Simon Katich | King Cricket https://www.kingcricket.co.uk Independent and irreverent cricket writing Thu, 27 Apr 2023 09:19:28 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.3 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-kc_400x400-32x32.png Simon Katich | King Cricket https://www.kingcricket.co.uk 32 32 Grim final Tests: 8 players who went out on a massive low https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/grim-final-tests-8-players-who-went-out-on-a-massive-low/2023/04/27/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/grim-final-tests-8-players-who-went-out-on-a-massive-low/2023/04/27/#comments Thu, 27 Apr 2023 09:09:23 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=28349 6 minute read Every player wants to go out on a high, but few actually do. Most topple forwards and face-plant when attempting to bow out in style. And that’s what life’s about. You do your best for a bit and then the ending’s probably going to be a little bit of a

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6 minute read

Every player wants to go out on a high, but few actually do. Most topple forwards and face-plant when attempting to bow out in style. And that’s what life’s about. You do your best for a bit and then the ending’s probably going to be a little bit of a mess.

Sport is obsessed with great players going out in a blaze of glory; one final flash of genius before they swap their boots for slippers.

But while it can happen, the value of a ‘perfect’ ending is questionable anyway. What might seem like an immaculate full stop generally also brings with it the shadow of a question mark. Perhaps the player in question should have carried on just a little bit longer. And why is the memory of a final match any more significant than memories of all the other matches anyway? It’s all history.

In any case, the greatest final Test has already been and gone, so why bother trying to compete?

Glorious final Tests

Alastair Cook finished with a ton. Jason Gillespie exited with an unlikely double century. Muttiah Muralitharan secured victory and his 800th Test wicket with his final delivery. Going further back, Vijay Merchant’s final two Test innings were 128 and 154 (albeit five years apart), while Seymour Nurse finished with three hundreds in his last six innings, vacating the stage with 258 against New Zealand.

But none of these are in the same league as Enid Bakewell.

Bakewell won her final Test for England, against the West Indies, after taking 10-75. She made 68 opening the batting in the first innings and made an unbeaten 112 in the second out of a total of 164. That’s 68.29% of the runs, which is more than even Charles Bannerman managed.

As Test performances go, it’s probably the best one.

So raise your hands, concede this one, and just play on. Play on until they’re forced to drag you from the field because you’ve turned into a massive great anchor holding the rest of the team back.

Paul Collingwood averaged 13.83 in his final series, but won the Ashes. That seems a good way to go out. He certainly seemed pretty pleased with it.

Inglorious final Tests

Before we get into this, let’s just quickly address the most immediately obvious final Test downer: Don Bradman’s duck.

To quickly sum up, the Don went into his final Test with an average of over 100 and was bowled second ball, which brought his average down into double figures.

This is, on the face of it, not an especially glorious finish – but think of it in terms of the story and the drama. Don Bradman started and ended this innings as the most consistently successful batter Test cricket has seen and so a duck was an incredibly big deal. Throw in the fact that it prevented him becoming the only player to average over 100 and this is pretty much the most famous innings of all time.

That is, in its own way, going out on a high. A three-figure average would have been an incredible feat, but 99.94 is barely less incredible and packs a far more powerful emotional hit.

1. Adam Voges, Australia

This is how you end on a downer. Briefly, during his innings of 239 against New Zealand in 2016, Adam Voges’ Test average exceeded Bradman’s. Then he was dismissed and over the course of the next half dozen Tests, that average went into a flat spin before concussion in a domestic match provided a timely reason for ejecting him.

Voges finished with a golden duck (at which point Australia were 8-4) and then 2 against South Africa in his 20th and final Test, his average dropping from 67.40 to 61.87 in the process. Australia were bowled out for 85 on the first day and suffered an innings defeat.

> Hot streaks: Test batters who hit a prolonged purple patch

2. Suresh Raina, India

What’s worse than a duck? A pair. Suresh Raina was never the most successful Test batter, but the contrasts in his final match were brutal. After Australia made 572-7 declared, India responded with 475. Australia declared again in the second innings but couldn’t bowl India out.

Raina’s contributions were a golden duck and a duck. His previous innings, against New Zealand, had also been a duck. All in all, he failed to score in five of his final seven innings. This is how to finish a Test career: unequivocally.

