Quote:
|
Originally Posted by FaaipDeOiad
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. 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.
|
Look ive already admitted that SA choked fairly often against Australia and anyone can see that they should have dominated Australia more often than they did. However not tournament finals and SFs against one team does not make them worse, not while they were winning tournaments otherwise. Nothing changes the fact that SA were the toughest team to beat, and that they were the best team of the tournament in both the 96 and 99 versions of the wc and if it werent for 1-2 games here and there they would have won both world cups.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by FaaipDeOiad
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.
|
That argument is equivalent to saying something like a batsman cannot be great no matter what he achieved over his career because one bowler constantly had the wood over him. Or perhaps what might be more representative for you, an aussie, i could say that Australia werent a better test team than india until 2004 merely because of the fact that they couldnt beat india in india despite being in winning positions in both lost tests in 2001.
The irony of it all is that had Hershelle Gibbs taken that catch, which IMO he did take anyways but only lost it while throwing it up in the air, Australia wouldnt have made the semi final and SA would have won the world cup and who knows what might have happened after that.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by FaaipDeOiad
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.
|
Firstly no matter how much you rate Gilchrist now, you cannot deny that back in the late 90s his record was not as good as it is now and he wasnt considered by anybody to be very good anyways. Not as a batsman at least.
Secondly as i mentioned earlier, he has benefitted from a period of flatter pitches and poorer bowling standards and its representative in his average which has gone up since.
Thirdly, the likes of Arjuna Ranatunga, Jonty Rhodes and Andy Flower were all clearly better players than Gilchrist but were stuck batting in the middle order where it is much harder to get a good bat in and often had to come in the slog overs and effectively throw their wickets away. Not to mention that 2 out of those 3 were stuck for most of their careers playing for largely inferior teams while also having to play against better quality bowlers.
Averages say a lot of things, but in Gilchrists case they overrate his ability as a player. Hes been extremely inconsistent over his ODI career and hes more or less almost always struggled against the better ODI bowling attacks, while cashing in on the rubbish bowling attacks of his day.