Mark of a man - Some more stats

As NC rightly pointed out in one of his comments, Ramps is getting very good coverage for himself at 40. Thanks to BCC!.

Well now, we have 3 issues to address

1) Can or Can’t England produce a guy who would average mid to high 40s?

It is a million dollar question, I am not sure if I would want to take-up the challenge of answering the question. I would recommend we keep this as a separate discussion. With the thumping win over West Indies (another wooden spoon team) in the first test, I am not sure if this is the right time to start that discussion. For, this positive (one test) might pull some wool over our discerning eyes. So let’s wait for the series to get midway at least.

2) How can they continue to play a batsman who averages 27 for over 50 tests?

The batsman in question is Ramps. Let’s look at some numbers again. A couple of mosaics, easy to read.

Some takeouts

a) Ramps got to play for England in 9 installments. 4 poor, sub 20 outings, 3 in 20s and 2 hovering 40s outings.

b) The longest run was 15 matches at 26 which included a decent Ashes campaign in Australia at 32.

c) Both instances when he averaged 40, he got dropped immediately. While this would make one think that the others might have fared better than this 40, it is not the case.

So how do we explain the selectors dropping a player who averaged 40?

3) Talent pool: I would differ slightly, with the view most of us have. In thinking England has a small talent pool. Let us do one small exercise, take the current T20 team of India and England. Tell me how many players from U-19 levels have gotten in to the teams?

The answer is...

The probability of finding a U-19 player is more in the case of the sub-continental teams & New Zealand, than in Australia, England & West Indies (WI's case is completely different, let's leave them alone for the moment). The reason is simple these countries have a larger talent base to select their players from because their domestic leagues are far more organized than what we have.

I would say Tesco is definitely a thing of the past as far as the current England set-up is concerned.

Why?

There is no Duncan Fletcher.

He won Ashes alright, but he was the Buchanan of England for a great part of his coaching career.

May be you missed the Mark(s)

Read Mark One

Now read about the Marksman

And some more Mark

And some reMark

Do read all and score full Mark(s)...

* There is a minor glitch in cricinfo, while their cumulative for Ramps shows 2350 runs at 27.32, when you go matchwise it throws what I have shown here. But that variance is only minor and it would go in Ramp’s favour.