It has come to some people’s attention that Shaun Marsh
has an unenviable record in Test cricket.
Should Shane Watson re-enter the Australian team for the
third Test at Cape Town at his expense, Marsh will have one foot in each of two
curious history books. Were he never to play another Test – an eminently
possible proposition – he would join such luminaries as Barry Richards*,
Clive Radley
and Tom Moody
to have scored two tons in less fifteen or fewer innings. (*No one doubts Richards would have played many more innings and scored
many more hundreds had South Africa been able to play Test cricket in the 1970s
and 1980s).
Less appealingly, Marsh also be the star feature in another
tome detailing batsmen with the highest percentage of failed innings.
On a good day, Shaun Marsh is splendid to watch. On
bad days – of which there are far more – you barely get a look at him. This
is because for any Test batsman (i.e. not specialist wicketkeeper or bowler)
who has played at least 15 innings, Marsh has the highest rate of ducks per
innings. He records one zero every 2.5 times he strolls to the crease (40%), a
truly remarkable rate that makes him a true outlier. The only other true
batsman with at least 15 innings’ experience to record even one duck in every four
innings is the immortal Saleem Elahi,
who made six gozzers in twenty-four.
The following is a chart that plots the frequency of a
player’s ducks against the frequency of their scores above 50. To qualify, a
player must have been selected as a batsman or all-rounder, played a minimum of
fifteen Test innings and had a duck frequency rate (DFR) over 10% (i.e. one duck
every ten innings).
Notable outliers have been named and highlighted.
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A table containing
these players can be found at the conclusion of this post.
