How good is Sanga?

[Teja.]

Before putting him in the best after Bradman, people need to address the longevity issue, pretty much everyone traditionally considered a candidate for it has had a career significantly longer than Sangas. (See: Tendulkar, Sobers, Hobbs, Hutton, Hammond, Headley)

To illustrate why this is important, Tendulkar when he was in a similar phase of his career in 2003 with 14 years behind him averaged 57.x over 100+ tests (one run less than Sanga) with most of it in the 90s. Even if you argue that Sanga 00-14 was slightly better than Tendulkar 89-03 (though that's highly debatable), where does he cover the value that Sachin batting on and averaging fifty for one additional decade with everything that comes with it?

Sangakkara is an all-time great batsman, definitely the best batsman in the world right now and by far the best batsman to have debuted post-2000 but he's not really a legit contender for being the best after Bradman, IMO.

 

[Dan]

Yeah, there's definitely merit to that, but at the end of the day I don't feel we can really hold it against Sangakkara for not debuting at age 16, especially if he keeps this record up for another 3-4 years. Beyond a certain point, bonus units of longevity lose their marginal value, as do bonus units of double tons vs. Pakistan.

Plus he didn't exactly have a choice in the matter, and 14 years and counting is hardly a small sample size.

Credit to Tendulkar, yes. Mark against Sanga? No IMO.

 

[viriya]

A 14 year career of 120+ tests is more than long enough. One valid point is that sanga hasn't gone through the average form period before retirement that most others did. He is definitely at a career peak right now and it remains to be seen whether he can maintain his current level till retirement. Considering his perfectionism and intiatiable hunger for runs I wouldn't put it past him.

Tendulkar only has himself to blame for hanging around too long for statistical achievements - no one stopped him from leaving while ahead. When rating a player's career you cant pick a subsection - it has to be the entire thing with a longevity bonus. It's the same reason I don't like to consider sangas record as a pure batsman as some do - its his overall record that counts.

 

[Maximas]

That's amazing, averaging 57 by 2003 against some of the attacks he faced, and then to carry on for another decade

 

[Teja.]

A 14 year career of 120+ tests is more than long enough. One valid point is that sanga hasn't gone through the average form period before retirement that most others did. He is definitely at a career peak right now and it remains to be seen whether he can maintain his current level till retirement. Considering his perfectionism and intiatiable hunger for runs I wouldn't put it past him.

Tendulkar only has himself to blame for hanging around too long for statistical achievements - no one stopped him from leaving while ahead. When rating a player's career you cant pick a subsection - it has to be the entire thing with a longevity bonus. It's the same reason I don't like to consider sangas record as a pure batsman as some do - its his overall record that counts.

Haha, please.

Lol @ "ruined his career stats"

Such a cricket fan thing to say, and so far removed from the views of players and most analysts.

 

[Prince EWS]

Yeah, there's definitely merit to that, but at the end of the day I don't feel we can really hold it against Sangakkara for not debuting at age 16

I think we can. If 16 year old Tendulkar was better than 16 year old Sangakkara to a point where it allowed him to contribute something to his Test side when Sangakkara wasn't good enough to do so, then it should count in his favour in a comparison between the two.

I have some sympathy for the Ponting argument in this case -- that Ponting arguably was every bit as good as a teenager as Tendulkar was but merely didn't get selected for Test cricket because Australia's team was stronger and system was harder to crack into -- but in Sangakkara's case, I see no reason to suggest he wouldn't have been playing if he was good enough when he was a teenager.

Credit to Tendulkar, yes. Mark against Sanga? No IMO.

When you are comparing Tendulkar to Sangakkara, these are exactly the same thing.

 

[viriya]

That tendulkar hung around at least an year too long is pretty obvious to any unbiased observer.

 

[Dan]

FTR if Sangakkara were to play for 50 more completed innings (so, what, 3.5-4 years with SL's Test schedule?), and averaged 35 across that period of time, he'd still come out ahead of Tendulkar on overall average (assuming my sums are correct).

