Many greats of Test cricket have not been able to tame the beast that is the final innings of a match. Here is an XI of players with some of the sharpest drop-offs in performance in the fourth innings as compared to the first three in their Test careers.

The specialist batters in this XI have been chosen only among those who have batted at least 20 times in the fourth innings of Test matches. The cut-off for wicketkeepers was ten or more innings as the designated keeper-batter in the fourth innings, while the bowlers and all-rounders have been chosen among those who have bowled at least a thousand balls in the fourth innings in their Test careers.

*The first line of the stats refers to the players’ records in the first three innings of Test matches, while the second line refers to their stats in the fourth innings (with some caveats that are explained in the text).*

Marvan Atapattu – Sri Lanka

4842 runs @ 44.99, 14 50s, 16 100s, HS: 249
475 runs @ 20.65, 3 50s, 0 100s, HS: 80

Atapattu’s Test career ran across seventeen years from 1990 to 2007. He had a poor start to his career, but made up soon enough, ending up with a Test career average of 44.42. However, he was never able to crack the code of the fourth innings. His average as an opener slipped from almost 45 in the first three innings (mentioned above) to a mere 20.65 in the fourth. No other batter who has opened more than 20 times in the fourth innings of Test matches has a worse average than Atapattu. He hit 16 centuries as an opener, yet, none of them came in the fourth innings.

Tom Latham – New Zealand

4554 runs @ 46, 23 50s, 13 100s, HS: 264*
532 runs @ 23.13, 4 50s, 0 100s, HS: 83

Latham’s average as an opener in the fourth innings falls down to nearly half of what it is in the first three. Like Atapattu, all his Test centuries as an opener have come in the first three innings of Test matches, and none in the fourth innings in a run-chase. His highest score in the fourth innings was a marathon 83 off 207 balls against England in Christchurch in 2018 that helped New Zealand save the game. However, there haven’t been many other memorable fourth-innings performances by him so far.

Steve Smith – Australia (c)

8152 runs @ 65.74, 31 50s, 31 100s, HS: 239
596 runs @ 28.38, 4 50s, 0 100s, HS: 97

Regarded as one of the greatest Test batters of all time, Smith has surprisingly failed to conquer the fourth innings of Test matches. He has batted 24 times in the top six in the fourth innings and has not scored a single century, with his highest score being 97 against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi in 2014. In the first three innings, on the other hand, he has a mammoth average of 65.74 while batting in the top six and has scored 31 centuries. Smith had a brilliant opportunity to change his fourth-innings legacy at Edgbaston in the first Ashes Test earlier this week, but he failed yet again, getting caught behind off the bowling off Stuart Broad for six – the lowest score by any Australian batter in that innings.

Denis Compton – England

5274 runs @ 53.81, 26 50s, 17 100s, HS: 278
455 runs @ 28.43, 1 50, 0 100s, HS: 93

The legendary Denis Compton, who played more than 500 first-class matches and had more than 100 first-class hundreds, was never quite able to leave his mark in the fourth innings in Test cricket. He scored more than five thousand runs while batting in the top six in the first three innings including 17 centuries. But 21 outings in the fourth innings yielded him only 455 runs at an average of less than thirty with a sole fifty-plus score.

Jonny Bairstow – England (wk)

2945 runs @ 40.90, 16 50s, 5 100s, HS: 167*
218 runs @ 18.16, 0 50s, 0 100s, HS: 48

Bairstow’s overall fourth-innings record is a decent one – an average of 34.69 from 28 innings, but his performance as a wicketkeeper-batter in the fourth innings of Test matches has been extremely poor. Among designated wicketkeepers who have batted at least ten times in the fourth innings, only two have an average above 40 in the first three innings and below 20 in the fourth: Bairstow and Kumar Sangakkara. Since Bairstow has kept wickets more regularly in Test matches than Sangakkara (56.04% of Bairstow’s Tests have been as a wicketkeeper vs 35.82% for Sangakkara), he gets the nod as the wicketkeeper for this side.

Steve Waugh – Australia

9758 runs @ 57.06, 45 50s, 31 100s, HS: 200
609 runs @ 25.37, 2 50s, 0 100s, HS: 80

The former Australia captain scored more than ten thousand runs across his Test career, but less than 700 of those came in the fourth innings. His average as a top-six batter saw a steep 55.53% drop-off from the first three innings to the fourth. In a career that spanned nearly 170 Test matches, he managed to cross fifty only twice in the fourth innings.

Ian Botham – England

4982 runs @ 35.08, 21 50s, 14 100s, HS: 208; 352 wickets @ 27.5, 26 five-fors, BBI: 8-34
218 runs @ 16.76, 1 50, 0 100s, HS: 54; 31 wickets @ 38.54, 1 five-for, BBI: 5-11

One of the greatest all-rounders of the game, Botham struggled in the fourth innings of Test matches with both bat and ball. His batting average fell by 52.2% while his bowling average rose by 40.14% from the first three to the fourth innings. With more than five thousand runs and 380 wickets in his Test career, it’s scary to imagine what his stats would have looked like had he been half as effective in the fourth innings as he was in the first three.

Maurice Tate – England

145 wickets @ 25.06, 7 five-fors, BBI: 6-42
10 wickets @ 42.10, 0 five-fors, BBI: 3-69

Tate, a right-arm seamer whose Test career spanned from 1924 to 1935, took nearly 3,000 wickets in his first-class career and more than 150 wickets in his Test career. However, he failed to create any impact in the fourth innings of Test matches. Out of the ten times he bowled in the fourth innings, he went wicketless in four. While he was able to keep the runs down and conceded only 1.94 runs per over in the fourth innings, the lack of wickets meant his bowling average jumped from around 25 in the first three innings to over 40 in the fourth.

Paul Adams – South Africa

112 wickets @ 31.08, 4 five-fors, BBI: 7-128
22 wickets @ 42, 0 five-fors, BBI: 4-64

The left-arm wrist spinner with a funky action is the only South African in this XI. Among spinners who have taken more than 100 Test wickets and bowled more than 1,000 deliveries in the fourth innings, Adams has the worst fourth-innings average: 42. Spinners are expected to better as Test matches go on to the fourth and fifth days, but Adams was an anomaly, as his bowling average went up by more than 35% in the fourth innings as compared to the first three.

Alec Bedser – England

220 wickets @ 23.81, 14 five-fors, BBI: 7-44
16 wickets @ 39.75, 1 five-for, BBI: 7-52

Bedser, a right-arm seamer who played for England between 1946 and 1955, took 236 wickets in just 51 Tests at an average of 24.89. However, only 16 of those came in the fourth innings as his average saw a sharp rise of nearly 67% from the first three innings to the fourth. Of those 16 fourth-innings wickets, seven came in one go, against India at Old Trafford in 1946. He remained wicketless in six out of his 13 fourth-innings outings.

Alf Valentine – West Indies

120 wickets @ 28.61, 7 five-fors, BBI: 8-104
19 wickets @ 41.10, 1 five-for, BBI: 5-88

A tall left-arm spinner from the Caribbean, Valentine played Test cricket from 1950 to 1962. He took a total of 475 first-class wickets, with 139 of them coming in 36 Test matches. However, like the others in this XI, he wasn’t able to perform to his potential in the fourth innings, which is all the more surprising given he was a spinner during the era of uncovered pitches.

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