> Best of the blobs: Eight of Test cricket’s finest duck-makers

3. Geraint Jones, England

What’s worse than a pair? A pair while losing the Ashes, even though it’s only the third Test. Geraint Jones was picked as England wicketkeeper in large part for his batting, but bowed out with a pair in Perth in 2006, securing it either side of Australia’s 527-5 declared – an innings that included a 57-ball hundred from his opposite number, Adam Gilchrist. Jones was run out by Ricky Ponting in his final innings off a ball where he could quite easily have been given LBW.

4. Simon Katich, Australia

New Zealand’s Chris Martin is pretty much the patron saint of ducks. It was therefore fitting that in his final Test innings he should fall below even his own rock bottom standards by getting run out without even facing a ball. However, given Martin’s record, that wasn’t actually an especially ignominious finish for a man who ultimately went out with five zeros on the trot if you include not outs. You didn’t expect runs from Chris Martin. That most definitely wasn’t what he was there for.

Simon Katich though? He was an opening batter. That gives his final Test diamond duck far greater weight, even if he did go on to make 43 later in the match. Because really you could argue that first innings, first over dismissal shaped the 2010 Adelaide Test and to some extent the series.

Katich was run out by Jonathan Trott off the fourth ball of the match. James Anderson then dismissed Ricky Ponting next ball and Australia’s 245 proved entirely inadequate as England racked up 620-5 en route to an innings victory.

5. Sohag Gazi, Bangladesh

What of the bowlers though? Where a bad final match for a batter is over in the blink of an eye, there is something uniquely grim about the equivalent experience for a Test bowler.

In February 2014, Sohag Gazi went into what would be his final Test having taken 2-207 across his previous two matches. He duly returned figures of 1-181 off 48 overs in the first innings and 1-87 off 18.5 overs in the second. Rather capping things off, on a pitch on which Kumar Sangakkara was able to make 424 runs on his own, Gazi batted once and made a golden duck.

6. Arshad Ayub, India

Gazi did at least take a wicket though. In December 1989, Indian off-spinner Arshad Ayub trunded in for 0-182 from 49 overs against Pakistan. That performance came after returns of 0-81 and 0-37 in his penultimate Test.

7. Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, Australia

As poor final Tests go, Chuck Fleetwood-Smith’s is perhaps the benchmark. His innings figures of 1-298 in England’s 903-7 declared remain the most expensive in Test history.

There’s a dash of batting to throw into the mix too, as you’d expect from a man who supposedly once said, “If you can’t be the best batsman in the world, you might as well be the worst.”

Fleetwood-Smith was the last man dismissed in Australia’s second innings when England secured victory by an innings and 579 runs. He made a duck.

8. Denis Compton

Compton’s final Test was the fifth Test against South Africa at Port Elizabeth in 1957. While he finished his career with an average of over 50, Compton made a two-ball duck in the first innings and 5 in the second innings.

That would be pretty bad in itself, but it was only really in keeping with a much broader downer. Defeat meant a tied series after England had won the first two Tests and drawn the third, and this match in particular was a weird combination of dreariness and farce. The pitch had been relaid with soil from Durban but it hadn’t properly settled and this meant the action was defined by a great many grub-hunters and pea-rollers. This resulted in the slowest Test in history with a scoring at a rate of 1.40 runs per six balls (538 runs from 287.5 eight-ball overs).

A blaze of glory? Denis Compton went out in a blaze of, “Ah stuff this, there must be something better I could be doing with my life.”

We couldn’t write these sorts of features without the priceless gift of time. Actually, not priceless, because the people who are backing our Patreon campaign quite literally buy us the time. You can buy us more time and yourself more King Cricket features here.

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Goldenarms: The best part-time bowlers in the history of Test cricket https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/goldenarms-the-best-part-time-bowlers-in-the-history-of-test-cricket/2020/11/18/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/goldenarms-the-best-part-time-bowlers-in-the-history-of-test-cricket/2020/11/18/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2020 12:11:42 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=23977 5 minute read All-rounders are great, but part-time bowlers are more entertaining. Bowlers have to bat in Test cricket, even though they are not picked as batsmen – but only very occasionally is a batsman asked to bowl. Let’s try and work out which Test cricketer who wasn’t picked for his bowling was

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5 minute read

All-rounders are great, but part-time bowlers are more entertaining. Bowlers have to bat in Test cricket, even though they are not picked as batsmen – but only very occasionally is a batsman asked to bowl. Let’s try and work out which Test cricketer who wasn’t picked for his bowling was the best at bowling.

All-roundering is a fun thing to talk about because it lies on a continuum. Between the players who are only really picked to bat and the players who are only really picked to bowl lie assorted misshapes.

