Williamson. Going into the third innings, New Zealand was trailing Sri Lanka by 135 runs. Sri Lanka could sniff a win when Jimmy Neesham lost his wicket to Nuwan Pradeep, leaving the Black Caps at 159/5.

However, Kane Williamson and Watling remained unbeaten for the rest of the New Zealand innings. They added 365 runs (The second-highest partnership for the sixth wicket) of which BJ Watling’s contribution was 142 runs off 333 balls. New Zealand went on to win the Test by 193 runs.

The Kiwi gloveman is all set to retire at the end of the England tour, the home side is an opposition he loves performing against. He has scored 778 runs at an average of 55.57 against the English team. These include two match-winning contributions, that of 120 at Headingley, Leeds in 2015 and 205 at Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui in 2019.

BJ Watling has been a splendid gloveman for his national side too, having picked 257 dismissals, placing himself at 9th place in the all-time list. Moreover, he has an impressive dismissal per innings of 2.09.

BJ Watling is a not much-discussed player in a format that doesn’t garner the maximum number of views. However, he has only enriched the game in his 12-year career as a cricketer. BJ Watling may perhaps even get overshadowed in his final Test, but his legacy will remain that of a team player who rose to the occasion whenever the situation demanded.

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ICC World Test Championship Final is Set, as India faces New Zealand

The final is set and the fans may actually get to be available in the stands for this one, which makes this year’s ICC WTC final even more special. India and New Zealand will face off in one of the most anticipated finals in recent memory, making that William Hill promo code and any other chips fans may have, even more useful and relevant.

Richard Hadlee would have an opinion about next month’s ICC WTC final, he has the credentials to speak on such a game and the cricket legend had an interesting take as far as predictions go, as we get ready to watch the scintillating matchup between India and New Zealand. The two teams are without doubt the best bowling and batting teams in the sport today, at the international level. The two teams showed out en route to finishing first and second on the WTC standings. India came out tops, while the Black Caps followed in second place. The ride has been rough, exhilarating and everything in-between. The teams and the ICC had to navigate the pandemic and all the restrictions it imposed on the game, with teams having to adapt to regular testing, bubbles, and guidelines that affected even personal lives.

Beyond battling covid-19, there is all game between the two teams, as two of the world’s most proficient captains in Virat kohli and kane Williamson face off.Both men do not only have leadership in their DNA but also masterful batting. The teams will face off in England, from the 18 to 22 of June at the Hampshire Bowl. Hadlee who has 201 caps for the Black Caps believes it will be a very tough matchup and will come down to a detail as tiny as who adapts first and better to the English climate at this time of the year. Playing your best under new conditions can be quite a challenge, but Hadlee believes that is where the difference will be made.

“It all comes down as to who is better prepared and who adapts better to the English conditions the quickest,”… “The weather may also play a part and if it is cold that will favour New Zealand. The Duke ball will suit both team’s fast bowlers especially the genuine swing bowlers and the Kiwis are well served in that department with Southee, Boult and Jamieson. If the ball seams around off the pitch, batsmen in both teams will be challenged”.

“Both teams have high-class batsmen so it will be an interesting game to watch. It is too difficult to call a winner at this stage.”

With regards to New Zealand coming agonisingly close in the last two years, hadlee believes the team will only be better prepared and have gathered enough from the experience to take them over the hump this time.

“We have a proud record in 50 over World Cups. Yes, those near misses were frustrating and disappointing but we were so close to winning in 2019 at Lord’s. I would go as far as to say there were no winners and losers on that day – it was just by a technicality that England won!

“The Test Championship is a one-off game. Yes, it is a final, but I don’t think either team will be too fazed about it. It is a neutral ground with no home team advantage,” he said. “The Test Championship is a one-off game. Yes, it is a final, but I don’t think either team will be too fazed about it. It is a neutral ground with no home team advantage”.

“It is something to look forward to. Both teams deserve to be contesting the final because of their consistent playing performances over a set period of time.”

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Gloucestershire in Print

Founded back in 1870 Gloucestershire has been well served by histories although, like almost all the counties, an up to date one is somewhat overdue. The three I have begin with one from 1949, The History of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club, by Samuel Canynge Caple. The other two came out within seven years of each other in 1983 and 1990. They are Graham Parker’s Gloucestershire Road and the Gloucestershire volume in the Christopher Helm series, written by the excellent David Green, although if I had to express a preference I would go for the Parker book.

In terms of biographies one Gloucestershire player, Dr WG Grace, has been the subject of as many books as anyone in the game’s history, save Donald Bradman, and would justify a bibliography on his own. I do not therefore intend to include every major publication about Grace, but will dwell on him nonetheless.

The first biography of WG appeared in 1887 from William Methven Brownlee. That was followed by three autobiographical books. The first came in 1895, The History of a Hundred Centuries, concentrating on that remarkable landmark. ‘WG’, a bulky book actually written by Arthur Porritt, was published in 1899. WG’s Little Book, as the title suggests much slimmer, came out a decade later.

WG died in 1915, and in the difficult times caused by the Great War little emerged initially, but 1919 saw a project that had been worked on for some time come to fruition, The Memorial Biography of WG Grace, a book which has aged rather well. With contributions from all of the great and the good of the game the book was nominally edited by Lords Harris and Hawke as well as Home Gordon, although in truth it was Home Gordon who put in most of the hard work.

Others biographies appeared from time to time but the next I will reference is AA Thomson’s The Great Cricketer, which was published in 1957. Social historian Eric Midwinter wrote WG Grace: His Life and Times, a book which, following its release in 1981, was the first biography of Grace that I read.

The best, perhaps, of the biographies of Grace is that by Simon Rae, which much impressed our reviewer. WG Grace: A Life and which hit the bookstores in 1998.  The centenary of WG’s death in 2015 brought two more, Richard Tomlinson’s Amazing Grace, and Anthony Meredith’s In The Steps of WG, both which approached their subject in interesting ways.

The statistics of WG’s career have attracted much interest and his long time ‘super fan’, solicitor G Neville Weston, privately published a statistical record, WG Grace: The Great Cricketer, in 1973. Later, in 1988 and backed by the ACS, JR Webber produced The Chronicle of WG, a huge book and a record of WG’s cricket at every level.

Also worthy of mention on the subject of WG are three other slim publications. The first is The Graces, a joint biography of the three Grace brothers, WG, EM and GF, that was written by Canynge Caple and AG Powell and published by the short lived Cricket Book Society in 1948. Then there are two excellent monographs by Irving Rosenwater, WG Grace: A Footnote to History and WG Grace: A Leviathan Was He, published in 1994 and 1997 respectively.

Whilst on the subject of EM Grace there is, in addition to the Canynge Caple/Powell book one full biography, published in 1916. Edgar Mills Grace: Cricketer is the only biography written by the eminent historian Frederick Ashley-Cooper. I have heard rumours at various times over the years of another book appearing on the life of ‘The Coroner’, but not for some time.

Two contemporaries of WG are also the subject of books and one, Gilbert Jessop, of several. Jessop wrote an autobiography in the days when very few cricketers did, in 1922, A Cricketer’s Log. CJ Britton then wrote GL Jessop in 1935, a pretty modest biography, before Gerald Brodribb published The Croucher in 1974 – surely that was the definitive volume? Not a bit of it as David Battersby has recently added two more volumes to the stock of human knowledge on Jessop, his self-published The Early Life of Gilbert Jessop and Gilbert Jessop at Cheltenham College appearing in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

We also have, thanks to Battersby, another biography of a teammate of the Graces, professional bowler William Woof. Woofy emerged from the House of Battersby in 2018.

Only two men, Wilfred Rhodes and ‘Tich’ Freeman, took more career wickets than the Gloucestershire left arm spinner Charlie Parker whose career lasted from 1903 to 1935. An awkward and interesting character the lack of a full biography of Parker is surprising, but perhaps that is because the extended pen portrait that appears of him in David Foot’s Cricket’s Unholy Trinity is such a good one.

Next on the Gloucestershire list is a man who may not match WG in the bibliography stakes, but nonetheless Walter Hammond is one of the most written about English cricketers. Foot’s 1996 biography Wally Hammond – The Reasons Why is one of the very best cricketing biographies there is.

Before Foot Gerald Howat and Ronald Mason had written biographies, both simply titled Walter Hammond, in 1984 and 1962. Hammond himself had contributed Cricket, My Destiny and Cricket, My World, in 1946 and 1948 respectively and Derek Lodge in 1990, so sandwiched between the Howat and Foot biographies, wrote The Test Match Career of Walter Hammond, so another biography albeit one with a limited brief.

In 1948 two young batsmen started their Gloucestershire careers. Both played for England although Tom Graveney was capped 79 times as against Arthur Milton’s six. Graveney, who was to leave Gloucestershire for neighbours Worcestershire in controversial circumstances wrote three autobiographies. The first of them, Cricket Through The Covers, appeared in 1958 whilst he was at Gloucestershire. Later in life he was the subject of biographies by Christopher Sandford (Tom Graveney – The Biography) and Andy Murtagh (Touched by Greatness), in 1992 and 2015 respectively.

