Poll: Greatest Cricketer amongst this lot

[Blaze 18]

Originally Posted by smalishah84

You seem to rate Lara very very highly

Yeah, the best batsman of all time bar Sir Donald Bradman, a peerless match-winner and a ridiculously gifted player. Watching him bat was the cricketing equivalent of having an orgasm

[Blaze 18]

Originally Posted by Prince EWS

Sweaty man crush. We've been over this.

[Lillian Thomson]

As there was criteria given for voting I voted for Botham who's the most naturally gifted all around cricketer from the list.

[Ikki]

Originally Posted by Prince EWS

The era McGrath played in didn't make that much of a difference though. It was definitely enough for me to say McGrath was in fact a better bowler than Hadlee, but only by a small margin. They were in fact 13th and 14th in my standardised bowling averages thread, which took the standards of run-scoring into account (it was basically its only purpose ).

Hadlee's average minus the minnows of his time should probably be considered. Great bowler, but I think McGrath was a bit more cheaper than your stats suggest.

[Prince EWS]

Originally Posted by Ikki

Hadlee's average minus the minnows of his time should probably be considered. Great bowler, but I think McGrath was a bit more cheaper than your stats suggest.

Those stats actually take the quality of each team into account though. There are definitely factors standardised averages don't take into account (longevity, top order v lower order wickets, support, strike rate, context of performances, difficulty of bowling in your home country compared to others at the time etc etc) so they aren't in any way a perfect measure, but minnow-bashing and era differences are taken care of, largely. I'm in no way saying they're the be all and end all, but I personally trust them to account for two factors scorebook averages dont : era run-scoring standards and relative quality of opposition. Given they're the first two things people have come up with to point out McGrath's supposed superiority over Hadlee, I'm inclined to think both are exaggerated in this particular case. I think McGrath was the better bowler but I do not think there is much in it at all; two extremely similar bowlers career-wise.

[Uppercut]

Given New Zealand's quality of the time, a bowler that owned much harder against "minnows" than he did anyone else was probably worth quite a bit more to them than one who did the opposite anyway. Assuming the end goal of cricket is to win matches.

[Prince EWS]

Originally Posted by Uppercut

Given New Zealand's quality of the time, a bowler that owned much harder against "minnows" than he did anyone else was probably worth quite a bit more to them than one who did the opposite anyway. Assuming the end goal of cricket is to win matches.

Given the most he averaged against any country was 28 against Pakistan, I don't think it's fair to say he made up for failing against anyone by dominating minnows. He was remarkably consistent against all countries, with the exception of Sri Lanka who he averaged 12 against but only played 6 times anyway.

[Ikki]

As a matter of curiosity who do you think had the best batting line-up in their careers? Hadlee did marvelously against the best team of his time/probably the best players of pace too. Whereas in McGrath's career the best players of pace were probably S.Africa and the best line-up in general would have been India's.

[smalishah84]

Originally Posted by Prince EWS

Given the most he averaged against any country was 28 against Pakistan, I don't think it's fair to say he made up for failing against anyone by dominating minnows. He was remarkably consistent against all countries, with the exception of Sri Lanka who he averaged 12 against but only played 6 times anyway.

That is quite outstanding. The highest average against any country being 28.

[Ikki]

McGrath's is 27. Marshall's 22.51.

[smalishah84]

Originally Posted by Ikki

McGrath's is 27. Marshall's 22.51.

once again he is very close to McGrath.