As he meant to go on

This post responds to a couple of letters contributed by (my favourite cricket writer) David Frith to The Cricket Statistician (journal of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians). In his first letter, Frith wondered whether any batsman has ever made such an instant impact as Neil Marks – a cricket writer, administrator and, for little more than a few weeks in 1959, New South Wales's star batsman. In particular, Frith highlighted the fact that Marks batted for a total of 644 minutes – spread across his first two innings – before being dismissed in FC cricket. Due to the paucity of minutes-batted data in the FC record, I can't answer the question of how exceptional a feat this is (though I share Frith's hunch that it must be pretty extraordinary). However, his follow-up letter raises a second – much more tractable – query: what is the greatest number of runs scored before a batsman's first FC dismissal?

In that second letter, Frith is right to identify Ray Watson-Smith as a leading candidate; indeed, it turns out that he is right at the top of the list. The 308 undefeated runs he made in his first two FC innings, for Border in 1969/70, are made all the more remarkable by the contrast with the rest of his brief career: he managed just 136 more runs in his remaining 6 innings. All in all, 22 cricketers have amassed 200 or more runs before losing their wicket in the FC game.

Table 1: Most runs before dismissal in first-class cricket

      Name             Team(s)              Year(s)     M   I   R     Inn(s)
  1.  R Watson-Smith   Border               1969        3   3   310   183*; 125*; 2
  2.  SJE Loxton       Victoria             1946        2   2   305   232*; 73
  3.  NG Marks         New South Wales      1958        2   2   283   180*; 103
  4.  Aftab Baloch     Public Works Dept.   1969        3   3   281   77*; 100*; 104
  5.  JJM McMullan     Otago                1918-1920   2   3   267   157*; 85*; 25
 =5.  GHG Doggart      Cambridge U          1948        2   2   267   215*; 52
  7.  AA Muzumdar      Bombay               1994        1   1   260   260
  8.  Aamer Malik      Lahore City A        1980        1   2   242   132*; 110
  9.  WFE Marx         Transvaal            1920        1   1   240   240
 10.  GR Viswanath     Mysore               1967        1   1   230   230
 11.  DW Barrick       Northamptonshire     1949        2   4   228   34*; 36*; 147*; 11
 12.  MJ Powell        Glamorgan            1997        2   2   224   200*; 24
 13.  JS Solomon       British Guiana       1956        2   2   222   114*; 108
 14.  Fawad Hussain    Rawalpindi           2007-2008   2   2   211   103*; 108
=14.  BW Malcolm       Bengal               1939        2   2   211   181*; 30
 16.  AV Pandey        Madhya Pradesh       1996        2   2   209   209*; 0
=16.  CT Tyson         Yorkshire            1921        2   3   209   100*; 80*; 29
 18.  NF Callaway      New South Wales      1915        1   1   207   207
 19.  A Maynard        Trinidad             1935        2   3   206   200*; 2*; 4
 20.  TR Arasu         Tamil Nadu           1998-1999   5   5   203   54*; 56*; 11*; 67*; 15
 21.  Haroon Malik     Sargodha             1999        2   2   202   67*; 135
=21.  J Hallebone      Victoria             1952        1   1   202   202

Just before Neil Marks comes allrounder and some-time Invincible Sam Loxton, who opened his FC account with an unbeaten double-century, and was most of the way to three figures before being dismissed in his second visit to the crease. He and Watson-Smith stand alone as batsmen whose FC tallies exceeded 300 runs before they first lost their wicket.

A related line of enquiry is to ask how many innings a batsman has had under his belt before suffering a FC dismissal. In total, nineteen cricketers made it at least as far as their seventh FC knock before their average could be calculated.

