Cricket's Historians

Appendix Two Statistics in the Computer Age The next step was to apply the international ranking model retrospectively, thereby recreating the ratings that players would have achieved at all stages in their careers. This generated statistics that objectively compared players from different eras, at least to the extent to which they each dominated their contemporaries. But since this involved Vince entering all past Test scorecards into his template, it suddenly became possible to generate automatically virtually any set of Test records capable of being derived from a scorecard. So, motivated by Ted Dexter’s dream of a set of world Test rankings, and with the consequent need for a database that captured scorecard data, the first major step in the computerisation of cricket statistics had been achieved. As well as being used by various television companies and news agencies, Vince also provided his program to local cricket clubs who could then input their past and future scorecards and thereby generate their own set of player and historical records. During the 1990s, a variety of ‘rival’ player ratings were devised, competing for coverage and credibility. Then in 1998, Dexter, Eastaway and Vince, now sponsored by PwC, launched the ODI ratings. As other methods fell into disuse, these were increasingly being referred to by the media as the official world ratings. Finally in 2003, the ICC formally adopted the ratings, securing sponsorship first from LG and then Reliance Mobile. With the emergence of the internet, the Cricinfo website became the natural home for typed-up international scorecards. At this point, anyone with computer access could, either by subscribing to a database or by going online, look up scores of matches that were previously glimpsed only by those fortunate enough to have the relevant reference books. Making source data available to anyone interested in cricket statistics was the next key step in allowing new and original research to be undertaken. The twin channels for further progress were to expand the breadth of scores available and to increase the ability to search the data, allowing ever more tailored information to be extracted. Andrew Samson in South Africa and Ric Finlay in Australia both developed their own offline databases incorporating a significant range of first-class scorecards and more search functionality. The latter was made available on a subscription service with emailed updates. These proved highly popular with television and radio commentators, allowing queries to be answered instantly while the prompt for the query was still topical. To know whether a new record has been set, one no longer needed to know what the previous record was, nor even whether it had ever been researched previously, but only to be able to 303