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Great small team V Great tall team ?

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
jlo33692 said:
Yes your right SJS
we are getting away from the original point,Who is Larter?
I think the first point to finding the answers is to find where they found all the cricketers heights,They seemed to have them all in alphabetical order and just pinging them out as quick as anyone could ask so they must be on a site somewhere,for without them we are guessing the heights and putting players in who maybe dont qualify,I think once we get the list of say 20 in each team we would get a good side from both and then see who we think has the better team.
David Larter was an England and Northamptonshire fast bowler of the sixties. Played ten tests for England with 5 wicksts in his debut innings (5-57 against Pakistan at the Oval 1962) and also, very intrestingly, 5 for 68 in his last innings against South Africa at Trent Bridge !! That must be rare I think - a five for in both one's debut and farewell bowling performance at test level.
If we did find such a list it would take away the fun. We need to keep finding the tall players (and the short ones) and keep building the side. Keep improving it - heightwise primarily - until we cant do it anymore.

Availability of so much information on the net has taken away some of the pleasure of such excercises I think.
 
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SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Ok. Larter was 6'7". That makes these so far the confirmed heights of tall cricketers i have been able to locate.

Player.....Inches.....cms
Garner.....80.....203.2
Reid.........80.....203.2
Moody......79.....200.7
Ambrose...79.....200.7
Grieg........79.....200.7
Larter........79.....200.7
Oram........78.....198.1
Walsh.......77.....195.6

The heights were all in inches in the sources from where I took them and I have converted to cms at 2.54 per inch. Thus there is some approximation in cms.
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
Here's another GJ Bonnor, the great Australian hitter was 6'6" or 198 cms.

George Bonnor played 17 tests for Australia in the eighties with 128 against England at Sydney in 1885 being his best test score.

I remember reading somewhere that he was also a brilliant fielder.
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
OK I found something !!

This article (its pretty old) lists some of the tallest, shortest and heaviest cricketers the writer could think of. It adds the following to my list of tall international cricketers.

1. LE Nagel : 6'6" (198cms)
who played a solitary test in the bodyline sries and opened the Aussie attack getting the wickets of Hammond and pataudi Sr (not before both had got hundreds)

2. Fredrick Durston : 6'6" (198 cms)
who played one test for England against australia in 1921 at Lord's , opened the bowling with Jhonny Wont Hit Today Douglas and took four wickets in the first innings including Armstrong and Macartney(whom he got again in the second) but never played again for England for some inexplicable reason inspite of a very successful first class career that ended 12 years later !!!

Some interesting names here for those looking for BIG cricketers by weight.
 

Salamuddin

International Debutant
I Think Saurav ganguly and Rahul Dravid are the same height - 6 feet tall I believe.

Daniel Vettori is definitely pretty tall - I think he'd be around 6"3 or 6"4.

The short guys are Tendulkar, Parthiv, Taibu. :D
 

jlo33692

U19 Debutant
SJS said:
David Larter was an England and Northamptonshire fast bowler of the sixties. Played ten tests for England with 5 wicksts in his debut innings (5-57 against Pakistan at the Oval 1962) and also, very intrestingly, 5 for 68 in his last innings against South Africa at Trent Bridge !! That must be rare I think - a five for in both one's debut and farewell bowling performance at test level.
If we did find such a list it would take away the fun. We need to keep finding the tall players (and the short ones) and keep building the side. Keep improving it - heightwise primarily - until we cant do it anymore.

