The end of an innings for Mark Boucher

I was incensed when news broke that Mark Boucher had been dropped from the Protea’s T20 and ODI squads to play the West Indies following the poor performance of the Proteas in the ICC World T20.

My initial reaction was, how can we drop the guy who always seems to be there for us when we need him? He’s been a pillar in the South African team for years, he’s broken all sorts of records along the way… How can we drop him while preparing for the World Cup which is just 15 ODI’s away?

Once my anger had subsided, I started investigating the statistics of Mark Boucher’s batting over the years, it became apparent that he hasn’t been the ‘the guy who saves the day’ for a while. The last time Boucher scored a half century in an ODI was on 31 October 2008 and that was against Kenya, prior to that he scored 55* against India on 29 June 2007.

Some may argue that playing most of your career at number 6 and 7 isn’t conducive to scoring half centuries and bigger scores, so I looked at his average from 16 January 2009, the start of the tour to Australia to his last ODI played against India on 27 February this year. Boucher scored 329 runs in 17 innings, he was not out in 6 of those innings, which gives him an average of 29.91 in that period. That average is slightly higher than his career average of 28.93.

Mark Bouchers batting average shows that he hasn’t set the world alight with his batting efforts, unfortunately for Mark the top five batsmen in the Proteas team have not performed very well in ODI cricket in the past few months. The poor performance of the top order has exposed Mark Boucher as a batsman and he’s taken the fall.

I understand that the dynamics in a team do not always allow for your best players to be included in every game, the coaching staff have reacted to the pressure and opted to hand the gloves to AB de Villiers which allows them to play the extra batsman in the team.

I’m not saying that I would have dropped Mark Boucher, but I understand.