As for Milton he was the last survivor of a group of twelve men, who will surely never now be joined by anyone else, who played cricket and soccer for England. Sadly he died four years before the publication of a biography by Mike Vockins appeared, a book which is a fitting tribute to Milton’s achievements.

Off spinner ‘Bomber’ Wells published an autobiography in 1981, but that largely concerns his days with his second county, Nottinghamshire. One More Run, first published in 2000 and then in a revised edition in 2020 is a masterly book by Stephen Chalke which is neither biography nor assisted autobiography, but one way or the other is definitely Bomber’s book, and is certainly on the subject of Gloucestershire cricket.

Gloucestershire’s wicketkeeper in the late 1950s and through the 1970s was Barrie Meyer, and he was later a Test match umpire. Andrew Hignell assisted Meyer to get his story into print in 2006. The title is Getting It Right.

Another Gloucestershire stalwart turned international umpire was David Shepherd, who began his county career in 1965. His autobiography, Shep, was published in 2001. Another man who began his Gloucestershire career in 1965 was Mike Procter, and the South African was still playing for the county a decade and a half later. There have been three Procter autobiographies. The first, Cricket Buccaneer, was published in South Africa in 1974. That was followed in 1981 by Mike Procter and Cricket and finally, in 2017, Caught in the Middle appeared.

Brian Brain spent most of his county career with Worcestershire, and there must have been occasions when, without ever getting the call, he must have been discussed at England selection meetings. He saw out the last few years of his career with Gloucestershire and never wrote an autobiography, but he did publish a diary of his 1981 summer in the West Country, Another Day, Another Match, so on the strength of that he gets in here.

And then there was one, RC ‘Jack’ Russell, an artist both with brushes or behind the stumps. Unleashed appeared in 1997, and one or two of his collections of artwork have included autobiographical elements as well.

Which brings us to the end of the biographies and autobiographies, although I will mention three other publications before moving on. Back in the 1990s West Country journalist Richard Walsh took to publishing occasional monographs on a variety of subjects and three of them concerned Gloucestershire players. One was on Charles Barnett, an attacking opening batsmen either side of World War Two, another subject was Cecil ‘Sam’ Cook, who continued the county’s tradition of producing top class slow left arm bowlers in the years after the War, and finally Jack Davey, a willing workhorse of a left arm seamer from the late 1960s and early 1970s. The writers were Andy Gibson on Barnett, and Alan Gibson for Cook and Davey.

Moving on to other books about Gloucestershire cricket it is important to mention Nico Craven, a Gloucestershire supporter who lived in Cumbria but made an annual trip to the Cheltenham Festival and, invariably, wrote of his experiences in what amounts to around thirty self-published books on the game.

The Tempus 100 Greats book on Gloucestershire appeared in 2002, and was written by Andrew Hignell who, two years later, was also the man in charge of the Gloucestershire edition in that publisher’s Fifty of the Finest Matches series. A dozen years earlier something similar, Gloucestershire Cricketing Greats by Dean Hayes, had been published. Hayes also, in 1998, edited the Gloucestershire book in the Sutton Publishing Images of Sport series.

There are three other books that I am going to mention that deal with different subjects. Lillywhite’s Legacy by Grenville Simons was published in 2004, and is a substantial history of the famous Cheltenham Festival. Simply Glorious by Andy Stockhausen was a celebration of the summers of 1999 and 2000 over which five of the six domestic one day tournaments were won by Gloucestershire. Third of the three is Charles Wood’s entertaining miscellany Bats, Pads and Gladiators, published in 2012.

Before I move on to my two choices for the future I will mention the Gloucestershire Museum which began with four splendid booklets in 2019 on the subjects of Gloucestershire cricketers killed in the Great War, a proposed tour of India by the county that was pencilled in for 1937/38, the story of a West of England XI that played during the Second World War and a monograph on the curious and most certainly obscure subject of CH Greenway, who appeared three times for the county in 1890 and 1891.

And finally, my nomination of two additional books on Gloucestershire cricket is, in relative terms, quite straightforward. The first would be a biography of the county’s captain of the 1930s, Beverley Lyon and any writer interested could do a lot worse than make that a double, dealing also with Bev’s older brother Dar, who enjoyed a long career with Somerset. In addition, although he was not a First Class cricketer, from what little I know the pair’s father was quite a character. My second choice would be another family biography. This time the focus would be Charlie Barnett, who played as an amateur before turning professional, made two Ashes hundreds in the 1930s and ‘enjoyed’ a difficult relationship with Wally Hammond. His father (again Charlie) and two uncles also played for the county, all three as amateurs.

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Three biggest reasons behind Mumbai Indians’ success

During the initial years of the IPL, Mumbai Indians were one of the worst teams in the tournament. They failed to win any titles and proved to be a big disappointment for their fans. However, once Rohit Sharma decided to shoulder the captain’s responsibilities of the team in 2013, their fortunes took a dramatic turn, and now they have the distinction of being the most successful team in the IPL history.

Bringing good players

Mumbai Indians have the reputation of being a slow starter in the IPL. However, that was not the case during the 2020 campaign when they put together a good run from the beginning of the tournament. After claiming nine victories out of 14 matches, Mumbai easily topped the table and qualified for the playoffs. And their impressive performances continued in the knockout stages and they ultimately went on to lift the IPL trophy.

They faced Delhi Capitals in the final and easily defeated their rivals by five wickets. With Trent Boult in amazing form, Delhi could only reach 156 runs in 20 overs. Skipper Rohit Sharma made the chase very easy by scoring 68 runs, and he was helped in this by Ishan Kishan who contributed 33 runs. Thus, Mumbai once again emerged victorious.

Good recruitment was one of the biggest reasons for the successes of the Rohit Sharma led side in 2020. They brought in Trent Boult and James Pattinson who both proved to be very handy bowlers, making good contributions to the successes of Mumbai. The franchise also could boast some very good overseas cricketers such as Mitchell McClenaghan and Coulter Nile.

Data analysis

Mumbai Indians have understood the virtues of data analysis to improve results. They are better at using numbers more than any other IPL side. They try to improve recruitment, selection and tactics with the help of data analysis. The franchise tries to come up with the best strategy by the smart use of data.

According to popular journalist Tim Wigmore:

“They (Mumbai) have got a very good idea of how to assemble a team because they’ve used data to establish the best strategy. Then they have a really strong scouting system that allows them to chase all of the most undervalued domestic talent.

“It’s a bit of a myth that you want to get the best overseas players – you actually want the players that add the most value to the team, which is dependant on which local players are available.”

Rohit Sharma

Rohit Sharma is one of the best batsmen in the world. For cricket fans, the 34-year-old is a joy to watch. Watching the cricketer play is more exciting than watching even the best strikers in Premier League history. The naturally gifted batsman has three ODI double centuries to his name, a feat that has not achieved by any other cricketer in the world.

During his first three seasons of IPL, Rohit was on the books of Deccan Chargers. He was impressive for the franchise and played an important role in helping them win the 2009 title.

Since 2011, Rohit has been associated with Mumbai Indians. He was made the team’s captain in 2013 and that same year he led his side to IPL victory. The Hitman proved his abilities both as a captain and a batsman over the following years.

Despite winning just a match from their first six matches, Mumbai Indians managed to win the trophy in 2015 under the leadership of Rohit. The franchise lifted three more trophies in 2017, 2018 and 2020 to become the most successful team in the history of the IPL.

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Pitting Don Bradman Against Leaders of Related Sports: An Investigation – Part 3

Pitting Don Bradman Against Leaders of Related Sports:

An Investigation

Part III

Bradman conversing with baseball legend Babe Ruth,

Yankee Stadium New York, July 1932

North American Sports

Turning to the four North American sports covered, international tournaments are held for baseball (World Classic from 2006, and World Cup during 1938-2011), basketball (FIBA World Cup from 1950) and American (or Gridiron) Football (IFAF World Championship from 1999), each being staged every four years; and also for ice hockey (World Championships, in full swing by 1930) being staged annually. All these feature national teams.

These sports are examined in a North American context because its leagues are of high quality and readily accessible performance data bases exist for individuals that extend far back. Indeed, these domestic leagues are distinctly superior in standard of play to the counterpart leagues in other countries, and are equivalent to international competition in the other sports considered. Also, there is extensive participation by league teams in these sports, reflecting their popularity and the large population base of the USA. (Canada is a minor participant for three of them and is excluded from one.)

A feature of the published statistics for these sports is that performance is reported chiefly for the standard (or regular) season, as used here; although they do exist for the subsequent playoff series as well. This has the merit of comparing strictly like-for-like, as many players never make the playoffs and some do so far more than others.

In playoffs, it is to be expected that facing tougher than usual opponents will result in a lower than overall regular season performance for individual players. The more prominent scorers tend to be around 5% to 15% down on performance stats per game for these sports, though this translates to only a small reduction when both phases of a season are combined – working out at around 0.5% to 2.0% down on a standard season alone.

