Talk:Batting average

message: Bradman's final average was 99.94. What is amazing about this is that in his final innings he needed just one run to take his average to 100, and was out for a duck (no runs). Incredible then that he didn't play again so that he could have made the career average of 100, clearly a different era meant a different attitude! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.63.199 (talk) 
:Actually he needed four runs from his final innings, since he finished with 6,996 Test runs from 80 innings, of which 10 were not out. Loganberry (Talk) 23:58, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bradman 

message: The time has come for the tables of leading batting averages to be revised.  Firstly by date.  Both games are very different nowadays from what they were decades ago.  Hence there should be tables for currently active players separate from those retired.  Baseball should have a separate tables for regular season and post-season, possibly a further split between championship series and world series, and possibly split again for semi-finals since the start of wild cards.  For cricket, one-day stats are equally as useful and relevant as full-term games nowadays, and there should be tables for first-class averages as well as test match.  A lot of table-making for somebody.  Guy 04:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead or alive? 

message: It seems clear that the international game has changed in the era of the ODI (the last thirty-five years).  A simple batting average is not adequate to compare test-match batsmen over a 120-year period.  The ICC stats, published here  do not seem to be totally satisfactory either.  One feature is the recent introduction of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh to the list of ten test-playing countries.  Some averages have been inflated by batsmen filling their boots against weak opposition - Sri Lanka too was a softer opponent when they were first admitted.  India and New Zealand also won very few test matches for many years, but that was at least forty years ago (until Geoffrey Boycott became the first losing England captain in New Zealand in 1978).  At the risk of falling foul of the Wikipedia strictures about original research, it should be possible for a proper statistician to analyse the numbers over the years to compare averages (for example, a correlation between average and tests/innings played for batsmen averaging over 50, or fitting the histograms to bell-shaped curves).  The ODI histogram is significantly narrower in the base than the test histogram.  I am inclined to think that the test averages of players active since the introduction of ODIs will converge in a similar manner to those of ODI batsmen.  I think one factor is that the modern batsmen who have sustained a high average are all exceptional players who have responded to the higher pressure of the game compared to, for example, timeless tests against South Africa in the old days, but then W.R. Hammond will have felt the pressure walking out on the Melbourne Cricket Ground.  There is plenty here for cricket-lovers to discuss - for my part all contributions made to the discussion in the spirit of the game are welcome, and will be taken seriously - call me an idiot if you like, as long as you supply supporting evidence.
Guy 05:13, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issues arising from Test and ODI batting averages 

message: As ardent a cricket fan as I am, I must say that I oppose the addition of these extensive tables of batting averages to this article. Firstly, I don't think Wikipedia is an appropriate place for lists of frequently updated sports stats - other sites that we link to do a better job of that. Secondly, this makes the article look cricket-heavy, at the expense of baseball. I strongly believe that fans of both sports gain an advantage by discussion of batting average being combined on one page, rather than split into two, as the statistics are historically related, and discussing them in the context of one another provides valuable insights and comparisons. Overloading the page with current cricket stats interferes with that insightful comparison and may make people start to agitate to split this article up into a separate article for each sport, which would be a tragedy. Therefore, I suggest we remove the additional tables, perhaps placing them on a separate page such as List of cricket batting averages. I'm listing this here for discussion rather than just removing the tables, because I suspect some people might feel differently, and I want everyone to know why I think they should be removed from this article. -dmmaus 22:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This change has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket, with consensus to move the extended tables of cricket averages to List of cricket batting averages. They should not be reinstated here. -dmmaus 04:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Addition of current player and ODI cricket batting averages

message: Baseball is far more popular (especially regarding this term) AND baseball is first alphabetically.  Really no excuse not to have baseball be the first thing you see. 63.145.155.66 17:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cricket ahead of Baseball?!

