By: Sandipan Bose
When a coin is flipped 10 times in the air, the law of averages states that 5 flips will be heads, and the other 5 flips will be tails. Does this law relevant while playing contemporary cricket?
Can a batsman of Cheteshwar Pujara’s ability justify slacken efforts after scoring big in the previous game? No.
There was a time when batsman like Virender Sehwag would make big hundred in a Test series out of minimum six innings. It was considered to be a good performance. Today, however, those two big knocks are not enough.
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They are, ofcourse, good enough to cement your place in the team for the next series. But, now it won’t satisfy the team management. In today’s cricket world, a batsman needs to score everyday.
With a fat pay package, the likes of Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara are expected to have a good day at work on every single day, no matter what. It is humanly not possible to pitch your best performance everyday at work.
But, this is the bane of being in the best profession in India, and that is to get selected to play for Indian cricket team. Similarly, expectation were high when Pujara got a start in the 4th Test match against in Dharamshala.
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He went past his fifty and was looking pretty convincing on the crease when he lost his wicket to Nathan Lyon. Pujara is coming out to be a very accomplished Test batsman in terms of the number of runs he has scored for India.
This domestic season and today was no different. Amongst the batsmen who got out, he was again the highest scorer. But, again he wasn’t expected to get out that early. Pujara could have had a bad day on the field.
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This brings us back to the same question. Can the law of average can’t catch up with the best batsmen? However, if you look at KL Rahul, he has been scoring fifty in almost every Test innings against Australia.
He is, infact, the best example how the law of average is completely irrelevant today. Rahul may have failed to score a century in this series, but he is able to give a good start to the Indian innings almost in almost all occasion.
Meanwhile, Kohli was the best batsmen in the team before the series started and now that the law of average saw him failing in six innings. He is suddenly not being missed in the team. Because without runs, no Kohli looks good!
