Cameos in ODIs: The Forgotten Efforts

Cricket followers remember hundreds,
fifties, 4/5 wicket hauls in ODI matches. Very few people remember the cameos
which often define the difference between a loss and win. In this article, I
will look at some of the memorable cameos which have been played over the
years.

What is a cameo? I have defined, based on
my own reading of the ODI game, a cameo to be an innings between 25 and 49. A
quick 17 could be considered but it is not often that this would result in a
win. On the other hand, a quick 30 will often mean a win or at least move the
lagging innings forward. A fifty is too long an innings, even though it might
have taken fewer than 20 balls.

For this article, I have set the bar quite
high, just so that I have very few innings to look at. I have only considered
cameos with a scoring rate of 266.7 (RpO of 16). Even lowering this to 250
doubles the number of innings. Thus we have only 14 innings to look at. The table
is ordered in two ways.

The first is in order of the scoring rate.

Franklin's was a recent effort in the World Cup. His cameo took New Zealand's
total from a sub-300 to a 350+ one and an easy win. Similarly, Maharoof's
effort moved a floundering innings to a flourishing one. Zaheer Khan's effort
gave India
some respectability at 283 but could still not prevent a Zimbabwean win. Shahid
Afridi's effort was in the chasing innings but still could not prevent the
Australian juggernaut. Azharuddin's innings was like Maharoof's and let India
win a close match.

It is surprising to note that four of these
excellent efforts, Imran Khan's and Shoaib Akhtar's efforts in addition to the
two already mentioned, have not helped their teams win. And three of these are
by Pakistani batsmen. Also, both second innings efforts proved insufficient.

The second table is ordered by the ratio of
the batsman's strike rate to the team's strike rate. It is important to realize
that a strike rate of 300 when the team has scored at 100 is far more valuable
than if the batsman scored at 200.

Afridi's 29 in 10 was in an innings which
finished at 142, a 464% effort, not enough to prevent defeat. Imran Khan's 25
off 9 was in an innings of 196 in 45, a 383% effort, again resulting in a loss.
Shoaib Akhtar's wonderful 43 in 16 was again for a forlorn cause, coming in at
80 for 9, chasing 248. The first three efforts, all Pakistani batsmen, ended up
on the losing side. Moin Khan's effort meant the difference between a loss and
win since Pakistan
won by 15 runs. Franklin's
was of course part of a big win.

I will later look at re-defining cameos with a
view to identifying only the winning innings, that too the prime-moving
efforts. That requires further analysis and a slight lowering of the bar.