India ATG Team- Open Voting

[Coronis]

Originally Posted by watson

The best attack that Merchant ever faced was perhaps the 1936 English attack that consisted of Allen, Gover, Verity, Robins and Hammond. Against those bowlers at Old Trafford he managed a score of 114. That's not bad.

2nd Test: England v India at Manchester, Jul 25-28, 1936 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo

However, while Merchant averaged a very healthy 71.64 in domestic cricket I'm not sure what that means as I can't imagine that the overall quality of Indian bowlers during 1930s-50s would have been very good, especially the quality of fast bowling.

On the other hand Barry Richards scored plenty of runs against Lillee, Roberts, Snow etc in English domestic and WSC cricket, and was therefore able to prove himself against top notch quicks on a regular basis. I'm not sure that we can say the same for Merchant as I don't think that Gover or Allen, or the domestic Indian bowlers were in the same class as the tear-aways of the 1970s.

Here is a Barry Richard's innings where he scored 207 against Lillee, Walker, Gilmour, Bright and Greg Chappell;

HowSTAT! Match Scorecard

While That mightn't have been the best comparison Merchant actually scored most of his runs during his tours of England, rather than in domestic cricket.

[Cevno]

Yeah, Merchant was a terrific batsman by all accounts of him but it is very tough to accurately judge him.

Might have picked him ahead of Sehwag on another day.

[Blakus]

Sunil Gavaskar
Virender Sehwag

[Satyanash89]

It shocks me how much people let recent form affect their opinions about certain players. Sehwag for all his deficiencies is a truly remarkable, once in a few generations batsman.
Yeah, he sucks balls in swinging conditions but in SC conditions, i genuinely think he's the greatest of all time.
1) When the conditions suit him, unarguably one of the most consistently destructive batsman of all time.
2) Apart from Lara, i dont think ive ever seen a batsman tear apart quality spin so effortlessly
3) In my opinion, he compensates partly for being **** in swinging conditions by making low, slow pitches, dustbowls, spitting minefields appear to be roads.
4) That Galle double against Murali, Mendis was just legendary. If people can quote Gooch's 154 to be the reason they rate Gooch>cook, ill do the same for Sehwag here.

My vote doesnt necessarily mean that i consider Sehwag to be a better batsman than Merchant, but he undoubtedly adds a great degree of fear factor in the lineup, and as most matches played by an Indian AT XI will be in SC his value addition is tremendous.

Gavaskar
SegWAG

[watson]

Merchant is still ahead by 1 vote;

Gavaskar = 21
Sehwag = 10
Merchant = 11

Might let the voting continue through the Aussie night-time. Whoever has the most votes when I log on in the morning wins.

[Satyanash89]

Im surprised at the lack of love for Engineer. Was an absolute hero and is a great option if someone actually wants a high class keeper in the team.
Understandable as hes not an ATG opener by any stretch of the imagination but i hope he gets picked in a lower order spot ahead of Dhoni

[stephen]

Sehwag
Merchant

Just to be a dick.

[Prince EWS]

Originally Posted by Satyanash89

Im surprised at the lack of love for Engineer. Was an absolute hero and is a great option if someone actually wants a high class keeper in the team.
Understandable as hes not an ATG opener by any stretch of the imagination but i hope he gets picked in a lower order spot ahead of Dhoni

Yeah I'd think about making Engineer open so I could pick someone like Mankad or someone like that at seven but with the vast increase in standard he'd probably just be a walking wicket most of the time at the top of the order against ATG new ball attacks, even if he provided better balance.

I'll roll with Gavaskar and Merchant. I find it really, really hard to objectively split Merchant and Sehwag so I've just voted for the player I like more. Sue me.

[Teja.]

Originally Posted by watson

However, while Merchant averaged a very healthy 71.64 in domestic cricket I'm not sure what that means as I can't imagine that the overall quality of Indian bowlers during 1930s-50s would have been very good, especially the quality of fast bowling.

It should be noted that Merchant played a considerable amount of FC cricket in England over two tours and and was immensely successful there too.

In 1936, As a 24 year old with his batting still developing, Merchant first toured England and made a name for himself. He scored 1745 runs at an average of 51.32 in that tour over all FC matches topping the batting charts. He was also named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year for 1936.

Young merchant's technique impressed CB Fry so much that he commented that year - "Let us paint him white and take him with us to Australia as an opener."

In 1946, by which time, he had settled comfortably as India's best batsman, he toured England again and scored a monstrous 2385 runs @ 74.53 over all FC matches.

So I hope your doubts over Merchant's adaptability as a batsman are settled, at least to an extent.

The Don rated him extremely highly and was adamant till his death that Merchant was a superior opener to even Gavaskar. On him missing the 1948 tour to Australia due to poor health, Bradman said "Worst of all, we were denied the sight of Vijay Merchant, who must surely have claims to be the greatest of all Indian players."

I don't mind people picking Sehwag ahead of Merchant but people reasoning that other people are only voting for Merchant as a knee-jerk to Sehwag's recent failures is rather shocking tbh.

[smalishah84]

i don't think people are just making knee jerk picks by dropping Sehwag

I do think that Sehwag would probably be found out against ATG attacks even in SC conditions

[cricmahanty]

Gavaskar
Merchant

[smalishah84]

welcome to Cricketweb Mr hard working cricketer

[cricmahanty]

Cheers

Hard-working cricketer ? I'm anything but hard-working tbh

[smalishah84]

so your name is actually the opposite of what you are

[cricmahanty]

How does my name sound like I'm hard-working ?

This is the name I go by on all cricketing circles on the internet. And I have an YouTube channel that goes by the same name. No need to be excited 'cos the channel doesn't have any videos on it