Major League Baseball (MLB) – North America

The MLB has two separate competitions: the National League with 15 teams, formed in 1876; and the American League also with 15 teams, formed in 1901. There is currently only one Canadian team, being the Toronto Blue Jays. The season extends over some six months, usually consisting of 162 games per team.

Only from the 1990s onwards have schemes come into existence that rate a player’s demonstrated value to their team, so here reliance is placed on a long established measure of a batter’s success at the receiving plate: the “batting average”, obtained by dividing a player’s “hits” by his total “at bats”. A legitimate hit is one that puts the ball into play (termed “fair territory”) and is credited to the batter when he safely reaches or passes first base.  An “at bat” is a player’s turn batting against a pitcher. The resulting batting average can, in principle, range anywhere between zero and 1.000.

Analysis is made of the leading 300 batting averages for those players with a minimum of 3,000 plate appearances (the number of times a turn at batting is completed).

Kettle – findings for baseball, top 12 to end 2020

		Career Span	Games	Batting Average	Z Score
1	Ty Cobb	1905-28	3,035	0.3662	4.19
2	Rogers Hornsby	1915-37	2,259	0.3585	3.63
3	Shoeless Joe Jackson	1908-20	1,332	0.3558	3.43
4	Lefty O’Doul	1919-34	970	0.3493	2.96
5	Ed Delahanty	1888-1903	1,837	0.3458	2.70
6	Tris Speaker	1907-28	2,789	0.3447	2.62
7=	Billy Hamilton	1888-1901	1,594	0.3444	2.60
	Ted Williams	1939-60	2,292	0.3444	2.60
9	Dan Brouthers	1879-1904	1,676	0.3424	2.45
10	Babe Ruth	1914-35	2,504	0.3421	2.43
11	Dave Orr	1883-90	791	0.3420	2.42
12	Harry Heilmann	1914-32	2,147	0.3416	2.39

 

Source: Baseball-Reference.com – Career Leaders & Records for Batting Average

A feature of the list is that all except one player have careers prior to WW2, which seems to indicate an inherent decline in batting averages (without the rules and regulations of the sport making batting significantly more difficult). Stephen Jay Gould – a biologist who produced a celebrated paper in 1986 on the historical development of the game – concluded that the very best hitters in modern times are just as good technically as those who, fairly commonly before the mid-1940s, used to manage to average a daunting batting average of 0.400 and higher in some seasons, even though recent generations have not been able to achieve this feat. The main reason being that the general increase in pitching and fielding standards has denied them nearly as many opportunities to score.[i]

The National Football League (NFL) – USA

The League began as the American Professional Football Association in 1920, renaming itself as the NFL from the 1922 season. A merger with the American Football League was finalised in 1970. The competition is confined to USA-based teams.

The standard season runs from early-September to early-January, each team playing 16 games, after which a play-offs tournament is held. As with a number of other sports, rating schemes have been devised to take account of all forms of ability, such as the “Pro Football Focus” scheme (as from 2006) and that of “Football Outsiders” (as from 2003), but that for the performance of quarterbacks – the individual who leads a team’s offensive play – extends sufficiently far back.

The traditional “passer rating” scheme is used here which is based on four metrics: yards per passing attempt, percentage of passing completions, interception percentage and touchdown percentage. Quarterbacks are judged by their how effective their passing is, based on four indicators: passing accuracy – the number of attempted passes being successfully caught by the receiver (“percentage of completions”); the number of touchdowns resulting from attempted passes (“percentage of touchdowns”); the number of attempted passes that result in an interception by the opposition (“interception percentage”), and number of yards gained per passing attempt – which includes yards made by the receiver after catching the ball (a reward for spotting the receiver’s opportunity). A complicated combination of these factors is used as the NFL’s official measure of quarterback performance.

(A receiver makes a touchdown, and hence earns points for the team, by carrying the ball across the opposition’s goal line or if he is already across the goal line on catching the ball and proceeds to touch down.)

It is noted that these statistics do not reflect leadership, play-calling, and other less tangible factors that go to make a successful quarterback.

Analysis was made of a field of 199 players, all having a minimum of 1,500 career passing attempts and a career rating of 52.0 and over.

Kettle – findings for American football, top 12 to end 2020

		Career Span	Games	Rating	Z Score
1	Patrick Mahomes	2017 –	46	108.7	3.07
2	Deshaun Watson	2017 –	54	104.5	2.65
3	Aaron Rodgers	2005-20	197	103.9	2.59
4	Russell Wilson	2012-20	144	101.7	2.37
5	Drew Brees	2001-20	287	98.7	2.07
6	Kirk Cousins	2012 –	109	97.9	1.98
7=	Tom Brady	2000 –	301	97.3	1.92
	Dak Prescott	2016 –	69	97.3	1.92
9	Tony Romo	2004-16	150	97.1	1.90
10	Steve Young	1985-99	169	96.8	1.87
11	Peyton Manning	1998-2015	266	96.5	1.84
12	Philip Rivers	2004-20	244	95.2	1.71

 

              Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com/NFL Passer Rating Career Leaders

Most notable is the very strong presence of recent players in the list, a trait which continues among the top 36. This is partly due to the passer rating scheme having some drawbacks, one being use of the percentage of completions statistic. Many contemporary quarterbacks surpass a number of all-time greats on this scheme because they are rewarded for “dink and dunk” completions. These are short passes – described as “quick flat, drag, hitch or corner routes that typically go for less than ten yards”. Among some elite omissions from the above top 12 are Joe Montana (1979-94) who is placed 16^th and Dan Marino (1983-99) who is placed well down at 38^th spot.

A scheme known as “total quarterback rating”, launched in 2011 and intended as a more complete alternative, is based on analysis of each and every play a quarterback is involved in. However, this is a highly complex assessment and has come in for criticism from a number of respected commentators. (The highest dominance rating under this scheme, on a best season basis, is 2.44 for Tom Brady, 2006 season.)

National Basketball Association/American Basketball Association (NBA/ABA)

The NBA was formed through merger in 1949 of the Basketball Association of America (established in 1946) and the National Basketball League (established in 1937). Nine years after the ABA was founded, the NBA and ABA formally merged in 1976 – effectively an NBA expansion as it took on four of the remaining six ABA teams, the other two folding. Currently, all the teams except one are USA- based, the Canadian team competing being the Toronto Raptors.

With each team fielding five players on the court, all positions are significantly engaged in attempting to put the ball through the hoop and hence score points for their team. Points can be accumulated by making field goals (two or three points) or free throws due to an opponent’s foul (one point).

A field of the leading 250 players was analysed – all with a minimum of 5,000 points in the former ABA, or with either 10,000 points or 400 games in the NBA – displaying a broad spread of careers.

Kettle – findings for basketball, top 12 to end 2020

		Career Span	Games	Points/Game	Z Score
1	Michael Jordan	1984-2003	1,072	30.12	3.90
2	Wilt Chamberlain	1958-73	1,045	30.07	3.88
3	Elgin Baylor	1958-71	846	27.36	2.94
4	Kevin Durant	2007-20	849	27.06	2.84
5	LeBron James	2003-20	1,265	27.04	2.83
6	Jerry West	1960-74	932	27.03	2.82
7	Allen Iverson	1996-2010	914	26.66	2.70
8	Bob Pettit	1954-65	792	26.36	2.59
9	Oscar Robertson	1960-74	1,040	25.68	2.36
10	James Harden	2009-20	841	25.17	2.18
11	George Gervin	1972-86	1,060	25.09	2.15
12	Karl Malone	1985-2004	1,476	25.02	2.13

 

              Source – Basketball-Reference.com/NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Points per Game

North American Ice Hockey – National Hockey League (NHL)

Formed in 1917 by four Canadian teams, with the first USA team joining in 1924, the NHL had only two additional teams by 1967. This increased to 21 teams by 1979 and 30 by year 2000. There are currently 31 teams, seven of which are Canadian. The regular season consists of 82 games per team, running from early-October to early-April. The teams are organised into two geographically-based Conferences (Eastern and Western), each being split into two divisions.

The NHL is considered to be the world’s premier professional ice hockey league. Its players are now drawn from around 20 countries. Historically, Canadians have constituted the majority of the participants, now accounting for close to half of them, USA for around one-quarter, and with an increasing proportion of European players in recent times.

The so-called “Goals Versus Threshold” scheme, invented by Tom Awad of Hockey Prospectus in 2009, rates individual players in relation to an average of all players in the NHL and combines demonstrated offense with defence ability. Whilst it has been applied retrospectively to a number of decades, here attention is on offensive capabilities in line with soccer, rugby union, American football and basketball.

A team can draw on up to 20 players during a game, though only five skaters plus the goaltender are allowed on the ice at any given time. The “Centerman” and the two “Wingers” are predominantly engaged in offensive play. With NHL statistics, a player earns one performance point for a goal he scores and one for an assist made – being a pass that lead directly to a goal. The stats record two player assists for each goal.

Assessment was made of a field of 250 leading players, all with a minimum of 500 career points, and most of which have careers from the 1960s onwards.

