“He is a good partnership breaker, isn’t he?” We have all heard this statement quite often when a bowler like Sourav Ganguly or Paul Collingwood comes on to bowl. Most notably a TV commentator once said it as Collingwood was coming on to bowl. His career stats flashed on the screen. At that stage he had a career record of 0 for about 200. “So which partnership did he break then?”
So, who are the partnership breakers of Test cricket? We can work out the average partnership broken. The clear leader of bowlers with 20 or more wickets is former England captain Norman Yardley. He took 21 wickets at an average of 33.66 in 20 Tests. But more significantly the average partnership that he broke was 92.19. This is well clear of 2nd placed Viv Richards’ average of 67.18 for his 32 wickets. The top five are:
| Name | Years | Wkts | TotParts | AvgPart |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NWD Yardley (Eng) | 1938-1950 | 21 | 1936 | 92.19 |
| IVA Richards (WI) | 1974-1991 | 32 | 2150 | 67.18 |
| GA Hick (Eng) | 1991-2001 | 23 | 1524 | 66.26 |
| RR Sarwan (WI) | 2000-2007 | 23 | 1465 | 63.69 |
| CD McMillan (NZ) | 1997-2005 | 28 | 1707 | 60.96 |
Yardley, incidentally, was also the first captain to be dismissed for 99 in a Test which he did against South Africa at Nottingham in 1947.
Paul Collingwood now has 6 Test wickets with quite a decent Average Partnership Broken of 57.16. Ganguly’s figure is a lower, but still respectable 44.53 for 28 wickets.
2 comments:
An interesting if peripheral stat. Setting the bar at 20 wickets is probably too low. Most of these guys bowled less than 10 overs per match, and would have done little bowling when wickets were falling regularly, so one would expect high figures.
It might be interesting to see if non-specialist bowlers who took less than one wicket per match have generally high partnership breaking figures.
I looked at Doug Walters' 49-wicket career once. He had a strong reputation as a partnership breaker, and there was some evidence. His top and middle order broken partnerships averaged 60 (as against 38 for all bowlers)
If the minimum is 50 then Nathan Astle is the leader with 51 partnerships broken at an average of 54.58, followed by Mark Waugh with 59 at 51.00 and Ray Price (69 at 47.84).
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