Who is the greatest match-winner in Tests among current batsmen?

Contribution to team’s total in wins

The flip side of the above methodology is that being the top scorer does not necessarily mean that the concerned batsman has contributed more towards victory. To know how much a batsman has contributed towards his team’s victory, let’s look at the number of times a batsman has scored more than 40% of the team runs in victories.

(The runs scored through extras have been ignored here).

The legendary left-hander leads the way once again, having scored more than 40% of the runs in 7 wins. No other batsman even comes close to him; Amla is the only other batsman who has done it more than once.

Even by the law of percentages, Sangakkara sits comfortably at the top having scored 40% the runs in 13.5% of the wins.

Percentage of centuries that resulted in victories

Calculating the number of centuries that result in victories is one of the easiest ways of standardizing the match-winning ability of a batsman. Going by the numbers, Sangakkara tops the chart with 19 match-winning centuries. But by percentage, De Villiers leads the way with 71.42% of his victories resulting in victories.

*Minimum 20 centuries

Percentage of wins in which a batsman scored a century

Deciphering the number of centuries a batsman has scored in his team’s victories is another parameter that is useful in measuring the batsman’s match-winning capacity. Pakistan’s Younis Khan has scored a century in 40.5% of his team’s victories. David Warner trails him with 40%.

Sangakkara is third in the list, having accomplished it in 36.5% of the games.

Impact in wins

This is by far the best way to analyse the match-winning ability of a batsman. As mentioned above, a great batsman is not necessarily a great match-winner. A team should depend on a batsman to a great extent for him to be termed a genuine match-winner. So how do you find out how much a team depends on a batsman?

If a batsman has a very high average in wins, that means he has contributed a lot to his team’s wins. But there are batsmen who have had high averages in defeats too. What this signifies is that, despite the gargantuan numbers, their innings didn’t have much impact in the outcome of the game.

So the difference between average in wins and average in defeats would give you the impact a batsman has on his team, for a higher average in wins and lower average in defeats would indicate that the team has been reliant on that batsman’s performance.

David Warner of Australia, for an example, averages 55.02 in wins and 43.36 in defeats. This clearly shows that his batting, despite taking a downward path in defeats, didn’t have a major impact in the results of the matches.

But let’s not make it too simple.

Another factor to consider is how the team as a whole has fared. Averaging higher as a batsman when the team averages higher cannot be considered a trait of a match-winner.

So a more efficient way of calculating the impact is by finding the difference between the average of the batsman and the team in wins and defeats separately and finding the difference between the values obtained for both wins and defeats.

From the above chart it is obvious that David Warner has had the least impact in his team’s performance. He averages 43.36 in defeats while his team averages 24.53. This elucidates the fact that his batting doesn’t have a great impact on the outcome of the game.

The Pakistani right-hander has the highest impact; there is a difference of 20.9 in the difference between his average and the team’s in wins and defeats. He averages 32.3 higher than his team in wins and the difference falls down to 11.36 in defeats, which shows that he has a tremendous impact on the outcome of a match.

Thus far, we have looked at eight different factors that govern a batsman’s match-winning ability. An easy way of finding out the winner is to add up everything and find out who has the highest total.

But not all eight factors are equal. For instance, Warner has scored a century in 40% of Australia’s Test wins, but his impact in the results has been very low.

So to find the weighted average match-winning ability of a batsman, let’s first find out the mean of each record and then compute the percentage of deviation.

Now, we know the average numbers, so let’s compute the percentage of deviation from the mean value for each batsmen. The percentage of deviation is calculated by dividing a batsman’s record by the mean value and multiplying the answer by 100.

*Note that certain players have a 0 deviation, since the concerned record was too low to be reckoned as a sufficient sample space.

Now that we have the percentage of deviation, let’s assign different weights to different records according to their importance, and find the weighted average of the percentages.

Below is the list of records in the descending order of importance to compute the match-winning ability of a batsman. I have allocated a number starting from 8 in the descending order to each record to find out the weightage each record would have in the final value to be calculated.

Your priority list might vary, and if you want to find out who the greatest match-winner is according to your list, all you need to do is find the product of each record and its weightage and divide by 100. Then add the result for each record to find the weighted average.

So according to my list, here is what I got.

Predictably, Sangakkara establishes his status as the greatest match-winner among current batsmen. But what surprises me is Younis Khan’s underrated match-winning ability. The world waxes eloquent about Sangakkara, Amla and De Villiers but the accomplishments of the Pakistani great are not paid much heed.

In a brittle line up, the Pakistani stalwart’s achievements should be cherished. Carrying a team’s batting single-handedly is an enormous task. Many greats have succumbed to the pressure of doing so.

Sangakkara, despite not getting the amount of accolades he merits, has somehow let the world know of his prowess. But Younis Khan still spends his life in limbo. When will the world recognize the Pakistani’s incredible match-winning ability?