Cricketers who changed the way the game was played
 

In this article, Chistopher Martin Jenkins pays tribute to Gilly and names other cricketers who have changed the way the game of cricket is played.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/spo...cle3261389.ece

Bosanquet (googly)
Jardine (rutheless pursuit of victory)
Lloyd (no need for spinners)
Kapil (shifting the power base from London to India)
Jayasuriya (role of openers in one-dayers)

- are his choices, apart from Gilly for changing the role of wk-batsman.

I think the impact he is attributing to Kapil is a by product of the result he achieved rather than a clearly measurable contribution. Also Jardine's captaincy turned out to be a one off thing and, till date, has not become the blue print for English captains.

My choices would also include:

Ranji: leg glance - until then one sixth of the cricket ground was under used by the batting team. it changed field setting theories irrevocably

Sarfraz Nawaz: reverse swing - only after this innovation could fast bowlers play an effective role with the old ball in otherwise spinners only situations

WG Grace is the obvious one. Turned cricket from idle passtime into a commercial sport.

I think Jardine is fair enough - there have certainly been plenty of captains since who've followed the win at all costs mentality he exemplified and brought into focus in the perceptions of the public.

Worrell - first black to become the substantive captain of the West Indies.

Agreed re Kapil unless you can mount an argument that he changed the way India looked at his type of bowling.

Besides that ..great.

Maybe add Murray Bennett for his contribution to players wearing dark glasses on the field

but, matt, would you not credit big ship armstrong for pioneering that attitude though? afterall, jardine's tactic was supposed to be a revenge to what he suffered in a first class match when armstrong was captain of australia

TBH I've always thought it was more Michael Slater than Gilchrist who started the "Australian strokeplay without fail" trend. :mellow: Gilchrist was obviously the lynchpin in its execution many times.

Pelham Warner changed the game by being the first to take a team touring under the aegis of MCC. 80 years later England were still playing Tests in the yellow-and-mauve.

I would put Sarfraz ahead of Kapil in terms of changing how the game is played. And as someone else said, Armstrong paved the way for Jardine. And of course Greatbach was the first guy to seriously raise the tempo in the first 10 overs of ODIs, but some folks just don't seem to get that. And I'm not convinced that Lloyd changed how other sides played, even if his approach did lead to the minimum number of overs that are supposed to be bowled. Maybe May & Cowdrey for bringing about a change in the lbw law? Maybe Murali for the recent laws about how the ball may be delivered. Agreed about Grace, as someone said.

Haha yeah, Murali, of course, for making us see the light over what a ridiculous idea was the one that bowler's elbows stayed at the same angle throughout delivery. :blink: Shame they didn't spot that in about 1930 TBH.

Maybe Chetan Sharma for showing that six required off the last ball of a ODI wasn't terminal?

Regarding Greatbatch\Jayasuriya - think Roy Fredericks would be somewhat unhappy at the notion that they were the first to raise the tempo in the early ODI overs. Greatbatch was the first to do it in a 15-over World Cup, but Jayasuriya was truly the one who brought it to the wider audience.

The crown is shared by Saeed Anwar and Jayasuriya. Missing Anwar in your post is a huge unjust for a player who revolutionised ODI openers role together with Jaya.

Yeah, true that TBH. Funny case, Saeed - often overlooked in so many ways, possibly partly because of his slight frame, yet beyond question one of the greatest ODI players of them all as well as arguably Pakistan's second-best Test opener, ever. One of my favourite players, too, ITBT, and I guess the only explanation for him not getting more credit is that he often opened with the even more aggressive (usually stupidly so) Shahid Afridi. Afridi was Anwar's Kaluwitharana.

I've always said I'd never hesitate to have Anwar up there with Ganguly as the contender for the second-best ODI opener of modern times (Tendulkar of course being the first).

What about Saqlain, for inventing the doosra?

He's the first to use it in big time. There were fair few who used it before him, but never sucessful ot pronounced as Saqlain. Jayananda Warnaweera from SL used it, he bowled to cracker-jack deliveries that spun the other way to Mike Gatting and Vinod Kambli. But I've never seen that video footage after that, so cannot say whether it was a doosra or an orthadox leg-break (warnaweera was a off spinner, who was even quicker than Kumble)

so who would be more responsible for keepers having to be a good batsman.. GIlly or Sanga ? equal?

Saqlain merely re-invigorated the ball after decades where it wasn't seen (and was then copied by Harbhajan and lately a few others), and - along with Moin Khan - gave it a name. Migara mentiones Warnaweera; there's also substantial evidence Eripalli Prasanna bowled the delivery in the 1960s and 1970s. And who knows who else may have done before that; Sonny Ramadhim could spin the ball both ways with the same action, but he may simply have been a Murali-style unique bowler rather than an orthodox fingerspinner with an alternative delivery.

Seriously, it was probably the West Indian pace battery that was more responsible than anything for that. This was the first time it became regular to select wicketkeepers who could bat (though not neccessarily as well as the likes of Mark Boucher, Ian Healy, Moin Khan and Romesh Kaluwitharana) - the last genuine tailender of a wicketkeeper was probably Bob Taylor.

Sangakkara and Gilchrist weren't even the first in being front-line batsmen and top-notch wicketkeepers; Alec Stewart did that a decade before them, though he only became a full-time wicketkeeper 3 years before Gilchrist's debut.

Sangakkara has always been something of a contradiction to my mind, too - in the first year or two of his Test career he was actually a very poor wicketkeeper and should never, ever have taken the gloves ahead of Kaluwitharana. And even since the dramatic improvement in his wicketkeeping (which happened in early 2002), he's still had periods where he's been relieved of the gloves, with them given to Kaluwitharana and Prasanna Jayawardene. Whereas Gilchrist, and from 1996 onwards Stewart, were full-time wicketkeepers.

Sangakkara is, to my mind, a batsman who sometimes keeps wicket, as Stewart was between 1990 and 1996. Beyond question, a better batsman than Gilchrist, but there's also no denying that his best batting has come when not possessed of the gloves. I do occasionally wonder what would have happened had Russel Arnold not been injured, resulting in Sangakkara's promotion to number-three in his 4th Test (he had originally taken Arjuna Ranatunga's place at five). Because I reckon Sangakkara could have combined the roles far more effectively had he batted five, not three. As it is, I'd probably prefer it had he never been given the gloves, at all. We're always going to be left with what-ifs now.

Look, Gilly may have changed the face of international cricket with keepers requiring to be able to hold a bat...

but when I play as India in Super International Cricket on SNES, D. Rajah (my wicket keeper) bats as low as 9. I just stack the team with all-round quality such as E. Gupta, C. Pille, and M. Gandhi (who may or may not be the actual Mahatma Gandhi... just the white version with hair).

I then don't require my keeper to be able to bat. When you have Mahatma coming in at 8, you're unstoppable.