Availability of so much information on the net has taken away some of the pleasure of such excercises I think.
well done SJS, Just diverting on your subject here m8 about Larter getting a 5 for in first and last test,I recently wrote to the stump the bearded wonder
Link....http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/sports_talk/stump_bearders/4349518.stm
Askimng him this question,Has there ever been another bowler (Warne Being the one) that has taken a wicket with his first ball in ashes series,and taken a wicket with his last ball in ashes series,or in any other series,as Warney got the gatting wicket with his first ball,and then in the 5th test he claimed the last wicket of someone? So at this stage he has taken a wicket with his first and final ball in test against england. He wrote back and said he will keep looking but cannot find anyone as yet who has done the feat.
as i see you are right into all the Stats and things around tests SJS i was wondering if you knew of someone else who has done it?
Anyway your right about finding the heights ourselves as it would take a bit of the fun out of the challenge, There must be a lot of players we are missing who meet the tall and short criteria,Come on other posters give us some talls and shrimps.
Still sjs it seems amazing that all the great batsmaen are short doesnt it?
All the record holders ie Bradman,Border,Tendulkar,Lara,Gavaskar,are small and are exceptional batsman.Why??????You might think it a disadvantage as any ball short of a length must be like a bouncer to them? All the batsman who are short also appear to be able to play every shot in the book!!!!
 

thierry henry

International Coach
In the 1930s 5'8'' was above the height of the average man.

Jacob Oram, according to himself, is 2m tall or 6'7'' and weighs in at 110kg/242lbs/17st 4lbs. A pretty big man.

The New Zealand team of recent years has actually been unusually tall imo (ironically, during the 2004 tour to England I recall several commentators saying that our bowlers lacked the height of Harmison and Flintoff- I suppose the delusional colonial superiority complex even extends to physical size :p )

Kyle Mills and Daryl Tuffey are both about 6'5'' and Vettori is 6'4'' and a lot more solidly built than he was in his younger days. James Franklin would be at least 6'4'' as well.

I always thought Shabbir Ahmed was pretty tall, apparently according to cricinfo he's 6'5'', I thought he might have been taller.

Shane Warne is about 6' so I don't think he should be in any short teams. Vaas is about 5'10'' imo.
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
jlo33692 said:
Still sjs it seems amazing that all the great batsmaen are short doesnt it?
All the record holders ie Bradman,Border,Tendulkar,Lara,Gavaskar,are small and are exceptional batsman.Why??????You might think it a disadvantage as any ball short of a length must be like a bouncer to them? All the batsman who are short also appear to be able to play every shot in the book!!!!
It is true that most all time greats in batting have been of at least average height and often lower. Rarely have the absolute masters been the real tall men. One can try and understand that and see what are the pros and cons of height for a batsman.

PROS :

1. The one clear advantage that suggests itself is that of reach. Height means longer limbs which increases the reach as far as the feet moving to the ball is concerned as well as, to a slightly lesser degree of importance I feel, the arms. It would appear that a tall batsman will convert a good length delivery to a near half volley due to his greater reach. This is true but only to the extent that a half volley (or a good length for that matter) is not a fixed spot or even range on the pitch. It is determined primarily by the reach of the batsman. Thus a good bowler will aim for a point closer to the bowling end when determining a good length spot for his deliveries when bowling to, lets say Tony Grieg, as against Tendulkar.

. Having said that, it is still an advantage since stepping out and driving means that a couple of paces would take Greig almost two feet closer to the bowler than Tendulkar’s couple of paces.

. We will see when discussing the cons that this has its limitations.

2. The other distinct and, in my opinion, unmitigated advantage is of the greater swing of the bat. The power of a hit is a factor of the force and the length of the lever (in the case of an orthodox clean swing it would be the length from the right handed batsman’s left shoulder to the sweet spot on his bat. This could be something like six to eight inches more for Greig than for Tendulkar. Hence id both of them swung the bat with equal force and speed and struck it well on the sweet spot, the Greig hit should, normally carry more force and take the ball further. Hence the real big drivers off the front foot and six hitters have been bigger men although the improvement in batting implements has made the Tendulkars hit the ball a long way too. But the advantage is clearly with the taller men.

CONS : These are many as we will see.

