Twice in two Tests in the current series against New Zealand, England were set challenging fourth-innings targets to chase down: 277 at Lord's, and 299 at Trent Bridge. On each occasion they had a centurion - a serene Joe Root at Lord's and scintillating Jonny Bairstow at Trent Bridge - as they romped home with plenty (five wickets) to spare.
Add South Africa's feats against India earlier this year, when they chased down 240 in Johannesburg and 212 in Cape Town, and there have been four significant fourth-innings batting performances in less than six months in 2022. And we haven't even mentioned Pakistan's epic-fourth innings response to a target of 506 in Karachi three months ago, when they gave Australia an almighty scare before finally settling for a draw with a score of 443 for 7.
Four successful run-chases in a relatively short timespan give rise to a few questions: are these targets being hunted down more often now than in the past? Has fourth-innings batting generally become easier over the last few years? Let the numbers tell the story.
To start with, there have only been four other years when 200-plus targets have been chased down more often: five times in 2006, six times each in 1998 and 2003, and seven times in 2008. With half a year to go, 2022 has a decent chance of challenging that all-time record. Since the start of 2019, there have been 12 successful 200-plus chases; in the six-year period from 2013 to 2018, it had only happened seven times.
However, these fourth-innings wins only highlight the success stories, without looking at the number of opportunities teams have had to chase such targets. To know the success rate in these situations, you'd also have to know the number of times teams have been set such targets, in the last few years and earlier.
In 2022, there have been 14 instances when teams have been asked to chase 200 or more; the targets have ranged from 212, for South Africa against India in Cape Town, to 506 for Pakistan against Australia. As mentioned earlier, four of those chases have been successful, six have ended in defeats, and the remaining four have been draws. Four out of 14 gives a success percentage of 28.6. That is a huge improvement from 2021 (three out of 24) and from 2018 (zero out of 29).
The last time the chase numbers looked so good was in 2008 (seven wins in 25 attempts), while 2003 was even better (six out of 19). In fact, the entire six-year period from 2003 to 2008 was a terrific one for chasing targets of 200 or more: there were 24 successful attempts, which is an average of four per year.
In general, the 2000s was the sunshine decade for the batters, with the overall runs per wicket exceeding 34. In the six years in question, the 24 winning run-chases came in 132 attempts, which is a success rate of 18.2%. That is exactly the same as the rate in the period starting 2019, when there have been 12 wins in 66 matches.
In some of those matches, though, the targets have been improbable ones. Take 2006, for instance, when three out of 14 targets exceeded 550; the chasing teams didn't have a realistic chance of winning those games.
Let us, therefore, set a cap to the targets in question. Since 418 is the highest target ever attained in Test cricket, let us limit the required runs to 450.
If we do that, the 2022 percentage goes up to 30.8, but there are a couple of years since 2000 with even higher success rates: 33.3% in 2008 (seven wins out of 21) and 35.3% in 2003 (six out of 17). In the six-year period between 2003 and 2008, the percentage climbs to 23.6, a touch above the 22.6 in the last three years (since 2019).
Comparing by decade
How do the numbers for the current decade - which, admittedly, is only two-and-a-half years old - compare with decades gone by? The stats so far since 2020 are astonishing: out of the 47 times that teams have been set a fourth-innings target of 200 or more, they have chased it down on nine occasions, which means one out of every 5.2 attempts has been a success. That success rate of 19.1% is much better than in previous decades; in the 2010s, only 19 out of 230 such targets were successfully chased, a percentage of 8.3. Even in the 2000s, which was the golden period for such chases, the percentage was only 16.3.
Restricting the upper limit to 450, the percentages go up quite significantly in some decades. In the 2010s, for instance, out of the 230 targets of 200 or more, 63 were beyond the 450 mark. If we exclude those, the success rate in that decade goes up from 8.3 to 11.4%. Similarly, the 2000s success rate goes up from 16.3 to 21%, which is much closer to the numbers from the current decade.
Overall fourth-innings comparisons
Looking at the fourth-innings success percentages, though, doesn't actually reveal the runs scored per wicket, and if batting has become relatively easier in the last innings compared to the first three. For that, you'd have to look at the overall fourth-innings numbers, relative to those of the first three innings - a comparative look at the averages will reveal if that is the case too.
In 2022, the overall fourth-innings average so far has been 29.64, the highest since 2012, when it was 31.06. Fourth-innings batting was particularly difficult between 2013 and 2017, and since then the batting numbers overall have dipped as bowlers - especially fast bowlers - have held sway.
In the first three innings in 2022, the average has been 32.22, which means batters in the fourth innings have scored 0.92 times what they've managed in the first three. The ratio was 0.94 in 2021, and the year before it was 0.88. In the period since 2000, there have been four years when the ratio was better than it was in 2021; in two of those years the average in the fourth innings was actually higher than in the first three innings.
In 2008, teams averaged 37.37 in the fourth innings compared to 33.64 in the other three. As mentioned earlier, that was also the year of a record seven instances of 200-plus targets being chased down. That includes South Africa's 414 for 4 in Perth, and India's 387 for 4 against England in Chennai. In fact, six of the seven chases that year were of 250-plus targets. Since 1960, there have only been 55 successful chases of 250-plus targets, of which almost 11% happened in one year. Given those stunning numbers, it's hardly surprising that the overall fourth-innings average was so high that year.
In fact, the six-year period between 2003 and 2008 was a particularly good one for fourth-innings batting: of the 24 successful chases of 200-plus targets in that period, 15 were in excess of 249. (That's 27% of the total such chases since 1960.) In 2007, too, the fourth-innings average exceeded that of the first three innings, while the ratios were very close to 1 in 2003 and 2006. Overall, in those six years, the runs per wicket in the fourth innings was 32.97, and in the first three innings it was 35.14, a ratio of 0.94. The outlier in that period was 2005, when the ratio dropped to 0.78.
The decade of the 2000s was generally an excellent one for batters - pitches were, relatively speaking, flat the world over; bowling attacks were thin; and that is also reflected in the fact that even stiff fourth-innings targets didn't faze batting teams.
A decade-wise comparison of these ratios shows that since the 1960s, there have only been two decades before the current one when the ratio has exceeded 0.9: in the 1960s and the 2000s. The ratio in the current decade is 0.92, which at the moment is the highest since the 1960s. This is still a relatively early period in the current decade, but the start has been promising for fourth-innings batting.