Top On-Field Personalities

[SJS]

Top on field personalities - a quick list

Pakistan : Imran Khan/Fazal Mehmood
India : ML Jaisimha
England : Ted Dexter
Australia : Norman Oniell
West Indies : Viv Richards/Sobers
South Africa : Hansie Cronje
New Zealand : Martin Crowe/Bruce Taylor
Sri Lanka : Cant think of one
Zimbabwe : DO
Bangladesh : DO

 

[garage flower]

Top on field personalities - a quick list

Pakistan : Imran Khan/Fazal Mehmood
India : ML Jaisimha
England : Ted Dexter
Australia : Norman Oniell
West Indies : Viv Richards/Sobers
South Africa : Hansie Cronje
New Zealand : Martin Crowe/Bruce Taylor
Sri Lanka : Cant think of one
Zimbabwe : DO
Bangladesh : DO

Love him or hate him, I think Sangakarra's got a great deal of personality.

I'm trying to remember the exact details of the comment he made when SL were playing England at the same time as the Football World Cup was taking place. A batsman was continually padding away Murali and Sanga commented: "I thought the World Cup was in USA/France (not sure of the year or the batsman)". Can anyone remember?

 

[tooextracool]

I didn't think Smith had a problem though, being second only to Bradman of all time as he is?!

you know, just analysing smiths career, i realised, why not do it the richard way. first chance averages.
and i found out that on his way to that massive 259 against england, he should have actually been out caught by hussain(a simple catch at point) when he was on 4. then i found out that in the game against pakistan on his way to 151, he was dropped by younis khan at slip on 54.
but wait, theres more, on his way to 139 against the WI at super sport park he was actually let off by an awful piece of fielding by sarwan when he should have been run out on 23.
what this is all means is that his first chance average is actually 41, clearly bradmanesque.

 

[SJS]

Love him or hate him, I think Sangakarra's got a great deal of personality.

I'm trying to remember the exact details of the comment he made when SL were playing England at the same time as the Football World Cup was taking place. A batsman was continually padding away Murali and Sanga commented: "I thought the World Cup was in USA/France (not sure of the year or the batsman)". Can anyone remember?

Yes He's not bad but I was trying to dig deeper and try to recall from all the Sri Lankan players over time. I can think of Siddath Wettimuny, Ranjan Madugalle and even a fast bowler they had, I think Rumesh Ratnayake.

My vote would go to Wettimuny, the graceful opener of the 80's, whose 190 against England at Lord's in '84 remins the highest Sri Lankan test score on that ground till date.

 

[Richard]

you know, just analysing smiths career, i realised, why not do it the richard way. first chance averages.
and i found out that on his way to that massive 259 against england, he should have actually been out caught by hussain(a simple catch at point) when he was on 4. then i found out that in the game against pakistan on his way to 151, he was dropped by younis khan at slip on 54.
but wait, theres more, on his way to 139 against the WI at super sport park he was actually let off by an awful piece of fielding by sarwan when he should have been run out on 23.
what this is all means is that his first chance average is actually 41, clearly bradmanesque.

Smith, like plenty of batsmen of the current era, has benefited from luck.
Almost all batsmen will have a first-chance average lower than their scorebook one (Flintoff is actually an exception - who can seriously remember an innings other than the Antigua one where he benefited from luck?) so you simply need different barriers.
41 isn't a bad first-chance average - though it's actually a bit lower than that because you don't seem to have included the clear lbw to Giles on 127 during the 277 at Edgbaston.
The reason I was so impressed with Smith in 2003 was because of the way he scored runs (no, he wouldn't have had the chance to score them but for dropped catches) after the drops - 251 without giving a chance (the Hussain drop was on 8 IIRR) at Lord's, for instance.

 

[Richard]

I didn't think Smith had a problem though, being second only to Bradman of all time as he is?!

Something which I've quite clearly never said.

 

[Richard]

Obviously Richard, you missed Graeme Smith fall to pieces after Fleming had a crack at him early last year in an ODI at Eden Park.

Fell to pieces to such an extent that he aptly demonstrated the substandard nature of New Zealand's attack by scoring 132* to win the Basin Reserve Test.
Having the last word is an imperative part of good captaincy.

 

[tooextracool]

Smith, like plenty of batsmen of the current era, has benefited from luck.
Almost all batsmen will have a first-chance average lower than their scorebook one (Flintoff is actually an exception - who can seriously remember an innings other than the Antigua one where he benefited from luck?) so you simply need different barriers.
41 isn't a bad first-chance average - though it's actually a bit lower than that because you don't seem to have included the clear lbw to Giles on 127 during the 277 at Edgbaston.
The reason I was so impressed with Smith in 2003 was because of the way he scored runs (no, he wouldn't have had the chance to score them but for dropped catches) after the drops - 251 without giving a chance (the Hussain drop was on 8 IIRR) at Lord's, for instance.

yet of course if it were somebody other than graeme smith who had a poor domestic average and succeeded at the international level, you'd be calling for his head.

 

[tooextracool]

Fell to pieces to such an extent that he aptly demonstrated the substandard nature of New Zealand's attack by scoring 132* to win the Basin Reserve Test.
Having the last word is an imperative part of good captaincy.

or perhaps fall to pieces by losing 6 ODIs straight and the 2nd test match and somehow choking out a win in the final game of the tour?

 

[savill]

Off the field, he is a right d**k, but on it Ronnie Irani is quite fun. I can remember the time he had the whole Barmy Army doing stretches, and also in a Day/Nighter for Essex gave a streaker a peck on the cheek after she done a handstand in front of him.

