England v India 2014: Was Bhuvneshwar Kumar deprived of a deserving MoM at Lord's?

Bhuvneshwar Kumar celebrates after dismissing Stuart Broad

What goes into choosing a Man-of-the-match (MoM) for a Test match? Is it the impact over the entire match or a match-winning innings, or a sheer display of brilliance? Most of the decisions we have seen over the years seemed to agree with us, but, once in a while, they seem off the mark.

In the aftermath of the excruciating Investec first Test, the second match at Lord’s promised a result: one that we feared would go England’s way given India’s recent record overseas and, of course, their domestic misadventure against the same opponents. So, it did come as a surprise when India won after 28 long years, and that too at Lord’s.

It may have been the weakest English performance at home against India in all these years, or whatever it is that is thrown at us (this article is not to bash the apologists, so I will end it right here). The fact is that this Indian team had been battered, bruised and our faces rubbed in the dirt, outside of India. So much so that this was, without a question, a breakthrough performance brought to fruition by some brilliant individual shows.

Lord’s Test – Performances in contention for a MoM award

The first that stood out was, obviously, Ajinkya Rahane’s resolute century, which retired England off-spinner Graeme Swann thought deserved the MoM recognition. On the other hand, there was Ishant Sharma with his intimidating 7/74, which did win the Man-of-the-Match award.

And then there was the Bhuvaneshwar Kumar show: In the first innings, the 23-year-old came in with India languishing at 147-7. He scored 36 as a part of a priceless partnership of 90 runs with Rahane. With the ball, he took 6 wickets at a time when batting was easier than on day one. He wasn’t done. On his next turn with the bat, India were just 211 runs ahead and in some danger of losing the plot and, in turn, the match. His 52 alongside Jadeja's 68 put the visitors in a commanding position. In all, he scored 88 runs in the match and took 6 wickets.

The man influenced three innings, saved two dismal batting performances and then picked up six wickets.The selectors of the MoM award, though, were swayed by Ishant’s performance whose impact was restricted to one innings and, to add to that, the English batsmen gifted him the wickets, frankly speaking.

How do you judge the Man-of-the-match?

An argument as the above should be good enough, but Bhuvneshwar’s performance actually goes beyond that. If one were to look at how many times an all-rounder takes 5 wickets or more and scores 50 runs or more in a winning cause over the past ten years, it has happened 37 times, which is less than 4 times a year (we compared only the top 8 Test teams with each other). In an away game, it’s just 10 times. So, what Bhuvi did happens once a year.

If one only looks at the Indian performances alone, the last time someone did that was Irfan Pathan at Perth in 2008 when he took 5/117, made 74 runs and deservedly won the MoM award.

Surprisingly, India does pretty well in that regard (especially in away games)

ALL ROUND PERFORMANCES IN A WINING TEST MATCH IN PAST 10 YEARS
COUNTRY	TOTAL	HOME	AWAY
Australia	10	7	3
England	10	9	1
India	7	4	3
South Africa	4	2	2
Sri Lanka	2	0	0
West Indies	1	1	0
Pakistan	3	2	1
New Zealand	0	0	0

That doesn’t discount good all-round performances in losing causes or, even, saving causes. But, if one does create a stringent litmus Test like we did and measured only those good all-round performances that helped the team win, then India does fare well.

Have all-rounders got the deserved recognition in the last decade?

The question is how do the all-rounders fare when it comes to winning the MoM? In 2 of the 37 cases, two players managed to achieve the feat in the same match, i.e., two all-rounders took 5 or more wickets and made 50 or more runs for the winning team.

So, out of the 35 remaining, 19 MoM awards were given to all-rounders: not bad, one would think, but that’s not necessarily the case. Of the remaining 16, there are atleast 8 instances where we think the recognition could have gone to the all-rounder. Case in point, in the match at Kolkata against West Indies last November, Rohit Sharma made 177 and got the MoM. In the same match, Ravichandran Ashwin got 124 as well as five wickets. Shouldn’t five wickets count for more than a 53-run difference between them, especially when a spinner gets a century?

Likewise in Bhuvneshwar’s case, Ishant got 7 wickets and made 12 runs, while the UP seamer got 6 wickets and 88 crucial runs resurrecting the team’s batting on two occasions. Won’t 74 more runs make up for the difference in one wicket? That should count for something!

There is always a tendency to award a superlative performance in an innings, but our fervent appeal to the wise men deciding MoM awards is to please also look at the impact on the match overall and, at the same time, considered some stats, too. It’s understandable that some subjectivity should come into the picture, but there are so many avenues that rate performances including ICC’s own system; therefore, one should factor that in.

Does that mean all-rounders get more MoM awards? Maybe, but those all-round performances that yield a victory are so rare that they should be rewarded on as many occasions as possible. Of course, if a batsman gets a 200 in one innings and just takes away the match, there is no debate on how that should be judged. And what if all-rounders get a few more MoMs? That is a rare talent as the data shows.

Match winning all-rounder

As an aside, if one were to judge who was the best all-rounder only on the basis good all-round performances in a winning cause – to reiterate >=50 runs and >=5 wickets – then the results are very interesting. That should be a very good test after all: these performances won matches, and against the top 8 teams. To be honest, one needs to look at match-saving performances, too, or the quality of wickets taken, or the situation in which the runs were scored, but if an all-rounder scores more than 50 runs and has taken more than 5 wickets, he must have contributed to the win in a big way. Well, the best all-rounders from the perspective are Mitchell Johnson and Stuart Broad in the past ten years! Spare a thought for Kumble, too: two such performances and 0 MoMs – bummer!

ALL ROUND PERFORMANCES IN A WINING TEST MATCH IN THE PAST 10 YEARS
PLAYER	TOTAL	HOME	AWAY	MoM
MITCHELL JOHNSON	4	3	1	4
STUART BROAD	4	3	1	2
ANIL KUMBLE	2	1	1	0
ANDREW FLINTOFF	2	2	0	1
TIM BRESNAN	2	2	0	0

Finally, in the past 10 years, when you find that no one has been able to put in such an all-round performance in a winning cause away from home, you have to feel for the guy.

The article is co-authored by Pravin Vemuri and Rakshit Shah