Table 2: Most innings before dismissal in first-class cricket

     Name            Team(s)                  Year(s)     M    I    R    Inn(s)
 1.  KSN Karunadasa  SL Navy Sports Club      2009        9    13   14   0*; 0*; 0*; 3*; 2*; 4*; 2*; 0*; 2*; 0*; 1*; 0*; 0
 2.  JCJ Dye         Kent                     1962-1963   9    11   20   4*; 1*; 3*; 5*; 0*; 2*; 0*; 1*; 2*; 1*; 1
 3.  GE Brown        Surrey                   1986-1987   7    9    49   0*; 2*; 13*; 5*; 1*; 8*; 8*; 4*; 8
=3.  ND Kambli       Goa                      1992        5    9    22   0*; 2*; 0*; 7*; 0*; 0*; 8*; 4*; 1
 5.  ESM Kentish     Jamaica; West Indies     1947-1953   7    8    52   15*; 2*; 1*; 1*; 8*; 13*; 10*; 2
=5.  ME Collins      Eastern Province B       1979-1980   5    8    47   11*; 9*; 0*; 3*; 3*; 0*; 7*; 14
 7.  IA Nicolson     Midlands; Zimbabwe A     2004-2005   4    7    65   17*; 5*; 11*; 0*; 1*; 5*; 26
=7.  JE Emburey      Middlesex                1973-1975   9    7    58   1*; 0*; 4*; 25*; 6*; 0*; 22
=7.  D Schaffter     Moors Sports Club        1995        5    7    43   1*; 9*; 5*; 10*; 0*; 18*; 0
=7.  PHL Wilson      Surrey                   1978-1979   18   7    29   9*; 0*; 0*; 0*; 1*; 4*; 15
=7.  AE Moss         Middlesex; Comb. Servs.  1950-1951   8    7    28   11*; 5*; 7*; 0*; 2*; 3*; 0
=7.  K Treiber       N Districts; Young NZ    1979-1981   7    7    20   2*; 4*; 4*; 2*; 4*; 4*; 0
=7.  SF Madon        Parsees                  1908-1911   5    7    19   2*; 2*; 0*; 0*; 2*; 10*; 3
=7.  MB Owens        Canterbury; NZ           1992        7    7    15   5*; 1*; 5*; 0*; 4*; 0*; 0
=7.  WG Peare        Warwickshire             1926        6    7    15   0*; 0*; 1*; 2*; 12*; 0*; 0
=7.  RS Herman       Middlesex                1965        9    7    10   0*; 0*; 0*; 2*; 8*; 0*; 0
=7.  A Sen           Himachal Pradesh         1988        5    7    8    1*; 4*; 3*; 0*; 0*; 0*; 0
=7.  LD Cooper       Queensland               1959-1960   6    7    6    1*; 0*; 0*; 4*; 0*; 0*; 1
=7.  S Badhwar       Haryana                  2006        5    7    6    2*; 0*; 0*; 0*; 3*; 0*; 1

The record-holder is a very recent addition to the list. Sudeera Karunadasa, a Sri Lankan off-spinner, only made his FC debut in 2nd October 2009 but, although he amassed just 14 runs along the way, he wasn't dismissed until his most recent innings, his thirteenth (all of them at number 11). One player who does not appear here is New Zealander James Burrows; he does not qualify for a list of most innings before dismissal because, throughout his nine-match, twelve-innings FC career, he was not dismissed at all. Note that Hugh Wilson did not get out until his eighteenth FC match (the record by a large margin), although he was only required to bat on seven occasions in that time.

Here's a final piece of trivia. According to one – slightly mischievous – interpretation of Frith's original question, the man with the longest interval between his first ball in FC cricket and the first time he lost his wicket is James Thomson. Thomson made his FC debut for Scotland v. Ireland in July 1962, making 1* in the first innings. He was out for a duck in his next FC knock, but that did not come until the corresponding fixture 22 years later. The total of 8,075 days between first ball and first dismissal is a record by several years (although over 500 cricketers have seen at least a year go by between FC bow and first dismissal, including some familiar names such as Mohinder Amarnath, Curtly Ambrose, Brett Lee, and both Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith).