Hussey's average - How long do we have to wait?.......

[atichon]

Hussey's average .

You're harsh, he's better than average

 

[C_C]

I think though that if Gilchrist ends his career averaging 40 people will say "well, he averaged 60 for so long, and he started his career late...". Gilchrist is similar to Hussey in that his career has been shortened significantly by the time that he began. He hasn't missed a test since the start of his career, but he has only been around since 1999, and is already nearing retirement. If Hussey is still averaging 70 odd in a year or two, it won't matter if he drops off after that and finishes up averaging in the 50s, he will still be remembered for his incredible start to his career.

Jeff Thomson, Viv Richards, Ian Botham and so on are testament to this. All of them have career records which fall short of their reputation because they declined at the end of their careers. No doubt Gilchrist will be the same.

Yeah. But at the same time, a Gillchrist or Hayden, even against similar attacks boasting similar stats cannot be held in the same regard as a Tendulkar or a Ponting.
Doing it at a very young age is indeed a special thing that deserves higher acknowledgement.
Its baffling why cricket, like some sports, doesnt consider prodigies to be something that counts in regard-factor. In almost every other field - music, education, etc., prodigies are synonymous with highest talent even if their work is not of much higher quality empirically ( prime reason why Mozart or Gauss are considered the finest classical musician/mathematician even though their work itself was not much more brilliant than Bach/Bethoven or Ramanujan/Leibnitz.

A Gillchrist or Hayden or even Hussey are expected to pull significantly higher figures than a Tendulkar or Sobers or Ponting under similar circumstances to be considered superior or on par. Primarily because a) they are entereing their 'international phase' as a far better polished and finished products and b) even the most brilliant of the youngest players ( including Bradman) tend to be more erratic in their teens/early 20s than in their primes (late 20s/early 30s). Players who start very young have two 'tough phases' in general - back when they are a kid and an unfinished article and still learning the game(such as Tendulkar) and the very common 'decline near the end of their careers' phase.

A player comming in at his prime, as a much better finished article, is not on the same benchmark as a player starting very young and still learning. For pacers, i will draw a line in their early 20s, spinners till their mid 20s and batsmen till their mid-late 20s.

 

[C_C]

As per rating Hussey- it will depend on the quality of the attack he faces(which is also developing alongside him), the pitch conditions ( if he averages 60 for the next 4 years when suddenly the avg. innings score is 500 and every other batsman is averaging 50+ is not that awesome) and experience - i tend not to hold any concrete opinions about a player until they've played 40-50 tests in the modern era.

 

[Goughy]

........until his batting average is considered extraordinary?

It already is extraordinary. He deserves a lot of credit for what he has done to start his career and his average is remarkable.

The tough part is keeping it so.

 

[Sanz]

Its baffling why cricket, like some sports, doesnt consider prodigies to be something that counts in regard-factor. In almost every other field - music, education, etc., prodigies are synonymous with highest talent even if their work is not of much higher quality empirically ( prime reason why Mozart or Gauss are considered the finest classical musician/mathematician even though their work itself was not much more brilliant than Bach/Bethoven or Ramanujan/Leibnitz.

I am just wondering why you didn't give any example from other sports. And how can you say that we in cricket, dont consider prodigies as special. As far as I remember Sachin was special from the first day he wore that India cap. What do you want us to do, bump his batting average by 10 runs ?

And Ramanujan wasn't a mathematical prodigy ? Good that you know your stuff.

 

[Sanz]

A player comming in at his prime, as a much better finished article, is not on the same benchmark as a player starting very young and still learning. For pacers, i will draw a line in their early 20s, spinners till their mid 20s and batsmen till their mid-late 20s.

At the same time you cant compare a 30 year Old Sachin Tendulkar to a 30 year old Hussey, because by this time Sachin had 14 years of International Cricket experience which cant be substitude by any other form of cricket. So at the age of 30 Sachin is better equipped than Hussey in terms of experience and as a finished product both. It's not easy to succeed in International Cricket, and Hussey has done very well so far. You can take it against him that he is a better finished product, which he is, but he has also lost his reflexes, he also doesn't have the international exposure and despite of that he has started on such a high level and if he can maintain it for next 1-2 years than that would be a solid feat.

Hussey is already 30, He is under more pressure to perform and succeed than a 16 year old because soon he will be considered too old to be considered in the future of aussie cricket (in case he failed). So overall, IMO, there are pros and cons of starting early and late and they cancel each other out.

 

[C_C]

I am just wondering why you didn't give any example from other sports. And how can you say that we in cricket, dont consider prodigies as special. As far as I remember Sachin was special from the first day he wore that India cap. What do you want us to do, bump his batting average by 10 runs ?

