Cricket writing, from our own data
Cricket records, rules explained and notes on the daily puzzles. Written from our own dataset, never rewritten from a news site.
The three teams that won a Test after following on
In roughly 2,600 Test matches it has happened three times, and two of them involved the same opposition. What the three have in common is not what people assume.
Why cricket overs are written in base six, and the maths it breaks
34.3 overs is not 34.3. It is 34.5. Every hand-calculated bowling figure and run rate in the world is slightly wrong because of this one notation.
The cricket toss, and how much it is actually worth
A captain wins a coin and makes one decision. In some conditions it is worth almost nothing; in others it is worth more than any player in the side.
Most Test runs of all time, and what the list is really measuring
Tendulkar's 15,921 leads a list that rewards longevity above everything. The averages beside those totals tell a very different story about who was hardest to dismiss.