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Is it fair to rate players based on their first class records ?

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
West Indies for a start; arguably Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well.

And that's in today's age, when by-and-large Test excellence is paramount. In days gone by, things were far less straightforward.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
can you explain this a bit, please?

it is going to be a shock to the world if you manage to make a convincing argument that while lillee, gavaskar, sobers, g.chappell, roberts, barrington, bedi, chandra, prasanna, gibbs, lloyd, kanhai, i.chappell, knott, holding and underwood were winning accolades for what they were doing in tests, a higher standard of cricket was played in the first class arena.
He never made that suggestion.
Ind33d I did not. The likes of Sobers, Roberts, Greg Chappell etc. were all heavily in the business of conquering both Tests and the domestic First-Class arena - in most cases, in at least a couple of different countries. There is also, of course, the fact that cricket games which rightly have no status at all (most notably Packer games) are sometimes worthy of consideration when assessing a player's calibre.

However you mention Barrington, a player who repeatedly struggles to get the accolades his Test record appears to merit. Well, no small part in his Test record not being regarded as the ultimate example of his excellence is the fact that his domestic FC average is so much lower. If Barrington had averaged 60 in First-Class cricket and 58 in Tests I've little doubt he'd be irrefutably considered by all as a serious contender for second best to Bradman.
 

bagapath

International Captain
Ind33d I did not. The likes of Sobers, Roberts, Greg Chappell etc. were all heavily in the business of conquering both Tests and the domestic First-Class arena - in most cases, in at least a couple of different countries. There is also, of course, the fact that cricket games which rightly have no status at all (most notably Packer games) are sometimes worthy of consideration when assessing a player's calibre.

However you mention Barrington, a player who repeatedly struggles to get the accolades his Test record appears to merit. Well, no small part in his Test record not being regarded as the ultimate example of his excellence is the fact that his domestic FC average is so much lower. If Barrington had averaged 60 in First-Class cricket and 58 in Tests I've little doubt he'd be irrefutably considered by all as a serious contender for second best to Bradman.
What??? boycott averaged 56 in FC and 47 in tests. he is not even considered second best to hobbs as an opener. he is seen to be inferior to gavaskar and greenidge as well. you say barrington would have been no.2 behind bradman if he had done better in FC cricket?? barrington is also known as borington. he was too slow, like boycott, to be considered part of world XIs, irrespective of good test records. dont confuse the issues here. and you are talking about one player when i have listed about 20 in my post. they all competed against each other in tests and earned their reputation. FC cricket in England or Aus or anywhere else was nothing compared to that except in pre WW1 England when the best cricket in the world was probably played there.

The super tests or the ROW tests are FC only by name. they were essentially invitational teams featuring the best international cricketers hence they were of highest quality, almost as good as tests. that is not true of any FC cricket outside the packer series or the ROW vs Aus series. These were an exception that by possessing test players they essentially became test quality teams, just like packer ravaged test teams were less in class compared to regular test teams. in fact, the supertest teams and packer ravaged official test teams were essentially what they were otherwise in normal circumstances; test quality teams and first class teams with roles reversed. using that example to say FC deserves the same respect as test cricket is not on.
 
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fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I'm pretty sure the WSC matches are not regarded as first class although, perversely, I believe the rebel tours to South Africa are - the other way round I could understand but that's plain wrong
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
cricketarchive doesn't include them as first class - although I can't find a definitive statement to that effect
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
On the first class/not first class theme, is the SA/India "test" that lost test status when (IIRC) Mike Denness was rejected by both teams as referee considered FC?
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
I'm pretty sure the WSC matches are not regarded as first class although, perversely, I believe the rebel tours to South Africa are - the other way round I could understand but that's plain wrong
they are as far as i know
cricketarchive doesn't include them as first class - although I can't find a definitive statement to that effect
WSC matches are categorically not First-Class, nor have they ever been regarded as such, nor should they ever be so. They were organised with the specific aim of disrupting real cricket and should never, ever be recognised as anything other than totally unofficial.

