ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2018

Preface The ACS Overseas First-Class Annual reaches a minor milestone with this, its tenth edition. As in previous years, it provides full scores of first-class matches throughout the world with the exception of those in England and Wales, which appear each year in Wisden . This edition of the Annual records the arrival of Ireland and Afghanistan as the two newest full members of the International Cricket Council, and includes full scores of the two countries’ inaugural Tests, against Pakistan and India respectively. Unlike Ireland, who succumbed only after a doughty struggle, Afghanistan suffered the humiliation of losing all twenty wickets in a single disastrous day. But if the Afghans’ first experience of life at top level was a chastening one, they could perhaps draw some comfort from their domestic first-class season, which – from a standing start – comprised an ambitious programme of two tournaments and over fifty matches, and which, despite the country’s well-attested troubles, seems to have come off without a hitch. Moreover, to judge by the scorecards reproduced in this Annual, the game seems to have been played with a zest and exuberance that more seasoned cricket nations can only envy. So, maybe Afghanistan’s prospects are brighter than their two-day shellacking by India might suggest: but, of course, it is far too soon as yet to pass judgment on either Afghanistan’s or Ireland’s prospects of success at the highest level. At least administrators in Ireland and Afghanistan seemed to take seriously their obligation to furnish prompt and full details of competitions and matches under their jurisdiction and the cricketers taking part in them. If only the same were true of all the established countries. It is bad enough that there are occasional omissions from scores of particulars that one would expect to see, such as the names of substitute catchers and, in a few instances, the team total at the fall of a wicket. But perhaps we should accept that isolated lapses such as these are unavoidable in any system for gathering complex information from across the world. What is much more concerning is the practice of some nations of failing to supply, and presumably also failing to collect, an entire category of information that is normally shown on a modern full card. I have two cases chiefly in mind. First, scorecards from Sri Lanka routinely omit the duration in time of batsmen’s individual innings. Now, I am aware that modern statisticians generally regard ‘balls faced’ as a more useful indicator of the duration of an innings than the time in minutes that was generally used for this purpose in former times. I agree with that conclusion, at least to the extent that, if I had to choose between ‘balls faced’ and ‘minutes’, I should opt for the former without a doubt. But when I shared this view with one of the most distinguished of current statisticians, Ric Finlay, his response was a robust defence of ‘minutes’ as a valuable metric in its own right. “The ‘balls faced’,” he said, “is a simple stat that gives the number of balls where the batsman is at the striker’s end. ‘Minutes batted’, however, complements this by giving the time that batsman is in the middle, and covers a much larger range of activities that ‘balls faced’ doesn’t. It includes time spent in the team’s cause at the non-striker’s end, perhaps observing the tactics of the fielding side and passing his observations on to his partner. It includes time at drinks breaks discussing progress, taking in instructions from the coach/captain via the drinks runner. It includes time between overs in constructive discussion with his partner. It clearly therefore involves a number of activities that require energy and focus given towards the team’s needs, and is in my opinion a much under-rated metric, and gives much more than ‘balls faced’ by itself. Putting the two together gives a much better picture of the progress of the game – for example, a 4