The Ashes Blog

I thought it would be interesting to do a statistical comparison of the two sides to see how they will fare against each other, statistically speaking. What I’ve done is add up the batting averages for all 11 players in each side to give a team batting average. I’ve then added up the bowling averages for Australia and England, and this gives us a team bowling average. To the Australian batting averages I added the England team bowling average to give a final total (and vice versa for England). So if a side has a very good, and therefore low, bowling average then they won’t be adding too many runs to the oppositions total team average, so it seems to me like a fair comparison:

Australia’s team batting average is far better than that of England. In the Aussie lineup there are 3 players who average over 50, whilst England has just the one in young Alastair Cook. Even in the tail the Australians look far stronger, with Brett Lee at number 9 averaging over 21.

In the bowling lineup, Australia once again has the edge over England. The visitors of course have 5 recognised bowlers available, whereas Australia has just the 4. So to even things up I’ll take out the English bowler with the highest bowling average, Ashley Giles. But that only brings England back to 123, compared to Australia’s 97. Spread across just 4 bowlers, that’s quite a significant difference.

So what can we get from all of this? Statistically, Australia should win comfortably, with a total score of 544 compared to England’s 448. But then again, they should have done that last year, and we all know what happened then.