And Ramanujan wasn't a mathematical prodigy ? Good that you know your stuff.

Prodigy = profuse talent from a very young age. I dont know much about Ramanujan and my knowledge isthat he was 'discovered' in his 20s or so... i could be wrong..but you got the cruz of what i said - someone who's a prodigy vs someone who's developed at a more regular rate.

 

[C_C]

At the same time you cant compare a 30 year Old Sachin Tendulkar to a 30 year old Hussey, because by this time Sachin had 14 years of International Cricket experience which cant be substitude by any other form of cricket. So at the age of 30 Sachin is better equipped than Hussey in terms of experience and as a finished product both. It's not easy to succeed in International Cricket, and Hussey has done very well so far. You can take it against him that he is a better finished product, which he is, but he has also lost his reflexes, he also doesn't have the international exposure and despite of that he has started on such a high level and if he can maintain it for next 1-2 years than that would be a solid feat.

Hussey is already 30, He is under more pressure to perform and succeed than a 16 year old because soon he will be considered too old to be considered in the future of aussie cricket (in case he failed). So overall, IMO, there are pros and cons of starting early and late and they cancel each other out.

The point is, if you are comming in as a finished product in your late 20s, you are expected to do better than someone of the same skill level who's been around since his teens or early 20s.
Its like almost taking the 'best phase' of someone's career and chopping off the 'adjustment phase' that many players have to do when they debut at a tender age.
Overall, statistically, the one who's making his debut in his mid-late 20s is better off than one who's making it in his mid-late teens. And as such, to be considered equal or better, the older debutant has to sport significantly better numbers consistently ( ie, give him 40-50 test matches or around a 100 ODIs).
As per the prodigy comment - put it this way - a batsman like Tendulkar- who's accomplished almost everything various other alltime great batsmen have at a much younger age would automatically be vaulted as ' best after bradman' on that score alone if it were some sports or areas such as music/education. That is the sole reason why Mozart is an echelon above Bach or Bethoven - not because his work was that much better- but because he did it at such a young age. Most sports tend not to appreciate prodigal talent but only the final stats at the end of the day.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

I disagree with the comparison to art and mathematics.

For one, Mozart recieves recognition because he was composing from when he was a small child, but that doesn't mean his greatest compositions came at that time - they developed with age and experience.

Nevertheless, cricket is a sport and its goal is results. Talent is not an end in and of itself. Hussey was no doubt a very good cricketer when he was 20 as well, but he didn't get an opportunity in the international side. In fact, it's virtually impossible for a player of that age to get a go in the Australian test side because of the way the system is structured. You'd have to be the next Bradman. Ponting is the closest thing we have had to a prodigy in a long time... he had a bat contract at 12 or something, and the likes of Rod Marsh called him the best young batsman they had ever seen. Still, he didn't make his test debut until he was 21, and when his performances dropped off a little he was promptly dropped, and he never reached his peak as a player until he was around 25 or 26.

Tendulkar made his test debut at 16 simply because the opportunity was there. A player in England or Australia of similar talent wouldn't get that chance. Regardless, his performances for the first three or four years of his test career were relatively unremarkable, and holding him in higher regard than a player who performed better at an older age seems very odd. If necessary, just ignore the early part of his career where he was clearly too young to be playing test cricket when comparing him with the likes of Hussey.

 

[Buddhmaster]

Wow this place is boring

 

[C_C]

I disagree with the comparison to art and mathematics.

For one, Mozart recieves recognition because he was composing from when he was a small child, but that doesn't mean his greatest compositions came at that time - they developed with age and experience.

Nevertheless, cricket is a sport and its goal is results. Talent is not an end in and of itself. Hussey was no doubt a very good cricketer when he was 20 as well, but he didn't get an opportunity in the international side. In fact, it's virtually impossible for a player of that age to get a go in the Australian test side because of the way the system is structured. You'd have to be the next Bradman. Ponting is the closest thing we have had to a prodigy in a long time... he had a bat contract at 12 or something, and the likes of Rod Marsh called him the best young batsman they had ever seen. Still, he didn't make his test debut until he was 21, and when his performances dropped off a little he was promptly dropped, and he never reached his peak as a player until he was around 25 or 26.

Tendulkar made his test debut at 16 simply because the opportunity was there. A player in England or Australia of similar talent wouldn't get that chance. Regardless, his performances for the first three or four years of his test career were relatively unremarkable, and holding him in higher regard than a player who performed better at an older age seems very odd. If necessary, just ignore the early part of his career where he was clearly too young to be playing test cricket when comparing him with the likes of Hussey.

