In search of the balanced allrounder
A detailed stats analyis to classify players as batting allrounders and bowling allrounders
Ric Finlay
25-Feb-2013
Ian Botham: as close as you can get to the most balanced allrounder • Getty Images
The beauty of cricket lies in the variety of different roles players can assume when they play the game. I contend there exists a continuum, with specialist bowlers at one end, specialist batsmen at the other, and a range of different types of allrounder in between. The terms "bowling allrounder" and "batting allrounder" are often used in reference to particular players, and it follows that in between these two categories, there must be a group of players whose allround capabilities are perfectly balanced; that is, they bat equally well as they bowl.
If my continuum does exist, then it should be possible to quantify each player's position along this line, and to determine who the "perfectly balanced" allrounders have been in the game's history.
Concerning myself with just Test cricket, I started with two extremes: the "purest" batsman was surely Brian Lara, who scored 11,953 runs in 131 Tests, but failed to take a wicket, the only scorer of 10,000 runs to do so. At the other end of the scale, we have South Africa's Mfuneko Ngam, who was only trusted with the bat once in his three Tests, scoring 0 not out, but was good enough as a bowler to take 11 wickets.
Of the 2551 Test players at the time of writing, 1085 failed either to score a run or take a wicket, and these may be regarded as our specialist players (either batsmen or bowlers), leaving 1467 players who can theoretically be regarded to some degree as allrounders. Readers may not be convinced of the allround credentials of Rahul Dravid, who has one wicket to go along with his 10,823 runs, and so we need to weed out these genuine batting specialists who by some freakish circumstance, have ended up with a small number of wickets.
Similarly, at the other end, we cannot seriously regard the likes of England's Bill Bowes (68 wickets) as a bowling allrounder, even though he scored 28 runs in 15 Tests, so from that end, we also need to establish a point beyond which a player can be regarded as a bowling specialist only, even though he may have scored the odd run here and there.
It will probably be obvious by now that the simplest (and perhaps most effective) way of establishing our continuum is to divide the number of runs a player has scored by the wickets he has taken. Using our two extremes, Dravid comes out with an allround index of 10823, while Bowes' is 0.41. The index for true allrounders, of course, lies within a much a narrower range, and with absolutely no theoretical basis for my conclusion, other than matching the results with my observations of players over many years, it seems that the figure of 14 is the point of equilibrium, where a player's batting is perfectly balanced with his bowling.
In fact no-one with 20 Tests under their belt has an index of exactly 14, but some come near. Of the megastars in the game's history, Ian Botham (13.58) comes the closest, while Jack Gregory (13.48), Ray Illingworth (15.05) and Chris Cairns (15.23) also seem to be extraordinarily balanced in their contributions with both bat and ball, the latter two obviously having a slight bias in favour of their batting. The closest with a 20-Test minimum is the little remembered nineteeth-century allrounder from England, William Barnes (14.22). The following table lists those whose indices lie in between 13 and 15:
Index player M runs wkts 13.02 Mankad, MH 44 2109 162 13.12 Boje, N 43 1312 100 13.39 Hirst, GH 24 790 59 13.48 Gregory, JM 24 1146 85 13.58 Botham, IT 102 5200 383 14.22 Barnes, W 21 725 51 14.37 Nasim-ul-Ghani 29 747 52 14.41 Ratnayeke, JR 22 807 56 14.68 Madan Lal, S 39 1042 71
How far can we deviate from this balanced centre before we can no longer call the player an allrounder? At the bowling end, the figure appears to be around 7. Wasim Akram comes in on exactly that figure, while Dominic Cork (6.60) and Ray Lindwall (6.59) just had too much fire-power with the ball compared to their output as batsmen to be considered genuine allrounders. Alan Davidson (7.14) and Richard Hadlee (7.46) are rightly included, as is the rapidly-improving Mitchell Johnson (7.38).