If he wanted to match Tendulkar's runs scored and average perfectly, he'd have to play 92 more completed Test innings and average about 42.70 for the rest of his career (again, 12:30am maths; someone may want to check this).

 

[simonlee48]

Wait, lets get some correct stats first. The 1,500 thing was bs.
.

Now, if you want to argue all the travelling and intense schedule would have broken him, well you could, but that's all speculation and doesn't deserve any merit.

All the other arguments are just pure BS. If you say "There are more countries to play against now!" I'll point you to BD and Zimbabwe (And some pretty mediocre attacks fielded by India, Sri Lanka, West Indies and New Zealand in the past). If you say "There are more conditions to play in and adapt to!" I'll just point out that back in Bradman's day, groundsmen weren't incentivised to produce flat wickets to make matches last 5 days to earn TV revenue/ticket sales, not to mention the uncovered wickets that made batting hard. If you want to argue tactics are better and fielding is better now, well then so are the bats and safety equipment, and video footage of your opponents helps both batsmen and bowlers. What else is left?

I was taking 1500 for mainly to show that many batsmen did average 60 and most of them would have averaged less. We got sidetracked but my main argument was - it's easier for a freak to be far ahead of their peers if you have 1000 players in entire planet. It gets proportionally tougher to do the same if you have 1M players. It's not an speculation. It;s simple math and common sense. Extreme example will be one good player playing only in his village and being far better than others. Not that Bradman was playing in village but you get the point.

All points about conditions/fielding/travel etc are speculation. Even my main point is could be claimed by you as speculation but it's based on simple probability.

 

[Maximas]

FTR if Sangakkara were to play for 50 more completed innings (so, what, 3.5-4 years with SL's Test schedule?), and averaged 35 across that period of time, he'd still come out ahead of Tendulkar on overall average (assuming my sums are correct).

If he wanted to match Tendulkar's runs scored and average perfectly, he'd have to play 92 more completed Test innings and average about 42.70 for the rest of his career (again, 12:30am maths; someone may want to check this).

Could easily argue Sanga played in an easier era to bat in and played against his favourite minnows more than Sachin though, and round we go

 

[viriya]

Sanga will probably not play for another 4-5 years.. He is almost 37 so will be 40 in 3 years. Most likely he will play for another 2.5-3 years max (would be 2 years except not many tests next year because of WC) and play 20-25 tests. So I think he will prob go past ponting in runs and retire soon after with a 57+ average.

 

[akilana]

Could easily argue Sanga played in an easier era to bat in and played against his favourite minnows more than Sachin though, and round we go

It is not like Sachin didn't bat in this easier era

 

[viriya]

Its not 1000 vs 1m though. There are more test players now but the difference isn't remotely close to that.

 

[Dan]

I'm not sure how much relevance the 'big fish in a small pond' logic works with Test cricket over time. International cricketers are such a small group that, a few notable exceptions aside, all of them are very big fish indeed. The ATGs even bigger still

Test teams being so exclusive, I don't think variation in potential player pool would affect things too much. Sure, your fish just outside the exclusive Test cricket pond might be a bit bigger on average, and there might be a lot more of the small fish swimming around the outlying ponds with no hope of growing, or there might even be some large fish swimming around in ponds we haven't tapped yet. But I don't think you'd see much, if any, growth in the size of the average fish in the Test cricketing pond.

Nothing remotely scientific about that idea, obvs, but when we're talking less than what, 3000 people have represented their country in Test cricket over a period of 200 years, they represent such a minuscule proportion of the overall global population that I personally don't see population growth as impacting upon the quality of that top fraction of a fraction of a percentage point at all.

 

[Maximas]

Reckon he'll retire somewhere around the end of 2015, will play another 15 tests at the very most IMO

 

[viriya]

Ideally Sanga gets to:

- go past ponting run tally
- get to 60.00 overall average
- beat Bradmans 12 double hundred record
- go past kallis' 45 hundreds
- get runs in SA/wi/Ind to "fix" his away record

Before retirement. Its unlikely that he can complete all these but that should be his goal IMO.

 

[viriya]

Haha, please.

