Turns Out Trent Boult Is The Best Number 11 In Test Cricket
It’s easy to lump praise upon the greatness of Trent Boult. With more than 300 Test wickets to his name – and counting – at an average under 28s, and a stack of fabled swing bowling masterclasses amongst his highlights, the numbers and the memories each speak for themselves. It’d require no dramas at all to roll out a couple thousand words on his wicket-taking prowess but that’s not what we’re here for today. Nah, this is an article dedicated to a more underrated aspect of his game: his batting.
Trent Boult is not a particularly good batsman, let’s get that out of the way first up. He’s not ever gonna score a Test century. There’s no later-career emergence a la Daniel Vettori on the cards. The man lives at number eleven. Don’t expect to see him rising up the order. Everything in context. Ah but as far as number eleven batsmen go... Trent Boult is the best in the business.
In fact he’s one of the best all-time if you zoom out. Strange thing to hang your hat on because generally speaking if you do well at number eleven then you should probably be batting higher, which tends to be what happens. Boult is a rare case of somebody who has remained at the very bottom of the batting order throughout his career with little thought to moving upwards and yet he’s found a formula that works for him. Those flamingo forward defence shots may look comical but, mate, they’ve taken him to this...
MOST RUNS AT NUMBER 11 IN TEST HISTORY
Keep in mind that’s only for innings at 11. The majority of these jerries will have come in earlier at various times in their careers – for example there are two current Aussies on that list so obviously Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood can’t both bat eleven in the same innings. Boult himself batted at ten (though never higher) thirteen times, scoring 115 runs at an average of 14.37. Pretty similar to his numbers at eleven.
Boult actually debuted as a number ten and there’s a good reason for that: Chris Martin. Boult’s first eight stints at 10 were all batting ahead of Marto. The five other instances since include a Test in South Africa where Jeetan Patel came in ahead of him in the first innings but was castled by Dale Steyn whilst jumping all over his crease so Boult got promoted to ten in the second innings. He also batted ahead of Neil Wagner twice in a match in Kanpur, India. Plus he came in ahead of Ajaz Patel during the 2019 tour to Sri Lanka. The only other occasions where Ajaz Patel has been last in the order happened in the most recent tour to India which Trent Boult wasn’t a part of.
Back to that list, here are a couple of things to be extremely aware of:
Trent Boult is only 35 runs away from being the all-time leading run-scorer at 11
Trent Boult has played considerably fewer matches than most of the other guys around him
Trent Boult’s average of 15.91 is higher than anyone else with more than 210 runs in the position
That average is also higher than anyone ever with 30+ innings at 11
Get, as the saying goes, that into ya.
We can keep going too because those 11 ducks are pretty puny compared to the other jokers with 500+ runs. That’s a dismissal for zero in 15% of Boult’s innings at eleven, considerably better than Murali (20%), McGrath (25%), Courtney Walsh (22%), or Morne Morkel (30%), for example. Not the best on the list by any means, Jeff Thomson is there with zero ducks at 11, but still one of the better nudges of those with substantial experience in the role. Helped no doubt by 38 not outs in 75 innings. Those aren’t empty innings either, he has 12 different instances of being not out in double figures at 11 (plus another one at 10). That’s a world record. Nobody in the history of Test cricket has more – Brian Statham is next with 10 double-figure not outs coming in at the bottom of the order.
Meanwhile Trent Boult is only 16th equal in the standings of most 0* scores. Luckily Chris Martin is on that list representing Aotearoa strong nearing on ten years since his retirement.
MOST 0* SCORES IN TESTS (ANY POSITION)
The other thing that Trent Boult has done which very few batters have ever achieved from that 11 position is that he’s scored a fifty. 52 not out against Bangladesh in Chattogram back in 2013. It was the first innings of the first Test of the series, Brendon McCullum won the toss and chose to bat. Peter Fulton and Hamish Rutherford put on 57 for the first wicket with Fulton going on to make 73, then in came Kane Williamson who went on to top score with 114 (his fourth Test ton). That set up a decent total but it was the final wicket partnership between BJ Watling (103) and Trent Boult (52no) adding 127 runs that really took things deep.
Unfortunately that last-man fiddy wasn’t quite enough as the Blackcaps ended up in deficit after the first innings thanks to 181 from Mominul Haque and 101no from Sohag Gazi anchoring a Bangladesh total of 501. The match ended in a draw. That same game also happened to mark the Test debuts of Ish Sodhi and Corey Anderson.
Regardless, that was only the fifth 100+ run partnership for the last wicket by a New Zealand pair. Richard Collinge and Brian Hastings of course once set the world record with a 151-run stand against Pakistan in 1973 though that’s since been beaten twice: 163 between Ashton Agar and Phil Hughes for AUS vs ENG in 2013 and 198 between Joe Root and Jimmy Anderson for ENG vs IND in 2014... weirdly both at Nottingham. Boult, by the way, has been involved in six other partnerships of 50+ for the last wicket. Plus a couple more in the mid-40s. His 50+ partnership partners: Watling, Blundell, Southee, Watling, Watling, Sodhi & Wagner.