1. First and foremost, a shorter stature means a lower centre of gravity hence the very tall players tend to be less ‘stable’/’steady’/’balanced’ than the average to low build ones. The game has traditionally, in the longer version at least, been about scoring with minimal risk which has meant hitting without playing too much in the air. A lower centre of gravity enables the batsman to keep the ball on the ground. This is exactly what the coach is trying to do when he asks you (when driving to covers for example) bend your left knee, keep your shoulder pointing downwards and generally ‘smell’ the ball. Basically it gives you greater control and also reduces the chances of the inadvertent hit in the air.

2. Just as the first pro of front foot, the shorter man benefits in the backfoot play. With a lower center of gravity you are also able to move quicker and more precisely while remaining well balanced. Great backfoot play is what separates the good batsmen for the truly great. This fact may be lost on the generation brought up in the limited over slugfest style and also because more people seem to understand what front foot batting is all about than do about backfoot batting (the straight batted backfoot batting in particular) but is true nevertheless. Count those universally accepted as the greatest batsmen in the history of the game (except the 19th century when backfoot play was still evolving) and you will find that they were not just exceptionally good of the backfoot, they played more off the backfoot than off the front. Look at Lara and you will find that he rarely goes on to the front foot to defend. My coach once told me that the difficulty about playing the good length delivery is that it takes you that split second longer to decide which foot to play the delivery off and that causes the majority of the problems. What he didn’t add but one has observed over the years that most batsmen have their preference of which movement (forward or back) they feel comfortable deciding in favour of when not sure of the length(the good length ball). Many batsmen tend to go forward and survive if the movement is negligible or manageable but the truly great batsmen go back and watch the ball off the wicket and improve their chances of survival. Lara is a prime example. The point in this context is that the taller batsmen, with honourable exceptions, tend to go forward and many of them grope against the big spinners of the cricket ball.

3. Its also a fallacy that height would give a batsman greater advantage in dealing with the short pitched delivery. This is not true for various reasons
a. The big issue in playing short pitched deliveries is being able to decide which to leave and the taller batsmen are at an obvious disadvantage here
b. Although the need to keep the ball down during hooking or pulling for example (rolling the wrists over) would appear to favour a greater height, in actual fact, the ball that does not rise as expected is as very often a bigger problem than the one that rises more than expected. Plus, if one finds the ball higher than what is possible to roll one’s wrists over, one can always leave it alone or play it intentionally in the air and away from the fielders which is possible if one is in control.
c. The biggest problem is not being able to move. Taller batsmen tend to be more leaden footed (though one day cricket has reduced the premium on footwork in stroke play) and not many of them go back on to the stumps to play back as comfortably as they go forward. This causes bigger problems facing short pitched deliveries than anything else.

Interestingly the horizontal bat backfoot strokes viz the cut, pull, hook etc are played better by average height batsmen while the tall batsmen who are able to move back with fluency (Sobers and Graeme Pollock come to mind though they were not giants) tend to play the backfoot drives of the straight bat very well !

4. The cricket bat as an implement (its size in particular) seems to be made with an average height person in mind. I once asked my coach what is the correct size of a cricket bat for a child and he said just slightly longer than half his height. This makes sense since you need to be comfortable in your stance. You need to be slightly bent over but not too crouched to be relaxed in your stance. A lot of very tall batsmen find the bat so short that a conventional stance is not very comfortable. Hence we had the crouchers in more orthodox times and now we have the batsmen who will stand bending only as mush as makes them comfortable but that leaves the bat in the air so they have modified with a bat-in-the-air stance. Clearly with the evolving height in homo sapiens, the heights of cricketers too is changing upwards and we will have more and more batsmen who will feel more comfortable standing with bat in the air than crouch. But clearly the conventional stance is ideal if one could adopt it. Shorter batsmen have no need to crouch. A bat seems to be made for people around 5’ 6” to 5’8” in height.

By the way, almost all the really great and very fast bowlers have been between 5’ 9” and 6 feet. Exceptions have been very few. The really tall guys 2 meters or so have invariably (again some exceptions) been medium fast to fast medium

More on that some other time .