It was painful to watch him hang on in the last year - especially since India had good replacements like Rahane/Rohit knocking on the door.

 

[simonlee48]

If Sanga ends up with 11 double hundreds instead of 12, nobody would hold it against him. They wouldn't suggest that his lack of 200 in a 2014 home Test vs. Pakistan was a hole in his record. It does, however, reinforce all those things that everyone unanimously agrees upon-- Sanga makes big scores more often than anyone else, and is ridiculously consistent against good attacks.
.

He is not. Let's see. Good attacks are Aus, SA, NZ, Eng and Pakistan.

Sanga agaist Aus, SA, NZ and Eng in his first 5 years: Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

Sanga against the same in the last 5 years: Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

That's 50 tests against those 4 countries in 5 years of two chunks. It shows that he has not been even consistency good for two large periods let alone being ridiculously good. He has been only ridiculously good and consistent against only one good attack and that is Pakistan. You could consider India in India as good attack as 6th option if you want but I don't bracket India as good attack. Only WI left now among non-minnows.

He was very good against all 5 attacks in middle though but two 5 years periods is not something you could simply ignore when talking about consistency for a batsmen who has played for 14 years. It has 50 tests in two chunks. Sanga can have many claims but consistently playing well against good attacks is not one of them. Against Pakistan that claim is true by some margin. Likes of Kallis/Dravid have been more consistent against good attacks than Sanga.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Before putting him in the best after Bradman, people need to address the longevity issue, pretty much everyone traditionally considered a candidate for it has had a career significantly longer than Sangas. (See: Tendulkar, Sobers, Hobbs, Hutton, Hammond, Headley)

To illustrate why this is important, Tendulkar when he was in a similar phase of his career in 2003 with 14 years behind him averaged 57.x over 100+ tests (one run less than Sanga) with most of it in the 90s. Even if you argue that Sanga 00-14 was slightly better than Tendulkar 89-03 (though that's highly debatable), where does he cover the value that Sachin batting on and averaging fifty for one additional decade with everything that comes with it?

Yeah, exactly.

More stattage since viriya and Blocky have repeatedly said Tendulkar is "inferior statistically":

1) Tendulkar's average touched 59.16 in February 2001 after 90 tests over 12 years. Almost as long as Sanga's career and considering how this entire period was during a time which everyone likes to say was tough to bat in, and although I'm not saying he smashed the 90s great bowlers for fun, it's an extraordinary statistical achievement.

2) After this Tendulkar went through a slight decline, but still somehow managed to rack up big runs through sheer grit. Even though he wasnt in form, his average was 58.4 when he played Pakistan in 2004. After 15 years of test cricket and 113 tests, his average was still stratospheric. But there's more: At this point in his career, he had 33 hundreds. Only 3 of them came against Bangladesh/Zimbabwe. And he played 54 tests, almost half his tests, away from the SC. While I will never slag Sanga off for bashing Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, getting to almost 60 average without getting anywhere near as many opportunities to pump up his average against weaker teams or playing every week in familiar home conditions is just phenomenal. This is why when people judge Tendulkar without having really appreciated what he achieved in those years, it just shows a great deal of ignorance.

3) If this isn't enough, after going through a big decline in the mid 2000s, Tendulkar roared back in the end of the 2000s and once again became the best in the world. After his last ton in test cricket, that classic at Capetown against Steyn, Tendulkar's average stood at 56.95. After 176 tests. More than anyone had ever played. So at that point, Tendulkar had played more test cricket than anyone and still managed to keep his average at ungodly heights. Almost freaking 57 after 22 years. . Compare that with 59 over 14 years for Sanga and tell me whats more impressive statistically.

And yet, after having done all this, bceause Tendulkar was mediocre for his last 15-20 tests, he's suddenly "statistically inferior". I don't get the logic whatsoever. That's why the final average is misleading. Tendulkar isn't better because of the statistics, there are other reasons I could give, but saying that his numbers are worse is just a complete fallacy.

 

[OverratedSanity]

It is not like Sachin didn't bat in this easier era

That's the thing though. He batted in both. And succeeded in both. Has to count for a lot