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A common joke among England fans is that bowling all-rounder batsman James Vince looks superb for 20 or 30 runs, then inevitably gets himself dismissed before he can reach the 40-run mark. Today, I will be using statistics to determine if this is actually the case. Yes, I really am that bored at the minute.
For this comparison, I will be considering all players who have batted at least twenty innings for England at positions #1-#7 since the start of 2015 (Root, Stokes, Cook, Bairstow, Buttler, Ali, Burns, Denly, Jennings, Ballance, Malan, Pope, Hales, Stoneman, the recently-retired Bell and of course Vince himself). I will also include every batsman who averages 50 or more with a minimum of twenty innings played and who has played a Test match from the start of 2015 onwards (this means Smith, Kohli, Williamson, Labuschagne, Sangakkara, Younis Khan, Chanderpaul, de Villiers and of course the legendary Adam Voges). Finally, I'll be including Don Bradman because why the heck not.
In the first table, I'll be presenting each player, their batting average, their total number of innings batted, their no. of innings in which they scored between 0 and 19, their no. of innings in which they scored between 20 and 39 and finally, their no. of innings in which they scored 40 or more. Players are listed by batting average from highest to lowest.
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Player	Average	Innings	0-19	20-39	40+
Don Bradman	99.94	80	22	12	46
Marnus Labuschagne	63.43	23	7	2	14
Steve Smith	62.84	131	45	24	62
Adam Voges	61.87	31	13	7	11
Kumar Sangakkara	57.40	233	86	40	107
Virat Kohli	53.62	145	60	22	63
Younis Khan	52.05	213	86	42	85
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	51.37	280	108	52	120
Kane Williamson	50.99	140	57	21	62
AB de Villiers	50.66	191	69	37	85
Joe Root	47.99	177	70	31	76
Alastair Cook	45.35	291	128	50	113
Ian Bell	42.69	205	97	34	74
Ollie Pope	37.94	20	12	2	6
Ben Stokes	37.84	122	52	31	39
Gary Ballance	37.45	42	18	12	12
Jonny Bairstow	34.74	123	55	29	39
Jos Buttler	33.90	82	37	19	26
Rory Burns	32.44	38	19	6	13
Joe Denly	29.53	28	11	11	6
Moeen Ali	28.97	104	59	21	24
Dawid Malan	27.84	26	14	5	7
Mark Stoneman	27.68	20	10	4	6
Alex Hales	27.28	21	14	2	5
Keaton Jennings	25.19	32	19	7	6
James Vince	24.90	22	13	4	5

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By coincidence, Vince is at the very bottom when it comes to batting average (I swear I didn't plan this). With Vince, the perception is that he often reaches 20 but fails to reach 40. Thus, the next table will be looking at what percentage of the time each of the above batsmen reach 20 runs in an innings, ranked from highest to lowest.
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Player	Percentage reached 20 runs
Don Bradman	72.50 %
Marnus Labuschagne	69.57 %
Steve Smith	65.65 %
AB de Villiers	63.87 %
Kumar Sangakkara	63.09 %
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	61.43 %
Joe Denly	60.71 %
Joe Root	60.45 %
Younis Khan	59.62 %
Kane Williamson	59.29 %
Virat Kohli	58.62 %
Adam Voges	58.06 %
Ben Stokes	57.38 %
Gary Ballance	57.14 %
Alastair Cook	56.01 %
Jonny Bairstow	55.28 %
Jos Buttler	54.88 %
Ian Bell	52.68 %
Rory Burns	50.00 %
Mark Stoneman	50.00 %
Dawid Malan	46.15 %
Moeen Ali	43.27 %
James Vince	40.91 %
Keaton Jennings	40.63 %
Ollie Pope	40.00 %
Alex Hales	33.33 %

