Followers of our Twitter page would have seen us recently capture details of our active players with the most number of innings having never been dismissed leg before. (For those who hadn’t seen it Geoff Vinall tops that list with a current run of 51 innings from debut and never been lbw.)
However in the comments under that tweet, another player on that list, Fraser Slater, (who has not been out lbw in any of his 20 career innings for the Club so far), was quick to mention that whilst he has never been out leg before “…I do get out caught a lot!”
That got us thinking and we took a look at people who have been dismissed caught to see if the above comment was just perception or whether there were any facts behind it.
Using the same minimum 20 innings as for the lbw analysis, Fraser appears to be very observant!
Let’s look at things in two ways:
(1) Out caught as a percentage of the number of times out
(2) Out caught as a percentage of the number of all innings, (including not outs)
(1) Whenever you’re out you’re out caught!
Fraser has been not out 5 times in his 20 innings for the Club, and has been out caught 10 times from his 15 dismissals, 66.67%.
On the list of active players Fraser is joint second with Billy Zander, the pair behind only Luke Patterson on the below image.
This first list looks at the highest 40 percentages for active players. The overall percentage of “when you’re out you’re out caught” for the all-time list of all players is 45.39% and all bar two of these active players have been out caught more often. Beneath the overall Club percentage we add Ben Townsend, (first guy on the list under 45.39%), to demonstrate that further down the percentages drop as we start to come across more people who reputedly class bowling as their stronger suit. Arman Zaheen sneaks in with his percentage reduced courtesy of his obstructing the field dismissal in August.
You may need to click on the image to enlarge it depending on which device you are reading this on
When introducing former and inactive players to this list Luke is still 5th all-time; only Shawn Dyson, (74.36%), Nic Carlino, (73.91%), Johnny Lawes, (73.44%), and James O’Gorman, (71.43%), are above him.
Whilst this article only looks at senior matches, when filtering on age group cricket Luke’s younger brother Mark has been out 20 times in those matches, and been out caught 14 times, (70%) – something for the family’s coach to work on there, perhaps?!?
(2) Whenever you bat you’re out caught! Read more