I don’t know what significance is to be assigned to the statistical oversights of others, but I’ll point one out to you and let you decide what weight to give it. If you go here you will find a discussion between Andy Zaltzman and S. Rajesh of the number 118 in cricket. The discussion occupies nearly 20 minutes, and from it you can learn that Ian Botham scored 118 in the Old Trafford Test of 1981; that Graham Gooch played in 118 Tests; that the very first batsman to score 118 in a Test was the Hon. F.S. Jackson; that Alistair Cook has twice been out for 118 in a Test match; and that Johnny Briggs took 118 Test wickets.
And the oversight? Well, Zaltzman mentions that at Edgbaston in 1997 England bowled Australia out for a total of 118. This is true but the fact on its own is poor and lonely if you miss – as Zaltzman does – the larger numerical fabric of which it is an integral part. In that same Test England’s target in the fourth innings to win the game was also 118. Then, four years later on the same ground, there was a clear reference back to the past since Australia won by an innings and 118 runs. Indeed, I noted the coincidence in my book on the 2001 Ashes series, Men of Waugh. There I wrote:
It immediately struck me that the result – Australia by an innings and 118 runs – strangely echoed the game at Edgbaston in 1997 when in the final innings England needed 118 to win, the exact amount of Australia’s first innings total then. Moreover, as I learned from the Channel 4 highlights on my return home, an innings and 118 runs had been precisely England’s winning margin over Australia at Edgbaston in 1985. [Link added]
I don’t know what your reaction will have been, but imagine my own disappoinment at finding that Zaltzman and Rajesh overlooked this rich set of connections in the matter of 118. (Thanks: RB.)