 

[Richard Rash]

Fell to pieces to such an extent that he aptly demonstrated the substandard nature of New Zealand's attack by scoring 132* to win the Basin Reserve Test.
Having the last word is an imperative part of good captaincy.

It is easily to determine if you actually watch the series that Fleming had a go at Smith during one of the ODI's and he fell to pieces. Having the last word has nothing to do with captaincy. If anyone looked back on that series it won't be remembered for Smith scoring a hundred and having the last word it will be for NZ's dominance over them for the majority of the summer and for Fleming working Greame Smith over beautifully and dare I say it teaching him some lessons in captaincy.

 

[Richard Rash]

Having the last word is an imperative part of good captaincy.

So I bet that Naseer Hussian felt great about his captaincy after England won the final test against Aussie in the last Ashes. Yep he definetly had the last word but did he come away from that series looking better than Steve Waugh..

Same applies to Gangualy in the recent Aussie tour to India. India won the last test and therefore Gangualy had the last word but overall that's not what people will remember when they look back at the series.

 

[Richard]

yet of course if it were somebody other than graeme smith who had a poor domestic average and succeeded at the international level, you'd be calling for his head.

No, because I've said umpteen times that I only ever use first-chance averages to sum-up a batsman's ability, not in selection.

 

[tooextracool]

No, because I've said umpteen times that I only ever use first-chance averages to sum-up a batsman's ability, not in selection.

and hence should we conclude that graeme smith ir ordinary, since his average falls down by so much when you look at his first chance average. i mean you do the same thing for sehwag and for a while you did the same thing for vaughan,

 

[Richard]

or perhaps fall to pieces by losing 6 ODIs straight and the 2nd test match and somehow choking out a win in the final game of the tour?

Something that I somehow doubt Fleming had any influence on - South Africa have been abysmal in ODIs since NWS2003.
They've played 22 ODIs against teams other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe since then and their record reads 5 wins, 1 NR and 16 defeats. 3 of the wins came against West Indies and 1 was only by courtesy of a remarkable run-chase.
It's not a run of form that can be easily explained in terms of the ability of the players available, but it's fact nonetheless.
Fleming can take no credit for it.
Indeed, I might add that just about every game of that series was pretty close and could have gone either way.

 

[Richard]

and hence should we conclude that graeme smith ir ordinary, since his average falls down by so much when you look at his first chance average. i mean you do the same thing for sehwag and for a while you did the same thing for vaughan,

Sehwag-the-opener's and Vaughan-of-2002's fall by considerably more than that, I can assure you.

 

[Richard]

It is easily to determine if you actually watch the series that Fleming had a go at Smith during one of the ODI's and he fell to pieces. Having the last word has nothing to do with captaincy. If anyone looked back on that series it won't be remembered for Smith scoring a hundred and having the last word it will be for NZ's dominance over them for the majority of the summer and for Fleming working Greame Smith over beautifully and dare I say it teaching him some lessons in captaincy.

Some lessons that if Smith is wise he'll have absorbed and learned from.
I don't really care what "the summer will be remembered for" - all that shows is how regularly people get the two game-forms mixed-up and let ODI stuff influence Test-match thinking.

 

[Richard]

So I bet that Naseer Hussian felt great about his captaincy after England won the final test against Aussie in the last Ashes. Yep he definetly had the last word but did he come away from that series looking better than Steve Waugh..

You clearly weren't taking much notice of English attitudes to that victory.
Plenty of people over here - 4 months down the line, admittedly - were talking of that victory in glowing terms, and of Hussain's part in it ("grinding cricket for 5 days, under a hot sun and an unflinching leader" reads one description; "maybe, just maybe, they exposed the first crack in a mighty empire" [though that's still not coming to much yet] another).
Of course, in Australia they weren't - there was mostly just the usual blinkered nonsense of "you wouldn't have done it but for us having injuries" (in spite of the fact they'd been screaming "stop making excuses" when Englishmen mentioned their own injury epidemic during the rest of the tour).
But nonetheless that match was extremely heartening to English cricket, and started the glow of something which has eventually flared into life with 12 Tests, 11 victories, albeit it took a little while to catch light despite two false sparks (the phenominal achievements of beating Zimbabwe and Bangladesh).

Same applies to Gangualy in the recent Aussie tour to India. India won the last test and therefore Gangualy had the last word but overall that's not what people will remember when they look back at the series.

No, people will remember it for the fuss the Australians made about the pitch on which the victory was achieved - they expect every match to produce conditions which favour them.

 

[tooextracool]

Something that I somehow doubt Fleming had any influence on - South Africa have been abysmal in ODIs since NWS2003.
They've played 22 ODIs against teams other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe since then and their record reads 5 wins, 1 NR and 16 defeats. 3 of the wins came against West Indies and 1 was only by courtesy of a remarkable run-chase.
It's not a run of form that can be easily explained in terms of the ability of the players available, but it's fact nonetheless.
Fleming can take no credit for it.
Indeed, I might add that just about every game of that series was pretty close and could have gone either way.

and believe me any team other than australia and b'desh are capable of beating the rest on their day. of course the fact that they managed to lose 5 and 6 out of 7 if you include the test, it really shows how much smith was affected.

 

[tooextracool]

Sehwag-the-opener's and Vaughan-of-2002's fall by considerably more than that, I can assure you.

please, i didnt even look at all the games that i played, i simply looked at all his 100s and as you pointed out, it falls even further when you consider the giles lbw on his way to 277. IMO his average would be around 35ish if we were to look at first chance averages, a whole 16 runs less than his career average.