Index player M runs wkts 6.53 Wickramasinghe 40 555 85 6.59 Lindwall, RR 61 1502 228 6.60 Cork, DG 37 864 131 6.67 DeFreitas, PAJ 44 934 140 6.80 Schwarz, RO 20 374 55 6.91 Briggs, J 33 815 118 7.00 Wasim Akram 104 2898 414 7.00 Edmonds, PH 51 875 125 7.14 Cairns, BL 43 928 130 7.14 Davidson, AK 44 1328 186 7.25 Hadlee, RJ 86 3124 431 7.38 Johnson, MG 21 694 94 7.46 Hadlee, DR 26 530 71
At the other end, we probably need to wander much further from our centre to capture all those who we might consider batting allrounders. Extending the index from 14 to 100 allows the inclusion of Jeremy Coney (98.81), but excludes Doug Walters (109.33), which might be considered fair enough. Wally Hammond (87.34), Scott Styris (86.37) and Chris Gayle (77.49) are also included.
Index player M runs wkts 71.15 Jayasuriya, ST 110 6973 98 74.94 Hathurusingha 26 1274 17 75.47 Shoaib Malik 23 1132 15 76.33 McCabe, SJ 39 2748 36 77.49 Gayle, CH 82 5502 71 79.30 Styris, SB 29 1586 20 82.00 Ryder, J 20 1394 17 86.37 Cronje, WJ 68 3714 43 87.34 Hammond, WR 85 7249 83 92.20 Astle, NJ 81 4702 51 98.81 Coney, JV 52 2668 27 102.17 Wyatt, RES 40 1839 18 103.74 Umrigar, PR 59 3631 35 109.33 Walters, KD 74 5357 49 109.60 Hazare, VS 30 2192 20
Finally, there happen to be exactly 50 players whose indices fall in between 10 and 20 - these are the players who I consider to be closest to being perfectly balanced in their allround contributions.
Index player M runs wkts 10.52 Imran Khan 88 3807 362 10.59 Mohd Rafique 33 1059 100 10.67 Tapash Baisya 21 384 36 10.95 Boyce, KD 21 657 60 10.99 Vettori, DL 92 3220 293 11.05 Pathan, IK 29 1105 100 11.60 Knight, BR 29 812 70 11.63 Harper, RA 25 535 46 11.63 MacGibbon, AR 26 814 70 11.65 Emburey, JE 64 1713 147 11.88 Lewis, CC 32 1105 93 11.94 Intikhab Alam 47 1493 125 11.99 Strang, PA 24 839 70 12.02 Giffen, G 31 1238 103 12.09 Kapil Dev, N 131 5248 434 12.15 O'Keeffe, KJ 24 644 53 12.58 Dharmasena 31 868 69 13.02 Mankad, MH 44 2109 162 13.12 Boje, N 43 1312 100 13.39 Hirst, GH 24 790 59 13.48 Gregory, JM 24 1146 85 13.58 Botham, IT 102 5200 383 14.22 Barnes, W 21 725 51 14.37 Nasim-ul-Ghani 29 747 52 14.41 Ratnayeke, JR 22 807 56 14.68 Madan Lal, S 39 1042 71 15.05 Illingworth, R 61 1836 122 15.06 Holford, DAJ 24 768 51 15.23 Cairns, CL 62 3320 218 16.00 Patel, DN 37 1200 75 16.03 Durani, SA 29 1202 75 16.07 Nadkarni, RG 41 1414 88 16.31 Brown, FR 22 734 45 16.50 Noble, MA 42 1997 121 16.67 Prabhakar, M 39 1600 96 16.72 Flintoff, A 75 3645 218 16.89 Hall, AJ 21 760 45 16.97 Sinclair, JH 25 1069 63 17.32 Julien, BD 24 866 50 17.35 Bailey, TE 61 2290 132 17.40 Miller, KR 55 2958 170 17.66 Binny, RMH 27 830 47 17.83 White, C 30 1052 59 18.31 Rhodes, W 58 2325 127 18.98 Ulyett, G 25 949 50 19.46 Abdul Razzaq 46 1946 100 19.51 Amarnath, L 24 878 45 19.58 Hopkins, AJY 20 509 26 19.62 Atkinson, DStE 22 922 47 19.82 Phadkar, DG 31 1229 62
So there we have it: a classification of players into five groups, Bowlers (Indices 0 to 7), Bowling Allrounders (7 to 10), Balanced Allrounders (10 to 20), Batting Allrounders (20 to 100) and Batsmen (above 100). These boundaries are purely subjective, and will no doubt promote some comment - but don't forget, this is NOT an analysis of who the BEST allrounders are!
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