Its easy to say when seeing Hussey that he might've been very good in his youth. But one look at Martyn,Hayden or Langer and its evident that they are anything but prodegies.
A babyfaced 18 year old doing almost as well as a 30 year old, to me, atleast, is far far more superb an accomplishment than just being the best batsman of the pack.
And i dont personally consider Ponting to be a prodigy at all.Almost every great batsman shows brilliance for their age group and get all sorts of labels attached to them - Sobers himself said that a 14 year old Lara was the best he's seen in the caribbean at that time.
The one true prodigy i would say is Tendulkar. Especially from our era. Its not that he got his chance because the team was weak-ish batting wise. He *earnt* his chance just like any other player. Before he debuted, he was close to 1000 FC runs at 50+ average. That kind of record from a just-turned 16 year old is just incredible.
Not to mention,he was absolutely tearing down the place in junior level cricket and routinely annihilating teams at school level playing with guys 3-4 years his senior.
Not to mention, his achievement on an age-by-age basis is better than almost everyone's before the age of 26-27.
Lara, Ponting, Viv, etc. - none of them dominated at such an early age or even tore up the shop at their respective levels to such an astounding level.
Sobers is another prodigy i would say- utterly brilliant throughout his teens, though he didnt take up cricket till he was already in his teens.

And no, mozart didnt compose his most brilliant stuff before 20 - but his most brilliant works were arguably not much better, if at all, than those of Bach,Bethoven, etc. Yet, the special niche is created for him, just as it is with people like Gauss, Sarah Chang, etc. because of the prodigious talent they show early in their lifetimes- talent that even the most brilliant of people cannot match at such a tender age.

 

[Sanz]

a batsman like Tendulkar- who's accomplished almost everything various other alltime great batsmen have at a much younger age would automatically be vaulted as ' best after bradman' on that score alone if it were some sports or areas such as music/education.

Sorry, I dont think Tendulkar is the best test batsman after Bradman. Infact I consider Sunny Gavaskar a bettger test batsman than him.

 

[Sanz]

Tendulkar made his test debut at 16 simply because the opportunity was there. A player in England or Australia of similar talent wouldn't get that chance. Regardless, his performances for the first three or four years of his test career were relatively unremarkable, and holding him in higher regard than a player who performed better at an older age seems very odd. If necessary, just ignore the early part of his career where he was clearly too young to be playing test cricket when comparing him with the likes of Hussey.

That's not correct, His performance as a 16-17 year old was quite remarkable, those who saw him bat in Pakistan in his first series will vouch for that especially in the last test of the series where he batted for 5 hours with Siddhu to save the match for India. We knew then he was a prodigy and a special find, something you are lucky to get once in a lifetime. In 1990 He saved the test match in England and then his first tour of Australia in 1991-92 is IMO his best performance in Australia.

 

[quick4mindia]

Sorry, I dont think Tendulkar is the best test batsman after Bradman. Infact I consider Sunny Gavaskar a bettger test batsman than him.

Such a general off topic discussion that anybody can think anything now

 

[Jono]

Tendulkar made his test debut at 16 simply because the opportunity was there. A player in England or Australia of similar talent wouldn't get that chance. Regardless, his performances for the first three or four years of his test career were relatively unremarkable,

LOL, WHAT? Spoken like someone who obviously didn't watch a test match he played in that period. Scorecards don't tell you everything, and yet despite this its still obvious looking at the scorecards that he played very well in the first few years of his career when you consider his age and the quality teams he was playing (away from home as well).

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1980S/1989-90/IND_IN_PAK/IND_PAK_T2_23-28NOV1989.html - Second highest score in India's innings in only his 2nd match

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1980S/1989-90/IND_IN_PAK/IND_PAK_T4_09-14DEC1989.html - Point blank saved the series for India with Sidhu!!!

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1980S/1989-90/IND_IN_NZ/IND_NZ_T2_09-13FEB1990.html - Against Hadlee

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1990/IND_IN_ENG/IND_ENG_T2_09-14AUG1990.html - 4th innings ton against england

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1991-92/IND_IN_AUS/IND_AUS_T3_02-06JAN1992.html - Self explanatory

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1991-92/IND_IN_AUS/IND_AUS_T5_01-05FEB1992.html - Has he ever batted better?

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1992-93/IND_IN_RSA/IND_RSA_T2_26-30NOV1992.html - Ton in SA.

