Pappus' plane - cricket stats

This is Part 1 in a series of posts analysing first-class cricket in England in the 1800's. The long-term goal is to compare first-class cricketers (in England) from all eras.

1 - data
2 - classification of matches
3 - filling in the gaps
4 - bowlers
5 - batsmen
6 - bowlers across eras
7 - batsmen across eras
8 - all-rounders (across eras)
9 - wicket-keepers

But before we can start calculating averages and so forth, we run into the problem of missing data. The CricketArchive website has the most comprehensive scorecard database on the Internet, but there are some gaps, of varying importance.

- One match (Kent v Sussex, 1829) has only a result — no record of which individuals played, what they scored, or even what the teams scored.

- Four matches (1, 2, 3, 4) contain only team scores, and no individual player details. The last three of these scorecards involve only Cambridge teams.

- Four matches (1, 2, 3, 4) lack the names of players who did not bat. The second of these matches was a Gentlemen v Players game (from 1845).

- There is one further match, as late as 1877 (here), in which one player who batted is unknown. It is known that the player was a full replacement, and that he scored 7 not out, but who he was is a mystery.

- One match (here) does not contain the dismissals in the fourth innings.

While these gaps are mildly annoying, their overall effect is not serious — they are only 11 matches out of almost 4500 that were played in England in the 1800's.

More serious are gaps resulting from changes in scoring style. This concerns only the bowlers — the batting scores are complete, apart from the examples listed above.

The most serious problem is that, for a long time, catches were credited to the fieldsman but not to the bowler. Only bowled dismissals counted towards a bowler's wicket tally. The earliest match where bowlers did get credit for catches was in 1836, and it was only from the 1838 season that it became common practice. It was not always the case, however. Even in 1847 there was a match where bowlers did not get credit for catches.

Making calculation of bowling averages even more difficult is that runs conceded by bowlers were not regularly recorded until about 1854. For the next decade or so, about 8% of matches contain gaps of this sort. After 1867, these scores are almost always recorded, but there is still a trickle of gaps, with the last gaps appearing in a match in 1882.

Recording the number of overs bowled follows a very similar pattern to that of runs conceded, but there are 50 matches, mostly from the early 1840's, in which overs bowled were recorded but not runs conceded.

The plan, then, is to try to fill in the gaps with estimates. I'll start by making estimates of wickets taken, and then do likewise for runs conceded.