Do you know that!

[C_C]

Quiete interesting reads-both of them.
And i agree- 1979 figures look odd.

Thommo was well past his fastest by that time but Holding bowling at 88mph ?????
Was he bowling spin ?

A few comments:


1. When it comes to brutish display of speed and menace, two overs of Holding comes to mind.
One was the legendary over to Boycott that was just picture-perfect. Each delivery was faster than the one before and the final one had Boycott bowled all ends up.
The other was his over to Brian Close. Closey was getting on the years but Holding nearly killed him on the pitch a few times that over.

2. I can certainly see Waqar Younis being the fastest man ever or at the very least, one of the top 5 fastest bowlers in cricket's history. He was timed at 95mph in 1995 or so, after having undergone two stress fractures of the back ! it only leaves to imagination how fast he bowled in the late 80s/early 90s before sustaining his back injury.

3. The author uses the term 'javelin throw' to describe Thommo's action. Now, Thommo had one of the cleanest actions ever- the kind action he had, it would be quiete a chore to chuck. Interestingly, Bedi often uses the term 'javelin thrower' to describe Murali.
Maybe the media has got it all wrong and Bedi is essentially saying Murali's action is clean as a whistle ?


4. A few notable omissions from that list are Srinath,Colin Croft, Rodney Hogg and Mohammed Zahid.
Srinath in the mid 90s was consistently clocking upwards of 90mph and the few times an actual speedgun was used, he upended Donald consistently when it came to speed.
Croft was one of the fastest and most hostile bowlers to ever take the field IMO.
Hogg- well he was known only for his speed so i am guessing he should've been ragingly fast. Feel free to correct me however- i don;t know much about Hogg.
And Zahid had a few tests (before he broke down) where he was clocking some serious speed.
I havn't seen that many pacers making Hooper look slow and lethargic( he always played a dumb shot after looking like he had all the time in the world to play a superfast delivery) but Zahid managed that.
Infact, he was bowling so fast that the keeper was standing closer to the ropes than to the stumps.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

I don't see how you can drop Imran and include Botham to 'strengthen the bowling'

I didn't just drop Imran for Botham, I dropped Imran and Steve Waugh for Botham and Murali, since the batting was already strong, and this would offer give bowlers and a second spinner.

The other possible change for me would be Chappell for Tendulkar.

 

[C_C]

Well if you wanna shore up the bowling without overly compromising the batting, i think it would be a good idea to include a bonafide bowler who could bat a bit - my choice would be Pollock or Akram.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Well if you wanna shore up the bowling without overly compromising the batting, i think it would be a good idea to include a bonafide bowler who could bat a bit - my choice would be Pollock or Akram.

I think Botham fills that role pretty nicely. As does Imran for that matter, but the idea of picking 5 bowlers and having one of them be Botham is you don't sacrifice much in terms of the batting.

 

[Swervy]

I think Botham fills that role pretty nicely. As does Imran for that matter, but the idea of picking 5 bowlers and having one of them be Botham is you don't sacrifice much in terms of the batting.

yep and Botham could actually bowl spin..he once took 6 wickets in an innings doing just that

 

[Richard]

Again, like i said, go get remedial english- pronto.

you said, and i quote, " And if you take careers FROM THE START to the end of the peak no-one will average anything close to 60+, 20-."

That is, you are talking about players' careers from the start to the end of their peak: precisely what i responded to.
The object of your sentence is the peak and not the start of one's career and you qualified that object by specifying the starting point and the ending point.
it is quiete different from saying 'And if you take careers from its start, to the end of the peak.........'
in the latter version( since you intended that apparently and which i have responded to already), you are defining two objects- the career and the peak and you are qualifying the former with 'start' and the latter with 'end of'.

I meant the latter - from the start of the career to the end of the peak.

And as i explained, from the start of one's career to the end of peak is irrelevant, because Botham's peak coincided with the start of his career.
Truncating off his record at 1981/82 is taking purely his peak years. If you do likewise with other players- taking a set of matches from the start of the peak to the end of the peak, a 60+ batting average and sub 20 bowling average will become quiete common.
That is aside from the fact that your absolute statement ( no one will average .......) is factually incorrect, as proven by the starting few years of Viv Richard's, Brian Lara's, Waqar Younis's, etc. careers.

Once again, simple logic is to take it as "hardly anyone will average..."

Quit arguing semantics with me. You said it was an injury from our worst nightmares and i said it is the kind of pain i am personally familiar with.
That is more understanding and experience of the matter than you in all likelyhood. So , again, stfu.

