Every year S Rajesh, this site's stats editor, writes an in-depth stats review of the year just concluded. As such, in order not to have any duplication, my review of 2024 will cover only the various analytical values that I have derived as part of my data analysis work.
For many new readers, and some older ones as well, there is a need for clear explanations of my metrics, which are in this support document . Presenting these inline here in this article will take up too much space.
Individual performances
My selection is based on the BAT-100 and BOWL-100 rating points, which are my rankings of the best batting and bowling performances of all time in Test cricket. These take account into many elements of an innings and bowling performance, including the match and innings context. As such, these can very well be taken as benchmark performances, with the top ones really being the best in their genre.
The best innings
It is no surprise that Ollie Pope's monumental 196 against India in Hyderabad tops this table. Facing a deficit of 190 runs, Pope came in at 45 for 1 and shepherded the total to a defendable 420. He achieved this with only low-level supporting innings. The bowling was top-class and Pope's innings finished ninth on the all-time great innings BAT-100 list, with 833 points.
A couple of months later in Christchurch, New Zealand set Australia a stiff target of 279 and they slumped to 80 for 5. Alex Carey and Mitchell Marsh added 140 runs and then Carey, in the company of Pat Cummins, finished the task. An away classic, against a very good bowling side secured Carey over 750 rating points.
After being dismissed for 55 against India in Cape Town, South Africa found themselves nearly 100 runs in arrears. Then Aiden Markram played one of the greatest ever innings in a losing cause. He scored 106 out of 176, with the next highest innings being 12, against a strong bowling attack. That fetched him 738 points. Rachin Ravindra's match-winning 134 in Bengaluru, Pathum Nissanka's quickfire 127 not out at The Oval, and Cameron Green's opening-day masterclass of 174 not out in Wellington are the other innings that compiled more than 700 points.
Just to give the readers an idea of the range and power of the rating points concept, I would like to mention that the lowest-rated hundred was that of Afsar Zazai who scored 113, coming in at 428 for 3 in Bulawayo. This innings only got 353 rating points.
The best bowling performances
If Pope did a Botham in Hyderabad, Tom Hartley did a Willis. The target was only 231 and seemed wholly inadequate against the strong Indian batting side. But Hartley allowed no Indian batter to settle down. His out-of-the-world spell of 7 for 62 brought England a narrow win. This performance secured 888 points and was placed third on the all-time BOW-100 list. Ajaz Patel's inspired defence of a low total of 147 (dismissing Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, and Sarfaraz Khan for 1 each) secured 873 points and was placed seventh in the all-time BOW-100 list.
Shamar Joseph's last-innings effort of 7 for 68 was the reason for an unlikely eight-run West Indies win over Australia in Brisbane. This performance secured him 866 points and eighth place on the all-time list. Imagine three all-time top-ten performances in a span of 11 months. Matt Henry, Noman Ali, Michell Santner, and Marco Jansen complete the list of bowlers who had performances that accrued over 800 rating points. All seven performances were in the top 60 of the all-time table. Never before in history has there been such a collection of bowling performances within a few months; 2024 was indeed a bowlers' year.
The best High Score Index values
HSI is an indicator of the support received - or not - by a batter. It is developed using the batter's score, the next-highest individual score, and the team score.
Markram's 106 stands way ahead in first place with an HSI value of 5.5. The next highest score in that South Africa innings was 12 and the team score was 176. A few weeks later in Visakhapatnam, Yashasvi Jaiswal scored 209 where the best supporting innings was 34. His HSI value is 3.3. A shade behind him comes Rishabh Pant, who played an amazing attacking innings of 64 against New Zealand in Mumbai while the rest of the Indian batting crumbled around him. If he had not been caught behind, India would surely have won.
The best Innings Peer Values
The IPV index compares a batter's score with the mean of the other innings in the Test. As such, it is a clear pointer to how an individual innings stands in relation to the way everyone else in the match batted. It is a single-value indication of how valuable the batter's innings is.
