Batting average

Batting average is a statistic in both baseball and cricket measuring the performance of baseball hitters and cricket batsmen, respectively. The two statistics are related, in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.

Cricket

In cricket, a player's batting average is the total number of runs he has scored divided by the number of times he has been out. Since the number of runs a player scores and how often he gets out are primarily measures of his own playing ability, and largely independent of his team mates, batting average is a good statistic for describing an individual player's skill as a batsman. Batting average has been used to gauge cricket players' relative skills since the 18th century.

Related Topics:
Runs - Out - 18th century

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Most players have batting averages in the range 5-50:

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:Between 30 and 50 is typical for specialist batsmen. All-rounders who are better with the bat might expect to have averages in this range. It would be hoped that a wicket-keeper, typically batting at seven, might average in this range.

Related Topics:
Batsmen - All-rounder

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:All-rounders who are more prominent bowlers than batters would get something between 15 and 30.

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:15 and under is typical for specialist bowlers.

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Career records for batting average are usually subject to a minimum qualification of at least 20 innings played. This is because it is easy to sustain an artificially high average over a career spanning few matches. Under this qualification, the highest Test batting average belongs to Australia's Sir Donald Bradman, with 99.94. Given that a career batting average over 50 is exceptional, and that only three other players have averages (barely) over 60, this is an outstanding statistic. The fact that Bradman's average is so far above that of any other cricketer has led several statisticians to argue that, statistically at least, he was the greatest sportsman in any sport.

Related Topics:
Innings - Test - Australia - Sir Donald Bradman - Three

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Batting averages in One-day International (ODI) cricket tend to be lower than in Test cricket, because of the need to score runs more quickly and the lesser emphasis on building a large innings.

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Some cricket followers have noted that the batting average is inflated by the number of not-outs (innings in which the batsman has not been dismissed), and argue that a better measure of a batsman's quality is the number of runs scored divided by the number of innings played. This proposed statistic has never been given an accepted name and is not commonly used by cricket fans or commentators. It may have the disadvantage that it would deflate the apparent quality of lower-order batsmen who are often not out but are rarely given the chance to bat for long.

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A different, and more recently developed, statistic which is also used to gauge the effectiveness of batsmen is the strike rate. It measures a different concept however - how quickly the batsman scores - so does not supplant the role of batting average.

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See also

• Cricket statistics