All-round Success

Simply astonishing stuff. Truly one of the most remarkable games of cricket, with records falling, reputations being restored and stars being born. The match itself ebbed and flowed with England's initial collapse (30-4) sparking all the Pietersen chat before the ridiculously long batting line-up proving its value. New Zealand's batting display then demonstrated how blunt and one-dimensional our bowling attack was. Early wickets in our reply left the Kiwi victory simply a matter of time until Cook's infuriating stubbornness put itself to good use and Stokes batted like he'd got confused with the IPL final happening at the same time. The blunt bowling attack which we all know is so reliant on Anderson then came good, with wickets coming from all over the place. 

As outstanding and dramatic a game as it was, the end result unquestionably papers over a few cracks. With all of the attention on Stokes' remarkable performance, there remains a few questions over the opening partner for Cook, the feasibility of Moeen as a genuine spin-bowler and the genuine threat posed by the fast bowlers when the going gets tough. That being said, there are a lot of positive signs and just an outside glimmer of hope now that we might not get totally obliterated in the Ashes. 

To the matter at hand; the Ben Stokes bandwagon. A brilliant performance from an exciting prospect with undoubted potential but a long way to go before being a top quality performer. He has talent, desire and a fiercely competitive spirit but what he'll need to learn from players like Cook is application. Two outstanding and destructive innings could each have been big hundreds. Am I being too harsh or is it good to expect big things? Certainly if Stokes is hoping to be the next big thing, he has a whole host of a way to go. 

Widely accepted as the greatest all-rounder in history is Gary Sobers, with the likes of Jacques Kallis, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev and Imran Khan knocking on the door. The great measure of an all-rounder is of the differential between their batting and bowling averages. The below table shows test all-rounders with at least 100 wickets at less than 40 AND 3000 test runs at greater than 30

Player	Mat	Runs	Bat Av	Wkts	Bowl Av	Ave Diff
GS Sobers (WI)	93	8032	57.78	235	34.03	23.74
JH Kallis (ICC/SA)	166	13289	55.37	292	32.65	22.71
Imran Khan (Pak)	88	3807	37.69	362	22.81	14.88
KR Miller (Aus)	55	2958	36.97	170	22.97	13.99
SM Pollock (SA)	108	3781	32.31	421	23.11	9.19
TL Goddard (SA)	41	2516	34.46	123	26.22	8.23
AW Greig (Eng)	58	3599	40.43	141	32.20	8.23
Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)	39	2732	40.17	142	33.29	6.88
IT Botham (Eng)	102	5200	33.54	383	28.40	5.14
CL Cairns (NZ)	62	3320	33.53	218	29.40	4.13
W Rhodes (Eng)	58	2325	30.19	127	26.96	3.22
N Kapil Dev (India)	131	5248	31.05	434	29.64	1.40
MH Mankad (India)	44	2109	31.47	162	32.32	-0.84
A Flintoff (Eng/ICC)	79	3845	31.77	226	32.78	-1.01
DL Vettori (ICC/NZ)	113	4531	30.00	362	34.36	-4.36

Miller, Sobers, Kallis, Khan & Dev

The results demonstrate what we'd expect to see, Sobers and Kallis with incredible batting averages and very solid bowling stats, with the likes of Khan and Pollock the other way round. Here are Stokes' figures at the moment:

	Mat	Runs	Bat Av	Wkts	Bowl Av	Ave Diff
Ben Stokes	10	648	36.00	28	40.10	-4.10

Evidently a long way to go! But of course how can you compare him so early in his career to those more established? Have a look at their stats after 10 test matches of course:

Player	Runs	Bat Av	Wkts	Bowl Av	Ave Diff
GS Sobers	419	29.92	12	35	-5.07
JH Kallis	340	22.66	11	30	-7.33
Imran Khan	288	20.57	37	33.86	-13.29
SM Pollock	344	28.66	30	23.96	4.7
IT Botham	479	43.54	53	17.33	26.2
N Kapil Dev	510	42.5	29	39.06	3.43
A Flintoff	255	15.93	7	66.42	-50.49

What can we learn from this? The same as with a lot of statistics, especially with such a small quantity of data to look, they're meaningless. Stokes' career could go either way.

A side note is that if we simply look at the difference between batting & bowling averages then it becomes clear who the real best all-rounders are in history:

Player	Mat	Runs	Bat Av	Wkts	Bowl Av	Ave Diff
DG Bradman (Aus)	52	6996	99.94	2	36.00	63.94
AN Cook (Eng)	113	8869	46.67	1	7.00	39.67

Statistically the best two all-rounders
in all of test cricket history