Sobers rates Subash Gupte over Shane Warne

[sachin200]

Former West Indian Great Sir Garfield Sobers said that he has reservations about Shane Warne as a spinner and rates India's subash Gupte over Shane warne

 

[fredfertang]

I'd be interested to know SJS's views on this particularly as he might have caught a sight of Gupte at the end of his career - I suspect he must have aired them before - if Richard were still around he'd probably find the relevant post(s) without too much trouble

Gupte's record is inferior but I don't think there can be any doubt about the fact that he would have taken more wickets had he had the fielding support that Warne had.

He also played as part of a different sort of bowling attack ie himself apart a pretty weak one as against one of the strongest of all time - although you can argue the effect of that both ways on balance I suspect he'd rather have bowled with the likes of McGrath, Gillespie etc

 

[honestbharani]

Find it hard to disagree with many of Sobers' opinions on cricket, tbh. Unlike some other former players, he seems to have thought through what he says...

 

[Athlai]

Haha this should be good.

 

[GotSpin]

so...Gupte>Warne>Murali...right?

 

[TumTum]

so...Gupte>Warne>Murali...right?

No, Gupte>Warne & Bedi>Murali.

 

[kingkallis]

Sobers must have said this pre '90.

Warne > Any other leggie including Tiger

 

[Craig]

Haha this should be good.

Just wait until Ikki reads this.

 

[Spikey]

Warne's average against India is better than Subash Gupte's. Therefore, Gary Sobers is wrong and should stfu.

 

[honestbharani]

Warne's average against India is better than Subash Gupte's. Therefore, Gary Sobers is wrong and should stfu.

 

[weldone]

Warne's average against India is better than Subash Gupte's. Therefore, Gary Sobers is wrong and should stfu.

Yes, but Gupte's average against Sobers is better than Warne's

 

[vic_orthdox]

Obviously it's only a small part of the reasons why he rates him lower than Gupte, but saying that Warne doesn't/didn't have a good googly isn't really all that relevant to how good a bowler he is.

Possible that he values its importance being a left-hander and all, though.

 

[Matt79]

We don't need to make a self-fulfilling prophecy of this thread getting derailed guys.

I know a few guys who saw Gupte here rated him very highly. Did Sobers play with/against Gupte? I think he did - and it's, in my experience, a pretty universal trait of all ex-players - even those who are otherwise excellent judges - is to underrate more recent players in comparison to those they played against. It's easy to appreciate all the subtleties and challenges of someone you played against, rather harder to do so for someone you watch from the sidelines.

 

[Jono]

I am 99% certain there has been a huge discussion on this previously.

 

[Ikki]

With all due respect...erm, no.

 

[Noble One]

I'm pretty sure when Gupte took 9 wickets in an innings it was against the West Indies with Sobers.

A performance like that would stick in the memory I imagine.

 

[benchmark00]

Agree with Sobers. Have always considered Warne to be overrated.

 

[vic_orthdox]

SJS has spoken before about Gupte, and Sobers' opinion of him.

Longevity alone doen't win too many arguements, does it. I haven't heard anyone on this forum putting Hobbs ahead of Bradman, WG ahead of Hobbs, Wilfred Rhodes ahead of Sobers and Woolley ahead of Lara.

Inspite of the many years Kumble has put in, have you ever heard anyone, ever, talk of him in terms of being the greatest spinner of all times. The fact is that some very highly respected names in the game have done that with Gupte. We may disagree with that claim but it surely tells us that longevity doesn't come into it. Sobers has talked of Gupte being better than Warne. He doesn't talk of Gupte being better than Kumble let alone talking of Kumble being better than Warne. Longevity does tell something about a cricketer but when you compare one great cricketer with another, you invariably think of each at his best and there aren't many who have had a twenty year peak.

Well. Thanks for the compliments guys. Don't know how much I deserve it. Anyway, I remembered I had written of Gupte in detail in an earlier thread. The advanced search of CW makes it less tedious to find these things, so here it is.

By the way, I have also opened up that thread on this page since I think it has plenty of good stuff on Indian cricket.

On Subhash Gupte from the thread - India All Time XI

Well he is surely the greatest orthodox leg spinner of all time India have produced.

That much we can say without much chance of contradiction with the unorthocox, medium pacers of Kumble and Chandra.

Gupte is widely called by those who played with or against him as the finest spinner India produced so we cant just ignore that claim out of hand, Amongst those who swear by him are as great and legendary cricketers as Sir garfield Sobers.

Inspite of Kumble's 600 plus wickets, Bishen's magnificently beautiful bowling and mastery over his subtle craft and Chandra's amazing ability to strike suddenly and venomously and win matches in a short sharp spell, the fact remains that the only other Indian bowler who has been considered amongst the all time greats by opponents Is Erapally Prasanna.