Kettle – findings for ice hockey, top 12 to end 2020

		Career Span	Games	Points/Game	Z Score
1	Wayne Gretzky	1979-99	1,487	1.92	6.18
2	Mario Lemieux	1984-2006	915	1.88	5.95
3	Mike Bossy	1977-87	752	1.50	3.59
4	Bobby Orr	1966-79	657	1.39	2.95
5	Marcel Dionne	1971-89	1,348	1.31	2.47
6	Sidney Crosby	2005-20	984	1.28	2.27
7	Peter Stastny	1980-95	977	1.27	2.18
8	Peter Forsberg	1994-2011	708	1.25	2.07
9	Kent Nilsson	1979-95	553	1.24	2.02
10	Phil Esposito	1963-81	1,282	1.24	2.01
11	Guy Lafleur	1971-91	1,126	1.20	1.78
12	Joe Sakic	1988-2009	1,378	1.19	1.71

 

Source: Hockey-Reference.com/NHL Career Leaders and Records for Points

The top two players are both Canadians. Wayne Gretzky, who began in the NHL at age 18, is the only player to have scored over 200 points in a season and has achieved this feat four times.

As to team performance, it gains two points for a win and one point for a loss either in overtime or through a subsequent shootout. If two teams are tied at the end of the regular season, based on the aggregate points gained, then a complex tie-breaking procedure comes into operation. Under these rules, the team with the greatest absolute difference between goals scored and goals conceded can be – though not necessarily – placed ahead of the other one.[ii] Eight teams from each Conference then go through to playoff for the Stanley Cup, which is a sizeable elimination tournament (four rounds of the best-of-seven games). In recent times, the top three teams in each division are guaranteed to qualify, plus two wild card spots for each conference – making a total of 16 playoff teams.

Given this context, the notion of dead runs in cricket may be considered to have a parallel with ice hockey, and also with the three other North American sports examined – that is, “dead points” scored when the opposing team has very little chance of reversing a deficit and drawing level or leading by the end of scheduled playing time. One expects a higher proportion of such points than for dead runs at cricket as, with the latter, the captain has the option of declaring the team’s innings to be closed – and once dead runs set in, he has an incentive to declare in order to reduce the opposition’s chance of salvaging a draw, whereas no such device operates in those North American sports.

Indeed, captains/managers of teams in these four sports need to have an eye during the season on points differential – the number scored for and against the team – as this might decide whether it goes through to the playoffs. Although this proves to be decisive only occasionally, the potential or prospect of it happening may be real for much of the season.

(In baseball, a team’s standing depends on the percentage of games played that are won, the outcome of each game resting on the number of runs scored by each team. For teams that are tied in top position in one of the two constituent leagues, a game is played to determine which of them goes through to the playoff series.)

(In American football, the team scoring the most points wins the match, and if points are equal after scheduled time (60 minutes of active play) an overtime period of 10 minutes operates to decide the winner, with ties resulting if the deadlock isn’t broken. Team standings are based on the proportion of games played that are won. Separating teams that are tied at season’s end is settled in a number of alternative ways, some of which relate to their respective ratios of total points won to total points conceded in the matches played.)

(In basketball, a team’s overall ratio of wins to losses determines its place in the season’s standings, with conference and division records being used as tie-breakers. One that may operate is the difference between total points scored less total points conceded against all opponents combined.)

In principle, when comparing the performance of participants in these sports it is desirable to make some allowance for “dead scoring”, specifically during those periods when a team either has very little prospect of making the playoffs or is a virtual certainty of going through. I have been able to derive some illustrative estimates for ice hockey (via Wikipedia), being the only North American sport looked at for which – prior to considering the issue of “dead points” – a leading player is found to be more dominant in their own sport than DGB is for Test cricket (when all players batting averages exclude their estimated dead runs).

A detailed analysis has been made for ice hockey’s two leaders, Gretzky (playing in 21 seasons) and Lemieux (17 seasons), and a sample of six others from the top twenty listed – collectively playing for a variety of teams:

Crosby at number 6 (16 seasons), Forsberg at 8 (13 seasons)

Nilsson at 9 (9 seasons), Sakic at 12 (21 seasons)

LaFontaine at 15 (15 seasons), Lindros at 17 (15 seasons)

One in three successive seasons were analysed for each of them. The scoring of points in every game in those sample seasons was examined to see whether the player concerned had put their team ahead by four or more points at any stage during the final session of play, or had put them five or more points ahead during the last four minutes of the second session – each of the three sessions comprising a game lasting 20 minutes. These rank as potential dead points when the season ends and the standings are finalised. The required scorecards – available from 1979 onwards – give the precise time of all goals scored, and notes the scorer plus the two final assisting players in each case.

Two lengthy days of inspecting scorecards revealed that potential dead points were material for each of the eight players, ranging from 3.6% to 7.1% of their total points scored in the seasons examined. The average for them works out at 5.3%. There is no correlation between position within the top 20 players listed above and the proportion of such points scored. Gretzky has 7.1% (as does Nilsson) and Lemieux has 3.8%, each departing materially up and down from the sample average.

The average of 5.3% has been applied to all other players in the qualifying field of 250 in order to derive a full set of adjusted dominance ratings. On this basis, Gretzky’s rating becomes 5.97 – now 3.5% higher than DGB’s rating for cricket rather than, as previously, 7.2% higher; whilst Lemieux’s rating becomes 6.14 – now 6.4% higher than DGB instead of previously only 3.2% higher. Both these changes are a direct reflection of their relation to the overall proportion of potential dead points estimated for the eight players noted. (The third player in the adjusted ranking, Bossy, is rated 3.59.)

This implies that, if an analysis were able to distinguish between genuinely dead scoring and potentially dead scoring, both Gretzky and Lemieux would still remain ahead of DGB: the former somewhere between 3.5% and 7.2% ahead and the latter between 3.2% and 6.4% ahead, both these margins being material.

Conclusions

• Impacts of updating and improved methodology

The impact of updating by itself, from early/mid 2014 – when applying Walters’ own qualifying criteria – has predominantly been to alter the dominance ratings by only a small amount:

Cricket, soccer, rugby union and golf: for the leading players listed earlier, changes to the ratings ranging from negligible to plus 0.4

Tennis (men and women): for those players listed, changes ranging from negligible to minus 0.6, except for three recently winning players at plus 1.1 to plus 2.7

Applying a more relevant qualifying threshold for Test cricket of 1,500 career runs (instead of Walters’ 2,000 runs), and for international rugby union 130 career points (instead of Walters’ 200 points), produces a further relatively small effect for the dominance ratings. For the leading players listed, there are increases of 0.12 to 0.15 for cricket – except DGB with an increase of 0.69 – and increases of 0.29 to 0.34 for rugby union.

For Test cricket, the exclusion of “dead runs” after updating has a substantial impact for DGB’s dominance rating, which falls by 0.93 or 14%; although it has very little impact on most of the other leading batsmen. The exceptions are Eddie Paynter, Jacques Kallis and Kumar Sangakkara, whose ratings fall by between 0.12 and 0.17, equating to 7%-8%.

A judicious inclusion of the more consistent one-time winners in the qualifying fields for tennis and golf raises the dominance ratings appreciably. For men’s tennis, the increases for the leading 27 players range from 0.72 at the top to 0.42 at the bottom, equating to 18% (top) and 131% (bottom). For women’s tennis, increases for the leading 21 players range from 0.52 at the top to 0.26 at the bottom, equating to 14% (top) and 197% (bottom). And for golf, for the leading 19 players there are increases of 1.51 at the top to 0.68 at the bottom, which equate to 30% (top) and 155% (bottom).

• Findings for DGB’s comparative dominance

I have applied those indicators of performance that I consider to be the most suitable of those readily available for comparing players’ abilities on a long-term (“all-time”) basis for each sport looked at.

Attention throughout has been on DGB at cricket in relation to the leaders of the other eleven sports: who exceeds DGB, or comes close to him in terms of dominance? I have not dwelt on the relativities between the leaders of those other sports. More sophisticated long-term indicators have sometimes been available and used for one sport than another that happens to be closely related – such as for hockey (goals plus assists) in contrast to soccer (goals only) – which prevents a direct comparison of their respective player dominance ratings. This is a minor drawback given the chief focus has been on comparisons with DGB.

Based on findings obtained to end of 2020, and applying the preferred participant qualifying thresholds:

• In cricket, DGB’s lead over the next most dominant batsman – a gap of 3.21 rating points – is shown to be greater than the corresponding leader over second place for each of the other five ball sports that Walters examined, so being consistent with his own findings. DGB’s lead in cricket is also greater than the lead applying to the additional six ball sports that I have covered. The next largest leader/second place gap is 1.73, being for women’s squash, followed by 1.26 for golf. Hence, DGB is certainly pre-eminent in this regard.
• Of greater significance for this article’s main focus, though, is the finding that three players are more dominant in their own particular sports than DGB is in cricket with his rating of 5.77. These are Jack Nicklaus in golf with a rating of 6.57, and Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux in ice hockey with estimated ratings of 6.18 and 5.95 respectively. At an absolute minimum, Gretzky’s rating would be 5.97, still ahead of DGB, whilst Lemieux’s rating could potentially be higher – up to 6.14. Also, golfer Tiger Woods, with a rating of 5.31, comes close to DGB.
• This overturns Walters’ finding on DGB’s status, and is a consequence primarily of the inclusion of certain one-time winners and the exclusion of “dead runs” for batting in cricket. Only if “dead runs” are retained would DGB head the leaders of all the other 11 ball sports examined. He would then have a dominance rating of 6.70, a touch ahead of Jack Nicklaus.