Markram stands on top again, with an IPV of 12.5. In a match with team scores of 55, 153, 176, and 80 for 3, the average of the other 37 individual innings was only 8.46. The IPV of 12.5 means he was more than 12 times ahead of all 21 other batters. In second place is the magnificent 240 by Rachin Ravindra in Mount Maunganui. The average of the other 43 innings was a low 21.6, leading to an IPV of 11.1. Also at the same value of 11.1 is Green's 174, which was huge compared with the average of 15.7 by the other 43 innings. Travis Head appears three times on this table - an indication of his propensity to play very special innings.
HSI is a measure of the support a batter gets within that team innings. IPV indicates how far ahead the batter is, when compared to all other innings in a Test, including those of the other team.
Pitches in 2024
The average Pitch Quality Index for the 53 Tests played during 2024 was 45.4, indicating a slightly bowler-friendly year. The all-time PQI average for all Tests is an almost perfectly neutral value of 49.7, indicating that pitch conditions even out over the years. Let us now look at the outliers in 2024.
Bowling-friendly pitches
The most difficult pitch to bat on was the Cape Town one. I have already referred to the scores while talking about Markram's innings. The runs-per-wicket figure was below 15 and the PQI under 24. The Wankhede pitch for the New Zealand Test was a little better, with scores of 235, 263, 174, and 121. Two more Indian pitches, those in Pune and Kanpur, follow next in the table below, which lists all sub-35 PQI values.
Batting-friendly pitches
The pitch for the Zimbabwe-Afghanistan Test in Bulawayo was an abomination. The home team's 586 was met by Afghanistan's score of 699. The PQI was a high 72.7. It was no wonder that the two individual double-centuries only got BAT-100 rating points either side of 500. Though the Multan pitch for the England series had a PQI of 71.7, it produced a result - no doubt thanks to the 823 for 7 made by England at 5.5 runs per over. The other Test with a 60-plus PQI was the one in Rawalpindi, which produced a surprise win for Bangladesh after Pakistan declared at 448 for 6.
Fair pitches
Finally a quartet of pitches that produced PQI values of between 49 and 51. A look at the scores at Old Trafford - Sri Lanka 236, England 358, Sri Lanka 326, England 205 for 5 - will tell you it was a fair contest between bat and ball. The RpW figure for this Test was a very nice 32.
A few observations related to 2024
Upsets
There were three upsets of striking proportions.
West Indies defeated Australia at the Gabba by eight runs. After matching first innings, West Indies could score only 193 and it should have been a cakewalk for Australia. Instead, Joseph produced an all-time-great bowling performance of 7 for 68 to dismiss them a few runs short. This was a monumental upset. West Indies had a Team Strength Index of 41.2 and Australia a huge 86.2.
Bangladesh went to Pakistan and instead of losing 0-2, as they were expected to, won by that margin instead. However, this was not that great an upset as it might seem. Though Pakistan were playing at home and Bangladesh away, the Team Strength Indices mostly matched each other. Pakistan have also been going through a tough phase and their bowlers were inexperienced.
That cannot be said about the third upset. India were expected to win 3-0 against New Zealand - or at worst, 2-0 or 2-1. What happened was earth-shattering. Though they had a far superior team, based on TSI, and were playing at full strength at home, India lost 0-3. The vastly experienced Indian spinners were completely outbowled by the New Zealand ones. India deservedly missed out on a place in the WTC final because of this single disaster.
Draws
Fifty-three Tests were played in 2024. A round 50 were decisive, and that works out to an all-time high win-loss result percentage of 94.3%. Only three Tests were drawn, and there too, two were drawn only because there was serious interruption by rain.
Let us first get the Bulawayo Test, in which 699 met 586, out of the way. The bowlers could have been forgiven if they had gone on strike afterwards. Inexplicably, a week later Rashid Khan spun Afghanistan to a famous win at the same venue with an all-time great spell of 7 for 66 - not covered here since that Test fell in 2025.
When West Indies played South Africa in Port-of-Spain, the match ended in an intriguing 60-40 draw. Chasing a sporting target of 298, set by Temba Bavuma, West Indies finished at 201 for 5, scoring at a decent rate. More than 170 overs were lost to rain.
