More wickets than runs

One of the favourites of cricket statisticians everywhere is the list of players who have taken more wickets than they have scored runs. I guess there is a fascination, and maybe even a bit of admiration, for players who might be very good at bowling but about as good as you and me at batting. The OGs (as the kids say these days) in Test cricket in this department are Bhagwat Chandrasekhar (167 runs, 242 wickets) and Chris Martin (123 runs, 233 wickets). Chandrasekhar (600 runs, 1063 wickets) is one of three players to have achieved this ‘feat’ in first-class cricket having taken at least 1 000 wickets. Eric Hollies, who bowled possibly the most famous ball of all time, scored 1 673 runs and took 2 323 wickets, and Bill Bowes (1 531 runs, 1 639 wickets) are the other two.

Inspired by Bangladesh’s Nahid Rana, this post looks at this genre of stats from a slightly different angle. Rana is the quickest bowler that Bangladesh have produced and is becoming a match-winner in Test cricket as demonstrated in the recent series against Pakistan. He has taken 108 wickets in 29 first-class matches to date while scoring just 36 runs at an elite bad average of 1.56. His only innings higher than four is the 11 he made against India at Chennai in 2024, bizarrely scoring all 11 off Jasprit Bumrah, of all people. That Test was one of just four first-class matches in which he scored more runs than he took wickets. How does this compare to other players? Only one player has had a lower percentage of first-class matches in which they scored more runs than they took wickets, with a minimum of 20 appearances. Kevin Emery had an unusual career. He made his first-class debut for Hampshire in 1982 and took 83 wickets at 23.72 in 24 matches. His 83 wickets in season of debut was the most in England since Derek Underwood’s 101 in 1963. And no one has come close since then. Emery played six matches in 1983 and took five wickets and never appeared again. Only twice in his 30 first-class matches did he score more runs than he took wickets; it took until his 22^nd match before he did it for the first time. The most matches played in a first-class career without ever scoring more runs than taking wickets is 13 by John Howarth (Nottinghamshire 1966-1967), who didn’t score a run, and Cyril Mthimkhulu (KwaZulu-Natal Inland 2013-2015).

Moving on to Test cricket. Helped partly by his famous 11, Nahid Rana’s record in Test cricket isn’t quite as spectacular, with more runs than wickets in two of his 12 Tests. Yet. Two players with 10 or more matches have a lower percentage: Pakistan’s Imran Khan (not the famous one) was one out of 10, and early days Australian, Jack Saunders was two out of 14. South Africa’s Brett Schultz has the longest Test career without having a match with more runs than wickets. In his nine Tests he scored nine runs and took 37 wickets. Even when he made his highest Test score of six, against Sri Lanka at Colombo-SSC in 1993 he was Player of the Match for his nine wickets.

What of the players at the other end of scale? Who has the most matches in a career in which they have scored more runs than taken wickets in every match? Most batters with a long career inevitably have matches in which they don’t score any runs, whether it is because their team did not bat, or they made a duck in their only innings, or made a pair. The leader in this has to be someone who scored at least one run in every game they played. Andy Moles, of Warwickshire and Griqualand West, scored more runs than he took wickets in each of his 230 first-class matches. This is despite taking 40 wickets to go with his 15 305 runs. An interesting name on this list is Beau Webster. The Australian is legitimately an all-rounder, so you would expect him to have some matches with more wickets than runs. Yet, only once in 123 first-class matches (he did not bat in the match and took one wicket) has he not had more runs than wickets. The leader in Test cricket is Graeme Smith on 117 matches.

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