No man has ever scored a Test hundred from number eleven. Ashton Agar went close with 98 in that big partnership mentioned earlier. That was famously on debut and he’s never again batted that low... although he’s only played four total Tests at the time of writing so yeah. Tino Best also scored 95 for the Windies a year earlier, while Jimmy Anderson has an 81 from that effort with Joe Root and back in 2004 Zaheer Khan scored 75 to break Richard Collinge’s world record knock of 68* which had stood for 31 years. He in turn had topped AEE Vogler of South Africa who scored 62 not out 67 years previous.
There have been twenty instances of number elevens passing 50 in Tests. By some strange confluence six of them happened in the range of 2012 to 2014... including Trent Boult’s knock. Since then there have been only been two more: Tim Murtagh with 54no for Ireland against Afghanistan in 2019 and Matt Henry’s 58no for Aotearoa against South Africa in February. There ya go.
Here’s another stat...
MOST SCORES OF 15+ BATTING AT ELEVEN
Muttiah Muralitharan & Trent Boult – 14 each
Courtney Walsh - 8
McGrath, Ntini, Willis, Anderson – 7
It’s funny how the Blackcaps transitioned from Chris Martin to Trent Boult. One of the best number elevens there’s ever been coming directly after one of the worst. Chris Martin has more Test pairs than any one else (seven of the suckers) and is third all-time for most ducks with 36 of them. Courtney Walsh had 43 and Stuart Broad is on 39 and counting. Those two each batted at least 80 times more than Martin did.
BLACKCAPS NUMBER 11 BATTERS (ARR. BY MOST INNINGS)
That 2.36 average is going to take a lot of beating. Of all worldwide batters through history with 100+ innings Chris Martin not only has the worst average... it’s not even close. Lance Gibbs is next at 6.97 and that was multiple generations earlier. Change the qualification to 50 innings and it’s still the worst, albeit not by quite as much. You have to drop the qualifier to 25 innings batter before you stumble upon Pommie Mbangwa of Zimbabwe with 34 runs at an average of 2.00 and that’s a long way down.
However there is one fella who is making a run at Chris Martin’s iconic bunny rabbit status. A man of precious talent in the art of not scoring runs. That man... is Ebadot Hossein.
You’ll know the fella from Bangladesh’s recent tour of Aotearoa, during which he was man of the match in that famous upset win at Mount Maunganui after taking 6/46 in the second innings. Ebodot’s a fascinating character. Got his break as a cricketer after entering a pace bowling contest having previously been a volleyball player for the Bangladeshi air force. Statistically he’s awful, with a bowling average that’s never dipped under 50 (currently 54.82) and which was soaring at 81.54 after 10 matches prior to his Tauranga heroics although he has taken 18 wickets at 38.50 ave since. A raw talent paceman who is slowly ironing things out at Test level.
But it’s his batting we’re here for and you’d be forgiven for overlooking this point but Ebadot’s bat provided one of the great moments in Blackcaps history recently: getting dismissed by Luteru Ross Taylor for the closing act of Rossco’s immaculate Test career.
That innings was also special for Ebadot because it provided his highest score yet. That score being 4, all of those runs achieved by a single edge past second slip and away to the fence off the bowling of Kyle Jamieson. The only boundary that the man has hit in Tests accounting for literally half of his total runs. No kidding. These are Ebadot Hossain’s scores in Test cricket:
0*, 0, 0*, 0, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0*, 0*, 0, 0, 0*, 0*, 0*, 0*, 0*, 4, 0*, 0*, 0, 0*, 0, 0*
To be fair to the guy, that’s a lot of not outs. Thirteen of them, all for zero. Have a geeze back at that list above and you’ll notice Ebadot is also seventh-equal for 0* scores which is absolutely remarkable for a bloke who has only had 24 innings. 24 innings from which he has scored 8 runs at an average of 0.72.
In his most recent match, the first Test between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, he mustered up his longest knock yet with 0 (20) lasting 46 minutes at the crease before he was run out at the non-striker’s end coming back for a second run. Mushfiqur Rahim was 175no at the other end. That effort must have impressed his coach and captain because, believe it or not, he was actually promoted up the order to ten for the second innings. Khaled Ahmed was the sorry fella who dropped below Ebadot. In that second innings Ebadot scored 0* off 5 deliveries whereas Khaled Ahmed got a golden duck. Khaled Ahmed’s Test batting: 11 innings, 4 runs, 0.50 average. In hindsight if you wanted to manufacture a sneaky wicket for Ross Taylor then there really was no better opportunity than against the Bangladeshi lower order.
Chris Martin’s legendary high score of 12 not out came against Bangladesh, funnily enough. Ebadot Hossain’s high score was also against New Zealand, as was his finest bowling performance. Plus he debuted against the Blackcaps back in 2019. Trent Boult’s high score was against Bangladesh too though that was a very different sort of high score, Trent Boult being the best number eleven in the game and all.
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