Holy Crap: Nathan Bracken

As we all know, Nathan Bracken's rubbish. Like many mediocre, third-reserve seam bowlers, his main skill is being left-handed.

In the good old days, this was enough to render you a pariah, but nowadays in these times of 'tolerance' and 'understanding' you can not only get away with it, but are considered useful. Difference isn't always a good thing. Deep down Nathan Bracken's parents are bitterly disappointed with him and his choice of handedness.

Anyway, he's rubbish, but due to Australia's pitiful pace-bowling reserves, they keep having to give him international caps. Look inside any discarded bottle of Victoria Bitter and you'll find at least eight Australian batsmen of Test standard. Conversely, get below the top three or four pace-bowlers and you're scratching around for anyone at all who doesn't look like Pat Sharp.

Well, as is the tradition with our limited Holy Crap feature, here's the unlikely statistic: Nathan Bracken has taken 89 wickets at 20.12 in one-day international cricket. That's frighteningly good.

So it is that we say:

Holy crap! Nathan Bracken's not rubbish!

Disaster narrowly averted

While we were researching Matthew Hoggard's 'Holy Crap' entry, below, we made a HORRIFYING DISCOVERY.

Here are the top two players by Test match batting strike rate:

A C Gilchrist, 82.14
Shahid Afridi, 80.22

He's second. Afridi's second. Shahid Afridi is defined by scoring runs quickly all of the time. How can this be?

Fortunately, we then found this, which made us feel better. This is the same statistic but for one-day internationals:

Shahid Afridi, 108.36
I D S Smith, 99.43
V Sehwag, 97.64
R L Powell, 96.66
A C Gilchrist, 95.57

Take that everyone who's ever played cricket. Shahid Afridi scores near enough thirteen runs per hundred balls more than Adam Gilchrist.

The runner-up there, incidentally, is former New Zealand keeper Ian Smith who only ever scored three fifties.

Shahid Afridi holds the record for the fastest one-day hundred, which he scored off 37 balls on his debut. On his DEBUT. He was sixteen in Pakistani years at the time. Pakistani years are the same length as everyone else's but some don't count towards your age.

Adam Gilchrist's fastest one-day hundred was off 73 balls.

As Geoff Boycott might say if his family weren't genetically predisposed to slow scoring: "73 balls? 73 balls? My mum could score a ton faster than that one-handed, with her eyes closed, using a fish instead of a bat - even if the boundaries were set really, really far back."

Loser.

Holy Crap: Matthew Hoggard

'Holy Crap' is an occasional feature that we're going to do where we make an unlikely assertion about a player and then back it up with statistics, like the spin doctors do (not the band who had a hit with 'Two Princes', the other kind). As a dismissive caller to a phone-in once said: You can prove anything with facts.

Today's feature is: Holy crap, Matthew Hoggard's a strike bowler.

Matthew Hoggard is inevitably described by proper cricket journalists as 'dogged' and 'willing'. In fact it is part of the British cricket media's code of practice that all writers must refer to him as a 'yeoman'. The image we have is of Hoggard with his 'farm labourers gait' toiling into the wind and waging a war of attrition against opposing batsmen. A quick hand count of cricket journalists who've taken a Test match hat-trick please... Matthew Hoggard has.

A bowler's strike rate is how many balls it takes them to get a wicket on average. I have included several great bowlers from history and their strike rates, starting with Matthew Hoggard. Matthew Hoggard takes a wicket slightly more regularly than once every nine overs.

53.71, Matthew Hoggard
53.75, Imran Khan
54.27, Wes Hall
54.57, Curtly Ambrose
54.65, Wasim Akram

Contemporary bowlers trailing in Hoggard's wake include: Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff, Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne.

And so, backed up by facts that are true and words that are about the facts, we say:

Holy crap! Matthew Hoggard's a strike bowler!

Holy Crap

'Holy Crap' is an occasional feature that we're going to do where we make an unlikely assertion about a player and then back it up with statistics, like the spin doctors do (not the band who had a hit with 'Two Princes', the other kind). As a dismissive caller to a phone-in once said: You can prove anything with facts.

Matthew Hoggard
Mark Richardson
Andy Flower
Nathan Bracken