This strange post combining cricket bowlers and Peruvian bears started well before the lockdown, so it can't be blamed on a fevered brain, but the long perspectives open at each instant of our lives currently mean I've finally gotten round to putting fingers to keyboard.
Somehow or other, when our resident small person was enjoying some marmalade-fuelled ursine entertainment, it struck me that paddington was an excellent term for a bowler achieving 100 dismissals by lbw. It could apply at any level, but Test cricket is the pinnacle, so I focussed my definitive efforts there. Not many bowlers take hundreds of Test wickets, so I was curious to know how many had taken a century of leg-before-wickets, and whether any of them were English. The answers, according to one of the various excellent cricket statistics sites out there, were nine and no.
This generated a good pub quiz question: Can you name three of the nine Test bowlers to achieve paddingtons?
(And a slightly more niche/fun question 'Which country has provided three of the nine Test bowlers to achieve paddingtons?')
So, no Englishman* has taken 100 Test wickets by lbw. Jimmy Anderson now has 82, one ahead of Ian Botham, and three ahead of Stuart Broad. Who will be the first to reach this landmark?
Anderson only needs 18 lbws, and Broad 21, so you'd think acquiring those dismissals would be entirely possible within their remaining Test career (current coronavariability notwithstanding, of course). However, if we look at the percentage of wickets they've taken by lbw, this is where the doubt comes in. Anderson only claims 14% of his Test wickets by lbw, and Broad 16.3%, so - on the balance of probability - they'd both need 129 more Test wickets to achieve their landmark.
I suspect the answer therefore, is neither. Perhaps Broad (34 this summer) has the better chance of playing for long enough to do it, but if not him, then whom? Moeen Ali has 181 Test wickets, Ben Stokes 147, Steve Finn 125, but no other current English Test bowler has 100 wickets, and the number of Tests played looks certain to decline. Will there ever be an English paddington?
The two English bowlers with the highest Test lbw success are Graeme Swann (70 lbws at 27.5%) and Matthew Hoggard (65 lbws at 26.2%). If only each had played Test cricket a few years longer...
*no woman has yet taken 100 Test wickets.
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| The cricket pavilion at Paddington Rec, London (Wikimedia Commons). |
Somehow or other, when our resident small person was enjoying some marmalade-fuelled ursine entertainment, it struck me that paddington was an excellent term for a bowler achieving 100 dismissals by lbw. It could apply at any level, but Test cricket is the pinnacle, so I focussed my definitive efforts there. Not many bowlers take hundreds of Test wickets, so I was curious to know how many had taken a century of leg-before-wickets, and whether any of them were English. The answers, according to one of the various excellent cricket statistics sites out there, were nine and no.
This generated a good pub quiz question: Can you name three of the nine Test bowlers to achieve paddingtons?
(And a slightly more niche/fun question 'Which country has provided three of the nine Test bowlers to achieve paddingtons?')
So, no Englishman* has taken 100 Test wickets by lbw. Jimmy Anderson now has 82, one ahead of Ian Botham, and three ahead of Stuart Broad. Who will be the first to reach this landmark?
Anderson only needs 18 lbws, and Broad 21, so you'd think acquiring those dismissals would be entirely possible within their remaining Test career (current coronavariability notwithstanding, of course). However, if we look at the percentage of wickets they've taken by lbw, this is where the doubt comes in. Anderson only claims 14% of his Test wickets by lbw, and Broad 16.3%, so - on the balance of probability - they'd both need 129 more Test wickets to achieve their landmark.
I suspect the answer therefore, is neither. Perhaps Broad (34 this summer) has the better chance of playing for long enough to do it, but if not him, then whom? Moeen Ali has 181 Test wickets, Ben Stokes 147, Steve Finn 125, but no other current English Test bowler has 100 wickets, and the number of Tests played looks certain to decline. Will there ever be an English paddington?
 |
| Saddington (Wikimedia Commons). |
The two English bowlers with the highest Test lbw success are Graeme Swann (70 lbws at 27.5%) and Matthew Hoggard (65 lbws at 26.2%). If only each had played Test cricket a few years longer...
*no woman has yet taken 100 Test wickets.
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