Batsmen As Match Winners

Batsmen do not win Test matches, but bowlers do. This obviously does not mean that batsmen have no impact on the outcome of Tests. What it means is that given the rules of Test Cricket, there is no situation in which a batsman's actions alone can produce a result without unnecessary concessions from the opposing team (such as a declaration), while it is possible for a bowler to win a Test Match through his own actions without unnecessary concessions from the opposing team. A batsman scoring two double hundreds in a Test does not guarantee a result, while a bowler taking 20 wickets in a Test does. In fact batsmen producing large scores are as likely to be in draws as they are in wins, where the more wickets a bowler takes, the more the likelihood of a win or a loss.

The one instance in Test Cricket in which batsmen can be match-winners is in the 4th innings. There is always a victory target available in the 4th innings. It can be as trivial as a solitary run, or, in the extreme case, as high as 835 - set by England at Sabina Park in 1930. (West Indies survived thanks to a double century by George Headley).

Targets are not created equal. Targets under 100 have been chased down 97% of the time (241 out of 248 run chases under 100 have been successful). When a team is chasing a 4th innings target under 100, it has already gone far ahead in the game in the first three innings, and the 4th innings is something of a formality. 

Targets from 100 to 199 have been chased down 67% of the time (173 out of 257 successful run chases).  Now, this is a large range. It is obviously reasonable to assume that 185 is much harder to chase than 115.

Targets from 200 to 299 have been chased down 26% of the time (79 out of 302 successful run chases), while targets from 300 to 418 have been chased down 7% of the time (26 out of 360 successful run chases). There have been a further 181 instances of teams being set target in excess of 417. I use 417 because it is the highest 4th innings run chase in Test Cricket.

So even in the case of 4th innings run chases, it could be argued that batsman can be genuine "match-winners" in only a fraction of the cases. Run chases from 200 to 299 are successful 26% of the time. They result in defeat for the chasing team 29% of the time. Run chases from 300 to 418 result in defeat for the chasing team 50% of the time, while they result in wins 7% of the time. There have been 505 4th innings targets under 200 in Test cricket, while there have been 843 targets in excess of 200, and 541 in excess of 300. So it is marginally more likely for 4th innings chases to be above 300 than it is for them to be under 200.

In chases under 200, the chasing team is expected to win. We often hear commentators say that "If they could extend the lead to 150-200, this could be a tricky chase". But this rarely happens. In 257 run chases from 100 to 199, there have been 173 wins and 40 losses. Sachin Tendulkar for example, has been on the winning side 6 out of 7 time in run chases from 100 to 199. The one defeat came at Barbados in 1997.

Overall, India's batsmen have done very well in 4th innings run chases and their record compares very well with that of other top batsmen. Tendulkar has done better than Lara Jacques Kallis has been on the winning side more often than Tendulkar in competitive chases (200 - 418) despite averaging 12 runs less. In chases from 200 to 299, Kallis has been in a winning chase 7 times out of 10, despite averaging 12.5!

So match-winning batsmen often develop reputations for being match-winning because their failures don't result in defeats. In fact, I would suggest that it is the first law of cricket opinion that the chances of a batsman to be considered a "match-winner" are directly proportional not to his actual match-winning contributions, but to his ability to end up on the winning side despite contributing very little!