What Makes Trott So Fascinating to Geeks

by Devanshu Mehta

I’ve harped on Trott a lot. I wrote three very long posts trying to present numbers that quantify the uneasiness he generates.

That is what makes him so interesting– the most popular metrics used to judge a cricketer fail when judging Jonathan Trott. Batting average, strike rate, gross runs, 100s, 50s, are an inadequate set. Those of us who pay attention to numbers have known about the inadequacy of traditional statistics, but Jonathan Trott personifies this struggle. Any time anyone says, what’s wrong with traditional stats? We can say, “Jonathan Trott,” and smile knowingly.

He has scored enough runs on average. He has scored at a decent stike rate on average. And he has scored a lot of runs in aggregate. But what the numbers don’t tell you is whether he scored the runs at the appropriate time, at the appropriate rate. And that’s why I keep writing about him.

And Misbah. I need to write about Misbah.

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