Just as the West Indians are enamoured by Gupte and swear by him, the Australians of the late 60's and early 70's swear by Prasanna. And you may not be fond of Ian Chappel but there are few more knowledgeable students of the game.

I havent seen Gupte bowl but I have heard of how great he was hundreds and thousands of times from those who had played with him. Prasanna I have seen and consider the greatest Indian spinner, I have seen for various reasons which will take some space.

Coming to the problem of putting Gupte's greatness in the context of his figures let me tell you that figures tell you something for sure but they dont tell you everything unless you KNOW it.

Whats the BIG difference between Gupte, Bedi, Chandra, Prasanna, Kumble, and Venkat ? Its the same difference as between Andy Roberts and the other great West Indian fast bowlers who followed. He had very modest, if any support at the other end. And yet so many of those who saw him at his peak consider Roberts the greatest of the many great West Indian fast bowlers.

Roberts for most of his peak as a fast bowler, bowled with medium pacers of modest caliber at the other end. By the time Holding developed into a world class fast bowler, Roberts' career was on the wane. Hence iplayers like Lillee, Imran, Lloyd, Trueman, Bailey and Mallet among others rate him higher than those who followed him in-spite of his figures being, comparatively, less impressive.

Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrashekhar were in a period when India had no pace bowlers to talk of but they had each other and Venkat waiting to play now and then. Between them they made the greatest spin attack ever assembled in one Test nation. This did help though Kapil arrived ten years late for India to really benefit from a truly awesome attack.

Kumble when he arrived had Kapil with some juice left in him, Prabhakar close to his best, Venkatpathy Raju who joined the same year and Javagal Srinath who made his debut the next year. By the time Kumble flowered around mid-90's, Srinath was a world class bowler. Before Srinath went Harbhajan had become a top flight off spinner and there were a host of young medium pacers knocking at the Test doors. Not to mention that India by now had become one of the great batting sides in the world which was important because Kumble didn't have to always defend very modest scores.

Gupte had the worst in this respect.

The only single bowler whose career, briefly, ran parallel to Gupte's was Vinoo Mankad. The others were nothing to write home about. Gupte made his debut in Dec 51, was promptly dropped and included exactly 12 months later in Nov. 1952. From then till 1956, he played 20 Test matches, mankad played in 19 of them.

In these 19 Tests, Gupte took 94 wickets at 23.5 each.

Mankad was to play no more for India till recalled in 1959 to lead the country against Alexander's West Indies. I think the 3rd captain in 4 Tests. Mankad was already 42 years old and bowled only in the first innings when he took four wickets while Gupte took one. Gupte took another four in the second as West Indies thrashed India once again.

India's previous series in the West Indies ha been six years ago in the Carribean and they had managed to draw four of the five Tests with Gupte being the outstanding bowler with 27 wickets. Valentine who took 28 for West Indies was the only bowler to take more. Mankad was the next best Indian bowler and his wickets cost him 24 runs per wicket more !!

This time they decided that the pace of Hall and Gilchrist had to be met with dead wickets. All that did was that the Indian bowlers were slaughtered in four of the five games while Hall and Gilchrist with sheer pace took 56 wickets between them at 17 apiece.

Windies ran up consecutive scores of 443 for 7, 614 for 5, 500 and 644 for 8 decl in the last four Tests to win three of them by 203 runs, an innings and 336 runs and 295 runs !!

Gupte toiled on those dead tracks to bowl 312.3 overs. The next three Indian bowlers Borde ramchand and Mankad bowled ten overs less !! between the three of them.

Gupte whose 4 for 86 in the first Test had helped restrict the Windies to a very modest 227 and whose fabulous 9 for 102 in the second Test got them, single handedly, for 222, still managed the series with nothing to show but the toil of bowling day in and day out on dead wickets.

After 15 wickets at 19.99 each in the first three innings of the series, he bowled 210 overs in the next five innings for just 7 wickets for almost 90 runs each. It broke his spirit.

He had dead wickets to contend with, and for fellow bowlers, as we have seen

- Borde, primarily a batsman - an allrounder of sorts,
- Mankad also an allrounder and well past his use by date,
- Ramchand again a bits and pieces player with 33 Test wickets in his career,
- Polly Umrigar again primarily a batsman,
- Surendranath a very modest bowler with 26 wickets in his Test career,​

These were the five main bowlers for India in this series and between them they bowled 457 overs. Ramchand with 5 wickets at 49.4 was the most successful of the lot.

Four bowlers in the series took over ten wickets three of them bowled fast to medium pace in the series (Sobers too most of the time).

