Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard
 That just isn't what ANYONE says. No-one has said it doesn't count. It's simply too much of a coincidence that so many players' scoring increased so rapidly at the exact same point for it to have been anything to do with batting improvement. Sure, Ponting was a better batsman in 2003 than 1999, but there's no way he was good enough to go from averaging 40 to averaging 70 (as he did). Nor is virtually anyone. |
yourself. Toss a
in there for not reading my post properly as well.
Did I say it wasn't present, or didn't have an impact (even if I think you in particular are fond of dramatically overstating this impact)? No, what I said was that this change coincided with his improvement, which was essentially that he grew up and became comfortable with his game at test level - which is why he improved so dramatically. I'd say roughly, maybe 5 of the 30 points his average improved came from conditions, the other 25-odd runs improvement came from himself. But this can easily be lost if one takes a dogmatic approach to discounting players from this period because you've got rose-tinted glasses about cricket in the 90s.