Some Issues in the Calculation of Batting Averages: Ranking (and Re-Ranking) the Top 50 Batsmen in Test Cricket, 1877-2006

Vani Borooah and John Mangan ()

No 351, Discussion Papers Series from University of Queensland, School of Economics

Abstract: Batsmen in cricket are invariably ranked according to their batting average. Such a ranking suffers from two defects. First, it does not take into account the consistency of scores across innings: a batsman might have a high career average but with low scores interspersed with high scores; another might have a lower average but with much less variation in his scores. Second, it pays no attention to the �value� of the player�s runs to the team: arguably, a century, when the total score is 600, has less value compared to a half-century in an innings total of, say, 200. The purpose of this paper is to suggest new ways of computing batting averages which, by addressing these deficiencies, complement the existing method and present a more complete picture of batsmen�s performance. Based on these �new� averages, the paper offers a �new� ranking of the top 50 batsmen in the history of Test Cricket.

Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-spo
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://economics.uq.edu.au//files/44477/351.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qld:uq2004:351

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers Series from University of Queensland, School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SOE IT ().