PS : Sorry I have no time to correct typo’s and grammatical mistakes 
 

thierry henry

International Coach
Really great/really fast bowlers between 5'9'' and 6'? I see your point but I'm not sure I agree. For example, Lee and Akhtar are slightly shorter than you might expect fast bowlers to be these days (which underlines your point), but I would say that they are still both at least 6 foot (probably both about 6' or 6'1''.) Ditto with Lillee and Hadlee, not huge man but I would have thought both were at least 6 foot.
 

SJS

Hall of Fame Member
thierry henry said:
Really great/really fast bowlers between 5'9'' and 6'? I see your point but I'm not sure I agree. For example, Lee and Akhtar are slightly shorter than you might expect fast bowlers to be these days (which underlines your point), but I would say that they are still both at least 6 foot (probably both about 6' or 6'1''.) Ditto with Lillee and Hadlee, not huge man but I would have thought both were at least 6 foot.
I dont disagree at all. Six foot is a good height for fast bowlers but the rarely have the real tearaway fast bowlers been in the Garner, Ambrose, Walsh, Larter, Bruce Reid range.

Larwood, Tyson, Thomson, Imran, Lee, Shoaib, Constantine etc. These are the real scary fast fast bowlers in the games history (among others) and they are not approaching the 2 meter mark. Most of them are just about 6 ft or tad below.

I wasnt saying that they have to be short but really tall tall bowlers dont seem to have that lethal pace over prolonged spells. By the way, not many of the really tall bowlers have conventional bowling actions too. This may also make a difference.

Some of the fastest bowlers have been of the sling variety (Thomson) or traditional classical action bowlers. I think a freakish height (and the ultra long upper as well as lower limbs) causes physical problems. Also when the ball is releaed from a height, it will go more towards the batsman(be fuller in length) if the angle of delivery is the same as when it is released from a lower height. Thus a taller bowler needs to make a steeper angle to ensure the ball pitches on a length and this can mean expending a lot of energy(force) in pulling the ball downwards rather than propelling it more horizontally towards the batsman.

Thats why , in fact the sling type action bowlers, tend to be faster since the ball is propelled more towards the batsman and loses less on account of the downward impact.
 

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
It's definately true that the very tallest bowlers are rarely in the express pace zone, but conversely the advantages from extra height often outweigh those from extra pace, which is why bowlers like Garner, Ambrose and even McGrath were so successful without being lightning quick.
 

thierry henry

International Coach
SJS said:
I dont disagree at all. Six foot is a good height for fast bowlers but the rarely have the real tearaway fast bowlers been in the Garner, Ambrose, Walsh, Larter, Bruce Reid range.

Larwood, Tyson, Thomson, Imran, Lee, Shoaib, Constantine etc. These are the real scary fast fast bowlers in the games history (among others) and they are not approaching the 2 meter mark. Most of them are just about 6 ft or tad below.

I wasnt saying that they have to be short but really tall tall bowlers dont seem to have that lethal pace over prolonged spells. By the way, not many of the really tall bowlers have conventional bowling actions too. This may also make a difference.

Some of the fastest bowlers have been of the sling variety (Thomson) or traditional classical action bowlers. I think a freakish height (and the ultra long upper as well as lower limbs) causes physical problems. Also when the ball is releaed from a height, it will go more towards the batsman(be fuller in length) if the angle of delivery is the same as when it is released from a lower height. Thus a taller bowler needs to make a steeper angle to ensure the ball pitches on a length and this can mean expending a lot of energy(force) in pulling the ball downwards rather than propelling it more horizontally towards the batsman.

Thats why , in fact the sling type action bowlers, tend to be faster since the ball is propelled more towards the batsman and loses less on account of the downward impact.

I agree totally. I was just being pedantic about the 5'9'' to 6 foot thing :p I would say 5'10'' to 6'2'' is more like it. Someone like Shane Bond for example, is about 6'1'' or 6'2'' and is still a good athlete with a nice action who is really quick. Any taller than that and it can be difficult to have the all round co-ordination and athleticism to be really quick (sorry to our taller forummers if that sounds harsh).
 

jlo33692

U19 Debutant
thierry henry said:
In the 1930s 5'8'' was above the height of the average man.