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There are actually a lot of insightful conclusions you can draw from this sort of 'breaking down innings into chunks' data (see this wonderful analysis by u/insideoutovercover for an example) but we're not here for that; instead, we're here for some spicy James Vince memes. Still, aside from Vince, there are a few interesting case studies here.
Firstly, Vince actually isn't as good at reaching the 20-run mark as I thought he was. Nearly 60% of the time, he gets out before then. Small sample size, I know, but his reputation of reliably making 20s and 30s doesn't appear to be backed up by the stats.
Secondly, Ollie Pope's stats here are pretty poor and a little surprising considering that he's yet to be dismissed for a duck in his Test career. His average is a lot better than the players around him, though, so perhaps he's just good at making big scores once he does get his eye in. Also, it could simply be the case that he just hasn't played that many innings so his numbers are a little skewed.
Thirdly, out of the batsmen who average 50 or above, Smith, AB and Sangakkara rank pretty highly in terms of consistently reaching 20 runs, whereas Voges and Kohli struggle to reach that landmark relatively speaking. In Voges' case, I'm not at all surprised given how a couple of great series completely blew up his average, and in Kohli's case, he has a reputation for either going cheaply or scoring piles of runs so these stats shouldn't be particularly shocking.
Fourthly, out of the England batsmen, Dendulkar is the king of reaching 20 runs consistently (in fact, in that metric, he beats out three of the Fab Four) and Root isn't far behind. Beyond England's generational batting talent (and Joe Root), Stokes and Ballance do pretty well when it comes to reaching the 20-run mark.
Finally, this Bradman fellow seems like a decent batsman. He's got nothing on Marnus Labuschagne, though.
This is only part of the story, however. As well as his reputation for consistently reaching 20-30 runs, Vince also has a reputation for consistently getting out on 20-30 runs. Let us then create a table ranking these batsmen by how often they reach 40 runs given that they've already reached 20 runs. To do this, we just simply take the number of innings in which they've scored 20+ runs and divide that by the number of innings in which they've scored 40+ runs.
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Player	Percentage reached 40 runs after reaching 20 runs
Marnus Labuschagne	87.50 %
Don Bradman	79.31 %
Ollie Pope	75.00 %
Kane Williamson	74.70 %
Virat Kohli	74.12 %
Kumar Sangakkara	72.79 %
Steve Smith	72.09 %
Alex Hales	71.43 %
Joe Root	71.03 %
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	69.77 %
AB de Villiers	69.67 %
Alastair Cook	69.33 %
Ian Bell	68.52 %
Rory Burns	68.42 %
Younis Khan	66.93 %
Adam Voges	61.11 %
Mark Stoneman	60.00 %
Dawid Malan	58.33 %
Jos Buttler	57.78 %
Jonny Bairstow	57.35 %
Ben Stokes	55.71 %
James Vince	55.56 %
Moeen Ali	53.33 %
Gary Ballance	50.00 %
Keaton Jennings	46.15 %
Joe Denly	35.29 %

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It won't surprise anybody that for the most part, batsmen tend to find it easier to get from 20 to 40 than they do to get from 0 to 20. Kohli of course does well here, and of the England batsmen, both Pope and Hales are ridiculously better at converting 20s into 40s than they are at reaching 20 in the first place (of course, Hales was so bad at reaching 20 that his ability to push on to 40 didn't really matter). Of all the batsmen we have analysed, there are only three exceptions to this general rule:

1. Stokes: He reaches 20 runs 57.38% of the time and from there, he reaches 40 runs 55.71% of the time. It's only a slight drop, but any sort of drop is unusual, at least for the batsmen analysed in this post (for all I know, this particular list of players could be the exception rather than the norm). His ability to get starts is certainly better than most recent English batsmen and his average suggests that he does a relatively good job of cashing in once he reaches 40 runs compared to other English batsmen.
2. Ballance: Like Stokes but worse. He reaches the 20-run mark 57.14% of the time (nearly as often as Stokes does) but then there's just a 1-in-2 chance that he kicks on to 40. His average is about the same as Stokes', though, so he can be quite dangerous once he reaches 40. I don't know for sure why this happens, but my hypothesis is that around the 20-run mark, teams begin to figure out Ballance's glaring technical flaw, and if they haven't figured it out by the time he reaches 40, they probably aren't figuring it out any time soon.
3. Denly: By far the most bizarre batsman on this list; he somehow finds it easy to reach 20 but can't seem to reach 40 to save his life. It's not just a slight difference either; he reaches 20 runs 60.71% of the time (the best out of the English batsmen) yet once he's settled, he only reaches the 40-run mark 35.29% of the time (way behind the second-worst, Keaton Jennings, at 46.15%). I...can't explain this. Seriously, I'm at a loss here. For most batsmen, they tend to struggle in the nervous nineties; for Root, it's the nervous sixties; for Denly, it's the nervous twenties and thirties.

