• Welcome to the Cricket Web forums, one of the biggest forums in the world dedicated to cricket.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join the Cricket Web community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

Batsmen who deserved 50 test avg

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
Basically its like asking which good int batsmen underachieved during their careers, I know you can argue that guys like Viv and Lara also underachieved despite avg>50 but that was the rough idea for this thread.:)
Well if it's about underachieving versus raw talent, you just can't look past David Gower. Not that he can be looked on as any sort of failure given that he played a hundred Tests and never averaged below 40 etc, but in terms of sheer talent there are very few that have ever equalled him, and averaging 44 doesn't adequately reflect that.
 
Last edited:

Lillian Thomson

Hall of Fame Member
Fair point.

Maybe I am lost on the point of this thread but surely if one was good enough to average 50 they would have? :ph34r:

It can be a very fine line though as with Bradman and averaging 100. Four more runs and he would have, but it makes no difference to whether he deserved to or not.
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Maybe I am lost on the point of this thread but surely if one was good enough to average 50 they would have? :ph34r:
Not necessarily - averages can tell lies - Bill Johnston averaging 102 with the bat in 1953 for one extreme and Denis Compton averaging 7 in the 50/51 Ashes series

Now over a career I would accept that averages are much more reliable than those extremes but I still dont think they can be assumed to tell the whole truth
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Well if it's about underachieving versus raw talent, you just can't look past David Gower. Not that he can be looked on as any sort of failure given that he played a hundred Tests and never averaged below 40 etc, but in terms of sheer talent there are very few that have ever equalled him, and averaging 44 doesn't adequately reflect that.
The trouble with "raw" talent is that not all raw talent is develop-able to the same extent. As I've said a good few times, Gower was the sort of player who was entirely natural and for whom I just don't think Gooch-esque netting would've made him any better. He just picked-up a bat and knew what to do with it, a few throwdowns to check his timing was in order was all he needed.

On the other hand a Tendulkar is probably somewhere not that far ahead in terms of "raw" talent but nets could and did make him inestimably better. Tendulkar all his career has been a ferocious netter, planner and preparer and it's that that's made him arguably the 2nd-best batsman there's ever been.

Not all those who don't practice lots are neccessarily underachievers. Some lucky buggers can just fulfill their potential without much work. Some whose "raw" talent was merely good, like Geoff Boycott, can make themselves into better batsmen than Gower via their work-ethic. And some have a raw talent that can be refined to take them to the very top of what anyone who wasn't Don Bradman can achieve, like Tendulkar or Sobers.

The other trouble with "raw" talent is that it's often interpreted as physical-only. Stephen Waugh didn't create his mental talent, he was born with it and precious few will ever be as good at that side of the game as he was, however much they try.
 

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
The trouble with "raw" talent is that not all raw talent is develop-able to the same extent. As I've said a good few times, Gower was the sort of player who was entirely natural and for whom I just don't think Gooch-esque netting would've made him any better. He just picked-up a bat and knew what to do with it, a few throwdowns to check his timing was in order was all he needed.

On the other hand a Tendulkar is probably somewhere not that far ahead in terms of "raw" talent but nets could and did make him inestimably better. Tendulkar all his career has been a ferocious netter, planner and preparer and it's that that's made him arguably the 2nd-best batsman there's ever been.

Not all those who don't practice lots are neccessarily underachievers. Some lucky buggers can just fulfill their potential without much work. Some whose "raw" talent was merely good, like Geoff Boycott, can make themselves into better batsmen than Gower via their work-ethic. And some have a raw talent that can be refined to take them to the very top of what anyone who wasn't Don Bradman can achieve, like Tendulkar or Sobers.

The other trouble with "raw" talent is that it's often interpreted as physical-only. Stephen Waugh didn't create his mental talent, he was born with it and precious few will ever be as good at that side of the game as he was, however much they try.
Believe it or not, I don't disagree with much of this. In fact although I have a distinct sense that Gower was an underachiever, there's nothing I could put my finger on in terms of how he might have been improved. I don't subscribe to the view that he was lazy (he wasn't, at least by the standards of his time). And yes he wafted perilously and fatally outside offstump more times than I care to think about - but this was also where he scored shedloads of runs.

