Dhoni V Prior (Tests)

[GIMH]

That series was low-scoring because the bowling was excellent, from both sides.

Glad I could clear that up, now can Cevno and centurymaker please stop posting utter ****e.

 

[Howe_zat]

Who's denying that England have been good? But there is a difference between being good yourselves and being Vastly superior to another very good bowling attack. Don't need to play the others down to be good yourself tbh.
Same issues can be raised about people calling Indian attack barring Zaheer Crap and then wrt to Zak and the batting lineup.

Also we were talking about one series here wrt to Pakistan where you made this point, I'll happily admit Trott was very good that series against and Prior was good too.

But now throwing your own logic at you, will you considering all the rest of the batsman averaged 30 or less in that series admit they were real crap or that the bowlers deserved bit less credit now?

I wasn't actually trying to argue that the English attack was massively better than anything. Just poking holes in logic where I see them.

On answering your question, but "all the rest" I assume you mean Cook, Stauss, KP and Morgan:

Cook and Pietersen had a crap series. Straightforward. Both have recovered.

Morgan was actually better, his hundred in the first test was an excellent innings. The jury was till out on him a Test batsman, not only because he got out a couple of times to quality fast bowling, but mostly because he beaten a couple of times by Ajmal. That was what bothered me. His average being pushed down when Prior ran him out for 1/6 of his series does not bother me.

Strauss had a better average, but has looked shaky for some time now. I'm really not sure he's one of the best seven batsmen in England any more. He had a poor series, and the thing that rescued his series average was an unbeaten 50 in the second Test when chasing an easy target.

I think in any given series you can expect two or three batsmen to have a poor series statistically, and given the standard of bowling they were up against I think it's rather par for the course to bump that up to three and half. Only in a rarity do I think a player having a poor series is a result of notable decline, which is why it's usually not a good idea to judge anyone on series averages - especially not when you're only looking at half a dozen innings.

 

[Cevno]

I wasn't actually trying to argue that the English attack was massively better than anything. Just poking holes in logic where I see them.

On answering your question, but "all the rest" I assume you mean Cook, Stauss, KP and Morgan:

Cook and Pietersen had a crap series. Straightforward. Both have recovered.

Morgan was actually better, his hundred in the first test was an excellent innings. The jury was till out on him a Test batsman, not only because he got out a couple of times to quality fast bowling, but mostly because he beaten a couple of times by Ajmal. That was what bothered me. His average being pushed down when Prior ran him out for 1/6 of his series does not bother me.

Strauss had a better average, but has looked shaky for some time now. I'm really not sure he's one of the best seven batsmen in England any more. He had a poor series, and the thing that rescued his series average was an unbeaten 50 in the second Test when chasing an easy target.

I think in any given series you can expect two or three batsmen to have a poor series statistically, and given the standard of bowling they were up against I think it's rather par for the course to bump that up to three and half. Only in a rarity do I think a player having a poor series is a result of notable decline, which is why it's usually not a good idea to judge anyone on series averages - especially not when you're only looking at half a dozen innings.

And that was the point in the first place that judging Steyn and Anderson based on a single respective series against Pakistan alone wasn't fair.

And specially considering the conditions varying in the 2 series too, which were completely contrasting. And it was uppercut who brought those 2 series up.
Except for Trott and to an extent Prior all the other English and Pakistani batsman struggled in that series.Yes the bowling was pretty good but you can't deny they were aided by conditions too to an extent, specially compared to the real flat tracks of Abu Dhabi. And this is not a reflection on the English tracks in general ftr.

 

[centurymaker]

southafrican attack has more variety (makes a significant difference too)

fast right arm swing bowler

fast right arm tall seamer

med-fast left arm seamer

tall left-arm spinner


english attack

fast-med right arm swing bowler

fast right arm tall swing bowler

fast-med right arm tall seamer

righ arm spinner

 

[Furball]

England's bowlers have differing levels of stubble. This is also vitally important in giving a bowling attack variety.

 

[smash84]

England's bowlers have differing levels of stubble. This is also vitally important in giving a bowling attack variety.

 

[John Blaze]

Steyn and Anderson have been bowling to pretty much the same standard for 2 years now. Steyn's number 1 but the difference these days is minimal.
Morkel's bowled well, as has Tremlett, they're pretty equal. Morkel has been doing it longer, which gives him a slight edge.
I'll take Broad or Bresnan before whoever South Africa pick as their 3rd seamer. The fact we have no idea who that is tells you how well they've replaced Ntini.
Swann is overwhelmingly superior to Harris, and Tahir is completely unproven at the top level.

Kallis is useful and is probably South Africa's 3rd best seamer, but since he's in the side for his batting I'm not factoring him in, as his main job is covering a pretty glaring weakness.

So that's two of the 4 where England are hugely superior, and 2 where South Africa are marginally ahead. In my book that gives England, quite comfortably, the best attack going. Look what happened to South Africa when Steyn had a bad series v Pakistan, and look at England when Anderson got injured at Cardiff. Huge difference.

That's not even taking England's bench strength into consideration. Name me one other Test side whos 2nd string attack has 200+ Test wickets between them.

 

[John Blaze]

Australia say hi.

Jan 2009 occured in the past 12 months?