message: I'll try to reword it, but in case I fail (or don't get back to it) this note should let someone else know the problem exists.  The article claims that the increase in strikeouts and walks makes it more difficult to hit .400.  But the walks should actually make it easier to hit .400, because they pad the Plate Appearance total (which needs to be at least 502 in a 162 game season) without adding extra at-bats (which are the denominator in the batting average calculation).  As such, a higher walk rate increases the chances of hitting .400 by increasing the statistical noise within a small sample (the smaller number of at-bats).  The rewrite will need to note that while the increase in strikeouts makes the .400 average less likely, the increase in walks makes it more likely. --Llewdor 22:52, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Statistical Error in .400 Section

message: An anonymous editor has added a request for a citation for the statement that baseball averages descend directly from cricket averages. I have the citation at home, and will add it as soon as I get home from work. -dmmaus 22:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Turned out it wasn't in Koppett's History of Major League Baseball as I thought. I know I've read it explicitly somewhere - must have been in another book on baseball history. The link is pretty clear though. It's well established that Henry Chadwick invented the baseball batting average statistic (     and the aforementioned Koppett), and he was originally a cricket journalist and statistician, so was intimately familiar with cricket's batting average and other statistics. It's pretty much impossible that he couldn't have been influenced by his familiarity with cricket statistics when devising his baseball statistics, though making that deduction could be construed as "Original Research". Until a better cite turns up, I've cited a website with the closest thing to a direct statement I could find. -dmmaus 22:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation for relation between sports

message: The example given batting averages being inflated by not-outs about Phil Tufnell is a pretty weak example of the point that is trying to be made. The issue with his average is not that it was inflated by not-outs, but that he was only out once and trying to take a statistical average over one sample point is not going to produce a reliable result. i.e. the issue with Phil Tufnell is the same issue as somebody having played one innings and scoring 200 then having an average of 200. I'm not what value this paragraph adds to the article, but if it does stay then removing the example or fining a better one would be a good idea. 150.101.103.206 (talk) 03:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phil Tufnell example is weak 

message: The Mendoza Line is named for Mario Mendoza. The version of the story that I understand is that one Sunday, George Brett walked into the Royals clubhouse and picked up the paper (newspapers on Sunday used to publish the batting statistics of every player in the league with a minimum number of plate appearances) and said, "So, let's see who's below the Mendoza Line this week," and the name stuck.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimpoz (talk • contribs) 17:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mendoza Line 

message: In average&redirect=no&oldid=228139725 the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :) 
* "BaseballRefBattingTitles" :
** 
** 
DumZiBoT (talk) 12:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot report : Found duplicate references ! 

message: ""1920-1944 – A player had to appear in 100 games to qualify. The lone exception was 1938: By order of the AL president, Jimmie Foxx (.349, in 149 games and 565 at-bats) was awarded the batting title over rookie Taffy Wright (.350, in 100 games and only 263 at-bats).""
If you only had to play in 100 games then Jimmie Foxx who played in 149 games would have qualified. I have heard this story before but I don't know where the mistake is. --Npnunda (talk) 16:07, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  this makes no sense 

message: This section seems very incongruous in an article devoted to batting averages rather than overall tallies.  The edits seems to indicate that the table is relevant to assessing a batsman's relative status.  So what?  This is not the subject matter of the article.  If that is the purpose of the table then (a) it should be deleted and moved to an article which is devoted to assessing Test crcket batsmen's status (if such a thing exists and can be written in a non-partisan manner).  Or otherwise (b) delete it as the data is already recorded under the relevant section of the Tect cricket records article here.  Or failing that (c) reformat the table for the present article and describe it as something like "Leading averages for batsmen who have scored 9,000+ Test runs" (in which case it will need to be re-ordered).  But at the moment the table looks out of place.  For the purposes of this article I propose either option (b) or instead option (c).  I note that the baseball section of the article does not have an analagous table for all-time runs scored, as clearly that is not the subject matter of the article.  Kind regards--Calabraxthis (talk)  11:52, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Based on the arguments presented above and given that my suggestion of deletion has not triggered any discussion or adverse reaction, I will now delete this section from the article.  Kind regards--Calabraxthis (talk)  16:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Leading Test batting averages ranked by career total runs scored

message: I must be missing something really obvious. 
:Career records for batting average are usually subject to a minimum qualification of 20 innings played, in order to exclude batsmen who have not played enough games for their skill to be reliably assessed. 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 four other players have averages over 60, this is an outstanding statistic. 
Yet the table in this article and the one in the linked article both list Bradman and just three others — Pollock, Headley and Sutcliffe.  Who is the fourth?  It seems to me it should say 
:Given that a career batting average over 50 is exceptional, and that only three other players have averages over 60 (and none over 61), this is an outstanding statistic.
YBG (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 00:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It was changed from three to four two and a half years ago when Mike Hussey was going great guns he has since returned to Earth and it's back to three. I have made the alteration. --Jpeeling (talk) 12:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That explains it!  Thanks!  YBG (talk) 23:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Career average over 60 

