The ATG Teams General arguing/discussing thread

[Days of Grace]

"Sometimes I feel that I'm misunderstood."

[8ankitj]

If you are going to compare averages, you can just stuff your team with bowlers from pre world war era

[Days of Grace]

That's until I adjust their averages for the era and playing conditions...


Cue Bench****.

[benchmark00]

Somebody stop him!

[Prince EWS]

Originally Posted by Days of Grace

What if I compare the total batting average of my 11 players to any other Alltime XI you wish to post:

Hobbs 56.94
Hutton 56.67
Bradman 99.94
Richards 50.23
Sobers 57.78
Gilchrist 47.60
Imran Khan 37.69
Hadlee 27.16
Marshall 18.85
Warne 17.32
Muralitharan 11.67

That's a total of 481.85, as opposed to Mike5181's 512.17.

However, the average of my 5 bowlers is 22.83, compared to Mike's 24.69.

So, my team should be able to measure up to almost all others.

There's no way your fifth bowler is as important as your first bowler though. It's only an even vaguely valid method if your best five bowlers all have to bowl an equal amount. All you need from your fifth bowler, assuming you have a strong, balanced attack, is the ability to competently either hold up an end or break a partnership with something different. I think Sobers's bowling is quite over-rated but he qualifies as good enough for that role, even at this hypothetical level. I personally think a lot of Gilchrist's success was down to where he batted and the freedom his role as a #7 gave him, so to move him out of that position at a much higher standard of cricket in order to accommodate five frontline bowlers beneath him seems absurd to me.

[watson]

Originally Posted by Prince EWS

There's no way your fifth bowler is as important as your first bowler though. It's only an even vaguely valid method if your best five bowlers all have to bowl an equal amount. All you need from your fifth bowler, assuming you have a strong, balanced attack, is the ability to competently either hold up an end or break a partnership with something different. I think Sobers's bowling is quite over-rated but he qualifies as good enough for that role, even at this hypothetical level. I personally think a lot of Gilchrist's success was down to where he batted and the freedom his role as a #7 gave him, so to move him out of that position at a much higher standard of cricket in order to accommodate five frontline bowlers beneath him seems absurd to me.

Took me a while to accept the idea that forcing the keeper to bat at No.6 so as to accomodate 5 front-line bowlers is over-the-top. So, in the main, I agree with you Prince EWS.

However, we do have a precedent against. It could be easily argued that the England team beat Australia in 2005 because they played 5 front-line bowlers - if you count Flintoff as a bowling all-rounder and therefore a front-line bowler. As I recall Flintoff batted at No.6 in all 5 Test matches, so the idea is not completely 'absurd'.

In the context of an ATG team I think that it would be acceptable to play Keith Miller in the top 6 as his batting is superior to Flintoff and other great 'bowling all-rounders'. Not my first preference, but acceptable just the same. Keepers like Gilchrist and Lindsay should always stay No.7 as a matter of principle though.

[Prince EWS]

Originally Posted by watson

However, we do have a precedent against. It could be easily argued that the England team beat Australia in 2005 because they played 5 front-line bowlers - if you count Flintoff as a bowling all-rounder and therefore a front-line bowler. As I recall Flintoff batted at No.6 in all 5 Test matches, so the idea is not completely 'absurd'.

I should qualify that I do not think, nor did I say, that the idea of a five man attack is absurd. Quite the contrary in fact; I think it's very important to have a competent fifth bowler unless your four man bowling attack is both well balanced and vastly superior to the opposition's batting lineup. You may have noticed that I selected Miller to bat six in the Australian All-Time thread, which backs this up. What I do think is absurd is making a player who thrived in (and arguably largely because of) the number seven role at Test level bat six at a much higher level in pursuit of a better fifth bowler. Sobers may not be good enough to be a specialist bowler at this hypothetical level of cricket, but a genuine bowler he was, and as the fifth member of a five man attack I'm sure his bowling would be competent. The team already has a five man bowling attack, so playing so many bowlers doesn't even add to the depth of the attack as such;, it just raises the quality of a bowler who will probably only bowl about 10-15% of the team's over at the expense of a much needed specialist batsman and probably at the expense of Gilchrist's effectiveness too.

