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Best After The Don

Best After the Don


  • Total voters
    90
  • Poll closed .

Ikki

Hall of Fame Member
It's true that Richards had a 'commanding presence' when batting due to the arrogance of his personality.
I wonder why people seem to forget that Viv's commanding presence wasn't just a made-up thing. The guy's SR during his career was 67-70 and he was a 50+ average batsman. I think that had something to do with it.

I do, however, agree with you that Greg Chappell looks, at least statistically, as imperious as Viv was. For one reason or another he doesn't get the same plaudits. I wonder if there is a detailed reason why Viv is rated so highly, because he clearly was.
 

harsh.ag

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Yes Harsh, stop being apologetic for voting for Tendulkar. It's like voting for Cook :p
Ankit, I haven't voted for anybody! How the f*** do you choose among these guys?? Ridiculous.

Yeah, Slifer, I will give you that one. So, Tendulkar goes in the third tier too (my rational glasses on). So, Hobbs, Sobers and Barry in tier two for me then.
 

Red

The normal awards that everyone else has
Jeff Thomson's summations are good fun ('Thommo Speaks Out', pages 243-244);
Quote:
Viv Richards was another fabulous player. You always thought you had a chance with Viv and that's why I rate Greg (Chappell) just above him, but Viv was devastating on his day.
Quote:
Lara was the best batsman I have seen over the past fifteen years, I saw him cut Warne and McGrath to pieces in the Caribbean. They didn't know how to bowl to him. Lara played in a **** side, a star among a bunch of mug batsman. He was a fantastic player. He had all the shots and plenty of time against the fast bowlers; always a sign of class.
Quote:
Sachin Tendulkar is supposed to get something like US$10 million a year. Mate, I wouldn't give you two-bob for him. I've never rated him as a great player. Tendulkar is a good player and he thrives on the low, slow, flat ****-heaps in the Sub-Continent. If he had to play against genuinely quick bowlers on fast wickets, he wouldn't get a ****ing run.

Thomson is a tosser. Tendulkar has succeeded completely against every opposition he's played, in every environment he's played in, over 23 years. Lara was great to, but to disrespect Tendulkar in a way that is completely unfounded is borderline racist imo.
 

watson

Banned
Thomson is a tosser. Tendulkar has succeeded completely against every opposition he's played, in every environment he's played in, over 23 years. Lara was great to, but to disrespect Tendulkar in a way that is completely unfounded is borderline racist imo.
No I disagree. That discription of Tendulkar is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time, and continues in the Australian tradition of showing complete disrespect toward cherished institutions lest they become too full of themselves.

As for racist? Well, Viv and Lara are black (or whatever the PC term is these days) are they not?
 
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watson

Banned
And just to digress a minute -

These days it seems to be the unfair responsibility of the individual to overly respect other peoples ideals. I think that it makes more sense, and is better for all, if people take themselves and their cherished icons less seriously. That is, realign their priorities of toward the things in life that really matter.

And that on note I'm off to watch 'The Life of Brian' and doodle a cartoon of 'The Prophet'.
 

Slifer

International Captain
I understand all the fall out over jeff's comments about Sachin but at times in the 99 series vs the WI, Mcgrath and Warne did look clueless vs Lara (which is what Jeff actually said not overall).
 

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
Why bring race into this Monk.... it ain't mentioned one time, unless you count **** heaps on the SC. Jeez.
 

BeeGee

International Captain
Thomson is a tosser. Tendulkar has succeeded completely against every opposition he's played, in every environment he's played in, over 23 years. Lara was great to, but to disrespect Tendulkar in a way that is completely unfounded is borderline racist imo.
WTF? :laugh:

Thomson is as thick as two short planks and you'd be better off listening to the opinion of the homeless guy I ran into the other day who claimed he invented the iPhone while working for a secret government agency (true story), but racist? What part of his comment was racist? He had nothing but praise for Lara. Was that pro-racisim?
 

complan

Cricket Spectator
Thomson is a tosser. Tendulkar has succeeded completely against every opposition he's played, in every environment he's played in, over 23 years. Lara was great to, but to disrespect Tendulkar in a way that is completely unfounded is borderline racist imo.
Wouldn't say racist .. unless it's selective racism :D But yeah, Thommo is sometimes full of ****. Maybe it's his way of joking. Tendulkar has actually performed as good in AUS as he has in India, and his avg in SouthAf isn't too shabby either. I'm not a big Tendulkar fan myself, but the man has to be given his dues.
 
