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Botham vs Flintoff

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
marc71178 said:
Let me guess, because his name is either Smith or Ramprakash? ;)
Or Butcher, or Dravid, or Thorpe, or Kirsten, or Tendulkar, or Pietersen, or Laxman, or Inzamam-Ul-Haq, or Asim Kamal, or Sangakkara, or Lara, or Astle, or any other batsman I find good.
 
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Swervy

International Captain
Richard said:
No, he doesn't, he's just better (and Kallis is disadvantaged, particularly in England, being a South African) and mainly only because he's had the chance to face better bowling than Kallis has.
To say he blows him out of the park is the height of ridiculous exaggeration.
Kallis is disadvantaged in England for being South African!!! Why?

The difference between Kallis and Richards is the difference between being a very good batsman in an age of not so brilliant bowling on flat tracks and being a great batsman in an age of pitches geared more towards the bowlers and some of the all time great bowlers of all time.

And at his very best..Richards blows Kallis out of the park..and in my opinion, there is no exaggeration there
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
shankar said:
Yes. Let's say A has a scorebook average of 50 and a first-chance one of 25 while B has 50 and 40. Now who is better?
Well, it depends, doesn't it?
If the runs are from 10 innings each and all of B's innings have been on incredibly flat pitches against West Indies while A's have been on 5 green seamers and 5 turners, all with uneven bounce, against Australia with McGrath, Gillespie, Kasprowicz and Warne, then I'd still say 25 was a better average than 40.
If conditions were equal and it was over a decent length of time, then B beyond all question.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Swervy said:
Kallis is disadvantaged in England for being South African!!! Why?
Err, because there's a general dislike of South African cricket (mainly due to the Cronje affair as far as I can tell) in England?
You'd have to be a complete dunce with a head in the sand to miss that, especially with fools like EXD around these parts.
The difference between Kallis and Richards is the difference between being a very good batsman in an age of not so brilliant bowling on flat tracks and being a great batsman in an age of pitches geared more towards the bowlers and some of the all time great bowlers of all time.

And at his very best..Richards blows Kallis out of the park..and in my opinion, there is no exaggeration there
And the only reason for that is the precise reason you have stated - Kallis has not had a tremendously large number of chances to play against superb bowlers on pitches offering something to them.
Kallis, in fact, has been less good against the more challenging attacks (something I'm almost certain will change), but just because someone hasn't had the chance to be good you can't automatically dismiss them as hugely inferior.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
shankar said:
It's not just that the average would be too small. The 'every chance' average would be completely misleading because the batsman doesnt start after a chance as he would, a new innings. In some cases the batsman might go through a bad phase in his innings where he's luckily, dropped a few times and each of those little phases between the drops would be unfairly counted as equivalent to a fresh innings.
Not completely misleading at all, just a small fault, one for which there is for almost everything in life.
 

Swervy

International Captain
Richard said:
Err, because there's a general dislike of South African cricket (mainly due to the Cronje affair as far as I can tell) in England?
You'd have to be a complete dunce with a head in the sand to miss that, especially with fools like EXD around these parts.
.

I dont think it is to do with the Cronje thing...I think the English public see a lot of resemblances in the way both Australia and South Africa play the game, and so they have become a team they love to hate( even back in 94 there was that general feeling, which escalated in 98 with the Aterton/Donald thing)...however I do think there is an admiration as well for the South African players

Richard said:
And the only reason for that is the precise reason you have stated - Kallis has not had a tremendously large number of chances to play against superb bowlers on pitches offering something to them.
Kallis, in fact, has been less good against the more challenging attacks (something I'm almost certain will change), but just because someone hasn't had the chance to be good you can't automatically dismiss them as hugely inferior.
Kallis hasnt had the chance to be good against good oppostion? Interesting if slightly flawed arguement...I think he has had every opportunity vs Australia, Pakistan in the 90's etc , he just hasnt taken it...I do agree though that he has the ability to do that however.

But all you have to do is watch the two players play....dig out some highlights from your vast archive and actually watch Richards bat...that way you will have no doubt of how much better a batsman King Viv was compared to Kallis
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Swervy said:
.

