Thread: English Cricket - they sure do churn players.....

Ok, I am a cricket tragic. Got a big screen TV, can now get Channel 9 in HD, so I'm toast.

Those who know me will also be aware that I'm fond of a statistic or two.

Ever since the First Test in Brisbane I've been perplexed by the amount of players that England must go through. This occurred to me because their most senior player, Jimmy Anderson, is #613 and 35yo, but their most recent player is #682. By comparison, Australia is up to player #451, and the two countries have been playing Test Cricket for exactly the same amount of time (since 1877).

That means Anderson has seen no less than 69 players cycle through the team since he debuted in 2003. That's an astonishing amount! He has also played under 5 regular captains (Vaughan, Flintoff, Strauss, Cook, Root) as well as a couple of stand-in captains (Trescothick, Pietersen).

So in the absence of any real data I thought that maybe the English Team might burn a lot more players than the Aussies, hence leading to a perhaps more insecure and therefore inferior team.

Well, what we do know is that they are inferior

The search for data took me to Wikipedia, and I downloaded the players and shoved them into Excel to see what's what.

In that same period, Australia has used 66 players, so that's about the same. The earliest serving current Aussie player, Time Paine #414 as actually a most recent addition to the team, in that he only played a few tests in 2010 before injury ruled him out until November this year. The next Aussie in line is Steve Smith #415 and 28yo also from 2010.

Note that England has played around 25% more Tests than Australia (806 v 994) but I don't know what period they accumulated those extra tests in (i.e. years ago or more recently). Also, whilst that might account for some additional players - say an extra 10-15% - it does not account for the 50% increase of players (451 v 682)

Some statistics that have come out of the data:

• Ave games per player - Aust 19.6, Eng 16.0
• Aust uses between 43% and 71% of the number of players the Eng does for any given 10 year period, except 1970-79 where World Series Cricket saw a whole new Aussie team selected, and the last 7 years (2010 - 2017) where Aust has used 2 more players then Eng (so about the same)
• both have similar numbers playing 100 or more Tests (A 12, E 14)
• both have reasonably similar numbers playing 50-99 Tests (A 39, E 52)
• both have identical numbers playing 25-49 Tests (63 each)
• both have similar numbers playing 11-24 Tests (A 102, E 116)

So if all those numbers are fairly similar, then the disparity must be in the "10 Tests or less" bracket. This can be seen to generally be where players have failed at the top level, after showing good promise. The 1-2 Tests players can probably be regarded as those who were stand-ins for someone who was injured.
1-2 Tests (A 103, E 174)
3-5 Tests (A 71, E 154)
6-10 Tests (A 61, E 109)

That means England have a lot more failed Test cricketers than we do.

No surprise there either eh?

Indeed, England has had almost as many failed/substitute cricketers (437) as Australia has used in total (451).

They also seem to burn up Captains as well. In the first decade (alright, 11 years) of Test Cricket, England had no less than 11 Captains! Of them, only WGG got into double figures as captain (13).They have had 80 Captains overall (average of <2 years each), and Australia has had 45.

Maybe that explains a lot about the mindset of English teams?



As a footnote, It's good to see (all) Ireland and Afghanistan entering Test Cricket. Their first Tests will be in 2018.