Contributing to winning causes is the primary aim of any sportsperson playing team sport. In Test cricket, there are players who stand out for their consistency – they tend to generally be major components of victories and this is reflected in their batting averages or bowling strike-rates. Then there are some who rise to the occasion when needed the most and are invariably the key reason why their teams get over the hump and win a game.
Cheteshwar Pujara’s centuries in the first two Tests in Sri Lanka set up India’s series victory and positioned India to achieve a rare clean sweep in a three (and plus) Test series overseas. Pujara’s rich vein of form in the past year has coincided with India’s own purple patch as the team has won a slew of Tests in this period. How does Pujara’s performance in wins compare with the records of other top players?
One useful statistic to evaluate batsmen that correlates well with winning contributions is the percentage of team runs scored in victories. Qualifying the winning runs to a minimum of 1,000 is a decent way of eliminating noise.
We look at the top-10 Indian batsmen, their runs scored, the number of wins they contributed to, and the % of team runs they scored:
| S. No. | Player | Wins | Runs | Team runs | % of team runs |
1 | Gundappa Viswanath | 20 | 1,637 | 9,739 | 16.81 |
2 | Navjot Singh Sidhu | 13 | 1,179 | 7,093 | 16.62 |
3 | Cheteshwar Pujara | 29 | 2,787 | 16,932 | 16.46 |
4 | Rahul Dravid | 56 | 5,131 | 31,820 | 16.13 |
5 | Sunil Gavaskar | 23 | 1,671 | 11,170 | 14.96 |
6 | Sachin Tendulkar | 72 | 5,946 | 40,823 | 14.57 |
7 | Virender Sehwag | 42 | 3,498 | 24,145 | 14.49 |
8 | Virat Kohli | 29 | 2,430 | 17,145 | 14.17 |
9 | Mohammad Azharuddin | 22 | 1,609 | 11,405 | 14.11 |
10 | Dilip Vengsarkar | 18 | 1,187 | 8,415 | 14.11 |
Notable batsmen outside the top-10: Ajinkya Rahane (13.50%), V.V.S. Laxman (12.53%), Sourav Ganguly (10.78%).
Cricket lovers of earlier generations who had the opportunity of watching Viswanath bat will not be surprised to see his name top the list. As for those from the post-1975 generation, how many times would they have heard parents and senior relatives speak of Viswanath’s 97 not out at Chepauk against the West Indies as the best innings they remember? Pujara’s 16.46% runs in team wins is just below Viswanath’s 16.81 and Navjot Singh Sidhu’s (surprise, surprise) 16.62%. Rahul Dravid, second in terms of wins (56) behind Sachin Tendulkar’s 72, is also in the same range with 16.13%.
How do these batsmen compare with the overall records of all international Test players ever? The top-10 batsmen with the highest % of team runs in wins are listed below. The player at the top is again not a surprise. The Don’s average of 99.94 stands several standard deviations away from the mean of averages for even the best players ever. His 27.13% is also a long way apart from others such as England’s Len Hutton, Jackie McGlew and Graeme Pollock, besides present-day cricket’s clutch performers such as Joe Root and Kane Williamson. The presence of Pakistan opener Saeed Anwar in the top echelons of the list illustrates what an underrated performer he was.
| S.No | Player | Wins | Runs | Team Runs | % of team runs |
| 1 | Donald Bradman (Aus) | 30 | 4813 | 17741 | 27.13 |
| 2 | Leonard Hutton (Eng) | 27 | 2678 | 12491 | 21.44 |
| 3 | Jackie McGlew (SA) | 11 | 1156 | 5560 | 20.79 |
| 4 | Graeme Pollock (SA) | 9 | 1178 | 5699 | 20.67 |
| 5 | Joe Root (Eng) | 23 | 2653 | 13474 | 19.69 |
| 6 | Shoaib Mohammad (Pak) | 12 | 1055 | 5374 | 19.63 |
| 7 | Saeed Anwar (Pak) | 23 | 2254 | 11709 | 19.25 |
| 8 | Kane Williamson (NZ) | 21 | 2334 | 12310 | 18.96 |
| 9 | Jack Hobbs (Eng) | 28 | 2720 | 14369 | 18.93 |
| 10 | Brian Lara (WI) | 32 | 2929 | 15764 | 18.58 |
199 players have scored 1,000 runs or more in wins. Viswanath’s 16.81% ranks 25th. The full list can be accessed here .
Notes:
1) There are some limitations in this method. For e.g., players who did well in teams that did not have sufficiently good batsmen would rank higher than those players who played on teams which had higher uniform contributions from many batsmen in winning games. Factoring this will require a more involved method to identify the best contributions during wins.
2) The statistics are for Tests completed by August 11, 2017. The numbers were obtained from ESPNcricinfo.com and bcci.tv
(With inputs from S. Ram Mahesh)