I dont think it is to do with the Cronje thing...I think the English public see a lot of resemblances in the way both Australia and South Africa play the game, and so they have become a team they love to hate( even back in 94 there was that general feeling, which escalated in 98 with the Aterton/Donald thing)...however I do think there is an admiration as well for the South African players
There is, for the odd player (Kirsten, Rhodes, Donald - the least frictional of the players), but for most there has been little but patronisation, typified by the case of Smith who, while not as good as he might look, could look like he was Bangladesh class if you listened to some people on here.
Maybe in 1994 there might have been a bit of dislike - I wouldn't know, wasn't paying enough attention back then. I can compare the teams of 1998 and 1999 and there was little of the desperation to prove as many South Africans substandard as there currently is (and has been since, coincidentally, mid-2000).
Kallis hasnt had the chance to be good against good oppostion? Interesting if slightly flawed arguement...I think he has had every opportunity vs Australia, Pakistan in the 90's etc , he just hasnt taken it...I do agree though that he has the ability to do that however.
I think he had a diminutive chance and blew it - I think if he'd had more chances he'd not have blown it.
But all you have to do is watch the two players play....dig out some highlights from your vast archive and actually watch Richards bat...that way you will have no doubt of how much better a batsman King Viv was compared to Kallis
I don't just judge on how good a batsman looks - it can be incredibly misleading. If you looked at the wrong things you could easily think Solanki was a better ODI player than England's best 3 ODI players ever, Knight, Hick and Fairbrother.
 

Smudge

Hall of Fame Member
Richard said:
If so, simple solution - don't read it.
When I opened it, I was unaware it was going to turn into another Richard "I am right and everyone else is incredibly stupid for being unable to understand the brilliance of my first-chance average theory" v the rest competition.

You make Cricket Chat not worth visiting. It's small pennance you rarely visit the NZ Domestic thread or the Black Caps thread.
 

badgerhair

U19 Vice-Captain
Richard said:
No, he doesn't, he's just better (and Kallis is disadvantaged, particularly in England, being a South African) and mainly only because he's had the chance to face better bowling than Kallis has.
To say he blows him out of the park is the height of ridiculous exaggeration.
No, it's including Kallis in the same bracket as IVAR which is the height of ridiculous exaggeration. You're right that being a South African, Kallis will inevitably be compared to Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock, and will invariably come off by far the worse, whereas Richards only has Sobers and Headley and neither were *quite* as good as Viv (although Sobers could bowl a bit).

It might, I suppose, be possible that someone who has only seen IVAR on video highlights could come to your conclusion. I can't believe that anyone who has watched both him and Kallis batting from the boundary could agree with you, though. I've seen a lot of both, in both international and county cricket, and there is simply no comparison.

Cheers,

Mike
 

wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
Richard said:
There is, for the odd player (Kirsten, Rhodes, Donald - the least frictional of the players), but for most there has been little but patronisation, typified by the case of Smith who, while not as good as he might look, could look like he was Bangladesh class if you listened to some people on here.
Maybe in 1994 there might have been a bit of dislike - I wouldn't know, wasn't paying enough attention back then. I can compare the teams of 1998 and 1999 and there was little of the desperation to prove as many South Africans substandard as there currently is (and has been since, coincidentally, mid-2000).
I think there's an element of truth in what you're saying about English attitudes towards SA, but it hasn't stopped Barry Richards being regarded in the same light as Viv (despite virtually no opportunity to merit it at the highest level), so I'm not convinced that Kallis' reputation has really suffered unfairly. Donald & Pollock are regarded as world class performers by all right-thinking folks, for example.

As for why the antipathy exists, I suspect there's a number of reasons. AFAICS in the 1990's several English cricketers didn't like the SA players at all, whereas they had no real problems with even the most obnoxious of the Australians, and followers of the game will have picked up on that. There was a real culture clash, for a number of reasons. Religion may have had something to do with it - our guys viewed some of the Saffies as sanctimonious, whereas they viewed some of ours as disrespectful - but I think it went beyond that. Maybe it had something to do with the period of exclusion. My guess is that some players who grew up in the 80's would have been affected by the widespread resentment at the situation, which in turn developed something of an "us against the world" mentality. Again, this wouldn't exactly endear them to anyone. I would imagine that's much less of an issue now, so if Smith gets a rough deal it's only because people don't like him. Don't over-analyse it!

