The year of the rabbit

The main focus of the Reliance ICC Player Rankings is to determine who the peak performers in world cricket are, be they in Test cricket or in the One-Day International format of the game. However, as we enter the Chinese Year of the Rabbit, we examine the other end of the scale - the true 'rabbits' with the bat - those batsmen who can often be found lurking at number eleven praying they are not required to make it to the crease with a bat in their hands.

Firstly, we need to set some parameters. It is relatively straightforward to discover the players who have achieved the highest number of Ratings points, but how should we judge the lowest? A player who debuts and fails to score has a total of zero points, but that isn't really a fair way of measuring his lowest point. So we have two points of reference in order to help us discover the true 'rabbits' of the world game.

Secondly, it is probably only really fair to limit our investigations to the Test arena. This is due to the fact that in the ODI game, players batting down the order only have a limited amount of time in which to make an impression, and often they fall early on in the quest for quick runs. In addition, they bat far more irregularly than their top-order colleagues.

In order to have a 'full' rating, a player has to have batted at least forty times in his career. To date, a total of 551 players have managed this, so more than enough to be getting on with. They range from Sachin Tendulkar with his 290 innings - 51 of which he has converted into centuries - to the fifteen batsman including George Headley and Dilhara Fernando to have batted on exactly forty occasions in their Test careers.

Of these 551 players it will probably come as no surprise to discover the names of the players with the best and worst batting averages. Don Bradman's average of 99.94 is more than 50% better than anyone else, and at the other end of the spectrum, Chris Martin's current average of 2.53 is comfortably worse than anyone else. In fact he would need to score 71 in his next innings to edge ahead of Bhagwat Chandrasekhar.

Returning to the Ratings, whereas when we look at the high flyers we examine their highest-ever points totals, here we are interested in their lowest points totals, once the player has qualified for a full Rating. So - how do they stack up? Here are the lowest batting Ratings achieved once a player has played the required forty Test innings:

The first thing that comes to mind is that Chris Martin really is a long way adrift of the rest of the pack. His Rating of 22 came after his 35th Test at which point his batting average stood at precisely two. A recent relative surge of form has seen his points total rocketing up to a career-best 33 ? still a fair way adrift of Fidel Edwards in second place.

There are three modern-day West Indian pacemen on this list. Whereas Messrs Holding, Roberts and Garner combined for a total of ten Test fifties, the recent trio of Edwards, Collins and Collymore have never even reached 25 in an innings between them. Comprising one of the greatest tails of all time, all three of them played three Tests against England in 2004. Two of those matches were lost, but they were not required to bat in the third as Brian Lara amassed 400 not out all by himself, more than half the combined career totals of the three tail-enders in their 105 Tests.

The second method of analysing Test cricket's 'rabbits' is to see who has the lowest 'average' Rating over the course of their career. This method enables us to include players who have not necessarily acquired the minimum forty innings used in the first method and those who played in the earlier days of Test cricket, when matches were somewhat fewer and farther between.

This now gives us a total of 1134 players who have had at least fifteen innings in Test cricket. Let's see who were at the bottom of the pile:

Chris Martin just misses out on the 'top' ten, with his average of 23.23. However, if he were to add to his current total of 29 ducks he just might edge his way into the leading pack.

There is perhaps a surprising name at the top. Mohammad Akram played 9 Tests for Pakistan between 1995 and 2000 batting a total of thirteen times. However, in eight of those he failed to score, with his only double-figure effort an undefeated innings of ten against Australia at Perth in November 1999. That kind of batting pedigree meant that his points total never made it out of the teens.

Cuan McCarthy was arguably even worse, although his points tally implies that he batted in slightly more difficult conditions than Akram. He strode to the crease 24 times in his Test career which lasted from 1948 to 1951 and never scored more than five runs in a single innings. He would argue that fifteen of those innings were undefeated so he could have gone on to greater things, but he is a worthy contender for the title of 'worst Test batsman ever'. The bronze medal goes to medium-pacer-turned-commentator Pommie Mbangwa. His 25 Test innings from 1996 to 2000 included just one innings greater than five, but he did choose Lord's as the venue for his career-best score of eight!

So, for every Bradman, Hobbs or Lara at the top of the tree, spare a thought for those number elevens who also have to don their pads, gloves and helmets for the good of their team, but with somewhat less success!