Jacob Oram, according to himself, is 2m tall or 6'7'' and weighs in at 110kg/242lbs/17st 4lbs. A pretty big man.

The New Zealand team of recent years has actually been unusually tall imo (ironically, during the 2004 tour to England I recall several commentators saying that our bowlers lacked the height of Harmison and Flintoff- I suppose the delusional colonial superiority complex even extends to physical size :p )

Kyle Mills and Daryl Tuffey are both about 6'5'' and Vettori is 6'4'' and a lot more solidly built than he was in his younger days. James Franklin would be at least 6'4'' as well.

I always thought Shabbir Ahmed was pretty tall, apparently according to cricinfo he's 6'5'', I thought he might have been taller.

Shane Warne is about 6' so I don't think he should be in any short teams. Vaas is about 5'10'' imo.
Good god man what are you feeding all these tall cricketers over there?:whistling:
 

jlo33692

U19 Debutant
SJS said:
It is true that most all time greats in batting have been of at least average height and often lower. Rarely have the absolute masters been the real tall men. One can try and understand that and see what are the pros and cons of height for a batsman.

PROS :

1. The one clear advantage that suggests itself is that of reach. Height means longer limbs which increases the reach as far as the feet moving to the ball is concerned as well as, to a slightly lesser degree of importance I feel, the arms. It would appear that a tall batsman will convert a good length delivery to a near half volley due to his greater reach. This is true but only to the extent that a half volley (or a good length for that matter) is not a fixed spot or even range on the pitch. It is determined primarily by the reach of the batsman. Thus a good bowler will aim for a point closer to the bowling end when determining a good length spot for his deliveries when bowling to, lets say Tony Grieg, as against Tendulkar.

. Having said that, it is still an advantage since stepping out and driving means that a couple of paces would take Greig almost two feet closer to the bowler than Tendulkar’s couple of paces.

. We will see when discussing the cons that this has its limitations.

2. The other distinct and, in my opinion, unmitigated advantage is of the greater swing of the bat. The power of a hit is a factor of the force and the length of the lever (in the case of an orthodox clean swing it would be the length from the right handed batsman’s left shoulder to the sweet spot on his bat. This could be something like six to eight inches more for Greig than for Tendulkar. Hence id both of them swung the bat with equal force and speed and struck it well on the sweet spot, the Greig hit should, normally carry more force and take the ball further. Hence the real big drivers off the front foot and six hitters have been bigger men although the improvement in batting implements has made the Tendulkars hit the ball a long way too. But the advantage is clearly with the taller men.

CONS : These are many as we will see.

1. First and foremost, a shorter stature means a lower centre of gravity hence the very tall players tend to be less ‘stable’/’steady’/’balanced’ than the average to low build ones. The game has traditionally, in the longer version at least, been about scoring with minimal risk which has meant hitting without playing too much in the air. A lower centre of gravity enables the batsman to keep the ball on the ground. This is exactly what the coach is trying to do when he asks you (when driving to covers for example) bend your left knee, keep your shoulder pointing downwards and generally ‘smell’ the ball. Basically it gives you greater control and also reduces the chances of the inadvertent hit in the air.