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1992-93/IND_IN_RSA/IND_RSA_T4_02-06JAN1993.html - Highest score in India's 1st innings

http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/1992-93/ENG_IN_IND/ENG_IND_T2_11-15FEB1993.html - Great performance at home against England

And there's many more performances in his first 4 years which I could show. On top of that let's see his record over the first 4 years of his career:

                     Mat  Runs  HS   BatAv 100  50   W    BB  BowlAv 5w  Ct St

unfiltered           132 10469 248*  55.39  35  41  37  3/10   51.16  0  82  0
filtered              28  1725 165   47.91   6   9   4  2/10   41.25  0  21  0

Now unless you define remarkable as 'tonning up every match and averaging over 55', Sachin was far from 'unremarkable' in the first 4 years of his test career. He was amazing.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Let me clarify.

I mean relatively unremarkable compared to the way he would perform later. Tendulkar was obviously a good batsman when he was in his teens, but he performed much better later in his career. Nevertheless, his average in the first 20 tests of his career (three years) was in the 30s somewhere, which isn't particularly brilliant by Tendulkar's high standards.

I'm not suggesting that he wasn't good enough to make the Indian side, but there's no doubt that if he didn't play for a subcontinent nation he would have started his career later. The number of teens that have debuted for India and Pakistan in the last couple of decades is quite high, while I don't think there's been a single one in Australia, while the closest that comes to mind for England is James Anderson, who played ODIs just after his 20th birthday.

 

[Burpey]

Wow this place is boring

Only post I read on this whole page.

 

[C_C]

Let me clarify.

I mean relatively unremarkable compared to the way he would perform later. Tendulkar was obviously a good batsman when he was in his teens, but he performed much better later in his career. Nevertheless, his average in the first 20 tests of his career (three years) was in the 30s somewhere, which isn't particularly brilliant by Tendulkar's high standards.

I'm not suggesting that he wasn't good enough to make the Indian side, but there's no doubt that if he didn't play for a subcontinent nation he would have started his career later. The number of teens that have debuted for India and Pakistan in the last couple of decades is quite high, while I don't think there's been a single one in Australia, while the closest that comes to mind for England is James Anderson, who played ODIs just after his 20th birthday.

That is because the cricketing culture of the subcontinent-caribbean is geared fundamentally different than Austalia or England.
The subcontinent/caribbean(who've handed debuts to teens historically) focuses on unearthing rare talent without much nurture given before or after. While Australia-England prefer turning out generic clones.
The point of a prodigy isnt 'performing absolute best of the field'. No prodigy has ever done that. A prodegy is someone who accomplishes 'well within par' despite being much younger.
You'd find that Tendulkar dominated from a very tender age- even from pre-teen years. A 15 year old debuting in first class cricket and averaging 50+ is definately 'well within par' for accomplished veterans. A 16 year old debuting vs one of the best attacks ever seen ( Imran-Wasim-Waqar-Qadir) and averaging in the mid 30s is definately well within par.
Also consider that in the period when Tendulkar debuted, the ball still very much dominated the bat and only three batsmen were going around averaging 50+ : Viv, Border and Miandad. Before his 20th birthday, Tendulkar had 1522 runs @ 44.76 with 5 centuries and 8 fifties from 37 innings. Considering that excellent batsmen of that era such as Gower, Boone, Vengsarkar, etc. all ended up averging less than that and by the age 20, Tendulkar was already the primier batsman of his side, it most definately falls in the category of prodegies by any measure.

And if Tendulkar was born in England or Australia in that era, his debut at most would've been held back by a year. He is a middle order batsman and as such a middle order batsman has 4 available spots. Every team had atleast one middle order batsman who was struggling to average 35-ish in that era and when you got a 16 year old sensation averaging 50+ in FC cricket ( which probably would've been 40+ if it were county cricket), you cant keep him out much longer.
Hell, even in today's Aussie side, if you had a 17 year old with 2 years experience at FC cricket and averaging 50+ with the bat, he too would get slotted ahead of one of the off-form/outgoing players (such as when Martyn was droppd/Clarke was dropped/Mark Waugh was dropped/Steve Waugh retired/Lehmann was dropped, etc. etc.)

 

[SJS]

- Gavaskar averaged 101+ with over 900 runs and before he reached 1400 his average had dropped to 49 ! He never exceeded 58 even after playing another 1oo odd tests after that.

- Rowe averaged 77.7 after 1100 plus test runs but went on to average under 44 in his career !

- Kambli averaged 77.3 after 1000 test runs and another 7 innings brought him just 79 runs and an average of 54.2 and an end to his career !

We should wait a bit, right.

 

[chaminda_00]

Only post I read on this whole page.

two post for me, i hate when they get into these debates.