Monday, July 21, 2014

300

300th entry on this blog. Coinciding with an amazing win at Lords with India bowlers bouncing out the opposition. So pardon my self-indulgence for feeling like this



A time for some self congratulations. The scoring rate has certainly slowed down but the posts will keep on coming.

But this post is about this little cricket blog. 
  • Named after Ian Bell's tendency to score centuries only if another batsman had scored one in the innings. An anomaly which Bell (also named the patron saint of this blog) has since corrected. 
  • Also the only dedicated blog covering Jharkhand cricket and its cricketers. 
  • Arbit Stats which appear with their own random frequency. 
  • However what this blog is not? A newspaper trying to cover every occurrence in the cricketing world.

300 posts in almost 5 years of dedicated cricket blogging. Some of the posts have managed to make an appearance on other forums as well. Special thanks to forum moderators.
  • Die Hard Cricket Fans (Link)
  • Sportskeeda (Link)

Thanks to all the readers across the forums for keeping the blogs going. 

Next target Lara's 400 mark :P

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Arbit Stats 31: Sting in the Tail

The Arbit Statistics return after a long hiatus. There were many reasons for this. Lack of motivation & laziness to write a post being the prime cause of this gap. Lack of cricket and arbit stats were certainly not one of them. But with India touring England for the fullest of the full tours, some arbitrary statistics were bound to appear, alongwith the enthusiasm to note them down.

Test Match No. 2128: England vs India at Trent Bridge, presented something never seen or heard before in the long history of the game. On a lifeless pitch more akin to Nagpur than Nottingham (a metaphor I have borrowed from a forgotten source), both sets of bowlers managed to prise out 9 wickets for a reasonable score. And then lightning struck. TWICE. First India's Numbers 9 & 11 Bhuvaneshwar & Shami helped themselves to their maiden Test half centuries, reached off consecutive balls of James Anderson.In the process they also picked up a century partnership for themselves. Guess this must have really hurt Anderson's pride. So when the England number 11 came out to bat with England in a lot of trouble, he proceeded to get his own maiden first class half century and alongwith Joe Root also managed to compile the biggest 10th wicket Test partnership of all time.

So Bhuvi, Shami, Root & Jimmy combined together and against each other to make this the first Test match ever to feature two 100+ 10th wicket partnerships. Well, everything does happen for the first time.