With the Ashes series against Australia coming up, the Cruncher is picking all-time top England and Australian teams. On the batting side the selection criterion is simple: those with the best test match averages get into the side. The all-time England batsmen are easy to choose. But, sadly, they are all blasts from the past. Yorkshireman Herbert Sutcliffe, who opened with Jack Hobbs between the wars, has the best ever average of 60.73 runs an innings. The Cruncher is not sectarian, so the next in is Lancastrian Eddie Paynter, a 1930s star with 59.23, and the best ever average against Australia of 84.42. Then comes the 1960s hero Ken Barrington with 58.67, closely followed by Walter Hammond, whose career again was mainly inter-war, with 58.45. Hobbs and Len Hutton fill the remaining two batting places with 56.94 and 56.67. The next contender is a long way behind, Denis Compton with 50.06, though if current golden boy Andrew Strauss keeps up his form he will soon edge his way in.
The contrast with the Australian all-star line up could hardly be more marked. First they have Don Bradman, with his average of 99.94. No other batsman in the world has a test match average of more than 61. Bradman, of course, is another name from the second quarter of the 20th century. But every other top Australian performer is either currently playing or has only recently retired. Ricky Ponting on 56.50, Adam Gilchrist with 55.65, Greg Chappell and Matthew Hayden at 53.86 and 53.46 respectively, to say nothing of Damien Martyn 51.62, Steve Waugh 51.06 and Alan Border 50.56. Bradman apart, the top English players average slightly more between them, but Australia's recent dominance of world cricket is easily understood once we see how her all-time best batsmen have played.
Deaths in Iraq
The UN's recent Iraq Living Conditions survey put the number of deaths caused by the Iraq war and continued violence at 24,000—far less than the "best guess" of 100,000 claimed in a Lancet report last year, which attracted much more attention. (Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported in May another unfashionably Rumsfeldian fact—there is not one documented case of a suicide bomber in Iraq being Iraqi.)
And here's a curious thing about deaths of coalition soldiers. By mid-June the total had reached 1,869. The clear impression from news coverage is that US troops have suffered disproportionately. And of course the US has lost far more in absolute numbers: 1,684 compared to 89 Brits and 96 from the other contributing countries. But the casualty rate for all three groups is almost identical. The US has lost just over 1.1 troops for every 1,000 on the ground, the British 1.05 and other countries just under 1.
Alaska ain't worth it
George Bush has announced accelerated development of oil reserves in Alaska to help free the US from dependence on middle east oil. The US consumes about a quarter of the 81m barrels of oil the world produces daily. Of that, 44 per cent goes into cars on US roads. The US imports 58 per cent of its oil, but surprisingly half that comes from other American countries, mainly Canada and Venezuela. The Gulf provides only 14 per cent. If oil starts flowing from Alaska in 2010 and if, improbably, the whole of its reserve were produced in the first year, the 2bn barrels would fuel American motorists for just under 18 months.