A few months later, the Gabba match between Australia and India ended in a draw. This time more than half the number of overs were lost. But it turned to be an exciting Test, which India managed to save. It is my firm view that even if India had followed on, the match would have been a draw, since only around 35 overs were played after that point. On the other hand, I am equally certain that if Steven Smith had caught KL Rahul off the first ball of day four, India would almost certainly have lost.
Opening partnerships
The average Test opening partnership in 2024 was 27. Compare this with the all-time figure of 36.1. Opening has certainly become more difficult.
In Hyderabad, India (Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma) and England (Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett) had partnerships over 40. The Indian partnerships were 80 and 42, while the English batters put on 55 and 42. The average for the match was just over 55. This was a surprise win for England.
Towards the end of the year, New Zealand and England went to the other extreme, in Christchurch. Tom Latham and Devon Conway could only manage 4 and 3 in their two partnerships, while Crawley and Duckett added 9 and 1 respectively. The average of 4.25 was one of the lowest in the past decade.
Scoring rates
The overall scoring rate for Tests in 2024 was quite high - 3.65 per over, to be precise, much higher than the all-time average of 2.90. The average number of overs per match dropped to 272 from the all-time average of 340. Surprisingly, the number of runs scored per match are almost totally comparable: 990 (all-time) against 996 (2024).
With only 35 overs bowled in the first three days of play in Kanpur, everything pointed to a dull draw. When Bangladesh took a further 40 overs in their innings, the chances of a result looked minuscule. Rohit and his players produced one of the greatest strategy decisions in the modern Test era by scoring 285 runs in 34.4 overs at 8.22 - an all-time record. They left enough time in the day to take two Bangladeshi wickets and won comfortably the next day.
A few months later, England, playing New Zealand in Christchurch, were set 104 to win with a day and a half to spare. Maybe they wanted to go and pay golf in the afternoon. They rattled off the 104 runs required in 12.4 overs, scoring at 8.21, a fraction below the Indian scoring rate in Kanpur.
India were also instrumental in producing the record at the other extreme. At the MCG, they were left over 90 overs in which to score 340 runs to win on the last day. It was a war of attrition from the beginning and finally India finished with 155 runs in 79.1 overs, scoring at 1.96 - the only instance in 2024 of an innings of under two runs per over. It was a good effort and needed another ten-odd overs of resistance to draw the match.
The top performance of 2024
Each reader will have their own preferences. This is my personal selection, including the long-term impact as well. The contenders are Joseph's match-winning spell, Pope's once-a-lifetime effort in Hyderabad, Hartley's magnificent defence of a low score with an all-time top-ten spell, Santner's magnificent Pune effort, Ajaz's defence of a low score in Mumbai, and Head's run-a-ball 140 on a difficult Adelaide pitch.
Joseph's spell helped West Indies defeat Australia but in the long run, did not have much of an impact on Australia's WTC successes or West Indies' fortunes. Australia qualified with a series to spare. The bowling attack that Head faced was not a great one, the Indian total was not big, and Australia's win was a comfortable one. Pope was fantastic but the 1-4 series loss took the sheen off it. Hartley was king in Hyderabad, but the same factors as Pope's apply to that one. Ajaz only converted a 2-1 margin to a 3-0 one, however unlikely the win looked like.
Santner converted New Zealand's 1-0 lead into a series-winning 2-0 and silenced the voices that proclaimed that India would win 2-1. Known as a white-ball spinner, for him to have found the correct method to overcome the Indian batters twice and take 13 wickets in India, including those of Kohli and Gill twice, was a stupendous achievement. Watching Santner bowl in Pune was an unforgettable experience. Let us not forget that a few months before, India had converted a 0-1 deficit against England into a 4-1 win.
Hence I have selected Santner's Pune effort as my Performance of the Year.
The quirky stats section
I have looked at opening partnerships - this time across both teams, within a Test - across all 2580 Tests.
Tests in which all four opening partnerships reached 50 runs.
Tests in which the sum of all four opening partnerships was below 10.
Normally I would have talked about who the openers were and elaborated on the context of the match. However, this being a pot-pourri piece, I will let the reader check out the scorecard if they want additional information.
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