Quote:
Originally Posted by Monk
I think that in a lot of other forums people just select modern players, so it'll always be "Hayden and Langer are the best openers ever ftw", or "Tendulkar has made 1,000,000,000 runs, so he's the best batsman ever". I like the fact that there is a good balance in this forum, and that people take the time to investigate the players from other eras, and critique them on evidence available against modern players (as tedious as it sometimes gets  ) As is currently happening between a few posters on the topic of Larwood.
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It's definitely good that people consider older players. However, I agree with him on the point that there tends to be a definite bias towards rating older players above what they deserve. Ironically, Larwood is a great example.
Lots of olden players with poor stats have their value beefed up by olden-cricket-romantics due to their being "amazing players to watch." So was Herschelle Gibbs, for example, but you won't see anyone beefing up his reputation due to it.