Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt79
 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. |
I don't. I think it's far too much of a coincidence that the Ponting rise in average coincided exactly with something similar for so many others. As I said, that Ponting has improved his skills of concentration is a given, but I don't think that happened at the exact time he started scoring runs. Nor do I think anyone - not Ponting, not anyone else - had a cat-in-hell's chance of averaging 70 or 65 over a time of 7 years under the circumstances that the first part of Ponting's career was conducted under.
Quote:
|
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.
|
Tempted to Rolleyes that myself. I have nothing of the sort, nor has anyone really. It's nothing to do with rose-tinted glasses and everything to do with accepting reality.