Different teams have different holes in them and so they need different pieces to complete them. One team might want a run-scorer who can be relied upon to get through a few overs of economical fast-medium. Another might have a vacancy for a frontline bowler who can hang around and make 20-odd with the bat.

At some point on that continuum you reach a point where no-one really honestly cares about your bowling, but you do still occasionally get asked to bowl.

Goldenarms

The part-time bowler is a very particular tool. You’re not going to have a big workload. You’re not going to bowl every match. And when you do bowl, you’re probably going to get taken off again pretty soon, regardless of how well you perform.

In fact there’s almost a case for saying that the perfect part-time bowler would be someone who comes on, instantly takes a wicket, and is then immediately whipped out of the attack.

Because part-time bowlers are, more than anything, partnership breakers. They’re a somewhat desperate roll of the dice. You bring on your part-time bowler when things are shit and you hope that you hit that bullseye and that the rest of the dominoes fall like a house of cards and it’s checkmate.

So that’s kind of what we’re looking for here.

Qualification criteria

This is a tricky one.

Test cricket’s greatest part-time bowler will need to have a certain body of work to justify that title – but the very nature of part-time bowling means that necessitates a lengthy career.

What we’re saying is, we need someone who played enough for us to know that they didn’t bowl much.

Let’s set a lower limit of 10 wickets because any less than that is too little to evaluate.

At the opposite end, let’s go for 100 wickets because more than that is just too many.

Let’s see what that gives us.

Most wickets

A lot of specialist bowlers have taken between 10 and 100 Test wickets. Working our way down the list, Sanath Jayasuriya is the first with fewer wickets to his name than Test appearances.

Jayasuriya played 110 Tests and took 98 wickets. This doesn’t seem very part-time to us. He’s maybe not doing a full-time job exactly, but he’s certainly around for the majority of the week and sometimes he stays late.

We feel like we have to exclude Jayasuriya. The man took 323 wickets in one-day internationals, for crying out loud. That puts him at number 11 in the all-time list – ahead of Shane Warne and absolutely everyone who’s ever played for England. That is not a part-time bowler.

The next man with more appearances than wickets is Steve Waugh. Let’s weigh up his case.

Waugh took 92 wickets in 168 Tests at an average of 37.44.

Is that the record of a part-time bowler? Or is that the record of someone at the very battingest end of the all-rounder spectrum?

> Who is Test cricket’s greatest number eight? (Which Test bowler was the best batsman?)

Waugh averaged 7.7 overs a Test match, which is not a lot, but also not a little. He also took three five wicket hauls. That feels quite all-roundery – but then it was in the space of 168 Test matches, so maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt. Although throw in four four-wicket hauls and we don’t know. It feels a little incriminating.

You may have noted that 92 wickets in 168 Tests is more than a wicket every other Test. That’s starting to feel like a concrete thing we should stick to. If you’re taking less than half a wicket a Test, it seems safe to assume you’re not considered a key part of the bowling attack.

That threshold would easily rule in Sachin Tendulkar, who took 46 wickets in 200 Tests, bowling all sorts of random stuff; while ruling out Greg Chappell, who took 47 wickets in 87 Tests, bowling 10 overs a Test match.

It also rules in Virender Sehwag (40 wickets in 104 Tests) and Allan Border (39 in 156), while ruling out Chris Gayle (73 in 103) and Hansie Cronje (43 in 68).

That feels about right. (If only because we don’t really want Cronje coming out on top here, do we?) (Also, it’s worth pointing out that Gayle bowled over 1,000 Test overs. That’s not part-time.)

This moves us on a lot. Or actually not very much at all because it turns out the top wicket-taker to have taken less than a wicket every other Test is Steve Waugh’s twin brother.

Mark Waugh took 59 wickets in 128 Tests at an average of 41.16.

Some will tell you that he’s an all-rounder on the basis that he averaged more than that with the bat. To that we can only counter with the fact that Alastair Cook averaged 7.00 with the ball in Test cricket.

The fact of the matter is that Mark Waugh averaged just over six overs a Test match and recorded one five-for, one four-for and one three-for in 128 Test matches.

That is a part-time bowler.

If we’re rating the best part-time bowler by how many wickets they took, Mark Waugh is the best.

But maybe we’re not rating them like that.

Best average

Darren Lehmann warrants a quick mention here for having taken 15 wickets in 27 Tests at 27.46. Had Boof played three more Tests and failed to bowl in them, he’d have topped the list.

But he didn’t.

The next man, we’d say, is our winner here.

Simon Katich took 21 wickets in 56 Tests at 30.23, delivering, on average, just three overs of left-arm wrist spin per match.

