The Pakistani Fountain of Youth in Numbers: a Chart on Catching Talent Young
by Devanshu Mehta
Recently Jarod Kimber was gushing over the new Pakistan quick Junaid Khan. In doing so, he said that in addition to flair and skill, it is the youth of new Pakistan bowlers that makes them so appealing. Of course, I’m paraphrasing. Jarrod never says anything so dull.
This got me thinking about how early Pakistan cricketers start in International cricket. Anecdotally, it seemed Pakistan had the most young debutants. This led me to StatsGuru. Which led to this chart (click the chart for an awesome large version)– the bars represent % of total debutants who were under 22, and there’s one bar per decade, per team:
Debuts Under Age 22 (as % of Total Debuts) by Decade in ODI cricket
I started by just getting the per team numbers for all 40 years of ODI cricket. This was great, and demonstrated the same trend (younger debuts in the sub-continent, older in England/Aus), but I wanted to see how these numbers changed over time. So I pulled the numbers separately for each decade of One Day cricket.
A few points that stand out for me:
- Pakistan and Sri Lanka have consistently favored youth. The remarkable thing is that their numbers remain high regardless of the fortunes of their team.
- English players have historically taken time to prove themselves worthy of an international cap, until the last decade. Perhaps this is a reason for their recent success?
- West Indies has oscillated dramatically between starting older and starting young.
- Do teams turn to youth when they are struggling? This is obviously the case with Bangladesh and Zimbabwe– I didn’t include their data here– but how about other teams? What I was trying to get at by splitting the data in to four decades.
- In countries like England, there is actually something going on at the other end of the spectrum. Andrew Strauss was effectively forced out of the side at age 34. A combination of the under-22 and over-34 problem is why the total centuries by the entire current English Test side is less than Tendulkar+Dravid*.
- Finally, it doesn’t help to compare 1970’s statistics to other decades. It was the first decade of ODI cricket, and most “debuts” were actually established players. It does make sense, however, to compare 1970’s numbers between teams. Even in that early decade, Pakistan is substantially ahead of the rest.
I also pulled overall (40 year) numbers for Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, but I don’t consider them interesting. They have such a poor record that they have no choice but to turn to the teenagers. If you’re interested, Bangladesh is 66% under 22 debuts, and Zimbabwe is 51%.
* And talent, of course.
Deep Backward Point 
A really valid documentation done by you here on this intriguing aspect of the game, which as much as being understated esp. regarding Pakistan Cricket, has often not been put through stats and graphs like you have done here. As evident here, the subcontinent teams have been in the helm of throwing the young guns in the deep end whereas the acclaimed pioneers of the game, Aussies and the Poms, being at the other end of the spectrum here.
Couple of points I would like to add to the ones which you mentioned. One being the fact that the Aussie Sheffield Shield and the whole domestic structure hardly gives any leverage in this scenario since most of them come through to the mainstream after years of maturing in the setup, with so many examples in front of us in the modern era, esp. our time span i.e. 90s, 00s. I think the only exceptions in recent years have been Clarke, Piggy Smith, with them starting in the early 20s. So I guess the whole dynamics of the domestic setup and their selection system is too embedded as regards Aus, that we may not see any improvement in the trends of young blood being put in the international level in near future.
Two, the shelf-life of a cricketer at the highest level is indeed a very engrossing element when we view this. As you mention the subcontinent players tend to get longer life spans due to their debuting as literally boys at the men stage, fair enough but you see, the probability of most of them playing consistently on that level due to continuous performance and especially physical sustainability is usually less than say, the Aussies and the English. Case in point, most of the recent Australian greats – McGrath, Warne, Steve Waugh, Langer, Gilly etc – had career spans of 13-15 years on average and yet they managed to play 100+ Tests and 250-300+ ODIs, which if taken by subcontinental standards would have taken easily more 15 years, especially the bowlers. Not that this factor should take any credit away from the subcontinental breed emerging in their teens on the big stage, but if the success+survival ratio of international cricketers would be ascertained, I’m pretty sure they would fall behind a bit compared to the colonial masters or the ‘fitter’ civilization of cricketers.
Excellent points, Masuud. I don’t mean to demean the hard-work that an Australian or English player has to go through to make it to the team, but there is something intangibly exciting about the youth that shoots up through the sub-continental ranks.