ICC Intercontinental Cup and Shield

Preface The suggestion of producing a scorecards-based book on the ICC Intercontinental Cup and Intercontinental Shield was made by John Bryant at the 2010 AGM of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. My long-standing interest in cricket in the Associate and Affiliate countries led me to respond by developing a proposal which was duly accepted by the ACS Committee. The work involved was potentially very straightforward since all the scorecards exist on the internet on the CricketArchive, Cricinfo, CricketEurope and the International Cricket Council web sites. Detailed examination of the scorecards, however, showed that they whilst they were in agreement on the basic information like innings totals, individual batting and bowling figures and fall of wickets, they differed on the number of balls bowled and received and the minutes individuals batted. The latter information was often missing from the published scorecards but, where it was provided, it was sometimes clearly incompatible with that on balls received. In one example a batsman was shown as having received 31 balls in two minutes; the opposition should have been proud of that over rate! In another case three tailenders are shown as batting for 138 minutes but during that time only 10.2 overs were bowled; the duration batted seems most unlikely since that would result in an over rate of only 4.6 per hour which, if true, would certainly have attracted some comment. The first step in producing this publication was therefore to examine each scorecard carefully, check all the calculations, identify gaps and possible errors and then seek to rectify them. For the majority of matches, the published scorecards were fine and there was agreement between all the available sources. For the others, it was often possible to find a consensus between the sources in which all the statistics added correctly. It was the information on balls bowled and received that was the most problematic because this is used to calculate both batting and bowling strike rates and the bowling economy rate. In cases where the published details differed between various sources and the balls received and balls bowled did not agree with each other the difference was sometimes small and could probably be explained by umpires miscounting and allowing either five-ball or seven-ball overs which were not then identified on the scoresheet. In other instances, the differences for an innings could be 20 balls or more. Without access to the original scorebooks, it was not possible to determine whether the problems related to errors made by the scorers or to typing errors made when transcribing the scorecard from the scorebook to the web page. I am particularly grateful to the scorers of both Ireland and Scotland who were able to consult their scorebooks and either confirm that the information on the Cricket Ireland and Cricket Scotland web-sites is correct or provide corrections and additional material. Unfortunately, the archiving of match results in some other countries does not reach the same high standards. The scorecards presented in this book are based on the best information available. In a number of cases it was necessary to exercise judgement to produce a scorecard in which the numbers of balls bowled and received balanced or the difference between the two was reduced to a minimum. As a result, for some players, the statistics on strike rates and economy rates have been recalculated and therefore differ from those found on certain web sites. I accept full responsibility for any errors arising from this procedure. For some scorecards gaps still remain. Each scorecard is accompanied by a one-page match report. The latter is an amalgam of the reports found on the various web-sites listed in the acknowledgements and in local newspapers consulted in the British Newspaper Library at Colindale and the British Library at St Pancras. Wherever possible and relevant, additional comments are made based on information contained in the scorecards or, in the case of local weather conditions, from published meteorological records. Although the scorecards and match reports form the basis of the book, they are put into a historical context of first-class cricket in the Associate and Affiliate countries in an introductory chapter. An attempt is made here to assess whether or not the International Cricket Council was vii