You know who isn't on the above list? That's right: Marnus Labuschagne. In fact, he's more reliable at reaching 40 once he reaches 20 than Bradman is. Labuschagne > Bradman confirmed.
Oh, also, Vince isn't on the list either. If you were to present two scenarios to England fans (Vince reaching 20 and Vince reaching 40 given that he's already reached 20) and ask them which one is more likely, I suspect most of them would say that the former is the likelier scenario (although perhaps I just have a very skewed perception of the general opinion among fellow England fans).
As a matter of fact, Vince reaches 20 runs around 40.91% of the time while he reaches 40 runs 55.56% of the time in situations where he's already scored 20. That doesn't seem too unusual for a batsman of his rather low ability. Why, then, does he seemingly have this reputation of scoring 20-30 runs before immediately getting out? To be honest, I have no idea. Perhaps this reputation is simply something that I've conjured up in my imagination rather than it being a reputation which actually exists in the minds of England fans. Denly certainly has a reputation for scoring twenty-odd or thirty-odd before being dismissed, but in his case, the stats actually back it up.
A slightly more tongue-in-cheek one this time, but I think there's a lot of genuinely useful stuff you can find out from this sort of analysis. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the read.

Welcome to what will most probably be my last 69 related stats piece, I’ve had some fun, but I think, just like Alastair Cook walking off into the sunset, it’s time to say goodbye.
This is a continuation of my previous piece, which I strongly recommend you read before this one, or not... do whatever you want I’m not your mother.
There have been 152 players who have played at least 69 test matches, and as I went through each scorecard, before any proper analysis, I assigned the player a rough score out of 5 for their performance in their 69th test.

Preliminary score out of 5	No. Players
1	79 (52%)
2	46 (30.3%)
3	14 (9.2%)
4	11 (7.2%)
5	2 (1.3%)

As I suspected, in any given test, no how matter good you are, the player is more likely to fail than succeed. In the previous post I gave my bottom 5, so now I will give my top 10, and there is no better place to start than… number 3. So, let’s get star-… What? You think that any logical person should start at 10 and work down to 1? Well alright then, here’s number 10.

1. Graeme Smith (SA). Test 1883 vs England in 2008. Score: 7 and 154*.

Graeme Smith was last in England in 2003, where he hit back-to-back double tons, and so had a lot of expectation on his name and his very impressive side, coming into the series. He was dismissed for 7, by Flintoff, and so after Paul Collingwood’s century in the third innings, South Africa needed to chase 281 to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series. Enter Graeme Smith with an incredible 154*, guiding his team from a very difficult place of 93-4. The next best was Mark Boucher’s 45* and they were going up against a strong England bowling line up that had a collective average of 31.21.

1. Sir Richard Hadlee (NZ). Test 1072 vs West Indies in 1987. Score: 25*, Wickets: 6/50, 3/101

To say that the West Indies v New Zealand in 1987 was David v Goliath is an insult to the West Indies. They expected to come to Christchurch, smash the Kiwis and take the series 2-0. Cue 100 all out against a combined top6 average of 43.23, thanks to exceptional bowling by Hadlee and Chatfield. Hadlee the aggressor with 6 wickets at 4rpo, while Chatfield kept it tight and pounced the odd wicket here and there with 4 wickets at 1.66rpo. Hadlee also followed this up with a breezy 25*, before taking 3 scalps including Greenidge, Richardson and Marshall (the top scorer) in the second innings, as New Zealand squared the series 1-1.

1. Martin Crowe (NZ). Test 1261 vs England in 1994. Score: 142 and 9

The early 90s was a strange period for New Zealand, it was after the great Sir Richard Hadlee had departed and before Stephen Fleming would take the captaincy and mould a very good side, but they still had Martin Crowe, and how. In the second test at Lord’s after going 1-0 down, Crowe stamped his authority in a majestic 142, which he later regarded as his purest. Very high praise for one of the most aesthetically pleasing batsmen the game has ever seen. He took his side to 461 against a reasonable English attack but could only contribute 9 in the second innings as the match was drawn. Nash took the MOTM for his 11 wickets, but Crowe’s masterpiece presented at the Home of Cricket that lived long in the memory.

1. Carl Hooper (WI). Test 1398 vs England in 1998. Score: 1 and 94*, Wickets: 1/14, 0/33.

West Indies in 1998 had some great players, but they were not a great team. After their loss against Australia in 1995, they became a shadow of their former self, and players like Hooper; a man who could kind of bat and kind of bowl was one of their senior men. He was bowled for just 1 in the first innings, as West Indies crashed to 191, and later England set West Indies 282 in the fourth innings, in a game where the highest score was 258… by England. Hooper was dogged in his 94* and took West Indies over the line with Kenny Benjamin for company 7 wickets down against a good bowling line up with a collective average of 31.12. Hooper sneaks into 7th with his unrelenting tight bowling, he had match figures of 28-11-47-1.

