[Arnab]

I want to know who has scored the most pecentage of team total in either a 4th innings or 3rd innings (team second innings) in a losing cause, i.e., the team lost all the wickets and lost the match but this guy almost always is the battling hero.

Instead of just averages, I am thinkng percentage of team total because that, in my opinion, lends more credibility to the term "third/fourth innings gladiator" (for a lost cause nonetheless).

Choosing just the lost matches was also deliberate, because it's only in these cases all the batsmen in the team played and were dismissed (not counting declared innings, but they are exceedingly rare).

I guess we can call this the "the batsman least likely to fold and likely to contribute the most to the team total when the team is facing defeat" stat. In a sense, he really IS the key batsman of the team; he is the one who delivers the most in crunch time, when the going really gets tough, even when the team loses the match.

In other words, using an example, when Brian Lara is going to bat in the team's second innings, on average he is likely to score 18.92% of his team's runs at an average of around 39, even (and especially) if his team loses.

He might do even better in the team 2nd innings when his team wins. But we are not counting those here.

The tally so far for some well-known batsmen (player with better percentage placed higher)

Donald Bradman (AUS): 23.66% (11 innings) 558 runs @ 50.12
Brian Lara (WI): 18.98% (41 innings) 1621 runs @ 39.53
Habibul Bashar (BD): 18.72% (25) 857 runs @ 34.28
Sunil Gavaskar (IND): 17.27% (34) 1299 runs @ 38.20
Alan Border (AUS): 16.55% (46) 1589 runs @ 40.74
Sachin Tendulkar (IND): 15.54% (31) 989 runs @ 31.90
Javed Miandad (PAK): 15.16% (23) 730 runs @ 31.74
Gary Sobers (WI): 13.21% (24) 717 runs @ 29.87
Rahul Dravid (IND): 11.47% (24) 566 runs @ 23.58


[Edited on 15-11-2003 by Arnab]