With it getting closer to an exciting 2018-2019 season we thought it was time to look at some stats from the archives, and one that is starting to gain a little bit of traction amongst some cricket statisticians around the world, is RBIs. What is an RBI? find out below...

Its not well known these days that many of the major stats, and terms used in baseball have their origins in cricket. One of the key performances used is baseball the ‘runs batted in’ or RBIs, which is used to count the number of times when a batter makes a play that allows for a run to be scored. Turning our thoughts back to our great game of cricket, the question is asked, using the partnership information in our scorecards database, who has the most ‘cricket RBIs’ for the North Otago Senior Men’s cricket team since 1896?

There are a number of stalwarts at the top and not surprisingly North Otago’s most capped player, Duncan Drew, is at the top of the list with 6,073 runs. Second on the list is another player who played first class cricket for Otago, Bob Wilson. With Drew only 50 runs behind Wilson’s North Otago record of 2775 career runs, Drew has the opportunity to replace him at the top of that list this coming season, mimicking the one above. Next on the list, making the top three, is the locally born and bred Ben Cant. He has been a major component of North Otago’s successes since he debut in 2009 and is always a key wicket for the opposition. Recent players also to make this list is Glynn Cameron (8th with 2,669), Francois Mostert (10th with 2,350), Jeremy Smith (14th with 1,905), Craig Smith (17th with 1,511) and Jordan Horrell (20th with 1,389).

So, Duncan Drew has the most RBIs since 1895 for North Otago, and Bob Wilson, Ben Cant, Norman McKenzie and Mark Wilson rounding out the top five, what about the highest average RBIs per player innings?

This list is led by former North Otago opener Keith Gardiner by a very comfortable margin. Gardiner was a player who didn’t give his wicket away very easily and is only one of two players to carry his bat in an innings for North Otago, during a dogged and determined performance back in 1997. Second on the list, with the stats once gain proving what an important part Francois “The King” Mostert has been to the team’s success over the past few seasons. Mostert has broken a number of records so far and hopefully this trend will continue in the forthcoming season, unless he gets a well-deserved promotion to higher honors. Cant drops one place in this list to fourth but this is still no dis-respect to him as the batsman who takes his place at third is the extremely talented former North Otago captain Brian Papps. Bob Wilson once again makes the top five averaging 52.089 RBIs per innings. Recent players to make this list are Scott Simpson (8th with 48.293), current Volt Nathan Smith (9th with 46.889), Drew (10th with 46.008), Jeremy Smith (12th with 44.302) and Sean Conlan finishing the list at number twenty with 40.174.

North Otago, being one of the smallest districts in the country, has traditionally struggled to be competitive despite some brief periods of success. However, with some exciting local talent, North Otago has seen a continued rise in recent years and can no longer be seen as easy to beat they have in the past. So with in mind, who makes the list if we start from the 1997-1998 season?

Drew is once again top of the list, despite his debut being before the time span of the period we are looking, and almost 2,000 RBIs ahead of the second placed Cant. Cameron, who debut was in the same game as Drew, moves up a number of places to third although not far away from him is Mostert. Rounding out the top five is Simpson, but Jeremy Smith only needs a further 79 RBIs to surpass him. Surprisingly, well not for most who remember that famous challenge against Manawatu, at number sixteen on the list is David Sewell David Sewell David Sewell. Despite his main role in the side was being the spearhead of the North Otago bowling attack, he was also well known for being difficult to get out and found himself ‘stranded’ a number of times bat in hand.

Well then, who has the highest average RBIs?

Not much change is seen in this list, with Gardner, Mostert and Cant making the top three. Grant Billcliff moves into fourth, while Simpson rounds out the top five.

So there you have it, an analysis of the North Otago cricket team using RBIs. While traditional stats have been based more on the individual more in terms of how many runs they scored or how many boundaries, this one looks at how many team runs have been scored while they were batting. This adds more weight to those who have batted for longer periods, like David Sewell above, and show the importance in the longer forms of the game of occupying the crease.

With the number of players in the first two lists being current players, hopefully we will see a lot of movement in them this coming season, along with the Hawke Cup making its first stay in the new pavilion at Whitestone Contracting Centennial Park Oval.

Team Pages:
North Otago 2017-2018 |