Botham has nothing to declare but his ignorance

Sky viewers might recall Sir Ian Botham's calls shortly after lunch yesterday on the fourth day of the first test against India for England to declare as they had enough runs on the board and no-one ever scores that many runs to win a test.

Obviously that worked out well, and with hindsight England could have done with declaring earlier leaving them more time to work out before the second test just how to dismiss Indian batsman on a turning 5th day pitch, and just as importantly leaving the good knight more time to go fishing or boozing round at Ravi Shastri's.

This has become something of a Beefy tradition. In recent years as soon as one team has built up a 2nd innings lead of around 300 runs, there at the back of the box is Beefy getting twitchy and wanting to get away from his (presumably well-paid) job as soon as possible. Viewers are then subjected to numerous "I really don't know what is going on here"s as the man who captained his country 12 times (no wins, 8 draws - clearly should have declared a little earlier) sees his day off rapidly vanishing before his own eyes. In fact, Botham's track record for wanting quick get-aways stretches back at least to Headingley 1981, when he checked out of the hotel along with his team-mates on the morning of the 4th day.

Botham's argument in Chennai was that only five times in the history of test cricket had a team chased more than 350 to win. If it only happened 5 times in all test history, Beefy said his maths wasn't very good but he'd take his chances on England having enough runs.

Forget his maths, his first problem is that he is asking the wrong question.

What about teams who were chasing mammoth targets and fell just short? Botham only had to go back to March, when New Zealand scored 431 runs. Scores of 553 runs may be impossible to chase down, but it was clearly possible to score 431 runs in the 4th innings. Botham should remember this test as he spent much of it questioning what on earth Michael Vaughan was doing allowing England to bat on with a lead of over 350.

Secondly, there may have been 1897 test matches prior to this one, but how many of them provided an opportunity for a team to chase over 350 in the 4th innings?

• He only had to look as far as the weather interrupted 1897th test match, which finished earlier the same day in Dunedin in a draw halfway through the third innings, without it ever getting as far as a 4th innings.

• Or he could have looked at the last test on the ground, back in March, when 1498 runs were scored for the loss of just 25 wickets on a track so flat South Africa didn't even get round to setting India a total.
  

• Neither would you expect Bangladesh to chase down 350 against Australia and you wouldn't expect Australia to be set 350 against Bangladesh. Does Bangladesh not reaching 350 against Australia in the 4th innings actually tell us anything?

It is clear that nowhere near 1897 teams have not had a chance to chase 350+ runs in the fourth innings.

The first question he should have been asking how many teams have scored more than 350 in the 4th innings and then how many teams have been set more than 350 in the 4th innings.

His third issue was that he was not noticing trends. Thirty-seven times teams have scored 350 or more in the 4th innings. More revealingly, sixteen times has been in the last decade, a decade during which he has been employed to sit and watch test cricket. In other words in the first 1468 test matches, teams scored 350 or more in the 4th innings 21 times, or at a rate of about once every 70 test matches. However in the last decade, the one where Botham has been a regular in the Sky commentary box and you know might actually pay attention to what is going on in world cricket, teams have scored 350 or more in the 4th innings in16 out of 519 tests - one every 32 test matches. In the last 5 years it is 11 times in 210 tests matches - once every 19 test matches, take it to the last 3 years and it is eight times in 121 tests, or once every 15.125 tests.

Remember, that is once every 15 tests but that includes the rain interrupted tests such as Dunedin, or the flat-track no result pitches that means teams run out of time (not likely to be an issue for India in the last test) like the last test in Chennai, or the one-sided contests involving Bangladesh, who have played 17 tests during the last 3 years. Fifty-four of those 121 games saw 30 or fewer wickets fall (the equivalent of three innings games), if these are eliminated as (almost certainly) rain-affected, non-result pitches or mismatches where the weather/pitch/match situation didn't allow a team the opportunity to chase 350plus - and this is certainly a conservative estimate - we can conservatively estimate that a team would, given time, reach 350 in the fourth innings once every eight opportunities. It becomes clear that 350 runs shouldn't be an automatic declaration in order to allow Beefy to go off fishing.