Swervy said:
He probably was at his best in that period you said, but it wasnt an outstanding period of batting by any stretch of the imagination. I 'manipulated' those stats just to show that if you took the first test of that 38 test stretch and the last two away (leaving the middle 35) he was actually very very average (statisically) during that period.
Yes... an average of 36 is so poor considering the quality of the bowling he often faced...
I'd say it's pretty good given what came before and after.
you dont see it probably because you didnt really watch Hussain back then. He was nowhere near the player he had been, not matter what the averages tell you
Sorry, I saw Hussain in both 1996-1999 and 2001-2004.
The only difference was in impression, because of 2000...
Hussain actually recovered himself very well and did little wrong, playing many match-turning innings in both the former and the latter period.
yeah you are right..BIG DEAL, I dont really care in the slightest if you think of him as a 'fine' test batsman, like Butcher, if you define 'fine' as 'someone who can knock the ball around a bit for a few 50s here and there, but rarely go on to produce a big score' then ok...its not how I define a fine player.
So Butcher didn't produce many big scores in 2001-2003\04?
I could name you 4 very important innings he played in 1998 alone - and in 2001 he was clearly a class above all the other England batsmen, against some at-times magnificent bowling (and catching).
In 2002 he at times looked near enough immovable.
And in 2003 he played one incredibly important knock and a few others, then in 2004 he played 2 that made as big an impact on winning a series as anything.
The one period of play that you quote as being Hussains best actually only lasted 3 and a half years in a career spanning from 1990 to 1994....so statisically he was only average really (just admit it), and technically he had some big flaws, thats what stopped him from being a much better batsman, in all phases of his career
Hussain's career in 1990 to 1995 doesn't really matter - it is an insignificantly small part.
It's only 1996-2004 that's remotely important.
Saying "he did nothing 1990-1995" is totally illiterate - career length is defined in matches, not years. Because some people go years without playing.
you see Richard most people dont really care if a players stats are distorted because he played a couple of tests vs Australia in 1989 just after university.Most people can make judgements about a player by actually watching them play
Err, so?
Plenty of people, I can assure you, will care that Atherton's stats are distorted by 1989. Whether you watch him and realise he was good or not no-one wants a worse average than they deserves.
And if Atherton had no chance of success in those games, then no one did, because he had actually played really well in first class cricket that season and the previous season...and to be honest when he scored his 40 odd in his second innings,alot of cricket followers were extremley impressed (not just the Lancs fan, who knew he was of that standard already)
He'd played, yes - but he'd always been bit-partish because of the fact he was at Uni.
And if one 40-odd demonstrated his potential... so? That didn't need doing - had he debuted in 1990 he'd have just come in and set The World alight straight away.
Overburdened????? I cant think why Atherton would have been that early in his career
Atherton was quite clearly a more natural batsman than Boycott ever was, just a different type of character, probably one who couldnt absolutely dedicated himself to the process of run scoring like Boycott could.
I don't really know what you mean by "natural" but Boycott played cricket and batted (never did aught but) from about the age of 5 or 6. For me, that's about as much of a "natural batsman" as you can get.
Both were, to me, perfectly "natural" batsmen, just Boycott was rather better.
but you said England didnt decend into farce during the 90's..so if there were series worse than 1999 vs NZ, then England were farcical on a number of occasions ..I will still go with 1999 as being the true low point out of the many England have experienced since the early to mid 80s, completely outplayed by a really medicore team)
1, New Zealand CERTAINLY weren't a "really mediocre" team. Indeed, probably their best side apart from the Hadlee-Crowe-Wright ones. They were
perceived as really mediocre, yes, but that was the fault of those doing the perceiving. They were erroneous.
2, England certainly played nowhere near as bad in 1999 as they did in 1990\91, 1993 or 1996 (Pakistan).
3, 1999 had actually been preceded by some really uplifting cricket. However, 1989 (the true black hour of English cricket) was the culmination of a whole FOUR YEARS of absolutely abysmal cricket. Between 1986 and 1989 England won just 3 Tests out of 40! 1 of those was against the newish Sri Lankans and the other 2 were against the even-worse Australia of 1986\87. Then you look at the fact that only on 1 occasion did they even look like winning (Fourth Test 1987) those 37 they didn't win.
I really fail to believe that anyone (except those concerned with an "instant" uplifting in 2000) could honestly believe 1999 was the worst time in English cricket history. The only thing that made it seem so was the presence of the Wisden World Championship.