1. Ramnaresh Sarwan (WI). Test 1872 vs Sri Lanka in 2008. Score: 57 and 102.

West Indies were not a great side at this time either, and Sarwan top scored in both innings to make up for it and take the win. He made 57 in a WI total of 294 in the second innings, and then chasing 253 in the fourth innings, he made a mockery of the target in the company of Chanderpaul. He was up against two greats in Murali and Vaas and the collective bowling average for the SL side was a stupendous 25.67. For a man who averaged below 40 at that point, this was a serious achievement.

1. Virat Kohli (Ind). Test 2316 vs England in 2018. Score: 97 and 103.

I think all of Cricket could tell you how this one went. After being battered by the smiling assassin Chris Woakes at Lords, India were 2-0 down after 2, but their captain was showing some form. In the first innings, he made 97 and set up India’s total of 329, alas a hundred was not to be. No, no, Virat Kohli doesn’t score fifties… he scores hundreds and in the third innings after Hardik skittled England, Kohli scored 103, his second hundred of the tour. India won and Kohli took the richly deserved MOTM award, especially considering he scored 200 match runs against Anderson, Broad and Woakes in their pump on green seaming pitches. Bravo Sir, bravo.

1. Greg Chappell (Aus). Test 910 vs Pakistan in 1981. Score: 201, Wickets: 1/6

Before Imran Khan’s captaincy, Pakistan were not a great side. They only scored 291 in the first innings were Chappell gave himself what can only be described as a cheeky 3 over spell and managed to knock over opener Mohsin Khan. In the second innings he scored an imperious 201, where no one else managed over 75 against a bowling line up that averaged a very decent 31.56, and Australia won the test by 10 wickets. Pakistan were there to be beaten, but Chappell well and truly conquered them, as Australia took an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series.

1. Kumar Sangakkara (SL). Test 1851 vs England in 2007. Score: 92 and 152.

Why Kumar, why oh why did you hold onto the gloves for so long. A year or so after relinquishing wicketkeeping responsibilities for good, Sanga played a gem of an innings in compiling 92, in a total of 188, where after HAPW Jayawardene’s 51, the next best was just 12 by Chaminda Vaas. In the third innings, Sri Lanka were battling against nearly a three-figure deficit, when Sanga played another incredible innings. If the 1st innings was a gem, this was a diamond, taking Sri Lanka to an incredible position, where again the next best score was only 78. Sri Lanka had no right to win that test, but then again Kumar Sangakkara had no right to be that good.

1. Sir Ian Botham. Test 990 vs West indies in 1984. Score: 30 and 81, Wickets: 8/103 and 0/117

Botham is rightly attributed with Legend status, but if you look at his career numbers: Batting and Bowling average of 33.54 and 28.40, they’re good but not legendary. Sir Ian was a shadow of himself in the latter half of the 1980s, and this series and match against West Indies was probably his last Hoorah... but what a match it was. He scored 30 in the first innings, as England compiled 286 and then scythed through against arguably the greatest batting line up in history with a combined top6 average of 46.59 at the time, taking all the top 6 wickets in an incredible 8/103. But Beefy didn’t stop there and against a seriously excellent bowling line up (combined average of 26.21) scored 81 with a SR above 70. I won’t go into the fourth innings, but I will say if it wasn’t for Greenidge, this would sit on top of the tree with Headingly 81. Talk to anyone about Sir Ian, and they will always say the same thing “He was so much more than just his stats”.

1. Nathan Lyon (Aus). Test 2273 vs Bangladesh in 2017. Wickets: 7/94, 6/60.

Nathan Lyon. Garry. When he is on form, he is on form, ask anyone and in 2017 he was at his pinnacle. Everything he touched turned to gold. Bangladesh in 2017 at home were a seriously good side, make no mistake and their combined top6 average of 37.38 proves that. They beat Australia for the first time ever in the first test and were looking to take the second as well. Garry took the first four wickets all LBW in the first innings and then removed the two set batsmen in Rahim and Rahmann as well. Australia managed to eke out a 72-run lead, and Garry got to work again, taking 6/60 and routing Bangladesh for 157, leaving only 87 to chase. 13 wickets in the match… Nice Garry.
It was always going to be Garry. I wanted it to be Botham or Sanga or Chappell, but no it was always going to be Garry. He doesn’t have the reputation of the others, but he has something else, a cult following that would make Elvis Presley turn in his grave, a knack to meme himself to the top, Garry always finds a way, and there was no way he wouldn’t be my number 1, his performance was just too good. So congratulations, you are the 69 champion, but more importantly, the people's champion.
There you have my top 10, please feel free to let me know why I’m wrong in the comments, and thanks for reading, not only this piece, but all my ‘69’ pieces, I am very grateful.