NEWS » in this stat; 19.3 against right-arm seam

Former All Blacks Dan Carter and Joe Rokocoko have been cleared of doping following an investigation by the French Rugby Federation, according to a media report in France.French newspaper LEquipe reported that Racing 92 five-eighth Carter was notified on Saturday of his clearance following a probe by the FRF medical commission.Reigning world player of the year Carter, 34, and club teammates Rokocoko, 33, and Juan Imhoff tested positive for corticosteroids after providing urine samples following the Top 14 Final in Barcelona on June 25.Racing 92 beat Toulon 29-21 to secure their first French title in 26 years.The trio attended an anti-doping hearing in Paris last week and, according to LEquipe, Carter has been cleared.Rokocoko and Argentina winger Imhoff are set to be informed of the same outcome, the newspaper said.Racing 92 said it had not received any information from the FRF.Corticosteroids, which can act as an anti-inflammatory, are prohibited unless players have been granted a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE).Racing 92 released a statement earlier this month saying the players were treated for existing conditions in an authorised manner which didnt require a TUE.All the medical procedures on the players reported by the media were carried out in total respect of the national and international anti-doping rules.Jerseys Cheap Wholesale . 24 Baylor in a Big 12 clash between teams trending in opposite directions. Andrew Wiggins made 10-of-12 from the foul line and scored 17 for Kansas (14-4, 5-0 Big 12), which capped a stretch of four straight games against ranked opponents unscathed. Cheap Jerseys . -- The Bishops Gaiters are showing they belong among the countrys top varsity football teams. http://www.wholesalejerseysnfl.net/ . Fellow centre Pavel Datsyuk remains out because of a concussion. Zetterberg has 11 goals and 19 assists for a team-high 30 points, and Datsyuk has a team-high 12 goals and 11 assists. Jerseys NFL Cheap . "I was fortunate to play many years at this level with a great organization and unbelievable teammates," said Hejduk in a statement. Cheap Adidas NHL Jerseys . The 31-year-old Spain midfielder hasnt played since Madrid lost in the Copa del Rey final to Atletico Madrid in May due to back and foot injuries.CONCERNING STAT 1: Since the start of the 2013 Ashes, England have converted 24% of their fifties into centuries. All other Test teams combined have a conversion rate of 34.5%; the other six teams ranked in the top seven have converted 37%.Alastair Cook, the erstwhile Honours-Board-Bothering machine, the one-time avaricious hoarder of three-figures scores, has scored only three hundreds in the 38 Tests he has played since the 2013 Ashes began. He has reached the half-century mark 23 times in 70 innings in those games; in the 40 Tests he played before that (from the tour to Bangladesh in 2010 to the end of the New Zealand micro-series earlier in the 2013 summer), he had made 22 fifties in 69 innings, but converted 15 of them into centuries (including six in a row from July 2012 to May 2013, the last five of which were in his early months as captain).So, although he has continued to reach fifty almost once every three innings, his conversion rate has collapsed from the best in Test cricket to the worst. Of the 25 players to have made ten or more fifties in Tests since July 2013, Cooks conversion rate of 13% is the lowest - other than he, only Kaushal Silva (two out of 13) has converted less than a quarter of his fifties into hundreds. In the 2010-2013 period, Cooks 68% conversion was the best of the 40 players with at least ten scores of 50-plus. To give some context to his excellence at that time, the next seven batsmen in the conversion-rate list were Kallis, Dravid, Sangakkara, Clarke, Younis Khan, Chanderpaul and Amla.To add further curiosity to the stats, conversion rates in all Test cricket have risen since July 2013 - excluding Cook, the rate has increased from 28.8% in the 2010-2013 period, to 33.4% since the start of the 2013 Ashes (and, for all other openers, from 27.5% to 35.1%). The England captains conversion stats have been swimming upstream like a randy salmon.Cook was similarly ineffective at converting fifties earlier in his career. After his stellar 2006 entry to the Test arena (five of his first nine fifties were converted into hundreds), in 70 innings between the New Years Ashes Test in 2007 and that 2010 Bangladesh tour, he made 25 fifties, and converted only six, four of which were against the lowly ranked, ineffective West Indies.Just as his fifty rate has remained relatively steady through these three wildly divergent conversion-rate periods in his career, so has his proportion of single-figure dismissals. In fact, his failing-to-trouble-the-tens-column rate was actually higher in his most successful phase. He was out in single figures 14 times in the 2007-2010 period; 19 times in his peak 2010-2013 phase; and 15 times from the 2013 Ashes to now.Cook, it seems, is almost exactly as adept at beginning his innings as he ever was, but he has become (again) vastly less effective at prolonging it. His average since the 2013 Ashes began is a solid 41.5 - very solid for a player playing so few big innings. Many of his non-hundreds have been important innings.However, this is a batsman who used to be one of the toughest to dismiss when set - in the 2010-2013 phase, once he had survived the first 15 overs, it took on average 161 balls to dismiss him, more than any other regular Test batsmen other