The best estimates of ratings obtained for the top four players of each sport examined are plotted on the following two charts.

The advances made here on Walters’ insightful assessment have enabled DGB’s standing to be viewed in a broader and enhanced context. Whilst DGB is still present among the top echelon of leaders of major ball sports, he is no longer out in front of all others. Perhaps this finding will motivate some researchers to examine those other ball sports, noted earlier, that have some claim to be in the “major” category, so that a truly definitive statement can be made about DGB’s standing.

It is also hoped that discussion, at the outset of this article, will stimulate debate on at least two matters. First, the criteria to apply for establishing those participants in a sport who are to be admitted to the field for assessing relative dominance, including the issue of the treatment of one-time only winners of tournaments. Second, whether aggregate performance over a career is to be preferred, in certain situations, to performance averaged out on a per innings, per match, or per tournament basis.

Aliam causam faciendi quod est in iconicus figura humani 

End Notes

 

[i] Stephen Jay Gould: “Entropic Homogeneity Isn’t Why No One Hits .400 Any More.” Discover magazine, Vol 7, Number 8, August 1986, pages 60-66. Ten years later, this article was expanded in his book, Life’s Grandeur – Part Three: The Model Batter, Extinction of 0.400 Hitting and the Improvement in Baseball (pages 77-132).

 

[ii] Regulation plus overtime wins are used as the tie-breaker initially, and then points gained in their season head-to-head series, before aggregate goal difference can come into play.

from Cricket Web https://ift.tt/3fmTCiU

Pitting Don Bradman Against Leaders of Related Sports: An Investigation – Part 2

Pitting Don Bradman Against Leaders of Related Sports:

An Investigation

Part II

Bradman on deck travelling

to England with the Australian

women’s tennis team, 1938

International Soccer

International matches got underway in earnest from the early-1900s, with the present governing body, FIFA, being founded in 1904. Yet the first official World Cup was not held until 1930 (proceeding on a four yearly basis), with the Olympics being the vehicle for international matches before then. In 1934, a total of 36 teams applied to compete in the World Cup, with 16 coming through after qualifying matches. By 1966, 70 countries took part in qualifying; and in 2002 a total of 199 teams attempted to qualify with 32 doing so – the same as in 2018.

Of those players with careers prior to 1930, only 3 had reached the qualifying threshold of 30 goals, adopted by both Walters and myself, and only another 8 had done so ten years later. Yet by early-June 2014 (prior to the World Cup that year), a total of 220 players had reached this threshold, and by end of 2020 this had increased by around one-third, giving a field of 303 players for analysis.

During this six and a half year interval, the dominance ratings of the leading 20 players has risen a little – by between 0.15 and 0.28.

         Kettle – findings for soccer, top 20 to end 2020

		Career Span	Goals	Matches	Goals/Match	Z Score
1	Just Fontaine (France)	1953-60	30	21	1.429	4.63
2	Vivian Woodward (England)	1903-14	73	53	1.377	4.37
3	Poul Nielsen (Denmark)	1910-25	52	38	1.368	4.32
4	Gunnar Nordahl (Sweden)	1942-48	43	33	1.303	3.99
5	Sven Rydell (Sweden)	1923-32	49	43	1.140	3.16
6	Ernest Wilimowski (Poland)	1934-42	34	30	1.133	3.13
7	Sándor Kocsis (Hungary)	1948-56	75	68	1.103	2.97
8	Edward Acquah (Ghana)	1956-64	45	41	1.098	2.94
9	Gerd Müller (West Germany)	1966-74	68	62	1.097	2.94
10	Kunishige Kamamoto (Japan)	1964-77	75	76	0.987	2.38
11	Ferenc Puskás (Hungary)	1945-56	84	89	0.944	2.16
12	Pauli Jørgensen (Denmark)	1925-39	44	47	0.936	2.12
13	Faas Wilkes (Netherlands)	1946-61	35	38	0.921	2.05
14	Nathaniel Lofthouse (England)	1950-58	30	33	0.909	1.99
15	Silvio Piola (Italy)	1935-52	30	34	0.882	1.85
16	Imre Schlosser (Hungary)	1906-27	59	68	0.868	1.78
17	Jassem Al-Huwaidi (Kuwait)	1992-2002	63	74	0.851	1.69
18	Ernest Pol (Poland)	1956-65	39	46	0.848	1.68
19	“Pelé” (Brazil)	1957-71	77	92	0.837	1.62
20	Luigi Riva (Italy)	1965-74	35	42	0.833	1.60

 

        Source: rsssf.com/miscellaneous/international goals

The above list displays four conspicuous features: the strong presence of Scandinavian players, with four in the top twelve; only one of the players have been in action since the late-1970s; only one Brazilian player is present (Pelé) despite its wealth of elite talent, and none at all from the powerhouses of Spain, Portugal and Argentina. To satisfy curiosity about omissions of various legendary attacking players, the matches played and goals scored by some of the more prominent are noted below:

Brazil

Neymar: 64g-103m (2010-20), Ronaldo: 62g-98m (1994-2011), Romário: 55g-70m (1987-2005),

Zico: 48g-71m (1976-86), Zizinho: 30g-53m (1942-57)

Spain

Alfredo Di Stéfano (mainly Spain, also Argentina): 29g-37m (1947-61), David Villa: 59g-98m (2005-17)

Portugal

Cristiano Ronaldo: 102g-170m (2003-20), Eusebio: 41g-64m (1961-73)

Argentina

Lionel Messi: 71g-142m (2005-20), Diego Maradona: 34g-91m (1977-94)

Uruguay

Luis Suárez: 63g-116m (2007-20)

Netherlands

Johan Cruyff: 33g-48m (1966-77)

France

Michel Platini: 41g-72m (1976-87)

England

Tom Finney: 30g-76m (1946-58), Bobby Charlton: 49g-106m (1958-70),

Jimmy Greaves: 44g-57m (1959-67), Alan Shearer: 30g-63m (1992-2000)

Scotland

Denis Law: 30g-55m (1958-74)

Sophisticated measures have been devised that indicate a soccer player’s overall worth to his team, given his position (role) on the field and reflecting his estimated influence on each match played. Statistics also exist on the number of passes a player makes in a game and his assists given to goal scorers. But these rating schemes are a fairly recent innovation (created during the last two to three decades), and cannot be applied retrospectively as there are invariably insufficient observations of a given player’s performance. So far, such measures have also been limited in systematic application to certain club competitions (such as the English Premier League) and to FIFA World Cup matches – not being applied it seems to many (if any) other competitive international matches such as the UEFA European Championship or to “friendly” matches.

The notion of dead runs in cricket has a parallel in soccer and also rugby union. However, end of season team standings for regional competitions and for World Cup groups/pools are sometimes decided on the differential between goals or points scored and conceded. Although this is decisive only occasionally, the potential for a team to find itself in such a position at season’s end, or just prior to a knock-out stage of a competition, is often present for a good deal of the time. So there is usually a motivation for a team to press a strong goals or points advantage during most of their matches in tournaments (as distinct from “friendly” matches). To cite one illustrative case: in the 2014 soccer World Cup, the USA who were surprisingly tied on points with Portugal, went through to the knock-out stage on superior goal difference.

In soccer, I have found a suitable record for the leader, Just Fontaine of France, though for hardly any other prominent player (England’s Tom Finney is a rare exception). To identify a dead or potentially dead goal, the record needs to state the state of play when a player scored his goals – the goal difference immediately after he scored and, desirably also, at what time during the match. For Fontaine, the first piece of information, and whether the match was during a competition, is readily available through Wikipedia. Taking a potentially dead goal to be one that is scored when the team is already two goals ahead of the opposition in a tournament, one-third of his goals in FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup competition – 7 of 21 – come into this category. And one-third of his goals scored in friendly fixtures – 3 of 9 – were definitely “dead” ones.

Intuitively, these might seem to be relatively high ratios, but whether this is actually so would need testing for a sample of other prominent players and adjustments then made to the whole field on that basis. Outside of World Cup competitions, identifying dead goals/points scored would mean carefully trawling though and interpreting a great number newspaper of magazine accounts. Possibly, Fontaine’s dominance rating would rise (above 4.63 as estimated) instead of fall – though it is barely conceivable that his rating would raise to a level threatening DGB’s 5.77. If it is assumed that all other players in the qualifying field of 303 players have definite dead goals amounting to 40% of those they each scored, as opposed to 33% being assumed for Fontaine, then his dominance rating would rise to 5.45 – still short of DGB.

