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Best Batsman

Which batsman would you choose and why?

  • Lara

    Votes: 22 21.2%
  • Tendulkar

    Votes: 21 20.2%
  • Ponting

    Votes: 30 28.8%
  • Dravid

    Votes: 14 13.5%
  • Kallis

    Votes: 3 2.9%
  • Inzamam ul Haq

    Votes: 7 6.7%
  • Hayden

    Votes: 2 1.9%
  • Other

    Votes: 5 4.8%

  • Total voters
    104

andyc

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Well, it's open to interpretation. The fact that a 0* is the same as a 0 is a big problem.
 

oz_fan

International Regular
Considering Kallis has played 100 tests its a very good record to have. From those statistics you'd expect him toget a fifty almost every innings. Compared to someone like Lara who you would expect to get a massive score (200+) every 10 innings. IMO Lara is the better batsmen but Kallis is the most reliable batsman on the list. I was suprised that Dravid wasn't in the top 10. It would have been interesting to see how Kallis would have compared to Tendulkar if Tendulkar had continued his consistency.
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
Depends on how you define reliability, doesn't it? Kallis is yet to have that big form slump that almost every other player seems to have had at some point during their careers. Him and Ponting are both due for that, I still think.
 

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
I think you can argue that a guy who scores 20, 25, 5, 0, 150 could be better than a guy who scores 40, 40, 40, 40, 40 anyway. A 40 is never going to win a test match, except in very rare circumstances, but a 150 is at least going to have a big impact on it, and if you play a matchwinner once every 5 innings you're going to be a pretty good player.
 

Jono

Virat Kohli (c)
honestbharani said:
Depends on how you define reliability, doesn't it? Kallis is yet to have that big form slump that almost every other player seems to have had at some point during their careers. Him and Ponting are both due for that, I still think.
Exactly, people keep going "If Ponting and Kallis continue liek this they're going to score 15000 runs and have 50 centureis etc. etc." when the fact is, in all likelihood they will not continue like this for the rest of their career. They are currently in their peaks, and a slump is bound to come.
 

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
Ponting didn't score a single century in 2004. That was a slump of sorts. Just that either side of that he averaged 100 in 2003 and 70 or so in 2005.
 

Jono

Virat Kohli (c)
That was him being out of form yes, and I'm sure captaincy had a minor effect. It wasn't a slump to the extent that Lara had gone through in the 90s or Sachin has gone through recently, or Waugh went through late in his career.
 

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
Jono said:
That was him being out of form yes, and I'm sure captaincy had a minor effect. It wasn't a slump to the extent that Lara had gone through in the 90s or Sachin has gone through recently, or Waugh went through late in his career.
I think one could argue that Waugh (at least, possibly Sachin too) was really more of a decline than a slump. Waugh was never as good after 2001/02 or so as he was before, generally because of age. No doubt Ponting will go through the same in a few years, as all players will. The question is whether or not he can maintain his recent (4 years or so) form until that decline, because if he does he may well be looking at breaking the run scoring record by a fair distance. Even if Ponting was to bat like he is for 2 or 3 more years, and then play another 2 or 3 at half the same level, he'd score 13000-14000 runs.
 

pasag

RTDAS
I think Waugh just lost 'it'. It was more a faulty technique than anything else and every single opposing bowler knew how to expolit it.
 

Jono

Virat Kohli (c)
FaaipDeOiad said:
I think one could argue that Waugh (at least, possibly Sachin too) was really more of a decline than a slump. Waugh was never as good after 2001/02 or so as he was before, generally because of age. No doubt Ponting will go through the same in a few years, as all players will. The question is whether or not he can maintain his recent (4 years or so) form until that decline, because if he does he may well be looking at breaking the run scoring record by a fair distance. Even if Ponting was to bat like he is for 2 or 3 more years, and then play another 2 or 3 at half the same level, he'd score 13000-14000 runs.
You don't just all of a sudden fall from grace into decline. Signs are shown fairly early. 2003 were the signs of Sachin, but it only properly set in late 2004/early 2005.

To think that Ponting is a dead set certainty to continue as he is until he's say 33-34 (remember he very much relies on his eye rather than his technique) and will hence smash every record before he then suddenly declines is being very short sighted.

Sachin at 26-28 was being predicted to break every single record in the book just about. He was smashing attacks everywhere, was one of the best batsman in the world and conceivably people predicted another 8-10 years from him. No one thought that "Hey, maybe he'll get injured, and hey, maybe he won't be as good at 32 than he is at 26".

Sachin just hit his prime at an earlier age to every other batsman because of his early start and his gifted talent, there's no reason the larger amounts of cricket being played nowadays won't result in Ponting eventually suffering an injury somewhere down the line.

I'm not saying its impossible that Ponting (and Kallis for that matter, but he relies much less on his eye for one and is far less aggressive) will definitely fall off the wagon and won't break the run scoring records, but I'd say all these predictions that are coming out on all these news sites with people saying Ponting will easily be statistically the best since Bradman by the time he retires is very naieve. Only a couple of years ago Sachin was averaging near 58, now its 55. A slump/decline can literally stop you in your tracks sometimes.
 

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
I never said it was a dead set certainty though, did I? I said "the question is whether he can maintain his recent form". I think it is pretty likely that Ponting will be at the top of his game for another 2-3 years. As I said, I think he is likely to decline as well, but given that Ponting is at his absolute peak right now, I think it's fair to assume that any sort of decline into mediocrity is a little while off yet. It might be five seasons or it might be two, but he certainly hasn't shown any signs of it so far.

As I said in the last post, if we assume that Ponting will continue near his best for another couple of seasons, and that he will eventually decline with age, but continue to play for a couple of seasons at less than his best, then it is easy to assume that he will break the run scoring records. The same, incidentally, goes for Kallis and Dravid. They are slightly less prolific than Ponting at their best, but they are still heavy run scorers, relatively young and not too far off the pace record wise.

As much as it is a fact that all batsmen go through slumps and declines as they get older, it's also true that very few batsmen just give it away immediately when they fall away from their best. Yes, it's short sighted to come out and say "Ponting will score 50 test centuries and make 16,000 runs, because of the pace he's set since 2001", but saying he is a likely candidate to pass Lara and Tendulkar's records certainly isn't.

Anyway, I think most people who are commenting on Ponting at the moment are simply praising his current form. It's worth remembering that we as cricket fanatics are perfectly aware of everything that is happening in the cricket world at any given moment, but when someone comes out and says "at the pace Ponting is currently setting, it is not inconcievable that he could finish his career with over 40 test centuries, 15,000 runs and an average over 60", they may be speaking largely to a cricketing audience that weren't aware of the unbelievable streak of form Ponting is in. It could simply be an example to illustrate his recent performance, rather than a genuine, considered prediction.
 
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Ikki

Hall of Fame Member
Sean's on the money. The inevitable decline would probably be gradual and in this current trend and predicting his eventual decline...it isn't too far off to say he will break those records. this is all forecast though, of course it can go either way.
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
I actually don't have a problem with people saying "If Player A continues in this kind of form, he will break all records and will go on to beat Bradman as the best player in the world" stuff, as long as they do understand that the "IF" involved there is a BIG "IF".


And as Sean said, while I think Punter will fall off and have a slump sometime in the future, I don't think it is all that wrong to predict that he will surpass Lara and Sachin's records. That is, unless a very drastic change takes place, almost a certainty. But w.r.t him being the best since Bradman and stuff, that is all speculation of the highest order. It is gambling, actually. ;)
 

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