Cricket's simplest statistic crowns Bradman and flatters a famously hopeless batter
A batting average is just runs divided by dismissals. That simple sum gives Don Bradman a Test figure of 99.94, so far clear of everyone that some statisticians call him the greatest athlete in any sport. It also gave Phil Tufnell a respectable-looking one-day average of 15, though his best score was 5 not out.
Cricketers have been judged this way since the 18th century. Because runs scored and times dismissed depend mostly on the individual rather than teammates, the number is a handy measure of batting skill, and players carry separate averages for Tests, one-day games, first-class cricket and other formats, as well as for particular seasons, grounds or opponents.
Context matters enormously. Most careers land between 20 and 40, bowling all-rounders usually sit between 20 and 30, and specialist bowlers often manage 15 or less. A handful of players averaged under 5 and kept their places only because they were superb bowlers, such as Alf Valentine, B. S. Chandrasekhar and Glenn McGrath. Before the heavy roller flattened pitches in the 1870s, 25 was very good, and until scoring rose in the 21st century thanks to better bats and smaller grounds, anything over 50 across a career marked a player as exceptional.
That is why Bradman stands out. Record lists normally require at least 20 innings, and under that rule only 4 other players average above 60. Ignore the threshold and the top Test figure belongs to Kurtis Patterson, who scored 144 runs for one dismissal across two innings before losing form and his place in the Australian squad.
The sum has quirks. Not-out innings inflate the result: Tufnell's 15 came from 15 runs over 10 innings with only one dismissal. A batter never dismissed has no average at all, because you cannot divide by zero. One-day and T20 averages tend to be lower, since batters take more risks to score quickly, which is why strike rate, runs per 100 balls, is tracked alongside it.
Source: Batting average (cricket)