The Flintoff example is different for many reasons. Firstly, Flintoff during that period was holding his place as a batsman anyway - between the start of 2003 and the end of 2005 he had scored over 2000 runs at an average over 40 with four hundreds; this was as good or better than what you could expect from the next unproven county batsman in line. Comparing it to our situation here, do we think Imran could average 40 playing against what we can only assume will be bowlers of a roughly equivalent standard to Earth's all-time team? Do we think he'd do roughly as well as Headley, Tendulkar, Richards or whoever else got left out so five bowlers could play? Unlike the situation with Flintoff at the time, there are far better top seven batting options to choose from. Furthermore, England needed that fifth bowler to ensure a good, well-balanced attack a lot more than the all-time Earth team does; Giles had to play to ensure balance and variety in their bowling attack with a genuine spin option, but he was too poor a bowler to be relied upon as part of a four man attack. To add to this, England did not have a 'replacement' fifth bowler anywhere as good as Sobers, even relative to standard, had they decided to play an extra batsman and move Flintoff to seven or eight.

[Flametree]

Yeah, I thought the England 2005 was a bad example... it was four (very) good bowlers plus Giles, rather than five very very good bowlers as some folk want to go with for their ATG sides.

[Howe_zat]

Ashley Giles' "ball of the century" - YouTube

[Flametree]

I guess the fact that he could only bowl one of them per century explains his average the wrong side of 40.

[watson]

Originally Posted by Prince EWS

I should qualify that I do not think, nor did I say, that the idea of a five man attack is absurd. Quite the contrary in fact; I think it's very important to have a competent fifth bowler unless your four man bowling attack is both well balanced and vastly superior to the opposition's batting lineup. You may have noticed that I selected Miller to bat six in the Australian All-Time thread, which backs this up. What I do think is absurd is making a player who thrived in (and arguably largely because of) the number seven role at Test level bat six at a much higher level in pursuit of a better fifth bowler. Sobers may not be good enough to be a specialist bowler at this hypothetical level of cricket, but a genuine bowler he was, and as the fifth member of a five man attack I'm sure his bowling would be competent. The team already has a five man bowling attack, so playing so many bowlers doesn't even add to the depth of the attack as such;, it just raises the quality of a bowler who will probably only bowl about 10-15% of the team's over at the expense of a much needed specialist batsman and probably at the expense of Gilchrist's effectiveness too.

The Flintoff example is different for many reasons. Firstly, Flintoff during that period was holding his place as a batsman anyway - between the start of 2003 and the end of 2005 he had scored over 2000 runs at an average over 40 with four hundreds; this was as good or better than what you could expect from the next unproven county batsman in line. Comparing it to our situation here, do we think Imran could average 40 playing against what we can only assume will be bowlers of a roughly equivalent standard to Earth's all-time team? Do we think he'd do roughly as well as Headley, Tendulkar, Richards or whoever else got left out so five bowlers could play? Unlike the situation with Flintoff at the time, there are far better top seven batting options to choose from. Furthermore, England needed that fifth bowler to ensure a good, well-balanced attack a lot more than the all-time Earth team does; Giles had to play to ensure balance and variety in their bowling attack with a genuine spin option, but he was too poor a bowler to be relied upon as part of a four man attack. To add to this, England did not have a 'replacement' fifth bowler anywhere as good as Sobers, even relative to standard, had they decided to play an extra batsman and move Flintoff to seven or eight.

Yes, point taken. But I was more focusing on the idea of weakening the top 6 slightly (it doesn't matter whether Gilchrist, Miller, or Flintoff is in the top 6) in order to get a top notch 5th bowler into the side - because having 5 top bowlers will win you more matches than you'll lose.