International Rugby Union

Although the first international match occurred as far back as 1871 (England versus Scotland), a substantial set of fixtures had to wait for four decades with the five nations tournament beginning in 1910 (adding Wales, Ireland and France). This supplemented the Australia-New Zealand matches which had begun in 1903. New Zealand-South Africa matches followed from 1921 and Australia-South Africa matches from 1933. The four yearly World Cup competition started comparatively recently, in 1987, which greatly expanded the number of qualifying players. With the removal of formal restrictions on payments to players, the game became a professional sport from 1995.

Similar to soccer, some rating schemes have been devised to reflect a player’s influence on a match (such as the “RPI” scheme, applied to international and club players), but these are also recent developments. The readily available long-term measures are career points scored and the constituents of tries, penalties, conversions and drop goals. The focus here is on the aggregate measure: total points scored per game played in; tries alone seems too restrictive.

Partly due to the generally cramped nature of play, taking place on a field a little smaller than a standard soccer pitch but with one-third more players on each side (15 rather than 11), the leading points scorers since the inception of international matches have predominantly been those taking penalties and conversion attempts. I have applied a minimum of 130 points instead of 200 by Walters. This is in order to bring highly prominent try scorers more into the field, such as the following who have scored all of their points through tries: New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu (1994-2002) with 185 points, Uruguay’s Diego Ormaechea (1979-99) with 183, France’s Vincent Clerc (2002-13) with 170, Wales’ Ieuan Evans (1987-98) with 161, Ireland’s Keith Earls (2008-present) and South Africa’s Jaque Fourie (2003-13) both with 160, England’s Will Greenwood (1997-2005) with 155, Australia’s Tim Horan (1989-2000) with 140, and Russia’s Andrei Kuzin (1997-2011) with 130.

The careers of the great majority of prominent points scorers date from the 1980s, though the first qualifier arrives a decade after the end of WW2 in the form of New Zealand’s famous full-back, Don “the boot” Clarke (1956-64), scoring 207 points in his 31 games.

The 130 points threshold, together with updating to end of 2020, produces a qualifying total of 252 players, between them having represented 23 countries. The games and points totals include any for the British Lions and British Barbarian sides.

 Kettle – findings for Rugby Union, top 15 to end 2020

		Country	Span	Games	Points	Points/Game	Z Score
1	Simon Hodgkinson	England	1989-91	14	203	14.50	2.53
2	Dan Carter	New Zealand	2003–15	112	1598	14.27	2.46
3	Grant Fox	New Zealand	1985–93	46	645	14.02	2.39
4	Jannie de Beer	South Africa	1997-99	13	181	13.92	2.36
5	Andrew Mehrtens	New Zealand	1995–2004	70	967	13.81	2.33
6	Diego Domínguez	Italy	1989-2003	76	1010	13.29	2.17
7	Esteban R. Segovia	Spain	2004-07	22	285	12.95	2.07
8	Jonny Wilkinson	England	1998–2011	97	1246	12.85	2.04
9	Gonzalo Quesada	Argentina	1996–2003	38	486	12.79	2.02
10	Michael Lynagh	Australia	1984–95	72	911	12.65	1.98
11	Ayumu Goromaru	Japan	2005-15	56	708	12.64	1.98
12	Jared Barker	Canada	2000-04	18	226	12.56	1.95
13	Paul Grayson	England	1995-2004	32	400	12.50	1.93
14	Toru Kurihara	Japan	2000-03	28	347	12.39	1.90
15	Federico Todeschini	Argentina	1998-2008	21	256	12.19	1.84

 

 Source: Rugby Union/Players and Officials/ESPN Scrum

Updating, combined with the shift to a lower qualifying threshold, introduces one new player to the top 15 (Jannie de Beer) whilst one drops out (Kurt Morath of Tonga, 2009-19). For the others listed, this produces an uplift in the ratings ranging from 0.37 to 0.45, equating to increases of 15% to 32%.

On the issue of points scored when the opposition has very little prospect of avoiding defeat (“dead points”), there is a similar difficulty as with soccer of identifying these. Prior to well documented records of World Cup competitions from 1999 onwards, of the Six Nations tournament (Northern Hemisphere) from 2000, and of the Tri Nations series (Southern Hemisphere) from 2007 (with Argentina joining in 2012), identification of these points means resort to careful interpretation of whatever newspaper and magazine articles have to offer.

Golf – The “Majors”

The analysis of winners extends back to the inception of each of the four Majors: the British Open from 1860, the US Open from 1895, the US PGA from 1916 and the US Masters from 1934.

The all-time basis of the analysis means that comparing players on their number of strokes per round is problematic. This would require a satisfactory way of reconciling changes to course length and layout, as well as to “advances” in the design of clubs.

Up to the end of 2020, there are 90 one-time winners who have also attained at least one 2^nd place or at least two 3^rd/4^th place finishes, and they are included in a qualifying field of 173 players. Updating from early-June 2014, and including these once-only winners, has the effect of substantially enhancing Walters’ dominance ratings – rising in the upper reaches of the top 19 by 0.89 to 1.70 (equating to 47% – 60%) and lower down by 0.69 to 0.82 (equating to 72% – 160%). The effect of updating alone is very small, giving rises of only 0.01 to 0.03, except for Tiger Woods who is the only golfer listed to have added to his wins since mid-2014, and only by one.

Kettle – findings for golf, top 20 to end 2020

		Country	Winning Span	Wins	Z Score
1	Jack Nicklaus	USA	1962–86	18	6.57
2	Tiger Woods	USA	1997–2019	15	5.31
3	Walter Hagen	USA	1914–29	11	3.64
4=	Ben Hogan	USA	1946–53	9	2.80
	Gary Player	South Africa	1959–78	9	2.80
6	Tom Watson	USA	1975–83	8	2.38
7=	Harry Vardon	Jersey	1896–1914	7	1.96
	Gene Sarazen	USA	1922–35	7	1.96
	Bobby Jones	USA	1923–30	7	1.96
	Sam Snead	USA	1942–54	7	1.96
	Arnold Palmer	USA	1958–64	7	1.96
12=	Lee Trevino	USA	1968–84	6	1.54
	Nick Faldo	England	1987–96	6	1.54
14=	John Henry Taylor	England	1894–1913	5	1.12
	James Braid	Scotland	1901–10	5	1.12
	Byron Nelson	USA	1937–45	5	1.12
	Peter Thomson	Australia	1954–65	5	1.12
	Seve Ballesteros	Spain	1979–88	5	1.12
	Phil Mickelson	USA	2004–13	5	1.12

 

Source: Wikipedia – List of men’s major championships winning golfers

Three players are present in the list with pre-WW1 careers, perhaps surprising as only two of the Majors were in operation during that period. And there are only two golfers whose careers enter the present century – Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson – which seems to indicate an intensifying (greater evenness) of competition – as with most professional sports over time, including Test cricket. A reduction over successive eras in the extent of variation around the overall average of participants’ performance in a sport is to be expected, owing to two factors:

• A general improvement in playing standards occurring with the maturing of a sport; stemming from a more general awareness of advances in technique, a standardisation of training exercises, a spread of individually-directed coaching to eliminate faults and suchlike.
• A ceiling coming into effect as the elite performers approach the limits of human endeavour.

Perhaps more than any of the other sports considered, with golf the difference is slight in demonstrated ability between most of the top twenty players of the world and those outside who lie within the top one or two hundred. Take the calibre of the following golfers, for example, who have secured up to four wins as against those with five to seven wins listed above:

3-4 wins: Billy Casper, Larry Nelson, Hale Irwin, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Rory McIlroy.

1-2 wins: Roberto De Vicenzo, Tony Jacklin, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw,

            Greg Norman, Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle, Corey Pavin, Nick Price,

José María Olazábal, Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia.

And of those who haven’t won a Major, I saw the following in action live, practising and on the course, during the 1970s/80s who made me fell just as lucky as watching some of those already noted:

Neil Coles, Brian Barnes, Peter Butler, Peter Oosterhuis, Martin Green, Mark McNulty,

Manuel Piñero.

Men’s Grand Slam Tennis – Singles

Of the four Grand Slam tournaments, Wimbledon and the US Open began in 1877 and 1881 respectively, with the Australasian Open following two decades later in 1905 (becoming the Australian Open from 1927) and the French Open in 1925 (previously, as from 1891, being restricted to members of national clubs). The US Championships continued unabated during both World Wars, unlike the other three. Each of them is examined from their inception.

Updating from early-June 2014, and including one-time winners who, in addition, have at least one other Grand Slam finals appearance or at least two semi-finals appearances (comprising 50 of the 65 one-time winners) produces a qualifying field of 135 players. Whilst those forming the updated top 27 remain unchanged from 2014, the list sees the rise of Nadal from third to equal first place with his 7 additional wins, a major move by Djokovic from equal 21^st to 3^rd place with his 11 additional wins, and Federer sharing first place having had 3 further wins.

Updating and the associated larger field (56 more players) means that for those listed under Djokovic there is a small rise on Walters’ dominance ratings – ranging from 0.01 for Sampras in 4^th place and increasing to 0.28 for those sharing 22^nd place.