This is undeniably part-time, but Katich was also undeniably effective. That bowling average is superior to Matthew Hoggard, Peter Siddle and Yasir Shah. It’s better than Brett Lee.

And then there’s the small matter of his strike-rate. This, for us, is where Katich makes his case.

As we wrote several hundred words ago, the ideal part-time bowler is someone who comes on, instantly takes a wicket, and is then immediately whipped out of the attack.

You’re looking for instant impact. A part-timer isn’t a fill-in bowler; he’s a spanner flung optimistically into the opposition’s works. You bring on a part-timer when you’re hoping to magically turn a hopeless position around.

Simon Katich’s strike-rate is 49.4. Simon Katich took a Test wicket every 49.4 deliveries.

That strike-rate is the same as Fred Trueman’s.

Simon Katich has a better Test strike-rate than Richard Hadlee, Michael Holding, Mitchell Johnson, Lasith Malinga and Glenn McGrath.

Simon Katich is the greatest part-time bowler in the history of Test cricket.

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Further reading: Two dismissals and over – who was Test cricket’s busiest wicketkeeper?


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Unbelievably, despite endless elite debate, Australians have once again completely lost track of ‘the line’ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/unbelievably-despite-endless-elite-debate-australians-have-once-again-completely-lost-track-of-the-line/2018/11/28/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/unbelievably-despite-endless-elite-debate-australians-have-once-again-completely-lost-track-of-the-line/2018/11/28/#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2018 11:22:50 +0000 https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=20690 2 minute read If there is one thing Australians love, it is to constantly, endlessly debate the exact whereabouts of ‘the line’ until all you can do is start trying to claw your own face off, shouting, “When will it end? When will it EVER END?!” Last we knew, everything was fine because

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2 minute read

Photo by Sarah Ansell

If there is one thing Australians love, it is to constantly, endlessly debate the exact whereabouts of ‘the line’ until all you can do is start trying to claw your own face off, shouting, “When will it end? When will it EVER END?!”

Last we knew, everything was fine because Tim Paine had revealed: “We know what’s right and what’s wrong, so it’s pretty simple.”

But Michael Clarke – in many ways the spiritual father of the line – does not think it’s simple. Bobbing to the surface again like a greasy, buoyant turd, he fired off a whole series of nonsense quotes this week in a bid to make things less simple.

The thrust of Clarke’s position is that the team needs to, “play tough Australian cricket.” An expert on the unique characteristics of the Australian genome, he added: “Whether we like it or not, that’s in our blood.”

Clarke cited David Warner as an example. He said he always liked having him in the team because he was aggressive. He added: “In saying that, there was always a line. He knew that. We had a number of conversations one-on-one about that line he couldn’t overstep.”

(Clarke also said, “David Warner gives it to certain blokes on the field because he wants them to give it to him when he’s batting. It’s like a turn on” – which is pretty funny when you take it out of context.)

Clearly Clarke is essentially thrashing around in muddy waters, shouting, “Look at me! Look at me! I’m covered in mud.”

Clarke’s old friend Simon Katich spotted this and (correctly) pointed out: “Once again we find someone missing the point. What’s been forgotten in all of this is we blatantly cheated.”

Paine (who we now always think of as Mr Shake Hands Man because he’s asked his team to respectfully shake hands with the opposition at the start of every series) responded to Clarke’s comments by drawing a subtle distinction between ‘trying to be liked’ and ‘acting like massive wankers’.

Alas, it was to no avail. All the latest round of Australian navel-gazing has achieved is that once again no-one knows where the damn line is (the slippery, weaselly bastard).

Summing up the confusion, Justin Langer said: “I’m not sure what people want from us. We can’t confuse the messages. On the one hand, we’re too aggressive and probably stepped over the line. Now we’re getting called tame.”

Dear Australia: THERE IS NO LINE. YOU’RE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EXIST. DIFFERENT PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT IDEAS ABOUT WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE – THAT’S THE PROBLEM.

(Also, as a quick steer, the sandpaper thing crossed pretty much everyone’s line.)

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Simon Katich dropped – the understated reaction https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-dropped-the-understated-reaction/2011/06/13/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-dropped-the-understated-reaction/2011/06/13/#comments Mon, 13 Jun 2011 08:39:14 +0000 http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=6792 < 1 minute read This is a quote from Australia’s federal defence minister, Stephen Smith. And yes, you read that job title correctly. “Well historically of course there have been a series of atrocities committed by the Australian Cricket Board or Cricket Australia or the Australian selectors against Western Australian cricketers but this one

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< 1 minute readThis is a quote from Australia’s federal defence minister, Stephen Smith. And yes, you read that job title correctly.

