Standard of International Cricket

[AussieDominance]

What does everyone think the standard of international cricket is like compared to previous eras?

 

[simmy]

I think that on the whole, batting is better and bowling is worse.

I have no foundations for this argument but it is what i think.

 

[FRAZ]

I voted better . Much much better . But can be more better . And wonder why it was sooooooo difficult to beat some teams in the past at their home ehhhhh .... Umpiring standards hmmmmmm

 

[andyc]

Umpiring standards

Have improved a hell of a lot

 

[AussieDominance]

i agree with you there Simmo

 

[James]

I think that on the whole, batting is better and bowling is worse.

I have no foundations for this argument but it is what i think.

I tend to agree, especially with the bowlers. Look at the top 10 Test bowlers ist, almost all the players are low/mid 30's. Where are the young up and coming bowlers?

1 M. Muralidaran SL
2 M. Ntini SA
3 S. Warne AUS
4 G. McGrath AUS
5 M. Hoggard ENG
6 A. Flintoff ENG
7 Shoaib Akhtar PAK
8 A. Kumble IND
9 S. Bond NZ
10 C. Vaas SL

 

[AussieDominance]

yeah we are seeing the occasional good bowler coming through but then he just disappears off the seen

 

[FRAZ]

One bad thig now a days : "Too much cricket" .
Players are like work horses . I think fast bowling is quite a physicaly demanding job and too much of cricket has ruined the careers of some great fast bowlers .
One Good thing : Lesser bias

 

[LongHopCassidy]

It's all in the pitches.

It's become a difficult situation when anything 500+ is merely a 'good' score.

As a result, young bowlers are discouraged (especially those relying on seam movement).

 

[FRAZ]

One more bad thing now a days : Killing the beauty of the game i.e. un-wanted restrictions on the fast bowlers .

 

[andyc]

I tend to agree, especially with the bowlers. Look at the top 10 Test bowlers ist, almost all the players are low/mid 30's. Where are the young up and coming bowlers?

1 M. Muralidaran SL
2 M. Ntini SA
3 S. Warne AUS
4 G. McGrath AUS
5 M. Hoggard ENG
6 A. Flintoff ENG
7 Shoaib Akhtar PAK
8 A. Kumble IND
9 S. Bond NZ
10 C. Vaas SL

It does stand to reason that young players won't be on that list, as they're still learning. Those ten are players with experience after playing years of international cricket. When they move on, the younger bowlers will move into their places.

 

[Clarence]

THe reason it seems that batting has improved and bowling hasn't is the whinging batsmen/captains complain if anything other than a nice flat road is churned out by the groundsmen. Ridiculous really...bring on the juicy pitches.

 

[FRAZ]

THe reason it seems that batting has improved and bowling hasn't is the whinging batsmen/captains complain if anything other than a nice flat road is churned out by the groundsmen. Ridiculous really...bring on the juicy pitches.

The reason . Bowling was famous because of the fast bowlers . Now if one will tie up the hands of a fast bowler and tell him to keep on giving balls at the off stump then what the fast bowler will get ..... This limitation of bouncers rule is just stupid . Plain stupid . I mean a batsman has a liberty to do what ever he wants to do and the bowler hasn't ,if its not the racism to-wards the fasties then what else? And also people are scoring more runs because I agree the wickets are made for the batsmen and the fast bowlers just have to give them the balls in the plate . I mean even a batsman like Jadeja could hit the fast In swinging deliveries of Waqar to the boundary. It's some un-favorable competition . And in the same year In Toronto there was a match b/w Pakistan and India and Waqar swung passed the bat of Jadeja many times and after every ball he told Jadeja ,"Dare to hit this one" . I mean we want more and more pitches where a fast bowler can get some help .

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Overall I think the standard is fine, with bowling lower than the 90s but batting higher. There was a bit of a down period at the start of the decade as a kind of 90s hangover, but international cricket is improving again.

Bowling has improved in the last couple of years, I think. 2001/02 or so was a really slow time for bowling, with basically only Australia having a strong attack. Since then we've seen the emergence of very good bowling attacks for England and Pakistan (when they aren't all injured), some improvement for South Africa, some interesting prospects for India and even the West Indies seem to be on the rise.

Bowling standards did suffer a natural low period for a time, as many of the great bowlers from the 90s declined or retired at the same point and most sides lacked good replacements because they had been so reliant on the previous stars. That period is ending, though.