Kettle – Findings for men’s tennis, top 27 to end 2020

		Country	Winning Span	Wins	Z Score
1=	Roger Federer	Switzerland	2003-18	20	4.69
	Rafael Nadal	Spain	2005-20	20	4.69
3	Novak Djokovic	Serbia	2008-20	17	3.84
4	Pete Sampras	USA	1990-2002	14	2.99
5	Roy Emerson	Australia	1961-67	12	2.43
6=	Rod Laver	Australia	1960-69	11	2.15
	Björn Borg	Sweden	1974-81	11	2.15
8	Bill Tilden	USA	1920-30	10	1.87
9=	Fred Perry	England	1933-36	8	1.30
	Ken Rosewall	Australia	1953-72	8	1.30
	Jimmy Connors	USA	1974-83	8	1.30
	Ivan Lendl	Czechoslovakia	1984-90	8	1.30
	André Agassi	USA	1992-2003	8	1.30
14=	William Renshaw	England	1881-89	7	1.02
	Richard Sears	USA	1881-87	7	1.02
	William Larned	USA	1901-11	7	1.02
	René Lacoste	France	1925-29	7	1.02
	Henri Cochet	France	1926-32	7	1.02
	John Newcombe	Australia	1967-75	7	1.02
	John McEnroe	USA	1979-84	7	1.02
	Mats Wilander	Sweden	1982-88	7	1.02
22=	Laurence Doherty	England	1902-06	6	0.74
	Anthony Wilding	New Zealand	1906-13	6	0.74
	Jack Crawford	Australia	1931-35	6	0.74
	Don Budge	USA	1937-38	6	0.74
	Boris Becker	Germany	1985-96	6	0.74
	Stefan Edberg	Sweden	1985-92	6	0.74

 

 Source: Wikipedia – List of Grand Slam men’s singles champions

Although the listing goes down to six wins, there are some extremely talented omissions, in certain cases due to turning professional. Some of the most prominent and interesting are:

• Norman Brookes (Australia) – the first non-British player to win the Wimbledon men’s singles, doing so in 1907 and again in 1914; was also a major force in Davis Cup competition, being instrumental with Wilding in gaining Australasia five of its six trophies between 1907-19.
• William Johnston (USA) – From 1915-25, gained two US Open and one Wimbledon win; and runner-up to Tilden in the US Open on five occasions. With Tilden, he secured seven consecutive Davis Cup trophies.
• André Gobert (France) – French national singles champion in 1911 and 1920; took the singles title at the British Covered Court Championships five times during 1911-22; and was an all-comers finalist at Wimbledon in 1912.
• William Laurentz (France) – instinctive and brilliant, if sometimes erratic. When only 16 years old, defeated the 27 year old colossus Anthony Wilding in five sets in the final of the 1911 French Covered Court Championships, and played in the Davis Cup a year later. Despite losing the sight in one eye from a freak tennis accident in 1912, he continued playing at the highest level – winning the World Hard Court Singles in 1920 (defeating Gobert in the final) and the World Covered Court Championship in 1921.
• Bunny Austin (England) – during the 1930s, runner-up twice at Wimbledon and once at the French Open. Was the last British player to reach the Wimbledon final until Andy Murray in 2012.From 1933-36, Austin and Fred Perry were at the forefront in winning the Davis Cup for Britain, in the final defeating France, USA twice and then Australia.
• Jaroslav Drobný (Czechoslovakia) – between 1946 and ’54, once winner and twice runner-up at Wimbledon, twice winner and three times runner-up at the French Open. Ranked in the world top 10 from 1946 to ’55. Gained a total of 147 singles titles.
• Manuel Santana (Spain) – with an all-court artistry, gained titles at the French (twice), Wimbledon and US Open during 1961-66. Played a key role in getting Spain through to the ultimate “Challenge” round of the Davis Cup in 1965 and ’67.
• Gerald Battrick (Wales) – displayed a model all-court game on en-tout-cas courts from a late-teenager into his mid-twenties; at age 24, winning the 1971 British Hard Court Singles Championship.
• Ramesh Krishnan (India) – a flowing stylist with just a hint of top-spin on his forehand and usually a little under-cut on the backhand. Highly prominent as a junior, winning the Wimbledon and French junior titles in 1979 at age 18. Consistently, a high quality performer in Grand Slam events from age 20-26 and would have gained some titles with a stronger service.
• Guillermo Vilas(Argentina) – from 1975-82, winning singles at the Australian (twice), French and US Opens, and four times a runner-up in Grand Slam singles events. Rated third best of all-time on clay courts, after Borg and Nadal.
• John Alexander (Australia) – youngest player ever to play in the Final Round of the Davis Cup, doing so at age 17 and 5 months, and competing from 1968-80 with a 17-9 singles wins-losses record.
• Henri Leconte (France) – arguably the most brilliant and entertaining player not to secure a Grand Slam title. Finalist in the French Open in 1988, and represented France in Davis Cup competition for 13 consecutive years from 1982.
• Andy Murray (Scotland) – in addition to his one US Open and two Wimbledon triumphs, runner-up eight times in grand slam events, all accomplished during 2008-16 from age 21.

Some who turned professional

• Vincent Richards (USA) – a prodigy who turned pro in 1926 at age 23, by then a four time semi-finalist in the US Open singles, initially at age 19. Ranked 3^rd in the world for 1925 and 6^th for 1926. Won the US Pro tournament four times between 1927 and 1933.
• Pancho Gonzalez (USA) – following two US Open titles in 1948-49, played pro tennis until the mid-1960s, winning many tournaments in America and England. At the very top of the sport from 1954-61. Great natural athletic ability plus lightning reflexes.
• Jack Kramer (USA) – turned pro after winning two US Opens and Wimbledon in 1946 and ‘47. One of the initial world class players to consistently adopt a serve and volley approach to singles.
• Lew Hoad (Australia) – turned pro following wins during 1956-57 over compatriots in the Australian and French Opens and at Wimbledon (twice), and having been a finalist in the US Open. From 1958-63, a runner-up 7 times in pro slam tournaments in the USA, France and England.

Women’s Grand Slam Tennis – Singles

Updating the qualifying field from early-June 2014 to incorporate the 24 subsequent grand slam events, and including 28 of the 50 one-time winners (based on the same criterion as for the men), produces a qualifying field of 102 players. The composition of the leading 21 players is unaltered from 2014, with just one change in position – Serena Williams moving up from 6^th to 2^nd place having secured six additional wins.

Williams aside, the dominance ratings of Walters are raised by between 0.28 at the bottom of the list to 0.45 at the top – equating to increases of 12% (top) to 255% (bottom). This is due very largely to the enlarged qualifying field, containing 33 additional players since mid-2014.

Kettle – findings for women’s tennis, top 21 to end 2020

		Country	Winning Span	Wins	Z Score
1	Margaret Court	Australia	1960-73	24	4.18
2	Serena Williams	USA	1999-2017	23	3.97
3	Steffi Graf	Germany	1987-99	22	3.76
4	Helen Wills Moody	USA	1923-38	19	3.13
5=	Chris Evert	USA	1974-86	18	2.92
	Martina Navratilova	Czechoslovakia	1978-90	18	2.92
7	Billie Jean King	USA	1966-75	12	1.65
8=	Maureen Connolly	USA	1951-54	9	1.02
	Monica Seles	Yugoslavia	1990-96	9	1.02
10=	Molla Bjurstedt Mallory	USA	1915-26	8	0.81
	Suzanne Lenglen	France	1919-26	8	0.81
12=	Dorothea Lambert Chambers	England	1903-14	7	0.60
	Maria Bueno	Brazil	1959-66	7	0.60
	Evonne Goolagong	Australia	1971-80	7	0.60
	Venus Williams	USA	2000-08	7	0.60
	Justine Henin	Belgium	2003-07	7	0.60
17=	Blanche Bingley Hillyard	England	1886-1900	6	0.39
	Nancye Wynne Bolton	Australia	1937-51	6	0.39
	Margaret Osborne duPont	USA	1946-50	6	0.39
	Louise Brough	USA	1947-55	6	0.39
	Doris Hart	USA	1949-55	6	0.39

 

             Source: Wikipedia – List of Grand Slam women’s singles champions

Of omissions from this list, those possessing outstanding talent include pre-WW1 pioneers, Lottie Dodd and Charlotte Cooper Sterry of England, plus the USA’s Hazel Hotchkiss. A number of prodigies are also absent: May Sutton, who won the US singles in 1904 at age 17 and a winner twice at Wimbledon in the next two years – being the only overseas player to win there until after WW1; Christine Truman, who won the French Open at age 18 and was a finalist at the US Open and Wimbledon by age 20; more recently, Hana Mandlíková, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, Martina Hingis and Maria Sharapova (all with 4 or 5 grand slam wins), whilst Tracy Austin’s  precocious career was cut short by a series of injuries and a serious automobile accident after winning the US Open at age 16 and again two years later.

In contrast, Althea Gibson made a late and stunning breakthrough, being one of the first Black athletes to cross the colour line of international tennis. From age 28, within the space of three years she achieved five wins at three Grand Slam events and was also a finalist at the Australian Open, before venturing to make a living from promotional and exhibition matches.