Hall 30, Gilchrist 26, Gupte 22 and Sobers 10.

Sometimes figures have to be seen in the wider context.

I think that if Gupte and Mankad had bowled in tandem for longer (more over lap) and/or if there had been a third bowler of some note in the Indian side of the fifites, we would be seeing completely different figures of Subhash Gupte.

I have stressed a lot on this series to stress the difference the lack of a balanced attack means. That is why Gupte, Andy Roberts and even kapil Dev for a large part of his early career and Richard Hadlee are such remarkable bowlers.​

From the Wisden obituary :

Sir Everton Weekes had recently said Gupte was "easily the best leg-spin bowler of all time", and certainly between 1953 and 1956 he was peerless. In 15 successive Tests for India he beguiled his way to 82 wickets at 23.57, averaging a wicket every 70 balls. At a comparable stage in his Test career, Shane Warne's strike-rate was 75.....

Subhash Gupte was small and slight. But he had a high arm action and the wrist-spinner's predilection for experimenting with flight and rotation. Unlike some, he possessed the control and patience to afford his variations. His legspinner, nicely looped, turned on the flattest pitches, while a scurrying top-spinner and two googlies provided sufficient chicanery. The googly he bowled with a lower trajectory was for batsmen to read; the other, from his customary high trajectory, came laced with overspin and dipped and bounced deceptively.

Unhappily, his close catchers struggled to pick his repertoire almost as much as the batsmen, so chances often went begging. He would have taken all ten wickets, instead of nine for 102, against West Indies on jute matting at Kanpur in 1958-59 had the wicket-keeper Naren Tamhane not dropped Lance Gibbs. It was the first time an Indian bowler had taken nine wickets in a Test innings - and still India lost by a large margin. There was one ten-wicket return in his career bag, however: for the Bombay CA President's XI against a visiting Pakistan Services and Bahawalpur side in December 1954, at a cost of 78 runs. ....

Though few of the pitches (in the Windies 1952-53) helped bowlers and Weekes was rampant, averaging over 100, Gupte took 27 wickets at 29.22 in the five Tests, including seven for 162 at Port-of-Spain, and ended the tour with 50 at 23.64. India's other bowlers managed 35 between them in the Tests and 57 overall. Back on the subcontinent he picked up 21 Test wickets on the mat and turf in Pakistan and then 34, while his team-mates took 30, against the touring New Zealanders....

Gupte was considered the best of his kind when India went to England in 1959, but the strain of carrying India's attack was beginning to tell. Gerry Alexander's West Indians had recently made him pay 42.13 apiece for his 22 wickets; India's next highest wicket-taker claimed only five and Gupte's workload of 312 overs was almost three times that of anyone else. Though he remained India's leading wicket-taker, he did not always come up to expectation on the hard pitches of that sun-baked English summer. And the Indians' slothful fielding didn't help; he was patently dispirited by the poor standard.....

Gupte missed that winter's Tests against Benaud's Australians because he was coaching in the West Indies. When Pakistan visited India in 1960-61, his brother replaced him halfway through the series. But the old familiar flight and fizz were much in evidence when he was recalled for the Kanpur Test against Ted Dexter's MCC side in December 1961. He took the first five wickets and, for the first time, India made England follow on. But the comeback did not last long. During the next Test his room-mate, Kripal Singh, phoned the hotel receptionist to ask her for a date. She complained to the Indian management who, claiming they did not know who made the call, suspended both players. Even worse, the Indian board president, himself an acquaintance of the lady, told the selectors not to pick Gupte for the forthcoming tour of the West Indies. Bitter and disillusioned, Gupte quit India for good at 33 and emigrated to Trinidad, where he worked in the sugar refinery​

 

[honestbharani]

Funny to see how condescending some of you guys are... At least the man who made the comments has watched both of them bowl.. I am sure pretty much all of us have never seen Gupte bowl (at least the ones that have posted till now.)


It is almost as if there is no way that Gupte MIGHT just have been the better bowler...


But as per the quote in my sig, it is pretty futile at times to compare within the same era, so comparing across eras simply gives too much room for speculation and doubt and it is really really hard to be conclusive either way. Agree with Matt reg. players rating the guys they played against higher than the ones they never played against though..

 

[Ikki]

The person in question makes some biased comments about his era and team in general. Another statement by Sobers a few years ago: "I never saw Bradman's teams play but you don't even have to go back that far," Sobers said. "I don't think they would have even won a single Test against Clive Lloyd's team, to tell you the truth. Look at how the Aussies struggled against Steve Harmison in England. What would they have done against an attack with Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Colin Croft, Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall?"

It almost feels if the guy is wanting some attention.