Of course, some of us oldsters are just struggling to shake off years of seeing Apartheid-era SA as The Big Issue, so it's going to take a while to be totally fair to hem. It doesn't help when we read & hear some of the claptrap spouted about quotas and the scapegoating of guys like Tsolekile & Amla.
 

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
badgerhair said:
No, it's including Kallis in the same bracket as IVAR which is the height of ridiculous exaggeration. You're right that being a South African, Kallis will inevitably be compared to Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock, and will invariably come off by far the worse, whereas Richards only has Sobers and Headley and neither were *quite* as good as Viv (although Sobers could bowl a bit).
Sobers not as good as Viv? Now, Viv was an amazing batsman without question and far better than Kallis, but there's only one batsman ever in test cricket who was better than Sobers.
 

shankar

International Debutant
Richard said:
Well, it depends, doesn't it?
If the runs are from 10 innings each and all of B's innings have been on incredibly flat pitches against West Indies while A's have been on 5 green seamers and 5 turners, all with uneven bounce, against Australia with McGrath, Gillespie, Kasprowicz and Warne, then I'd still say 25 was a better average than 40.
If conditions were equal and it was over a decent length of time, then B beyond all question.
8-) Obviously I'm talking about an instance where the conditions are equal. And why is it B beyond all question? A has made good on his chance much more than B. Granted he has been lucky to get that opportunity to show his worth. But given the opportunity, he has shown himself to be as good as B.
 

shankar

International Debutant
Richard said:
Not completely misleading at all, just a small fault, one for which there is for almost everything in life.
No It's not a small fault. It is a fundamental fault in the method because it treats the phase in the batsman's innings between two chances (or a chance and his dismissal) as equivalent to a fresh innings starting from 0. This is not at all reflective of the batsmans mindset.

For example, a batsman getting dropped on 110 doesnt bat like he's starting a fresh innings. He is very likely take a lot more risks in the knowledge that he already has a good score under his belt. As a result he would get unnecessarily penalised.
 

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
shankar said:
No It's not a small fault. It is a fundamental fault in the method because it treats the phase in the batsman's innings between two chances (or a chance and his dismissal) as equivalent to a fresh innings starting from 0. This is not at all reflective of the batsmans mindset.

For example, a batsman getting dropped on 110 doesnt bat like he's starting a fresh innings. He is very likely take a lot more risks in the knowledge that he already has a good score under his belt. As a result he would get unnecessarily penalised.
Exactly. If a batsman scores 120, gets dropped, then gets dropped again on 122 and 130 and then gets out for 140, his first chance average is 35, despite the fact that he hit 120 without giving a chance. That's so appallingly unfair to the batsman it's just not funny.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Voltman said:
When I opened it, I was unaware it was going to turn into another Richard "I am right and everyone else is incredibly stupid for being unable to understand the brilliance of my first-chance average theory" v the rest competition.

You make Cricket Chat not worth visiting. It's small pennance you rarely visit the NZ Domestic thread or the Black Caps thread.
There's a very simple way of checking who's posted lots in a thread you know.
And for where you typed "rarely" read "never".
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
badgerhair said:
No, it's including Kallis in the same bracket as IVAR which is the height of ridiculous exaggeration. You're right that being a South African, Kallis will inevitably be compared to Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock, and will invariably come off by far the worse, whereas Richards only has Sobers and Headley and neither were *quite* as good as Viv (although Sobers could bowl a bit).

It might, I suppose, be possible that someone who has only seen IVAR on video highlights could come to your conclusion. I can't believe that anyone who has watched both him and Kallis batting from the boundary could agree with you, though. I've seen a lot of both, in both international and county cricket, and there is simply no comparison.
Why?
What's so spectacularly different?
 

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