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Originally Posted by tooextracool
Firstly the gap between Australia and SA was large enough. SA won a staggering 74% of their games from 95 until 2000(Which by the way is only marginally worse than Australias ODI record from 2000 until now) while Australia won 60% of their games in the same period. thats a difference of 14% which is a large enough gap to suggest that one team was clearly better than the other. Even if you were to look at their records from 97 until the world cup(Since you seem to think that the Australian side got better after taylor dropped the captaincy), the record is still 73-60 in SAs favor:
http://stats.cricinfo.com/guru?sdb=t...ields=viewtype
http://stats.cricinfo.com/guru?sdb=t...ields=viewtype
Add that to their overall superior head to head record against Australia, you really are clutching at straws by looking at head to heads between the 2 teams in tournament finals. |
Tournament finals are the games you have to win, it's as simple as that. When it comes down to it, South Africa had not one but two clear chances to beat Australia in the '99 WC and failed from a winning position in both games. If they were the better side in the manner that you suggest, one struggles to wonder how, at full strength and in top form, they failed to win either match. South Africa had a very good ODI side in the period in question, and their inability to get over the line against Australia in key matches is the only major blemish on their record, and if it wasn't for that they certainly would have won at least one world cup. However, it happened enough times that I don't think it was a co-incidence, and there's certainly no excuses for the fact that they lost twice in a row to Australia in key matches in that World Cup.
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Originally Posted by tooextracool
except that for most of the 90s and early 2000s he was averaging in the low 30s?
Id also be willing to bet that more than at least 60-70% of the 60 batsmen that are on that list ahead of him were openers or batted in the top 3. To be amongst the top 40 top order batsmen in the history of ODI cricket isnt much of an accomplishment IMO, not especially when you consider that his record has improved dramatically only after pitches have gotten flatter.
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Actually, I said top 20 for a reason, though I was talking about openers only. I looked through the list, and Gilchrist was around 19th among batsmen who had opened in half their ODI innings or more, and a couple of places lower if you include occasional openers. That includes players like Graeme Smith and Marcus Trescothick incidentally, who I certainly wouldn't say are clearly better ODI openers than Gilchrist. Either way, he's in the top 20, and if that doesn't make him a good ODI batsman your standards are absurdly high. Some other "good" ODI batsmen he has a better average than are Arjuna Rantunga, Jonty Rhodes, Nathan Astle and Andy Flower, and he's only fractionally behind the likes of Graeme Hick and Mohammad Azharuddin. Needless to say, he also has a better scoring rate than any of them by a fair margin while maintaining a similar average, which is obviously a major strength in ODIs, and he's maintained his success over a pretty lengthy career.