More understanding than me? Maybe so. I've had injuries aplenty, so I understand dosages of pain equally well.
And I was not referring specifically to the pain but the pain combined with the knowledge of what the pain was forcing you to miss, combined with the knowledge of the long-term damage you were doing in order to get around what's causing the pain, is something you have absolutely no clue of, unless you've read his autobiography.

From my uncle. He is F.R.C.S in Orthopedics- an authority in the field of skeletal deformities and its treatment.
You claimed that it wasn't a degenerative condition and i corrected you on that.
Its true that the degeneration was accelerated by hours of strenous back activity lasting well over two decades but fact remains that it is degenerative. Ie, Atherton would be in the same boat as he is now at the age of 55-60 if he had a more sedentary lifestyle.

Congratulations on being able to correct me for the first time.

Which is why you get continously booed in practically every thread for arguing semantics and taking the thread off course. Which is why you get continously booed in practically every thread for comming up with hairbrained and idiotic ideas.
I know that i am not particularly popular here but if you think you are, i suggest you get a reality check.
As per most posters finding you more appreciable, i don't care for a popularity contest but i seriously diagree. However, you are free to conduct a popularity contest if you feel like it

No, I'm not, it's not felt acceptible to do such things on the site.
I do, though, talk pretty regularly with most posters on MSN and let me assure you, that'd not happen if I was considered the possessor of hairbrained ideas.

You *DO* need a good dosage of humility alongside a good dosage of reality.
You hold a far superior opinion of yourself than how most see it- You think you are capable of writing a book on cricket and its impacts on the society better than authorities in the said field. You think you are super popular when all i see is Richard vs rest.
.You think your hairbrained ideas, that are in contradiction to matchplay realities faced by players of considerable expertise are correct nonetheless and those players are wrong.

All this points to a classic case of narcissistic delusion.
And incase you are wondering, should i wish to persue it, I am a year and half away from making a medical diagonosis of someone's emotional health.

Not by studying posts on an internet forum you're not.
And find me where I've said I've the literary skills to write books? On ANYTHING?
All I've said is I've the understanding of cricket to do so, and more significantly write shorter articles.

The only one in a bubble is yourself. Logical reasoning proves you wrong. Sports historians and an understanding of sociological levels of professionalism proves you wrong.
Up until mid 1950s, the sport was a split between professionals and amatuers. As the years went by, the professional side swelled in their ranks and the amatuers diminished. But come 1950, there were still a considerable number of amatuers in the sport, both at domestic and international level.
As such, very few amatuers had the quality and the chutzpah to play high quality cricket- which is why amatuers like Bradman are quiete a rarity and which is why the few and far between professionals like Clarrie Grimmett and Sid Barnes were ridiculously successful.
because it isnt a straight fight between two sharks, it is a fight between sharks and salmon.
The quality was so inconsistent that it isnt funny. The same team that boasted a batsman or bowler of awesome capability often boasted players with barely enough capabilty to break into a modern day semi-professional club side.
The lineups were something similar to 'Tendulkar, Lara, me mum, your mum, McGrath, McGrath's granny, etc' taking the field for both sides.
And as such, all pre mid 50s statistics are massively inflated due to the presence of hopeless players at the highest levels.

Nope, they're nothing remotely close, otherwise amateurs would have been humiliated every time they took the field. Yes, most professionals were better than most amateurs, and that, amazingly, is why most of the best players at both domestic and international level were professionals, especially bowlers.

Nationalistic bias ?
yes i do admit i have nationalistic bias. Which is why i was deliriously cheering on when John Davison was murdering Merv Dillon in world cup 2003 or when Joe Sakic scored a goal against the yanks in Salt Lake city. you see, i am a Canadian. And bloody proud of it.

Lucky you. Maybe you might have pro-American bias that's never been relevant to discussions, too.
No-one, however, needs to ask where your preferance lies with regards the major cricketing nations. Even you couldn't make Canadians look the best.

As per regional bias, it is a term most often synonymous with ethnocentric behaviour, which is just a politically correct term for racism.
So in short, you ARE accusing me of racism if you are accusing me of regional bias.

Indeed it is. Not all regions, however, are synonymous with ethenticity, and the India-Pakistan-Sri Lanka cricket triangle is one that isn't.

As per the whole 'start with the subcontinental teams', subcontinental cricket didnt exlode till the 70s/80s and that is not where i draw the line. India was active in pre 1950s and yet i include Indian players in that list too.
Maybe if you took off your 'he is a racist' cap, you will realise that the demarcation i make is infulenced by sports history and views of sports historians and sociologists.

