Missed England chances this summer
Given the growing concern over Matt Prior's keeping, I looked over the chances that have been missed in Tests this summer by England. In 7 matches it looks like this:
15 chances
6 missed by Prior (1 stumping, 5 catches - all of Sidebottom)
3 missed by Collingwood
3 missed by Strauss
2 missed by Bell
1 missed by Plunkett
1 missed by Panesar
If you are wondering why that adds up to 16 for 15 chances, it's because Strauss and Collingwood left one to go between them so they both dropped it in my book!
Sidebottom and Panesar have missed out on 5 wickets each, while Harmison has missed out on 2, Hoggard, Tremlett and Plunkett 1 each. On average the bowlers have needed to take well over 11 wicket taking balls per innings to bowl a side out, not accounting for wrong decisions.
I'll let you ponder on that for a while before thinking about what it means for future England selection....
3 comments:
Interesting piece of analysis that demonstrates that clearly Prior can't carry on at wicketkeeper. It also demonstrates that keeping to left arm over bowlers is a different skill that keepers are not often well versed in. It would be interesting to know how many chances Dhoni has put down this summer, and how many of these were off Zaheer, as this is clearly another measure of the ability, in terms of glove work, of a keeper.
I'm surprised to see that Collingwood has missed so many chances. Is it a case of because he is such a good fielder he is expected to take half chances which other people wouldn't (gets hands to things other people wouldn't).
Also, is this the first summer when Vaughan hasn't featured as a person who has missed chances?
I think it's because he's fielding slip to Panesar which isn't necessarily his cup of tea, but England are defficient in slip resources. When Flintoff is back I presume Collingwood won't be slip for Panesar, but we'll see...
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