“Well historically of course there have been a series of atrocities committed by the Australian Cricket Board or Cricket Australia or the Australian selectors against Western Australian cricketers but this one is extraordinary. This one is very high at the top of the list.”

Atrocities? You’d think someone in Smith’s line of work might hold words like that back for when he really needs them.

Meanwhile, Cricket Australia’s head of cricket operations, Michael Brown, has seen fit to question the idioms used by Katich when complaining about losing his contract:

“I certainly don’t support the idea that you pay peanuts you get monkeys.”

We get the impression that Brown has taken that comment literally and while he’s resolute in public, behind the scenes he’s despatched some specialists to do a series of species checks on the selection panel.

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Simon Katich grabs Michael Clarke by the throat https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-grabs-michael-clarke-by-the-throat/2009/02/06/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-grabs-michael-clarke-by-the-throat/2009/02/06/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:03:01 +0000 http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=806 < 1 minute read Simon Katich went for Michael Clarke in the dressing rooms after Australia beat South Africa at the SCG last month. You can’t blame him. If we were in the same team as Michael Clarke, we’d probably have drawn up some sort of schedule as to which days we were going

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< 1 minute readSimon Katich went for Michael Clarke in the dressing rooms after Australia beat South Africa at the SCG last month.

You can’t blame him. If we were in the same team as Michael Clarke, we’d probably have drawn up some sort of schedule as to which days we were going to punch him square in his smug face. The punch-in-the-face days would be the ones when we could bear to be in the same room as him.

The argument was a hugely worthy one. Michael Clarke wanted the team to sing their team song earlier than usual. Simon Katich presumably didn’t.

Clarke wanted the song sung by 11pm, but only The Custodian Of The Song can decide when it is sung. Mike Hussey currently holds this sacred post and he decided that the song should be sung at nearly midnight. We’ve suddenly warmed to Mike Hussey.

All this is true, by the way. We should make that clear. We’re not averse to making stuff about the Australians, but on this occasion we’re innocent and they’re mental, rather than vice versa.

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Simon Katich plays a nice innings https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-plays-a-nice-innings/2008/11/23/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-plays-a-nice-innings/2008/11/23/#comments Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:04:04 +0000 http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/?p=700 < 1 minute read People who decide man of the match awards are stupid. If there are loads of runs in the match, man of the match adjudicators think the batsmen have all batted really well and pick the guy who scored the most. If it’s a really low-scoring game, they think the bowlers

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< 1 minute readSimon Katich exhibited solid defensive fortificationsPeople who decide man of the match awards are stupid. If there are loads of runs in the match, man of the match adjudicators think the batsmen have all batted really well and pick the guy who scored the most. If it’s a really low-scoring game, they think the bowlers have done really well and pick the guy with the best figures.

That’s such shite. This Australia v New Zealand match featured four low scores. Out of 44 individual innings, only three were over 40. Simon Katich carried his bat for 130 not out and he wasn’t man of the match. Mitchell Johnson was for nine cheap wickets.

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Simon Katich hits triple hundred https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-hits-triple-hundred/2007/10/28/ https://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-hits-triple-hundred/2007/10/28/#comments Sun, 28 Oct 2007 10:26:00 +0000 http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/simon-katich-hits-triple-hundred/2007/10/28/ < 1 minute read Simon Katich – remember him? – hit 306 for New South Wales against Queensland. Everyone cross their fingers that he’ll get back into the Australian team in time for the next Ashes. Australia have any number of excellent batsmen and Katich is one of them, but at least he’s got

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< 1 minute readSimon Katich leaves the field without swearing like a sulky childSimon Katich – remember him? – hit 306 for New South Wales against Queensland. Everyone cross their fingers that he’ll get back into the Australian team in time for the next Ashes.

Australia have any number of excellent batsmen and Katich is one of them, but at least he’s got a proven track record of getting all hot-and-bothered during crucial matches and throwing big hissy fits when he gets out.

In truth a mere triple hundred isn’t such a grand achievement on a pitch where even Matthew Hayden managed to hit 179.

With reference to yesterday’s post about too much cricket, we’d like to highlight the ongoing brilliance of Australian domestic cricket’s fixture list. Each state plays ten first-class games and as there are only six states, cricket followers can comfortably follow every single first-class match.

Mean-treating, keen-keeping brilliance.

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