A graphical analysis of New South Wales v Western Australia, Pura Cup 2004-05, Sydney, played 2-4 November 2004. by Jack Solock

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Scorecard:

New South Wales v Western Australia

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A graphical analysis of New South Wales v Western Australia, Pura Cup 2004-05, Sydney, played 2-4 November 2004.

 

There are hundreds of domestic first class games played every year in the ten major Test match playing countries, and most of them are as memorable as yesterday's newspaper. However, there are a handful of matches which, for one reason or another, become legend.

 

Some recent examples are: Central Province defeated Southern Province in the 2003-04 Sri Lanka Ten Sports Interprovincial Tournament at Kandy in January 2004 (http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/f/47/f47238.html) by scoring 513 for the highest fourth innings score ever to win a match; Essex lost to Glamorgan in the 2004 English Frizzell County Championship at Chelmsford in September 2004 (http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/f/47/f47648.html) after scoring 642 in the first innings of the match, the highest opening innings score ever to lose a match; and Canterbury lost to Auckland in the 2002-03 New Zealand State Championship at Christchurch in March 2003 (http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/f/46/f46720.html) after Canterbury batsman Peter Fulton scored 301*, one of the few times in cricket history that a team had lost after a batsman had scored 300.

 

The victory of New South Wales over Western Australia falls into this category. What sets it apart is an amazing 10th wicket partnership of 219 runs between Dominick Thornely and Stuart MacGill, the seventh highest 10th wicket partnership in the history of 1st Class cricket, and the second highest in the history of Australian 1st class cricket.

 

 

The graph is instructive in that it shows a powerful 419 run 1st innings for NSW, an exact mirror image of what a 400 run innings might look like. The Blues were on the carpet at 165/8, and down and out at 200/9. But here, amazingly, Thornely took the game by the scruff of the neck and won it. MacGill played a crucial, if silent role. Of the first hundred of the partnership, MacGill scored exactly 1. He opened up and scored 26 more in the next 119. By the time the carnage had ended, WA didn't know what had hit them, and were well and truly demoralized, as the rest of the graph aptly demonstrates. For his part, Thornely not only got his highest first class score (261*), but also hit 11 sixes, which broke the record in a first class match in Australia of 10 by the late David Hookes in a Sheffield Shield match for South Australia against Victoria at Adelaide in February 1986 (http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/f/35/f35765.html) (an innings in which Hookes scored 243).

 

Highest 10th wicket partnerships in 1st class history:

307--A.F Kippax and J.E.H Hooker, New South Wales v Victoria: Melbourne 1928-29 
249--C.T. Sarwaite and S.N. Banerjee, Indians v Surrey: London 1946
235--F.E. Wooley and A. Fielder, Kent v Worcestershire: Stourbridge 1909
233--A.K. Sharma and Maninder Singh, Delhi v Bombay: Bombay 1991-92
230--R.W. Nicholls and W. Roche, Middlesex v Kent: London 1899
228--R. Illingworth and K. Higgs, Leicestershire v Northamptonshire: Leicester 1977
219-- D.J Thornely and S.C.G. MacGill, New South Wales v Western Australia: Sydney 2004-05

 

Of these matches the team with the 10th wicket partnership won 4 and drew 3. All the big partnerships except Sharma-Maninder were 1st innings partnerships.

 

Sources for this article:
Alex Brown--Sydney Morning Herald
cricketarchive scorecard archive
Wisden Cricketer's Almanack--2004 Edition

 

(Article: Copyright © 2004 Jack Solock)