Will the Lefties be All Right in Test Cricket?

 by Indie Stone

Sanath Jayasuriya: greatest left-handed batsman
(image by N Chahal, Wikipedia)

When Test Cricket first started in 1877, the huge majority of players were right handed batsmen, and the lefties didn’t really exist. Because of this, only seven batted left-handed, and they were all primarily bowlers. This was until William Scotton opened the batting in 1884 at the Oval that Test Cricket had its first tip-order left-hander in the history of cricket.

Over the next 30 years, the huge minority of left-handers became a fairly stable group that would remain for nearly a century. If you were to look at the proportion of left-handed batsmen in cricket, which varies across different playing populations, it will usually fall into the  range of 15-25 percent (made up of natural left-handers and right-handers that bat left-handed).

The best estimate we see for left-handedness in the general population is approximately 11 percent of men and 9 percent of women, but by around 1990, the world started to see a steady increase overall in the amount of left-handers at the Test Level. The thing is, there wasn’t much rise in the level of the batsmen within cricket - because between 1990 and 2010, there was a sharp surge in the top-order innings played by left handers. But funnily enough, this only happened in certain countries, and interestingly, only for the opening batsmen.

This wasn’t due to the way the game was played or the tactics. Observing the performance figures, it seems that the left-handers generally just outperformed the right-handers at this period of time. The only reason they were selected is not because they were-left handed, but because they were very successful. In Test selection, Australia, South Africa and England had the biggest advantage with good left-handers. On the other end of the scale, the countries that had a little disadvantage were Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

In the first group, they were countries that dominated with fast bowlers. The second group are countries where spin bowling is the head of state. Only time will tell whether we’ll find a further increase of left-handed batsmen and how this will play out with different types of bowling.