Maybe - if I didn't realise it was factually flawed.
No, cricket didn't "explode" as you put it until the 70s, but it was still very much around for most of the 20th-century.
What would have been the point of "All India" being given Test-status if the game wasn't incredibly popular?

if one has an accurate understanding of the field and statistical analysis, you will see only ONE or at best, a few conclusions.
All my statistical analysis is backed up by consistency from my part. I evaluate players based on their aggregate performance, overseas performance,difference in various eras and performance against the best. Atleast, they have the king's share in my analysis.
And as such, i have been consistent with that and i dare you to prove me otherwise.

Or perhaps, like i stated earlier, the pro-subcontinental bias is just a faculty of your view of things, given that the anglicised world has been fed pro-anglo propaganda in most spheres for most of the media's historical existance.
Just a thought for you to consider before you accuse me of regional bias.

And given that I'm not one to be spoon-fed rubbish such as pro-Anglo propaganda that's not a likelihood.
Of course, there's equal propensity for the thing to happen the other way around, Anglophobia is a large part of subcontinental and Arab society (for obvious reasons) and while I'm not for a second, unlike you, going to suggest that influences your values, there's absolutely no disputing it.
Like I've said earlier, maybe or maybe not you are aware of a bias towards your own lands in terms of cricketing assessment. I've said, time and again, that if you look hard enough and turn enough angles you can find statistics to prove anything. I'm not saying that it happens all the time with you, unlike Scallywag, but equally there are many occasions where I find your take on the validity of certain statistics flawed and the validity of others far greater.

 

[Swervy]

and I thought this thread had mellowed out!!!!

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

and I thought this thread had mellowed out!!!!

NEIN!

 

[Kweek]

whoah C_C on the attack..and richard sets in a counter attack!

 

[Smudge]

As that great band Hanson sung

"Where's the love?"

 

[cricket player]

As that great band Hanson sung

"Where's the love?"

Qoute
Where is the love

Where cricket player is

 

[Smudge]

Qoute
Where is the love

Where cricket player is

cricket player is Hugh Hefner and I claim my five pounds.

 

[badgerhair]

T_C :
I think you nailed it absolutely.
It is all relevant to how we define greatness.

My definition, as you correctly surmised, is based on consistency. What is the job of a player ? It is to contribute to the team's performance day in and day out. To make them competitive day in and day out.
As such, you've done a much better job by scoring two hundreds in two matches instead of a double century and a duck.
That is why while your average performance is important, it MUST always be weighted against your consistency.


As such, fundamental definition of greatness is consistency.

This definition makes it considerably easier to justify the use of career averages as weighty evidence in an argument. And it certainly makes for open and shut cases.

The difficulty I have with this approach is that I've never seen an average come out to bat when a team was in trouble or take a blinding catch, or indeed do anything to affect the course of a game in progress.

What the collection of aggregate runs and aggregate wickets sliced and diced against balls bowled, received, times out et cetera attempts to measure is the net positive effect a player usually has on a game, which is a fair enough sort of thing to want to measure, but the argument here seems to be partly about whether the figures collected are actually good measures.

A true calculus of the worth of an innings would take into account not only its quantum but also some of what might be its vectors. A score of 120 runs is obviously valuable in and of itself, but value should also be added if the violence of the assault led to a particularly troublesome spin bowler being withdrawn from the attack and dropped for the rest of the series. (And how, for instance, does one measure the value of the innings Wally Hammond played at the MCG in the tour match against Victoria prior to the 32-33 Ashes series? England did not want to face Fleetwood-Smith in the Tests, so Jardine told Hammond to go out and smash him to bits - which he duly did with 203, F-S going for five an over, and F-S was not picked for the entire series. To me, greatness is embodied in being able to go out and carry out such an order, but I "define" (if that's not too ambitious a word) greatness that way.) And 45 on a horrible pitch chasing 103 to win seems to me to be worth a lot more than 45 on a flat deck in a team total of 650-8d replied to with 430 and 351-7.

There have been three scores of 149* in Test cricket. Botham at Headingley, Gilchrist at Hobart, and Younis Khan at Auckland. Pakistan had a good first innings lead and spinners who could exploit a wearing pitch, so that 149* was really a bit of overkill. Gilchrist came in when his side was 126-5 in pursuit of a 368 winning target and odds-on to lose, and nursed his team home to victory. And Botham became BothMan the White-Sweatered Crusader before our very eyes and scared the Aussies to death with ominous psychological effects for the rest of the series. Gilchrist and Botham played incredibly important innings, while Younis Khan played one which was by no means as valuable.

