Is Steve Waugh a choker?


Waugh out in Sydney
By Gaurang - Jan 8, '03
January 8 2003

After his recent innings in Sydney, where he scored a fighting century in the first innings under high personal pressure, Steve Waugh has rightfully been lauded. But is this evidence of Waugh as a "great" batsman under pressure?

Steve Waugh's splendid first innings effort did not save his side from a comprehensive defeat against a hitherto struggling England in the fifth and final Test of an Ashes series which was already won, in which Vaughan played a couple of breathtaking innings which made all the difference in the end. While his home crowd celebrated the effort as a vintage Waugh innings anyway, it is up to the neutral observer to evaluate Waugh's record and see if it stands up against some of the more stellar batsmen the game has seen.

One factor that devalues this particular Waugh effort as an acid test of whether he should be retained by the Australian selectors is that the Test series was already won 4-0 and he was fighting mainly for his place in the side, which was clearly under threat. This was pressure of a personal nature, rather than a team nature. When the series was "live" and still on the line, in the first three Tests of the series Waugh's efforts did not impress. However, it must be added that in none of those Tests did England look even remotely challenging and each of the 3 Tests were won by comprehensive margins.

But a far more important factor in gauging his record, and one worthy of analysis, is Waugh's performance in the 4th innings in Tests. Traditionally, this has always been the worst time for batting and most pitches will start deteriorating by this time: uneven bounce means that fast bowlers will be at their most dangerous, and balls turning square allows the spinners to dominate. To make it worse, a side will often bat under high pressure in the 4th innings, battling to either win or draw a Test.

This list of top 4th innings averages from Howstat throws up the usual suspects. Fittingly Don Bradman heads the list, but even he is reduced from an average of 100 to 70 runs. Sunil Gavaskar and Geoff Boycott are almost identical at 58 each, and both average higher in the 4th innings than in their career -- confirming their tremendous fighting spirit, as well as their competence at handling helpful pitches and fresh bowlers which made them such good openers.

Steve Waugh is not even on that list of 27 batsmen! Considering that he has played over 150 Tests, this is amazing. Even brother Mark makes it on that list at the 15th position. Steve fares even worse compared to some on that list when you consider that someone like Sunny made many of his runs against the greatest fast bowlers in cricket -- among others, the magnificent Michael Holding and Malcolm Marshall.

As an interesting aside, Rahul Dravid is a big 10 runs ahead of Sachin Tendulkar, who has a rather poor 4th innings average of 35 by his standards.

Looking closer at Waugh's records, a large percentage of the time (especially lately) he has not had to bat in the 4th innings. This may be a double-edged sword considering his 4th innings record, since he may actually have been fortunate that his team's overall strength did not expose him more.

However, several of Waugh's major "chokes" have come in the fourth innings. Here are some of them:

From the above, Waugh had at least 8 chances to lead Australia to a victory or an honorable loss (by fighting it out on his own), but he choked each time. In fact, he has scored only a single 50 in the 4th in such a long career, and not a single match-winning innings!

Keeping Tugga's performances in perspective, while he should be considered a "great" batsman, it is difficult to rate him among the top 25 batsmen of all time at the end of his career.

I'd like to acknowledge the following comments which helped compile these thoughts:

Bongs (England fan): "I'd be intrigued on the point of which of the greats had the most good second innings knocks. Generally speaking, these would be match-saving or match-winning efforts -- in my opinion the acid test of a truly great batsman."

Dog__ (South Africa fan): "Interesting stats. Inspired me to dig into the ODI stats, theory being that if he's a "choker" then he will also have struggled to win ODI games batting second. Overall, when batting second in ODI's he averages 35.6, compared to an average of 31.2 batting first.

I guess the stats show how heavily Aus have depended on him in the past to get them to the target in ODIs. But they also back up Gaurang's point to some extent: out of 60 lost causes, there are only 8 games where he wasn't part of the failure."

Bradmania (Australia fan): "Well, he does have one 4th innings 50 (67 vs NZ, Perth, 2001-02), which helped the Aussies save the match. But it's not a great record. I guess he mainly tried to plunder big scores in the first innings. He's played so many great innings that prove he's a great batsman. Every great has a flaw somewhere. It's an amazing stat. During the NZ test when he got his maiden 4th innings 50, the commentators couldn't believe that stat when it was presented to them. You expect players to average more in their 1st innings because of better batting conditions and the time allowed to make huge scores, but you'd think a class player would've made a few more runs in that situation. Ah, the beauty of the great game."