Beyond stats: How Glenn Maxwell’s 201 stacks up against Kapil Dev’s 175
Glenn Maxwell’s ‘big show’ on Tuesday night revived the memories of Kapil Dev’s 175 not out against Zimbabwe in the 1983 World Cup. It immediately started a debate whether Maxwell’s unbeaten 201 against Afghanistan was the greatest knock in ODI cricket history, even better than Kapil’s. Statistically, it’s always easy to determine but not without the risk of reducing those innings to mere numbers, taking away all the charm and magic.
Let’s examine other factors that separate a good innings from a great one.
The Innings
While Kapil’s 175 came in the first innings, Maxwell scored that double hundred in chase. There is a general consensus that chasing a target is tougher than setting a target. For example, in the ODI cricket history, 2,539 hundreds have been scored in 47,001 matches while batting first – an average of 18.50 innings per hundred.
In chases, only 1,886 hundreds have been scored in 42,360 innings – an average of 22.46 innings per hundred. Also, Maxwell’s 201 was the first-ever double hundred in the second innings of a men’s ODI. In comparison, Kapil’s 175 was also the highest individual ODI score then.
And we need to take into account how rare individual hundreds were in the 1980s. In the 1983 World Cup, for example, only 8 hundreds were scored in 27 matches. The ongoing edition has already seen 32 hundreds in 40 matches.
The Situation
When Kapil came to the crease, India were tottering at 9 for 4 and they kept losing wickets after that.
