Dear All,
I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I find them curious and amusing but not sustainable. Although it ‘feels’ like wickets fall more often after describing a batter’s ominous ‘stability’, and often just a ball or two later, I still don’t believe it.
So, as a ‘live’ experiment, I sent the last column with 20 overs remaining on the final day of the first Test between the West Indies and South Africa in Trinidad. Alick Athinaze and Jason Holder were looking rock-solid and there seemed no chance they could let the Test slip.
Let’s see…
Talking about curses...
Many years ago I was playing bridge with the great statistician Andrew Samson in our university residence just before exams (what else do you do just before exams?). Andrew had a run of particularly bad hands. Now with 40 high card points in a pack, one expects to average around 10 over an evening. Andrew was complaining that this was not the case, and of course we all reminded him about the law of averages. So, as expected, Andrew decided to keep score! Over the next half a dozen hands or so, he never reached 10 high card points once; the run including some 3 or 4 pointers.
And then he had a hand of 24 or 26 points - the best I have ever seen. We duly bid 7 No Trump, but just before we could play the hand - power failure!! We never got to play the hand.
Statisticians curse.
Since it's a draw, does that question remain open, hehe? :)