Batting: All County Cricketers Rated

This page contains expected County Championship Division One batting averages for all County Cricketers to have i) played during 2019; and ii) batted in at least 20 completed innings since 2016.

Performances in the Second Eleven Championship, County Championship and Test Cricket are included, though each performance is weighted according to the level being played at (so averaging 30 in Test Cricket is much better than averaging 40 in the Second Eleven Championship).

To give a better indication of current ability, and to partly adjust for age, ratings are weighted more heavily towards recent performances.

Ratings are shown if each player were playing in Division One – this ensures bowlers are compared on an apples-to-apples basis.

This version includes matches up to 29th September 2019. For an update, see the 2021 County Championship preview, which contains much more information about each player.

Top batsmen

Full list

Key findings

Zak Crawley is an odd Test selection

• Expected Division 1 average under 30
• Only averaged 34 in 2019, after averaging 32 in Division 2 in 2018.
• Even separately adjusting for age (he’s only 21), it’s hard to argue he’s currently better than Dent & Rhodes.

Ollie Pope is practically too good to be true

• Expect his average to come down – he can’t possibly have an expected average exceeding 60.
• Only 42 completed innings – barely a sufficient sample size to be included in the top 50 players.
• Still, he’s easily worth a Test place.

Very few English batsmen are capable of consistently averaging over 40 in Division 1

• Cook, Ballance, Northeast and Brown are the four England qualified batsmen who would be more likely than not to average over 40.

There’s more decent English openers than you may have been told elsewhere

Keaton Jennings, Mark Stoneman, Chris Dent and Will Rhodes could cover Burns and Sibley. And, if he could be coaxed out of Chelmesford, Cook.

England selectors might well be relieved that Cook has retired – imagine having to choose two out of Cook, Sibley and Burns to open the batting.

What do you think?

No doubt there’s plenty of themes and trends from the data that I’ve not mentioned – please do drop me a line through the contact page or @edmundbayliss on Twitter and let me know what you think.