Highly notable also is the absence of Kitty McKane (2 Grand Slam wins), undoubtedly England’s best player in pre-WW2 times. She was one of only three players (along with Helen Wills and Elia Álvarez) capable of posing a serious threat to the pre-eminent Suzanne Lenglen who reigned from 1919 until turning pro in late-1926.

Squash – British Open Championship, Men

For much of the time since its inception in 1931, this tournament has been regarded as the unofficial world championship. It is now widely considered to be one of the two most prestigious of the game, along with the World Open Championship (established in 1976 for men, and in 1979 for women).

Up until 1947, the format was similar to the early phase of tennis singles at Wimbledon and the US Open, with the reigning champion standing by to play the winner of the rest of the field in the “Challenge Round”. With the British Open, this challenge consisted of the best of three matches. Subsequently, a standard knock-out format has been used. Apart from the WW2 period, the tournament has been staged annually – except for 2010 and ’11 when sponsor support fell through and in 2020 owing to the presence of the Covid-19 virus.

The qualifying field of 21 players includes 6 of the 9 one-time winners who have, in addition, made at least one finals or two semi-finals appearances.

Kettle – findings for men’s squash, top 13 to end 2020

		Country	Winning Span	Wins	Z Score
1	Jahangir Khan	Pakistan	1982-91	10	2.47
2	Geoff Hunt	Australia	1969-81	8	1.70
3	Hashim Khan	Pakistan	1951-58	7	1.31
4=	Jonah Barrington	England	1967-73	6	0.92
	Jansher Khan	Pakistan	1992-97	6	0.92
6	FD Amer Bey	Egypt	1933-38	5	0.54
7=	Mahmoud Karim	Egypt	1947-50	4	0.15
	Azam Khan	Pakistan	1959-62	4	0.15
	David Palmer	Australia	2001-08	4	0.15
10=	Abou Taleb	Egypt	1964-66	3	-0.24
	Nick Matthew	England	2006-12	3	-0.24
	Grégory Gaultier	France	2007-17	3	-0.24
	Mohammed El Shorbagy	Egypt	2015-19	3	-0.24

 

             Source: Wikipedia – British Open Squash Championships

Most conspicuous is the presence of Pakistani and Egyptian players – comprising 12 of the qualifying field and 8 of those listed above – both countries having a long tradition of high quality club competition. The Khan dynasty of Pakistan ruled the British Open through three relatives, initially during the 1950s and early-1960s, and later through Jahangir Khan in an unbroken 10 year stretch from the early-1980s. (Jansher Khan was unrelated to these players.)

Owing chiefly to the highly consistent, inexhaustible and enduring play of Jonah Barrington and Geoff Hunt, none of a gifted Pakistani quartet of Aftab Jawaid (3 finals), Gogi Alauddin (2 finals), Mohibullah Khan (1 final) and Hiddy Jahan (1 final) was able to clinch the title. And their compatriot, Mohammed Yasin had to withdraw from the 1974 final due to an ankle injury incurred during his semi-final in overcoming the wizardry of Qamar Zaman, having in the previous round defeated the reigning champion Jonah Barrington. Two Australians are also highly prominent without attaining the title: the deceptive left hander, Cam Nancarrow (2 finals) and Rodney Martin (3 finals) who took the mighty Jahangir Khan to five games in the 1989 final.

Squash – British Open Championship, Women

At its inception in 1922 and for the next five years, this tournament took the form of a series of “round robin” matches prior to the semi-finals stage. Since 1927, a conventional knock-out format has been adopted.

Of the field of 25 qualifying players to end of 2020 (including all 8 one-time winners), the main features are the dominance of English and Australian players – 12 and 7 respectively – and, as with the men, long-series of wins by a quintet of players. The performance of Heather McKay, with 16 straight finals wins, is unparalleled in the sport – against whom gaining one game (in best of 5 game encounters) was regarded as a triumph!  Witnessing her British Open final in 1976 against the second seed, Sue Newman, she was in control throughout in an undemonstrative way. Her game was stylish and neat, without unnecessary power; moving usually unhurried in a flowing manner about the court.

McKay lost only two matches in her entire career: in 1960, at the quarter-finals stage of the New South Wales tournament; and in 1962, at age 20, the Scottish Open final. She was unbeaten in tournament play from then right through to 1981 when she retired at age 40. There are strong runs of success also by Margot Lumb with 5 straight wins in the 1930s, Janet Morgan with 10 straight in the 1950s, Susan Devoy with a string of 7 wins from the mid-1980s, and Michelle Martin with a string of 6 wins in the 1990s.

Kettle – findings for women’s squash, top 13 to end 2020

		Country	Winning Span	Wins	Z Score
1	Heather McKay	Australia	1962-77	16	3.58
2	Janet Morgan	England	1950-59	10	1.85
3	Susan Devoy	New Zealand	1984-92	8	1.28
4	Michelle Martin	Australia	1993-98	6	0.70
5=	Nicol David	Malaysia	2005-14	5	0.41
	Margot Lumb	England	1935-39	5	0.41
7=	Vicki Hoffman (Cardwell)	Australia	1980-83	4	0.13
	Rachael Grinham	Australia	2003-09	4	0.13
9=	Joyce Cave	England	1922-28	3	-0.16
	Nancy Cave	England	1924-30	3	-0.16
	Cecily Fenwick	England	1926-31	3	-0.16
	Susan Noel	England	1932-34	3	-0.16
	Joan Curry	England	1947-49	3	-0.16

 

Source: as for men’s squash

The most eminent player never to gain the title is Sue Cogswell of England, runner-up in 1974, 1979 and 1980. She won the British National Championship five times during 1975-80 and was a finalist in the 1979 World Open.

Including performances in the World Open Championship, starting in 1976 (the only other tournament on a par with the British Open) raises the number of qualifying men players by only half a dozen, to become 27. The top dominance rating rises moderately from 2.47 to 2.92 (Jahangir Khan in both cases), though still way down on DGB in cricket. These combined statistics have not been used as the best set of results to quote due to the lengthy gap in the two tournaments’ inception dates (nearly half a century). It would unfairly and substantially reduce the ratings for five great players: Hashim Khan, Barrington, Bey, Karim and Azam Khan.

The same combined analysis has been done for women’s squash (there being a 57 year gap in their two inception dates), giving an increase again of half a dozen qualifying players. The dominance ratings of British Open greats, McKay (retiring after only one World Open entry) and Morgan fall by 0.46 and 0.41, although McKay remains top at 3.12. Big movers up are David (to 2^nd place), and Fitz-Gerald and Sherbini (to 6^th and 7^th places). But, again, the combined ratings still pose no threat to DGB.

Given the small numbers making up the qualifying field in squash (21 and 25 players) – and the substantial differences for some of the other sports examined – a comment is called for as to whether a wide disparity matters in the size of the various fields. (Cricket has a field of 403 players and the other sports range between 100 and 300.)

There is no reason for a systematic correlation to exist between the size of a qualifying field and the size of the resulting ratings for the most prominent players. Whilst increasing the field to include less strong performers inevitably reduces the overall average (the Mean), the magnitude of the Standard Deviation is also affected, and in unpredictable way; and both these factors enter the calculation of the dominance ratings. How much the Standard Deviation alters depends on exactly how the shape (or pattern) of the distribution of performance values varies between qualifying fields of different sizes. The direction of Z Score change, and by how much it changes, is vitally influenced by this.[i]

With the British Open in squash, when all appearances in the final are included, the qualifying field would rise to from 21 to 53 players and the dominance ratings for all of the top 13 players increase; whereas for women’s squash the field would increase from 25 to 29 players and the ratings rise for six of the top 13 but fall for the other seven.

Across the first ten sports looked at, taking the 1^st, 6^th and 10^th rated players, their ratings are set out below. No consistent pattern emerges.

Player					Tennis –	Tennis –	Squash –	Squash –
Position	Cricket	Soccer	Rugby	Golf	Men	Women	Women	Men
1st	5.77	4.63	2.53	3.64	4.69	4.18	3.58	2.47
6th	2.45	3.13	2.17	2.38	2.15	2.92	0.41	0.54
10th	2.12	2.38	1.98	1.96	1.30	0.81	-0.16	-0.24
Field	403	303	252	173	135	102	25	21

End Note

[i] In some instances, the resulting rise in the value of the Standard Deviation is sufficient to more than offset the reduced value of the Mean and produces a reduced Z Score. Thus, with cricket, when using a 1,500 runs qualifying threshold rather than 2,000s (and retaining dead runs for all players), DGB’s Z Score falls a little: becoming 6.603 instead of 6.635 (the Means are respectively 38.512 and 40.033, and the Standard Deviations are respectively 9.304 and 9.032). And when dead runs are excluded for all players, DGB’s Z Score falls by nearly the same amount, from 5.796 to 5.768. In contrast, with rugby union, using 130 points as the qualifying threshold instead of 200 points increases the Z Scores for the leading players (doing so by 0.286 to 0.344); the resulting rise in the value of the Standard Deviation being insufficient to offset the reduction in the value of the Mean.

 

PART 3 follows

from Cricket Web https://ift.tt/3yjwlaq