message: Starting a discussion here due to recent reverts to the article.  There seems to be a disagreement on which should come first.  I see a discussion further up on this page on this topic, which also references earlier discussions which I can't seem to locate.
While I usually like the concept of alphabetical formatting; in this case, I support leaving the article with Cricket first for two reasons.  First, that's how the article has been structured for quite some time with no issues; unless there's good reason to change it, the sequence should be left with Cricket first.  Second, and more importantly, I support leaving Cricket first because chronologically that is the most logical sequence; the use in baseball was based off of the concepts created for cricket - so cricket should come first to give the correct background. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully this doesn't escalate into a petty dispute. The reasons above are perfectly reasonable; it should stay as is, imo. Zeng8r (talk) 22:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sequence: cricket or baseball first? 

message: Hello. Having read the section on cricket averages it mentions that there are 4 other players (excluding the Don) with an average over 60, which is immediately contradicted by the list of leading averages, where only 3 other players have an average over 60. A previous discussion took place further up the page (several years ago) mentioning this, and I assume something was changed, but over time it appears to be have been changed back.
I edit to make the required changes.Scoops81 (talk) 10:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cricket averages over 60 Part II 

message: Why are hypothetical players only referred to in a male sense? I am not referring to the term 'batsmen'. There are lots of instances where this article uses 'he' and 'his' where 'they' and 'their' would suffice, and be more accurate, as lots of females also have betting averages. 
I am only concerned with the cricket section of the article, and the baseball section seems to be fine in this regard.
:The word 'he' means both males and/or females when the context allows, eg. see meaning 2 at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/he Mmitchell10 (talk) 21:28, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Females don't count?  

message: As at 24 February 2016, Adam Voges appears to qualify for inclusion in the cricket portion of the article with a batting average of 95.50.  However, given that Voges has only completed 14 innings (albeit played 21 innings), and instinct and conservatism tell me that perhaps it is statistically premature to draw any conclusions, I have only added in a very brief line of text.  
I have also not updated the table which appears to be constructed on the basis of a minimum of 20 completed innings, rather than innings played (and which I note is different to the approach taken by Cricinfo).  Kind regardsCalabraxthis (talk)  03:10, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adam Voges 

message: Cobb's career BA was originally reported here as .366, just 8 points ahead of 2nd place Hornsby's.  It (Cobb's career BA) was adjusted to .367 by Ryk72 (talk | contribs) at 16:00, 2 December 2015 to reflect the variance reported by leading statistics-mongers.  See the Ty Cobb page for a full explanation of this variance, due partly to a suspected error of double-reporting a game. I completed this adjustment by fixing the delta over Hornsby:  Cobb's .367 leads Hornsby's .358 by 9 points. Bookerj (talk) 19:01, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ty Cobb's career BA lead over Rogers Hornsby 

message: Discussion on splitting this article at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cricket#Batting_average Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:57, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion on splitting 

message: I believe this articles should be split, as they are two different sports using the same term, and so the article is really just two articles in one. No need for this combined articles, as it's likely readers will be looking for either cricket or baseball information, but probably not both. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:56, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Well done, now for the process of moving all the links! I've edited / requested edits of a few major templates that link here to see how much that cuts things down, but it may be a major project! Spike 'em (talk) 20:20, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: There are approx 23k transclusions of both  and . The first has a hard-coded link to Batting average (I've requested this is changed to BA (cricket)), but the latter uses parameters to link to BA, so the individual articles will need to be changed (for batters only, as pitchers tend to have a different set of stats).Spike 'em (talk) 22:17, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split discussion 

message: I notice on wikipedia typically when there are regional variations on a thing, alphabetical order is used to provide objectivity. Why is Cricket going first here?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:0:231B:40F2:1F84:BD58:A2D9 (talk) 01:49, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Chronological order perhaps? HiLo48 (talk) 03:13, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This is discussed above Mmitchell10 (talk) 21:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shouldn't Baseball/Cricket be in alphabetical order?