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.
Home advantage in cricket, measured rather than assumed
Home sides win around half of all Test matches and lose about a quarter, and the gap grew through the 2010s while it shrank in almost every other sport.
How a cricket pitch is prepared, and what green really means
Grass, moisture and rolling are the three variables a groundsman controls, and green on television tells you almost nothing about which of them is present.
How cricket helmets went from optional to compulsory
For a century batters faced fast bowling bare-headed, and the argument was about courage rather than physics. It took forty years and a death to settle it.
How the daily cricket puzzles choose their answers
Why every puzzle is decided ninety days in advance, how the weekly difficulty curve works, and what happens when a puzzle turns out to be unfair.
How the ICC rankings actually work, and what they measure
Ratings out of 1,000 rather than points for wins, weighted by who you beat and how recently, which is why a side can win a series and lose ground.
Imran Khan by the numbers, and the side he built
362 Test wickets and 3,807 runs, plus a captaincy that took Pakistan from unreliable to a World Cup, largely by finding fast bowlers nobody else had noticed.
Jacques Kallis by the numbers, and the case for the best all-rounder
13,289 Test runs at 55.37 and 292 Test wickets. Nobody else has been a top-order batter of that standard and a front-line seamer at the same time.
Kapil Dev by the numbers, and the country he changed
434 Test wickets and 5,248 runs from a fast bowler India was not supposed to be able to produce, plus 175 not out that won a World Cup.
Left-right batting pairs, and why bowling sides hate them
Every single a left-right pair takes mirrors the whole field and moves the bowler's line by a stump and a half. It costs the fielding side; it costs the batters nothing.
MS Dhoni by the numbers, and the parts that are not countable
Two world titles, a Test mace, and a finishing record built on a method — take it deep, then win it — that nobody has successfully copied.
Muttiah Muralitharan by the numbers, and the 800
800 Test wickets, which is 92 more than anybody else, taken by a bowler whose action was tested three times and cleared three times.
Net run rate, and the two rules almost everyone gets wrong
Net run rate decides more qualifications than any other number in cricket, and most explanations of it skip the two rules that actually change the answer.