I thought that the Flintoff experiment would be a good case in point because he was not a true batsman and Giles bowled about as many over in the series as any of the other bowlers. However, I didn't realise that Flintoff's batting average at the time was that good, and that English cricket was in such a poor state that it couldn't find a 6th batsman who could roll his arm over satisfactorily.

[watson]

Originally Posted by AndyZaltzHair

I guess with Imran, Wasim and Waqar there, Kapil would not add much value with the ball, it's true. I think a decent fifth bowling option is needed though, tempting to put Mankad/Mushtaq in the line up who could do the job with the bat as well. Mankad got all of his centuries opening the innings including a double ton and I also feel he is underrated. The thing with Inzi/Jaya/Hazare in this line up is that with no 3, no 4 and no 5 locked with Dravid, Sachin and Miandad, I'm not sure of placing Inzi/Jaya/Hazare at no 6 and pushing batsman of Sanga's caliber into no 7 or vice versa. The solution in my mind atm-

1. Sunil Gavaskar
2. Hanif Mohammad
3. Rahul Dravid
4. Sachin Tendulkar
5. Javed Miandad
6. Kumar Sangakkara+
7. Vinoo Mankad
8. Imran Khan*
9. Wasim Akram
10. Waqar Younis
11. Muttiah Muralitharan

Sorry for de-railing your thread Andy (at that point). I like your ATG Asian XI. Here's my go as promised;

Asian XI
01. Sunil Gavaskar
02. Virenda Sehwag
03. Kumar Sangakkara
04. Sachin Tendulkar
05. Javed Miandad
06. Vinoo Mankad
07. Farouk Engineer +
08. Imran Khan*
09. Wasim Akram
10. Waqar Younis
11. Muttiah Muralitharan

The choice of Virenda Sehwag was a tough one, but in the end the curiosity of seeing him bat along side Gavaskar was too strong. Plus his stat's ain't too bad either;

It Figures | Cricket Blogs | ESPN Cricinfo

I also resisted the temptation of playing Sangakarra as a keeper just so I could get Dravid into the team. Sangakkara's average sky-rocketed from 40 to 70 once he gave up the gloves. Hence the difference was too great to ignore.

I'm not particularly happy with Vinoo Mankad at No.6 as he was one of the most inconsistent batsman in history;

It Figures | Cricket Blogs | ESPN Cricinfo

However, Mushtaq Mohammad didn't appear to be too much better despite some stunning innings against the West Indies and Australia during the 1970s. Therefore, I went for Mankad because he was probably a better bowler and there aren't too many other 'batting-allrounders' of note that I can think of.

Because of Vinoo Mankad's inconsistency I went for Engineer as keeper (just beating Dhoni) as he was skillful with the bat. Engineer + Imran at Nos.7 and 8 is inherently stronger than Imran + Kirmani who was my second choice keeper.

The bowling attack virtually picks itself with the absence of Kapil Dev being my only regret. Unfortunately neither he nor Imran were quite good enough with the bat to nail down the No.6 spot, and I couldn't leave out either Wasim or Waqar to make way.

[Howe_zat]

Needs more Hazare.

[AndyZaltzHair]

Nice one too, watson; initially I thought of playing Sanga at 3 and drafting a specialist keeper too. Probably I would go with Kirmani but as you mentioned with Vinoo at 6, the team needs a strong batting wicket keeper so the dashing Engineer is probably the best choice. Otherwise the fifth bowling option has to be excluded and a pure batsman to be included at 6 and Kirmani at 7/8. Matter of preference I think.

[watson]

Originally Posted by AndyZaltzHair

Nice one too, watson; initially I thought of playing Sanga at 3 and drafting a specialist keeper too. Probably I would go with Kirmani but as you mentioned with Vinoo at 6, the team needs a strong batting wicket keeper so the dashing Engineer is probably the best choice. Otherwise the fifth bowling option has to be excluded and a pure batsman to be included at 6 and Kirmani at 7/8. Matter of preference I think.

Good point - is a 'competent wicket-taking 5th bowler' really that necessary to an ATG team? Probably, but I'm not sure.