Do batters score more on their birthday?

The questions nobody sensible would commission, put to 895 men’s Tests since December 2001 and treated with the gravity they do not deserve.

Birth dates are on record for 698 of the players in these Tests. Top-seven batters have played 108 innings in Tests that ran over their birthday, and averaged 37.31. In their other 7,548 innings they averaged 37.32.

The average hides a birthday wobble. Batters made a duck in 11.1% of their birthday innings, against 7.7% the rest of the year, and a hundred in 4.6%, against 8.0%.

Travis Head, born on 29 December, has spent his birthdays in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. He made 114 there against New Zealand in 2019, then 0 against Pakistan in 2023 and 1 and 0 against India in 2024. Ben Stokes started the Lord’s Test against New Zealand on his 35th birthday this June and was out for a three-ball duck. Kusal Mendis made 196 at Chattogram in the Test that spanned his birthday in 2018, the best present in the sample.