Simon Barnes has written about the "talent for possessing talent". While I suspect that he may be overdoing the bollocks (which he sometimes does), he definitely has a point. However I doubt that Gower was in the category of those who were in any way mentally weak - he wasn't afraid of the big occasion, he wasn't vulnerable to sledging, he wasn't a waster in the Botham mould, and he was able to knuckle down when circumstances required it. So he remains an enigma.

If anyone has any theories to explain his failure to average 50 in Test cricket I'd be interested to hear them.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
You know, I reckon our friend William "Uppercut" might just say he was a (very) rich man's Ian Bell.
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
If anyone has any theories to explain his failure to average 50 in Test cricket I'd be interested to hear them.
For me watching Gower batting was one of the best things life had to offer - main trouble was I think his list of priorities in life wasn't the same as we'd all have liked it to be.
 

Uppercut

Request Your Custom Title Now!
You know, I reckon our friend William "Uppercut" might just say he was a (very) rich man's Ian Bell.
Will "Uppercut" Quinn. Brought to you direct from the Mafia.

I see where you're coming from, but they're different in the fact you alluded to that Gower was very good, whereas Bell is really bad. Sometimes people don't have one obvious technical weakness, their problem is just that they don't get the ball out of the middle of the bat quite consistently enough to reach the level their technique seems to warrant. A lot of the time it's blamed on mental weakness, incorrectly IMO.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
I don't think Bell's really bad though, just nowhere near as good as he appears to be. The fact that there's no continuity about his dismissals means you can't say he has any technical weakness nor has he been worked-out by anyone. But he just finds ways to get out. Gower, from what I understand, was much the same. That perhaps made him appear superlative when in reality he was merely good. Bell, on the other hand, appears to have the potential to be good but is perhaps in reality really rather below average.
 

Uppercut

Request Your Custom Title Now!
I don't think Bell's really bad though, just nowhere near as good as he appears to be. The fact that there's no continuity about his dismissals means you can't say he has any technical weakness nor has he been worked-out by anyone. But he just finds ways to get out. Gower, from what I understand, was much the same. That perhaps made him appear superlative when in reality he was merely good. Bell, on the other hand, appears to have the potential to be good but is perhaps in reality really rather below average.
Hmm nah Bell's pretty bad. He scores considerably less runs than the average test batsman these days, and those he does score are generally the easier ones. In terms of ability, there's a lot of players worse than him, but for what he contributes to the team he's shocking. Should currently be nowhere near the team.
 

The Sean

Cricketer Of The Year
PBH May

While I'm not one for saying that a batsman "deserved" to average 50 (IMO you average what you deserve to), I think there must surely be a sense of statistical underachievement in the fact that the batsman many good judges consider to be the finest England has produced for 60 years finished with a Test average of just under 47.
 

Anil

Hall of Fame Member
Believe it or not, I don't disagree with much of this. In fact although I have a distinct sense that Gower was an underachiever, there's nothing I could put my finger on in terms of how he might have been improved. I don't subscribe to the view that he was lazy (he wasn't, at least by the standards of his time). And yes he wafted perilously and fatally outside offstump more times than I care to think about - but this was also where he scored shedloads of runs.

Simon Barnes has written about the "talent for possessing talent". While I suspect that he may be overdoing the bollocks (which he sometimes does), he definitely has a point. However I doubt that Gower was in the category of those who were in any way mentally weak - he wasn't afraid of the big occasion, he wasn't vulnerable to sledging, he wasn't a waster in the Botham mould, and he was able to knuckle down when circumstances required it. So he remains an enigma.

If anyone has any theories to explain his failure to average 50 in Test cricket I'd be interested to hear them.
i actually had the same opinion of gower and have argued his case as an underachieving talent on these forums...i am not so sure of the underachievement part anymore...i am coming around to the opinion that people who have had substantially long careers and didn't average 50+ just weren't good enough to...he is still my all-time favourite player to watch though...when on song, the fluidity, the grace, the seemingly effortless style was just breathtaking....
 

bagapath

International Captain
Rohan Kanhai
I thought about him, too. But he never touched 50 in his entire career. Players like arthur morris and gordon greenidge played with a 50+ average for soemtime and then ventually saw it drop below the magic number as they got older.
 
Last edited:

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Gordon Greenidge's average only very briefly went above 50 - it was mid-40s for most of his career.

Although TBF, if his first couple of series' (even though his first was a good one) are excluded and one takes his career between '76 and '87/88, his average was indeed over 50 for the vast majority of the time.
 
Last edited:

Top