A true calculus of innings worth would be able to assign useful numbers to these innings which would show their relative value. If you were then to average those weighted contributions over a career, you might well have something, but it doesn't make any logical sense to say that a partial measurement of one aspect of an innings (its quantum) can be a complete representation any more than measuring the average speed of a car tells you everything you need to know about its performance (unless you're simply interested in how fast it goes), so it makes equally little sense to stoutly maintain that the statistical approach is superior to every other when the numbers you are using don't tell you what you really want to know.

Cricket is far too complex a system for it to be properly analysable by measuring only one or two variables. You leave too many variables undefined and do not analyse their effect on the system, and while I'd agree that some variables can give you a very rough and ready idea of the likely state (raw batting average) while others would be hopeless in isolation (eg the average time of day at which a batsman walked out to bat), the view you get from them can only be an approximation.

It's possible that there is a Grand Unified Theory by which you could capture all the variables involved in a cricket game and produce a true model of it and thereby explain the behaviours of the various particles (or players) in it, but none of the statistical theories I've seen propounded over the last thirty years has survived empirical observation. Lots of them have been good approximations, sure, but none of them have been able to adequately explain various outliers in the data except by effectively declaring that they are irrelevant because they contravene the theory and are therefore incorrect. Which is not very good science in my book.

Enough theory.

Back to Botham and Imran and so on, since I haven't had a rant about Botham for a bit.

In retrospect, I know of three Bothams. Both 1.0 (1977-80) was a bowling all-rounder, a magnificent bowler who could bat excitingly on occasions. Then there was Both 2.0 (1981-4) who was a batting all-rounder who was good enough to open the bowling given what else we had available. And from 1985 onwards we had Botham 3.0, a middle-order batsman who had a ghastly tendency to browbeat captains into letting him bowl even though he was actually rubbish, and could do so because according to the media he hadn't stopped walking on water since 1981 (even if he was being kept afloat by getting stoned on occasion) and nobody dared upset him.

But one thing which remained constant throughout his career and which appears to have been completely ignored in the entire discussion is that he was a brilliant second slip. Only four men have taken 10 or more catches in a series four times - Botham, Ian Chappell, Bobby Simpson and Mark Waugh - and none of them were less than stupendous in the slips. To analyse Botham's all-round performance and only include runs and wickets is a travesty.

Cheers,

Mike

 

[SJS]

But one thing which remained constant throughout his career and which appears to have been completely ignored in the entire discussion is that he was a brilliant second slip. .

Read again

As a fielder. He was one of the greatest all round fielders of al time. Again the other three were simply not in the same league..

 

[SJS]

The difficulty I have with this approach is that I've never seen an average come out to bat when a team was in trouble or take a blinding catch, or indeed do anything to affect the course of a game in progress.

Brilliantly put !!

Will fall on uncomprehending or deaf ears I am afraid

 

[honestbharani]

I think Botham's ability to pull off blinders at the slips should be considered. It should be counted like a wicket too.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Excellent post, Mike.

 

[SJS]

It has been said here that Imran was capable enough to walk into any team in the world on the strength of his bating alone. A fantastic claim but difficult to verify for other teams in the world. So lets look at Pakistan itself.

Imran played 126 innings for Pakistan. As many as 98 of them were at numbers 7 to 10 !!

Only 28 innings were played in the top 6. A strange way to treat a "pure" batsman

Botham, who it has been said, could never be talked off in these terms. Played 161 innings for England and only 47 of them were at numbers 7-9 and as many as 115 amongst the top 6 !!

Strange that Pakistan should play its batsmen amongst the tail and england should play its bowlers(pretty bad ones at that) amongst the middle order batsmen.

Maybe the England side with Boycott, Gower, Randall, Gooch, Fletcher, Gatting, Lamb, Hick, Stewart amngst others, did not have the great batting strength of Pakistan that made it play a "pure" batsman (remember we are talking of his being as good as a pure batsman) amongst the lower order.

Or maybe when it was said, Imran could walk into any side in the world as a batsman, it was meant any side other than Pakistan.

 

[C_C]

I meant the latter - from the start of the career to the end of the peak.

And start of the career to end of the peak is irrelevant, because it has a lot to do with where the peak of that person is located. When talking about start of career to end of peak for players like Viv, Botham, Lara etc., you are talking essentially of their peak only. As such, you have to talk about peaks only of other players.

And I was not referring specifically to the pain but the pain combined with the knowledge of what the pain was forcing you to miss, combined with the knowledge of the long-term damage you were doing in order to get around what's causing the pain, is something you have absolutely no clue of, unless you've read his autobiography.

