Six insights that will change your views on appealing

How successful are players in getting the umpire to look at their appeals favourably?

The poker player: Shane Warne's success rate in appeals indicates he could influence umpires' decisions with his shouts and body language

The poker player: Shane Warne's success rate in appeals indicates he could influence umpires' decisions with his shouts and body language © Getty Images

After cataloguing more than 25,000 appeals in nearly 700 Tests played since 2000, we found that on average there were about 44 appeals per Test. About 13 of these were successful. Which means that there were 2.9 unsuccessful appeals for every successful appeal - a success rate close to 30%.

77 Percentage of appeals for lbw. There were 13% for caught behind, and only 3% of appeals were for catches at short leg, which is surprising since these can be some of the most contentious.

19 Percentage of lbw appeals given out. In contrast, 61% of caught-behind and 60% of stumping appeals were given out. Even when bowling teams were confident enough to review under the DRS system, only 20% of "not out" lbws were overturned.

17 Percentage of lbw appeals upheld for spinners. Medium and pace bowlers got for 21% of their appeals. Fast bowlers have had better luck in appealing than spinners. Glenn McGrath, Dale Steyn and Mitchell Starc all had success rates of 45% and above for the period assessed. The bowlers with the lowest success rate in appeals are spinners again: Ashley Giles (14% from 53 appeals in 53 Tests), Saqlain Mushtaq 16%, Ravindra Jadeja 18%.

35 Percentage of successful appeals by Australia - the highest rate of success among teams. Bangladesh have the lowest - 24%. The important factors here tend to be the number of matches a team wins and the mix of spin- and pace-bowling wickets. India, with their emphasis on spin, have a 25% rate of success.

Team-wise success rate of appeals
Team Appeals per wicket Success%
Australia 0.79 35
South Africa 0.72 34
West Indies 0.86 30
New Zealand 0.90 30
Zimbabwe 0.98 27
England 1.05 27
Sri Lanka 1.19 27
India 1.32 25
Pakistan 1.38 24
Bangladesh 1.28 24

23 Success percentage of appeals for Muttiah Muralitharan - the bowler to have tried his luck the most, with 1110 appeals from 91 Tests assessed. Murali's long-time rival Shane Warne led among the top spinners with 27% compared to 21% for Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh 23%.

29 Most number of unsuccessful appeals by a bowler in one match: 29 by Murali, against Pakistan in the final of the Asian Test Championship in Lahore in 2002. He took eight wickets in the match. He also made 29 failed appeals in 2006 in Christchurch, where he took seven wickets.

108 Number of appeals attempted in the New Zealand v Pakistan Test in Auckland, 2001 - the most for a single match.

21 Percentage of lbw decisions given by Steve Davis - the highest among current umpires. Although, these figures could be affected by "overturn" decisions in the DRS system. About 8% of the decisions are overturned on review in Tests. The umpire with the lowest proportion of overturns is Bruce Oxenford, with 18%.

To know more about the process used to find the data behind appeals and whether there is a big difference between left-arm and right-arm bowlers when it comes to appealing, read the full Cricket Monthly stats feature by Charles Davis here

 

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