Simple puzzle (simple if you get it)

What does this load of dead statistics mean?

Incidentally, I think the solution to this puzzle is of more than statistical interest. (Though you know what Darrell Huff said about statistics ....)


ENGLAND

AJ Strauss - caught 38
AN Cook - caught 26
IJL Trott - caught or run out 80
KP Pietersen - caught 51
PD Collingwood - caught 35
IR Bell - caught 26
MJ Prior - caught 37
GP Swann - caught 36
SCJ Broad - caught 29
JM Anderson - caught (or not out) 14
MS Panesar - caught 8

extras- ?

Total (all out): 380 (plus extras)



AUSTRALIA

(??????)

Total (all out): 417 (plus extras)

England bowling:

Anderson: 2-112
Broad: 3-90
Swann: 2-80
Panesar: 3-135

Most likely result from head-to-head tests to date?

Anderson has to be not out.

tac is banging on the right rails, but it's a bit more exact than that.

I did say "statistical". ...

Anderson might well be the one to be not out. In which case his score is presumably a few less.

Mind you .... Cardiff ....

most likely as in average runs etc plus most common form of dismissal etc . .

Yup. Specifically, currently v Oz.


Would be a sobering thought for a Pom .... if you didn't know stats is to likely outcome what Dinosaurs are to prediction. Can give you some indicators, and that's it. Doesn't usually explain the Gulf Stream Drift, or Climate Change. Or the next rainfall.

Who was it said "History is Bunk"? Bell and (on a bad day) Jimmy, apart that is.

And to get the Brit "bowling analyses", I had to take av wickets per match, not innings, adding the current average per wicket.

Might indicate the Poms will have difficulty taking 20 wickets .... but:

a. we knew that
b. there were always other bowlers (usually five) taking wickets in an Oz innings
c. "History is bunk", or as Darrell Huff put it, ....