So you think somebody who broke his back at 13-14 didnt know what he was missing due to wearing a traction suit for 7 months ?
Right-o.

Congratulations on being able to correct me for the first time.

Definately not the first time, unless you are into blatent lying.

No, I'm not, it's not felt acceptible to do such things on the site.
I do, though, talk pretty regularly with most posters on MSN and let me assure you, that'd not happen if I was considered the possessor of hairbrained ideas.

Like i said- i don't have any beef against you. I only point out the ridiculous ideas you bandy around. That has nothing to do with talkin to posters on MSN.

Not by studying posts on an internet forum you're not.

It is not the best of means but it certainly shows the nature of posters. Honestbahrani(sp?) has a pacifist streak- he has a long history of making comments that dilutes tension.
You have a narcissistic streak when you think your opinion is far more valuable than others, including current cricket players-people who are FAR more well equipped to form an opinion about facing McGrath for example and how much variations he has.
SJS has a typical 'my words are final because i am a golden oldie' attitude-though he manages it very politically.
neil pickup has a parental attitude where on some levels he sees posters here as 'children under his supervision'.
I could go on and on but the point is, posting patterns are very informative as essentially it is the electronic equivalent of lying on a psychiatrist's chair and rambling on on 'what you like'. Ofcourse,it is missing the pointed questions that a psychologist often poses-which is why it isnt as good a means. But to claim that a poster doesnt reveal his/her personality traits over a long period of posting is horseshyte.

Nope, they're nothing remotely close, otherwise amateurs would have been humiliated every time they took the field. Yes, most professionals were better than most amateurs, and that, amazingly, is why most of the best players at both domestic and international level were professionals, especially bowlers.

And professionals regularly humiliated amatuers in that era.
In an era when neither batting nor bowling was as planned and organised as it is in the last 30-40 years, there are some of the hugest descripancies in terms of averages popping up quiete frequently.
And more often than not, the 'lesser players' were amatuers.
As late as 1939, approximately 30% of the domestic league in england were amatuers and test teams still picked two-three amatuers per side.
Ofcourse that number steadily declined but nothig close to modern professionalism was achieved until late 1950s.

Lucky you. Maybe you might have pro-American bias that's never been relevant to discussions, too.
No-one, however, needs to ask where your preferance lies with regards the major cricketing nations. Even you couldn't make Canadians look the best.

I have no intentions of making someone look the best or not look the best. On that aspect, i go largely on record. As per a Canuck having a pro-American bias, you will not find many Canucks that are overly fond of America and i certainly am not one of them.

Maybe - if I didn't realise it was factually flawed.
No, cricket didn't "explode" as you put it until the 70s, but it was still very much around for most of the 20th-century.
What would have been the point of "All India" being given Test-status if the game wasn't incredibly popular?

Read carefully.
subcontinental cricket exploded in activity and popularity sometime in the 1970s. The following it had before then was a drop in the bucket compared to what it had after that period.

Of course, there's equal propensity for the thing to happen the other way around, Anglophobia is a large part of subcontinental and Arab society (for obvious reasons) and while I'm not for a second, unlike you, going to suggest that influences your values, there's absolutely no disputing it.

That would be generalising. And even then, that generalising would be accurate if one had been brought up under a predominantly subcontinental environment. Since i've spent only 1 year in the subcontinent after the age of 5 ( discounting vacations), it certainly doesnt apply to me. And the last part of your statement is self contradictory. If there is 'absolutely no disputing it', then you ARE suggesting it influences my values.

I've said, time and again, that if you look hard enough and turn enough angles you can find statistics to prove anything. I'm not saying that it happens all the time with you, unlike Scallywag, but equally there are many occasions where I find your take on the validity of certain statistics flawed and the validity of others far greater.

it is irrelevant to me whether you find my statistics flawed or not.
What you cannot accuse me of is inconsistency in application of my statistics.
I've deemed, from my experience in playing and watching cricket, alongside interacting with professional cricketers, as to what what the key criterions are. And i apply them uniformly to every tom **** and harry.
Which is why you don't see me contradict myself on issues. For eg, unlike many, i did not argue that Vettori is a superior bowler than his overall statistics because of his performance against Australia but when the same benchmark comes to Imran-Botham, the same 'logic' goes outta the window.
I have always considered performances against the best of the best to be one of the many factors influencing a player's standing in my eyes.
If there was any nationalistic bias, you would be able to show me a single example of me not applying my evaluation process evenly.

 

[Blaze]

Wow you guys certainly love being right don't you?

At the end of the day does any of this actually matter?

Does it really matter who is right and who is wrong?