Wednesday 20 July 2011

Dravid, cricket’s Methuselah

A recent piece of statistics confirmed our worst fears.

Rahul Dravid has faced most deliveries in test cricket’s history. A staggering 29,125, before he resumes the self-flagellation in England.

It goes with the 15,124 in ODIs and 1303 in T20s. None of these, however, are likely to improve unless Ramalinga Raju does the computation for ICC. Put them together and Dravid has faced 45,552 deliveries.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume every delivery took two minutes.

After all the sightscreen has to be moved, the batsman has to make sure the rival skipper has not sneaked in an extra fielder, the non-striker has to conclude his chit-chat with the mid-on fielder wherein both inquire about the female members in each other’s family and so on.

Also, the ball has to be licked, rubbed, roughened, scratched and its seam assaulted – with nail, both human and iron, bottle-openers and even Afridi’s teeth – before the bowler starts his run up.

And if Shoaib Akhtar is the bowler, a batsman can afford a quick power nap without risking oversleeping as the Pakistani’s grunt would wake him up just in time to face the ball.

You can safely say Dravid has spent an estimated 91,104 minutes – quite a Lalit Modiesque number -- for the deliveries he faced in international cricket.

Any stout calculator will tell you that is slightly more than 1518 hours, which is nearly 64 days.

To give you an idea, it’s exactly the time a brow hair takes to grow back after it has been plucked.

Now it takes a lot of patience to do that and Dravid has been patient. In fact so patient that was promptly drawn to a doctor who became his better half. Three-quarters, if you fuss.

Returning to the point, if Dravid looks like cricket’s Methuselah, you know why.

He faced 45,552 deliveries, mind you. And that excludes his wife’s two.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

What does Methuselah mean? Great stats!

Som said...

Anonymous, don't know who found his birth certificate but this guy Methuselah, Noah's grandpa, apparently died at the tender age of 969. You can safely call him the AK Hangal of Bible.

Axiom said...

Great article. Who dares to count one's wife's venomous deliveries ? SO, bro, don't dare to count those.

Som said...

Axiom, I'm afraid Govt of India would feel let down by you. They insist one should not only count those but also try to restrict them. I can see see the day when they would equate it with bouncers and prohibit more than one.

Btw, welcome to Doosra and avail this opportunity of further raising your popularity by frequently coming :)

Dharmendra Pant said...

Sachin Tendulkar faced 27145+ deliveries in test cricket, 20980 in ODI and 12 in T20Is. And his wife also a Doctor. What you say about Allan Border, who faced 27002+ balls in test and 9134 in ODI. He is one of the three batsman who faced more than 27000 deliveries in Test Cricket.

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Som said...

Dharmendra ji, no wonder Border looked so craggy under the baggy green :)

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Anonymous said...

2 mins to a ball. You must be kidding. Test cricket 2 hrs 30 overs. That is 4 mins for an over, 40 secons per ball. ODI 3 and 1/2 hours 50 overs. That is 4.2 mins per over, 42 seconds per ball.

Som said...

Anonymous, if you thought you've outwitted me, you are terribly mistaken. Remeber Ganguly was the captain most of the time :)

Som said...

But when you talk about kidding, I have to hand it to you. :)

Sid the Gnome said...

Dharmendra, that explains a hell of a lot about Border actually. He not only looked craggy, Som, but was a cranky bastard to boot.

But I, you know, love him and stuff.

Som said...

Sid...so do I. Hell of a cricketer and one of the best captains. Think I shared this before here. There was this popular hindi movie called "Border" on India-Pakistan war etc. Now, Sunil Gavaskar was invited in Australia for a premier of a film called "Sunny' and he was aghast that the film didn't even have a single mention of him. When he pointed this out to his Australian hosts, they chuckled. "Well, score settled. You didn't mention Alan in 'Border', did you?"

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Anonymous said...

How many balls did his wife face, you said?

Som said...

Anonymous, that's below the belt!

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Maradona said...

My ideal left header is Saeed anwer and right headed is Dravid he take enough effort to reach national team in the end get green caps and continue his games many years.

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