What’s a wicket worth? Part 1: Baggy green bowlers A Set the default text size A Set large text size
Replay A Set the default text size A Set large text size
“All wickets are equal, but some wickets are more equal than others,” As George Orwell would have put it had he spent more time watching cricket and less time penning
Animal Farm.
Cricket careers are measured by aggregate, average and strike rate because those numbers are straightforward and comparable. Yet the wickets of some opposing batsmen clearly have far more value than those of others.
A bowler who dismissed Don Bradman and Stan McCabe cheaply and achieved a final analysis of 2-70 would have done far more to gain victory for his country than his teammate who cleaned up the Australian tail for final figures of 4-70. But unfortunately his bare figures wouldn’t acknowledge that matchwinning contribution.