Cricket: The double-ton men

By RICHARD BOOCK

New Zealand might have ended the calendar year in full retreat but the same could not be said of the rest of the world, and especially in terms of test cricket's most productive batsmen.

One of the more difficult aspects to appreciate when watching the New Zealand team in action is that batting has not yet become an impossibility, and that scoring runs consistently is far more than a pipe dream.

A sobering point is that, in a week that saw New Zealand fall apart as soon as Pakistan's pace attack began digging deep, runs aplenty were being scored around the world, topping off one of the most batting-friendly years in test history.

The duel between Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden and Brian Lara for top gun was one of the more fascinating sideshows as the curtain fell on the year.

And what a year - 14 double centuries, six batsmen scoring more than 1000 runs, a hatful of world records, one triple hundred, a Bradmanesque performance; everything but the partridge and pear tree.

South African opener Herschelle Gibbs can be blamed for starting it all after carving up the Pakistan test attack back in January at Newlands, his 228 setting the scene for what might yet be remembered as the Year of the Bat.

An astonishing 14 double hundreds, and an incredible 40 since the start of the decade. In the entire 1990s, only 42 were scored, and the numbers start to decline the further you look back.

Australian captain-in-waiting Ponting led the onslaught with three of them, becoming the first batsman in test history to score three in a calendar year since the Don strutted his stuff against England in 1930.

Bradman scored 254, 334 and 232, a record that lasted almost 74 years before Ponting equalled the mark with 206 against the West Indies, 242 against India at Adelaide and 257 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

It was a champagne time for Ponting, who was also the leading run-scorer for the year with 1503, the most scored since a bloke named Viv Richards helped himself to a record 1710 in 1976.

In terms of the double-centuries, the 14 were split between Ponting (3), Indian right-hander Rahul Dravid (2), Lara (2), South African captain Graeme Smith (2) and Hayden, Gibbs, Stephen Fleming, Marcus Trescothick and South Africa's Jacques Rudolph.

Rudolph's was significant in that it was on his test debut, against Bangladesh at Chittagong.

Of particular note was Hayden's world-record 380 against Zimbabwe at Perth in October, although many would argue that Smith's astonishing effort against England, when he posted back-to-back double centuries, was hard to beat.

Smith's effort at Birmingham and Lord's, where he became the first South African to score double centuries in consecutive tests, and the first South African to score a double century at Lord's, was viewed as the start of a new dawn for his team.

The only previous touring batsmen to have scored 200 or more at Lord's are Australians Bradman and Bill Brown, New Zealand's Martin Donnelly, West Indian Gordon Greenidge and Pakistan's Mohsin Khan.

Smith's 277 at Edgbaston was the highest test score by a South African, and he also joined a select club comprising Bradman, Wally Hammond, and Indian Vinod Kambli as the only batsmen to have scored back-to-back double centuries. As it happened, Bradman and Hammond managed it twice.

Then there was Dravid, the Indian top-order batsman who scored two double centuries during the year, one against New Zealand at Ahmedabad in October, and a sparkling 233 to set up a win against Australia last month in Adelaide. Dravid's effort meant he has now scored four double-centuries, equalling Sunil Gavaskar's Indian record.

Bradman, with an incredible 12 double-centuries, leads the world, followed by Hammond (7), Javed Miandad (6), Marvan Atapattu (5) Lara (5), Len Hutton (4), Greg Chappell (4), Zaheer Abbas (4), Gavaskar (4), Greenidge (4) and Dravid (4).

Lara added two double centuries to his already impressive CV, dining out on the Sri Lankans at St Lucia when he posted 209, and then defying the South Africans last month at Johannesburg, when he scored 202.

Lara could also reflect on a massive year, finishing behind Ponting with 1334 runs, only 22 more than Hayden (1312), but well clear of Smith (1198), Gibbs (1156) and England left-hander Trescothick (1003). On the other hand, six players scored more than 1000 runs in 2002 as well, although from then on things begin tapering off.

You have to go back to the 1930s to find the previous golden era for double tons, when 28 were scored in 89 tests. But the difference in those days was a chap named Bradman - who scored 10 of them.

By countries Australia: 4

380 - M. Hayden v Zimbabwe, Perth, October

257 - R. Ponting v India, Melbourne, December

242 - Ponting v India, Adelaide, December

206 - Ponting v West Indies, Trinidad, April

South Africa: 4

277 - G. Smith v England, Birmingham, July

259 - Smith v England, Lord's, July-August

228 - H. Gibbs v Pakistan, Cape Town, January

222no - J. Rudolph, v Bangladesh, Chittagong, April

India: 2

233 - R. Dravid v Australia, Adelaide, December

222 - Dravid v New Zealand, Ahmedabad, October

West Indies: 2

209 - B. Lara v Sri Lanka, St Lucia, June

202 - Lara v South Africa, Johannesburg, December

New Zealand: 1

274no - S. Fleming v Sri Lanka, Colombo, April

England: 1

219 - M. Trescothick v South Africa, The Oval, September