than Chanderpaul (166 balls per dismissal from over 16 onwards), and his after-the-15th-over average of 81 was comfortably the highest of those who batted more than ten times in that part of Test innings. Since the 2013 Ashes, Cooks figures are down to an average of 49 (25th best of those with ten or more relevant innings), and a dismissal once every 116 balls (seventh best) - still impressive, still adhesive, still valuable to his team, but significantly declined.Is there a reason for this? Perhaps bowlers have become more persistent in challenging his weaknesses. Perhaps the burden of captaincy has fractured the impregnable cocoon in which he used to bat once established, or a decade of Test-match opening has worn down his mental stamina. Perhaps the added pressure of being a prime lynchpin in a more fragile batting line-up has added strain to his batsmanship, and made opponents treasure and target his wicket even more. Perhaps Edward Snowdens disclosure in June 2013 of the covert surveillance programmes of the US government made Cook worry that his batting was being spied on by the CIA; perhaps Croatias accession to the European Union on July 1, 2013 made the Essex man fret about the potential geopolitical impliications of the rapid expansion of the EU in the aftermath of the collapse of the communist bloc.dddddddddddd We may never know.Cook is the most striking example, but England as a team have struggled to capitalise on their half-centuries. In the 2010-2013 period detailed above, Englands 36% conversion rate was second only to South Africa (41%) of the nine regular Test-playing teams. Without Cook, at 30%, they would still have been third. In the 2013-2016 block, England are eighth in the conversion league, at 24%. With Cooks 3-out-of-23 figure removed, Englands rate is 26%, still eighth in a table led narrowly by Pakistan (42.6%) from South Africa (42.1%).Joe Root has made only one century from his past eight 50-plus scores, having turned eight of his previous 19 half-centuries into tons. Ian Bell, after his momentous, career-defining 2013 Ashes, converted only two of the 11 Test half-centuries he made subsequently into three figures. Recently the entire England team has struggled even to convert three-quarter centuries into centuries. Since the start of last summers home international season, English batsmen have reached 75 in a total of 33 innings. They have converted only 12 of those into centuries (36%). All other Test teams collectively have converted 60% of their 75s into hundreds over the same period. Only West Indies (one out of six) are below 50% at converting 75s into tons. Australia have converted 77% (24 out of 31). All in all, curious and unhelpful from an English perspective. Explanations on a postcard, please, addressed to The ECB, No.1 Cricket Street, Cricketsville, Cricketshire, England. Soon, preferably. By 11am on Friday morning, if you have the time.CONCERNING STAT 2: Since 2006, England have collectively averaged 18% less against left-arm pace than against right-arm pace (28.4 to 34.6). No other team has a such a pronounced comparative weakness against left-arm quicks. (India, oddly, average 45% more against left-arm quicks than against right-arm ones.) Of those who have played a significant quantity of Test cricket, none of Englands current batting line-up, nor any likely potential replacements, has a better record against left-arm seamers than right-arm seamers. Root averages 37.4 against left-arm pacers, 47.6 against right-arm pacers, Bairstow 28.3 to 48.5, Ballance 21.2 to 53.2, Moeen 26.7 to 32.8, Stokes 24.6 to 44.4. Furthermore, Bells figures are 33.6 to 42.0, and Jos Buttlers 23.7 to 40.1.Cook is the closest - 40.4 against left-arm pace, 42.5 against right-arm pace. Even so, he was dismissed by a decent but hardly devilish Rahat Ali delivery in the second innings at Lords, having scored, in effect (after being aided by some rather Kamranakmalian catching) 25 for 3 against Mohammad Amir in the first, which does not suggest that Englands leader is in tip-top flourishing-against-high-quality-left-arm-seamers form.Since the beginning of the 2006 English summer, 20 England players have faced at least 30 overs of pace from both left-armers and right-armers. Only three average more against left-armers - Matt Prior (48.8 to 39.1), Adam Lyth (a not very good 23.2 to an even worse 17.3), and, intriguingly, the recently-departed-from-the-team Nick Compton (54.6 against left-arm seam, the best of the 20 England players involved in this stat; 19.3 against right-arm seam, second worst of any non-specialist bowler who has faced at least 500 balls of right-arm pace since 2006, ahead only of Lahiru Thirimanne [18.4]).Part of the disparity must be due to the fact that England have played several recent Tests against some very good left-arm pacemen, and have faced some less-than-Marshallesque right-armers, but still those are numbers for Pakistan to pin on their bedroom ceilings at night to help them get to sleep. (I assume international cricketers pin statistics to their bedroom ceilings.) (I cannot imagine why they would not.) (I would, if I was an international cricketer.) (I do, and I am not an international cricketer.)Stats, of course, are made to be broken. Or flatly ignored. Or tweaked, or reinterpreted, or counter-statted with another stat. Or used as legal evidence, quiz questions, or chat-up lines. Englands batsmen will need to start declamping these two unwanted numerical albatrosses from around their statistical necks, or this series could become very problematic indeed. ' ' '