More wickets than runs in first-class cricket – a list

In cricket, having taken more wickets than scored runs is sometimes seen as an indication of extreme ineptitude with the bat, as it is generally supposed that players with mroe first-class wickets than first-class runs are supposedly very few. On the poorly restrictive qualification of fifty first-class wickets, however, The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians finds as many as 132 such cricketers. 

However, when I had a look I found that most of these were quite occasional cricketers who did not play much cricket at all – not to be compared with genuinely great bowlers like Bill Bowes or Bhagwath Chandrasekhar, or an immensely popular crowd-attracting bowler like Chandrasekhar or Eric Hollies. Under the criterion of:

1. at least fifty first-class matches or
2. at least one Test match

there are only 49 players with more wickets than runs in first-class cricket, listed below in order of ratio of wickets to runs, with Test players shaded in red:

Player	Wickets	Runs	Matches	Ratio
T Natarajan	67	29	21	2.31034
S Sandeep Warrier	186	93	57	2.00000
Grahame Anton Chevalier	154	84	43	1.83333
Bhagwath Subramanya Chandrasekhar	1,063	600	246	1.77167
Alfred Ewart Hall	234	134	46	1.74627
Azhar Attari	245	143	76	1.71329
Kevin Bertram Sidney Jarvis	674	403	260	1.67246
Robert George Mallaby Carter	523	324	178	1.61420
Mark Frost	169	106	64	1.59434
David Buchanan	408	257	62	1.58755
Francis Prest McHugh	276	179	95	1.54190
Brian James Griffiths	444	290	177	1.53103
John Norman Graham	614	408	189	1.50490
George Fenwick Cresswell	124	89	33	1.39326
William Eric Hollies	2,323	1,673	515	1.38852
Holcombe Douglas Read	219	158	58	1.38608
James Coupe Shaw	642	467	115	1.37473
Kelaniyage Jayantha Silva	232	177	65	1.31073
Rupert William Hanley	408	320	113	1.27500
Peter Robert George	207	163	61	1.26994
Simon Peter Davis	124	98	48	1.26531
Ayavuya Myoli	131	104	67	1.25962
Christopher Stewart Martin	599	479	192	1.25052
Cuan Neil McCarthy	176	141	60	1.24823
Charles Stowell Marriott	711	574	159	1.23868
Guy William Fitzroy Overton	169	137	51	1.23358
Richard William Stewart	131	107	52	1.22430
Michael Joseph Cowan	276	233	99	1.18455
John Andrew Afford	468	398	170	1.17588
Saad Altaf	425	365	104	1.16438
Norman Gordon	126	109	29	1.15596
Ben Matthew Edmondson	194	169	58	1.14793
Padmakar Kashinath Shivalkar	589	515	124	1.14369
Sarmad Anwar	170	151	54	1.12583
Milton Aster Small	56	51	18	1.09804
William Mycroft	863	791	138	1.09102
Tanaweera Achchige Vajira Hemantha Kumara Ranaweera	255	234	96	1.08974
Kahakatchchi Patabandige Jayananda Warnaweera	287	265	68	1.08302
William Eric Bowes	1639	1531	372	1.07054
Johnson Tumelo Mafa	183	173	62	1.05780
Ernest Raymond Herbert Toshack	195	185	48	1.05405
John David Frederick Larter	666	639	182	1.04225
James Donald Higgs	399	384	122	1.03906
Charles William Foord	128	125	52	1.02400
Alfred Lewis Valentine	475	470	125	1.01064
Aamer Nazir	319	316	83	1.00949
Ewen John Chatfield	587	582	157	1.00859
Subashis Roy	172	171	67	1.00585
David Alfred Donald Sydenham	487	485	145	1.00412