Fleming and Bond

Hmmmm, everyone seems to use terms like 007 and "James" when talking about Shane Bond, but I just realised that the author of the James Bond books was one Ian Fleming. Let's hope our Fleming can continue to author many more successes involving his Bond.

Hmmmm.

The reason I came up with that terrible metaphor is because Cricinfo's the numbers game has just presented a statistical analysis of those two players.

Author S Rajesh points out that Bond's strike rate at 50 test wickets is one of the best since the Second World War. Bond's rate of a wicket every 38.60 balls is significantly better than, say, Richard Hadlee (58.64 at the same point as Rajesh points out, and 50.85 over his entire career). Rajesh qualifies his praise of Bond slightly by pointing out that 24 of his wickets have come against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

I am confused at one aspect of Rajesh's analysis of Fleming. He says that Fleming has an exceptional record against spin and a terrible record against Glenn McGrath - but then quotes a batting figure against spin of 32.50 and against pace of 79.92. Perhaps that is a typo. The most interesting aspect of the analysis of Fleming is that his batting average in New Zealand is 32.36, while overseas it is 44.81. Perhaps this says something about the traditionally low-scoring New Zealand wickets, or perhaps it says something about Fleming's struggle with the seaming ball (perhaps also demonstrated by his average against McGrath).