 

[John Blaze]

southafrican attack has more variety (makes a significant difference too)

fast right arm swing bowler

fast right arm tall seamer

med-fast left arm seamer

tall left-arm spinner


english attack

fast-med right arm swing bowler

fast right arm tall swing bowler

fast-med right arm tall seamer

righ arm spinner

Although it leads to a difference, just the fact that there is variety doesn't constitute enough of a reason to claim one attack better than the other, especially when the left arm spinner is **** and the right arm spinner is good.

 

[centurymaker]

Although it leads to a difference, just the fact that there is variety doesn't constitute enough of a reason to claim one attack better than the other, especially when the left arm spinner is **** and the right arm spinner is good.

for example- dravid, sachin and strauss all fare better against right-arm pacers.

kp and sachin fare better against right arm finger spinners.

(large majority of batsmen tbh would prefer to face right arm bowlers because they are accustomed to facing them)

edit
and harris isn't useless ****

he does his job well. keeps an end tied up and allows steyn and morkel a breather. harby cant even do that these days

 

[John Blaze]

for example- dravid, sachin and strauss all fare better against right-arm pacers.

kp and sachin fare better against right arm finger spinners.

(large majority of batsmen tbh would prefer to face right arm bowlers because they are accustomed to facing them)

Who would Sachin rather face Swann a right arm finger spinner or Harris a left arm orthodox? Quality trumps variety

 

[John Blaze]

for example- dravid, sachin and strauss all fare better against right-arm pacers.

kp and sachin fare better against right arm finger spinners.

(large majority of batsmen tbh would prefer to face right arm bowlers because they are accustomed to facing them)

edit
and harris isn't useless ****

he does his job well. keeps an end tied up and allows steyn and morkel a breather. harby cant even do that these days

Am I a **** or Harris isn't a 'useless ****'

 

[centurymaker]

Who would Sachin rather face Swann a right arm finger spinner or Harris a left arm orthodox? Quality trumps variety

he would be indifferent between the two.

he's never done too well against left arm spinners.
harris has troubled him quite a bit (he gets bounce too because of his height) and dimissed him a few times.

 

[MW1304]

for example- dravid, sachin and strauss all fare better against right-arm pacers.

kp and sachin fare better against right arm finger spinners.

(large majority of batsmen tbh would prefer to face right arm bowlers because they are accustomed to facing them)

edit
and harris isn't useless ****

he does his job well. keeps an end tied up and allows steyn and morkel a breather. harby cant even do that these days

Just stop trying to argue. When you are trying to claim that the SA attack is better than England's because of the left-arm variety Harris brings, you know you're going nowhere. That is a ridiculous argument; however awkward to face Harris' not-at-all awkward to face darts are, he is not even close to being close to Swann.

I think Uppercut has made the best point here, in any case. Instead of just breaking everything down into individuals and their stats or 'variety', you also need to look at how the whole attack operates, and the results they get. Variety is one thing, but it needs to be balanced out with quality and consistency and not looked at on its own.

 

[centurymaker]

Just stop trying to argue. When you are trying to claim that the SA attack is better than England's because of the left-arm variety Harris brings, you know you're going nowhere. That is a ridiculous argument; however awkward to face Harris' not-at-all awkward to face darts are, he is not even close to being close to Swann.

I think Uppercut has made the best point here, in any case. Instead of just breaking everything down into individuals and their stats or 'variety', you also need to look at how the whole attack operates, and the results they get. Variety is one thing, but it needs to be balanced out with quality and consistency and not looked at on its own.

their attack operates just fine-
they have two lethal fast bowlers, 1 containing spinner and ok 3rd and 4th (kallis) seamers.

look if broad goes back bowling like ****, i cant see how southafrican attack as a unit is clearly inferior to england's attack.

go ask strauss who he would rather face out of siddle/hilfenhaus/harris and welegedra. i'm sure he would pick the former.

and i'm sure he would do better against those aussie quicks despite teh fact that they are clearly better than welegedra

 

[MW1304]

their attack operates just fine-
they have two lethal fast bowlers, 1 containing spinner and ok 3rd and 4th (kallis) seamers.

look if broad goes back bowling like ****, i cant see how southafrican attack as a unit is clearly inferior to england's attack.

go ask strauss who he would rather face out of siddle/hilfenhaus/harris and welegedra. i'm sure he would pick the former.

and i'm sure he would do better against those aussie quicks despite teh fact that they are clearly better than welegedra

Stop picking out individual players, its nothing to do with the preferences of certain players against certain types of bowling, its about overall effectiveness. Why is variety quite so important to you? I'm certain that, however much KP hates left-arm spin, 95% of the world's bowlers would rather face Harris than Swann. Swann is a much, much better bowler. The argument you are using about variety is ridiculous, stop using it.

 

[Jacknife]

I think I've been on three different threads now and the same argument is going on.

 

[tooextracool]

Every time Dhoni scores runs it makes me cringe. Such an awful technique, should not be scoring anywhere near as many runs as he has done over his test career. His average certainly flatters him

 

[GIMH]

The variety argument really doesn't work when you're talking about a team's only spinner. The spin is the variety. Not rocket science.

 

[smash84]

Every time Dhoni scores runs it makes me cringe. Such an awful technique, should not be scoring anywhere near as many runs as he has done over his test career. His average certainly flatters him

I have always thought the same