Batting standards are unbelievably high, right now. We're blessed with as many great batsmen as at any other point in history, and we possibly have more batsmen now than ever before who are capable of dominating a bowling attack. The decline in pitch and bowling standards has left batsmen with less survival skills than they might have in other eras, though, and some of the middle of the pack batsmen may be exposed as the bowling standards rise. This is a pretty natural element of test cricket, which has always had peaks and troughs in bowling and batting.

Pitch standards have been horrible, but thankfully I think that's starting to turn around as well. Much like in the other eras of cricket where roads have dominated, the current pitch issues have come as a result of contributing factors from cricket in the last 10-15 years or so. The rise of ODI cricket and its need for flat pitches to ensure high scoring games, combined with the fact that test cricket was viewed as too boring and defensive in the 90s meant that groundsmen and cricket boards strived to create good batting pitches whenever possible. In the last year or so we've seen Australia and South Africa produce some more sporting wickets though, so generally the standard hasn't been so bad in recent times as it was in the 2000-2004 period. Hopefully that trend continues as well.

The key in good test wickets is variety. Minefields all the time and roads all the time make for boring, predictable cricket where one field dominates. The best outcome would be for cricket boards to concentrate on variation between their pitches to emphasise the individual character of the ground rather than uniform rubbish. This is an area Australia has usually been good in, with a nice range of wickets at the major grounds creating different conditions for each test, but recently there's been a lot less variation between them.

 

[benchmark00]

Define 'era'.

If this 'era' incapsulates the entirity of McGrath's, Murali's, Warne's et. al. whole career, than who's to say bowling standards have decreased?

I do agree, across the board, bowling has become harder due to the roads you see, however that's not to say the quality of bowlers are any less than previous 'eras'.

 

[wpdavid]

What does everyone think the standard of international cricket is like compared to previous eras?

As someone else said, it depends which eras you mean. For a start, most sides are better than before WW2, so things are generally more widely competitive than they were 70+ years ago.

I'd agree with the view that standards were higher 10 years ago than they are now. Then you had really good sides from Aus, SA & Pakistan, and WI still had Ambrose & Walsh in their pomp. The idea that test cricket is currently full of great batsmen must be questionable given the bowlers & wickets they're facing much of the time.

 

[Burpey]

But does more competition mean that standards are necessarily higher? Maybe some teams have improved more so than others, thus making the gap bigger but standards improving nonetheless.

 

[wpdavid]

But does more competition mean that standards are necessarily higher? Maybe some teams have improved more so than others, thus making the gap bigger but standards improving nonetheless.

Which era do you mean?

 

[Burpey]

My comment was a little vague. I'll try again.

I'd agree with the view that standards were higher 10 years ago than they are now. Then you had really good sides from Aus, SA & Pakistan, and WI still had Ambrose & Walsh in their pomp. The idea that test cricket is currently full of great batsmen must be questionable given the bowlers & wickets they're facing much of the time.

I assume you're trying to say that there was more competition 10 years ago, and thus standards were higher than nowadays. But does more competition mean standards are higher? I am not even sure myself, as it depends on what you mean by standards. Is it relative competition, is it skills, is it techniques, is it level of interest? If I am right in my assumptions of what you said, you believe competition is a strong factor in determining the standard of world cricket, whereas I was suggesting that maybe some teams have improved more than others. As a result there is less competition, but perhaps skill levels are the highest they have ever been.

Just throwing it out there, could be utter rubbish for all I know.

 

[wpdavid]

My comment was a little vague. I'll try again.

I assume you're trying to say that there was more competition 10 years ago, and thus standards were higher than nowadays. But does more competition mean standards are higher? I am not even sure myself, as it depends on what you mean by standards. Is it relative competition, is it skills, is it techniques, is it level of interest? If I am right in my assumptions of what you said, you believe competition is a strong factor in determining the standard of world cricket, whereas I was suggesting that maybe some teams have improved more than others. As a result there is less competition, but perhaps skill levels are the highest they have ever been.

Just throwing it out there, could be utter rubbish for all I know.

Oh, I see. I'd argue that both were true 10 years ago - standards of a number of sides were higher, and, with occasional exceptions like last year's ashes, things were more also more competitive at the top. I agree that the two don't always go hand in hand though. Once Warne & Mcgrath go, test cricket will probably be more comeptitive but only due to Aus not being so outstanding.