2. Just as the first pro of front foot, the shorter man benefits in the backfoot play. With a lower center of gravity you are also able to move quicker and more precisely while remaining well balanced. Great backfoot play is what separates the good batsmen for the truly great. This fact may be lost on the generation brought up in the limited over slugfest style and also because more people seem to understand what front foot batting is all about than do about backfoot batting (the straight batted backfoot batting in particular) but is true nevertheless. Count those universally accepted as the greatest batsmen in the history of the game (except the 19th century when backfoot play was still evolving) and you will find that they were not just exceptionally good of the backfoot, they played more off the backfoot than off the front. Look at Lara and you will find that he rarely goes on to the front foot to defend. My coach once told me that the difficulty about playing the good length delivery is that it takes you that split second longer to decide which foot to play the delivery off and that causes the majority of the problems. What he didn’t add but one has observed over the years that most batsmen have their preference of which movement (forward or back) they feel comfortable deciding in favour of when not sure of the length(the good length ball). Many batsmen tend to go forward and survive if the movement is negligible or manageable but the truly great batsmen go back and watch the ball off the wicket and improve their chances of survival. Lara is a prime example. The point in this context is that the taller batsmen, with honourable exceptions, tend to go forward and many of them grope against the big spinners of the cricket ball.

3. Its also a fallacy that height would give a batsman greater advantage in dealing with the short pitched delivery. This is not true for various reasons
a. The big issue in playing short pitched deliveries is being able to decide which to leave and the taller batsmen are at an obvious disadvantage here
b. Although the need to keep the ball down during hooking or pulling for example (rolling the wrists over) would appear to favour a greater height, in actual fact, the ball that does not rise as expected is as very often a bigger problem than the one that rises more than expected. Plus, if one finds the ball higher than what is possible to roll one’s wrists over, one can always leave it alone or play it intentionally in the air and away from the fielders which is possible if one is in control.
c. The biggest problem is not being able to move. Taller batsmen tend to be more leaden footed (though one day cricket has reduced the premium on footwork in stroke play) and not many of them go back on to the stumps to play back as comfortably as they go forward. This causes bigger problems facing short pitched deliveries than anything else.

Interestingly the horizontal bat backfoot strokes viz the cut, pull, hook etc are played better by average height batsmen while the tall batsmen who are able to move back with fluency (Sobers and Graeme Pollock come to mind though they were not giants) tend to play the backfoot drives of the straight bat very well !

4. The cricket bat as an implement (its size in particular) seems to be made with an average height person in mind. I once asked my coach what is the correct size of a cricket bat for a child and he said just slightly longer than half his height. This makes sense since you need to be comfortable in your stance. You need to be slightly bent over but not too crouched to be relaxed in your stance. A lot of very tall batsmen find the bat so short that a conventional stance is not very comfortable. Hence we had the crouchers in more orthodox times and now we have the batsmen who will stand bending only as mush as makes them comfortable but that leaves the bat in the air so they have modified with a bat-in-the-air stance. Clearly with the evolving height in homo sapiens, the heights of cricketers too is changing upwards and we will have more and more batsmen who will feel more comfortable standing with bat in the air than crouch. But clearly the conventional stance is ideal if one could adopt it. Shorter batsmen have no need to crouch. A bat seems to be made for people around 5’ 6” to 5’8” in height.

By the way, almost all the really great and very fast bowlers have been between 5’ 9” and 6 feet. Exceptions have been very few. The really tall guys 2 meters or so have invariably (again some exceptions) been medium fast to fast medium

More on that some other time .

PS : Sorry I have no time to correct typo’s and grammatical mistakes 
Good stuff SJS,Gee m8 you really know and love your cricket,amazing,
Just on the conversion table im using m8 I.8 meters or 180cm is the 5 foot 9 inch and that was the cut off point that was suggested for short players (under)
Justin Langer is at (Height 1.78 m) so he is under the limit as is Ponting(Height 1.78 m)
I am having trouble getting Tendulkars,Lara,Gavaskar,but anyway the topic on fast bowlers and a tall team has taken my intesest and is starting to get really interesting to try and find a competent team of talls,Guess it is starting to prove the theory that the original statement was, Small players seem to dominate cricket,but i wonder also if we could pick a team in the average range,180cm up to whatever 6,foot 2 inches is in cm,Making 3 teams.I think this one might be the one that gives a great team to match the shorties.
Im still trying to find a lot of the mentioned players in this threads height,not so easy it seems hahahaha. :wacko:
 

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