Another cricket record "made to be broken"

Today one more record in the Test cricket's history was made, or broken, depending on your point of view. Jayawardene and Sangakkara, best buddies on and off field in the Sri Lanka cricket team, scored 624 runs together for the 3rd wicket against South Africa, a record for any partnership by any team. In the process, Jayawardene achieved the personal milestone of scoring 4th highest individual aggregate of 374 runs (highest by a Sri Lankan). The partnership total overtook the earlier record of 576 set nine years ago by another Sri Lankan duo of the great Jayasuriya and Mahanama for the 2nd wicket stand against India (Jayasuriya scored the highest, until today, Sri Lankan individual score of 340 in that match). This is the recurring theme in cricket records, or any sport record for that matter. You create one record today that instantly propels you to cloud nine, and poof it goes tomorrow and you are another been-there-done-that fellow ruminating on past glory. There are statistical outliers - records so spectacular they stand the test of time - like Bob Beamon's world long jump record in 1968 Summer Olympics that stood for 23 years; or, more relevant for this topic, Bradman's career Test batting average of 99.94 that will probably remain unsurpassed. (These two performances have since been immortalized in the sports lore by two new adjectives "Beamonesque" and "Bradmanesque".)

So, how close are the current top cricket records to being toppled? Below are two small tables, for Test and ODI formats of the game, where I pulled together some of the commonly quoted world records and the number of performances that are within 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% of these records. I have included all present and past cricketers (except Bradman) to show the "clutter factor" of a record, which attempts to make the point that unless the record is an outlier (like Bradman's average) or a close one, it is likely to be broken sooner than later. I have disregarded names and other details about the results (they can be found here). For the Test averages I considered only those cricketers who played at least 20 Test matches; likewise, for ODI averages I included those who played at least 50 ODI matches.

Test
		Record	<=5%	<=10%	<=15%	<=20%
Batting	score	400	1	5	6	13
	career tot.	11505	1	3	4	4
	career avg.	60.97	8	14	21	35
	100's	35	1	3	4	4
	innings tot.	952	0	1	2	3
	partnership	624	0	1	1	1
Bowling	career wkts	685	0	1	1	1
	career avg.	15.54	0	2	3	3
ODI
		Record	<=5%	<=10%	<=15%	<=20%
Batting	score	194	4	9	17	24
	career tot.	14146	0	0	0	1
	career avg.	53.58	0	0	3	9
	strike rate	108.16	2	3	9	24
	innings tot.	443	2	2	5	16
	partnership	331	1	1	2	3
Bowling	career wkts	502	0	0	0	2
	career avg.	18.84	0	1	2	8

If we had listed Bradman's average 99.94 instead of Graeme Pollock's 60.97 in the third row of the Test table, succeeding numbers in that row would be all zeros - Bradman's record has a zero clutter and is a true outlier (Pollock's average, which is the next highest, barely makes the "<=40%" column). There are couple of close ones in the ODI table, for example Tendulkar's career aggregate of 14146 runs (and he is still playing), or Akram's aggregate of 502 wickets. They will eventually be surpassed, but may take quite awhile. By contrast, Saeed Anwar's highest ODI score of 194 runs has lot of clutter - there are 4 scores within 5% of it and 9 within 10% - and it may not be long before this record tumbles. Same is true for Afridi's ODI strike rate of 108.16, with the increasingly specialized techniques used today for power hitting. On the other hand, Pollock's Test average of 60.97 runs presents a conumdrum - on the face the record has the largest amount of clutter, but Pollock played only 23 Tests in his entire career before retiring in 1970. Today's cricketers often play more than 100 Test matches, and sustaining such high averages is quite difficult after so many games (the more matches one plays over a prolonged career, more he plays when out of form, which pushes his career average down). It is a testament to Dravid's stupendous consistency that after 104 Tests his average of 58.75 finds a place within 5% of Pollock's record, besides being a record itself among current batsmen (followed closely by Ponting's 58.22 after 105 matches, with Tendulkar's 55.39 after 132 Tests not too far behind). So, there is indeed a point to the cliché "records are meant to be broken". Today's tech-savvy coaches and managers with a slew of support staff and ultra-modern gadgetry have considerably narrowed the gap between the prodigy and the merely good, thereby creating a level playing field, and what is record today will be commonplace tomorrow. Or maybe not. Surpassing a record 20 or even 10 years later assumes that the format of the game stays the same. There used to be only Tests being played in Graeme Pollock's time, now ODI taps the pulse of the crowd, and it already looks like Twenty20 holds the promise of the future.