Personally I don't have a problem with SA Rebel tour games being FC, and think the ICC's belated decision to rule some of them not so was pretty stupid and completely pointless. Outlawing them from the Test arena was fair enough but First-Class cricket is a different matter.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
What??? boycott averaged 56 in FC and 47 in tests. he is not even considered second best to hobbs as an opener. he is seen to be inferior to gavaskar and greenidge as well. you say barrington would have been no.2 behind bradman if he had done better in FC cricket??
I said nothing of the sort, so stop reading what you'd like to have been written and read what was written. The idea that Gordon Greenidge was better than Boycott is debateable at best, nonsense at worst BTW.
barrington is also known as borington. he was too slow, like boycott, to be considered part of world XIs, irrespective of good test records. dont confuse the issues here.
That's nonsense. Most people don't care less whether players are boring when they consider how good they were - all that matters is... well, how good they were. Hobbs (and Sutcliffe, and Hutton) was better than Boycott not because he was more interesting but because he was better.
and you are talking about one player when i have listed about 20 in my post. they all competed against each other in tests and earned their reputation.
They also earned their reputations in the domestic game. Had they done lesser there - which was never going to happen BTW - their reps would've suffered accordingly. The point is not about any one player but that most players who perform at Test level have also tended to perform at domestic FC level - and the odd example who has not done suffers for it.
FC cricket in England or Aus or anywhere else was nothing compared to that except in pre WW1 England when the best cricket in the world was probably played there. The super tests or the ROW tests are FC only by name. they were essentially invitational teams featuring the best international cricketers hence they were of highest quality, almost as good as tests. that is not true of any FC cricket outside the packer series or the ROW vs Aus series.
I'm sorry, but to say that is historically ignorant, nothing more. The idea that Surrey v Yorkshire (or in fact Yorkshire v several other counties) was of a lower standard than for instance West Indies v India would've been in, say, 1935, is plain wrong. There are many other examples. For some, a tourist fixture against Yorkshire in 1935 would've been barely lesser than a Test against England, and certainly greater than a Test against South Africa.
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
WSC matches are categorically not First-Class, nor have they ever been regarded as such, nor should they ever be so. They were organised with the specific aim of disrupting real cricket and should never, ever be recognised as anything other than totally unofficial.

Personally I don't have a problem with SA Rebel tour games being FC, and think the ICC's belated decision to rule some of them not so was pretty stupid and completely pointless. Outlawing them from the Test arena was fair enough but First-Class cricket is a different matter.
You think the rebel tours didn't want to destabilise official cricket?
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Oh, for certain they did, but for different reasons. Packer purely wanted cricket for his television station, he didn't give a damn about the welfare of the game; Bacher and co. wanted it because they didn't believe South Africa should've been outlawed. All right, that was a pretty shallow belief, but they weren't deliberately trying to destabalise the game in England, Australia and West Indies as they ended-up doing; they were merely trying to right what they saw, wrongly in the eyes of most, as a wrong.

In my book South African domestic cricket (which remained First-Class in the eyes of all throughout isolation) is a different matter to Test cricket. First-Class matches can be handed-out on a whim; there is a very specific nature to Tests. Debarring countries from playing Tests had a means and an aim; ruling matches non-First-Class would have been and was completely pointless - there is no stigma attached.
 

Son Of Coco

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
It's probably a knottier question for chaps who've had distinguished FC careers, but whose test records are mediocre (I suppose Hick & Ramprakash are the obvious recent examples). Would anyone rate them as better batsman than someone like Collingwood, who averages far more at the highest level than he does in the first class game?

I think cases could be made either way, but it'd be interesting to see where people stand on the subject.
Personally I wouldn't rate someone higher on first class average if all of them have played a number of tests. It kind of shows that the guys with the higher average in first class cricket couldn't handle the step up to tests. I guess you have to take the eras they all played into account too.
 

silentstriker

The Wheel is Forever
We spend so much time debating the records of Test players of the same era, dissecting, removing, analyzing every stat even when the opposition is relatively standardized. How can you even begin to do the same to FC records? I don't see it.
 

silentstriker

The Wheel is Forever
Of course, this is true. But if the criteria is "judging by the records", those who don't care about records would automatically be removed from this discussion, surely? The only people who would decide whether its fair or not to judge players on FC record would be people who already think it's fair to judge players on Test records?
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
Hmm, maybe it's just me but I think you're being a bit pedantic. I would never say a player's record should be ignored, I just believe that the analysis of statistics can sometimes (and I do stress, only sometimes, I do appreciate good statistical analysis, I just hate OTT stuff) suck all life out of the game, because sport is not a science. I don't think the question is really focusing specifically on averages, but rather achievements, i.e. can we judge those who didn't play Tests based on what they did elsewhere?

I don't think the standardisation of records etc needs to be a factor in whether or not you can fairly judge a player based on their FC achievements.
 

Pothas

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
As far as I am concerned first class cricket should never be ignored or totally disregarded. Ramps and Hick scoring 100 centuries is an amazing achievment and one which should be celebrated regardless of their performances in tests.
 

silentstriker

The Wheel is Forever
Well, if you care about records at all, then obviously standardization would be the first thing to look at, otherwise you don't really care about it at all (which is fine too, of course, if that's what you prefer). Otherwise, it's just numbers without meaning surely? What are they except in context against other numbers?
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Personally I wouldn't rate someone higher on first class average if all of them have played a number of tests. It kind of shows that the guys with the higher average in first class cricket couldn't handle the step up to tests. I guess you have to take the eras they all played into account too.
You certainly do. Although what you say is true at the current time and has been for 20 years or so, it certainly hasn't always been.
 

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