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Red

The normal awards that everyone else has
No I disagree. That discription of Tendulkar is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time, and continues in the Australian tradition of showing complete disrespect toward cherished institutions lest they become too full of themselves.

As for racist? Well, Viv and Lara are black (or whatever the PC term is these days) are they not?
Why bring race into this Monk.... it ain't mentioned one time, unless you count **** heaps on the SC. Jeez.
Wouldn't say racist .. unless it's selective racism :D But yeah, Thommo is sometimes full of ****. Maybe it's his way of joking. Tendulkar has actually performed as good in AUS as he has in India, and his avg in SouthAf isn't too shabby either. I'm not a big Tendulkar fan myself, but the man has to be given his dues.
Yeh, just thought I'd say something as completely outrageous as what Thomson said, to see what the response was
 

watson

Banned
Yeah, good article. I liked this paragraph;

If Lara's finest innings was perhaps the match-winning 153 against Australia in Bridgetown in 1999, it is this early period that seems to sum him up: not so much the weight of run scoring - Jonathan Trott had the same number of hundreds the same number of matches into his Test career - but a concatenation of unsurpassable peaks. This is the key to the Lara-Tendulkar debate, and in fact the only thing really worth saying about it. Tendulkar obviously wins on pure accumulated stats. Lara wins on visceral sporting elegance and also on the extremity of his peaks.
And this paragraph;

....the correct comparison is probably not Lara but Jacques Kallis: a fellow technician in a similarly stable team who scores hundreds at the same rate and at a slightly higher average, but who also happens to have the same number of Test wickets as Jimmy Anderson and is therefore statistically the greatest cricketer of all-time (there is a problem here for militant Tendulkar fans: their man may win the Lara battle on points, but bring in the world's greatest all-rounder and Sachin starts to look a bit like Kallis without the wickets).
Which reminds me of Sobers. In Sobers you not only get the 'concatenation of unsurpassable peaks' and 'visceral sporting elegance', 'but also the 'pure accumulated stats' at the same time.

Perhaps Gary Sobers really is the second best after Bradman after all.
 
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Pothas

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I thought this bit sums up a good deal of the more infamous discussions on CW:


...a discussion that under new proposals put forward to the EU could soon be banned in public places, which is punishable by ritual flogging in many of the world's more despotic outposts and which, reduced to its familiar interminable thrashings-out tends to end up recreating the exact physical sensation of arguing interminably about who would win a race between a satsuma and the colour green, while having a breadstick driven up your nostril into the front quarters of the brain
 
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kyear2

Cricketer Of The Year
Yeah, good article. I liked this paragraph;



And this paragraph;



Which reminds me of Sobers. In Sobers you not only get the 'concatenation of unsurpassable peaks' and 'visceral sporting elegance', 'but also the 'pure accumulated stats' at the same time.
Perhaps Gary Sobers really is the second best after Bradman after all.
Interesting perspective.

Also love the line about "Kallis without the wickets".
 

Arachnodouche

International Captain
Tendulkar has been around for so long now that people take it for granted that he was always the staid, mechanical run machine he was (uptil a couple of years ago anyway). For the first 12 years or so, he was every bit Lara's equal in terms of attacking strokeplay and brutality. He may have lacked the leftie's elegance, but he was hardly a blocker in the Kallis mould. He might never have quite finished off games like Lara; Lara gets a lot of credit, rightfully so, because of his triumphs over Australia at home, but Sachin had more than a few "visceral" innings of his own. The Sharjah knocks, the first hundred against Warne, the hundred in the lost cause against Pak in Chennai....those have the emotional resonance that ppl generally equate with Lara.
 

harsh.ag

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
For the first 12 years or so, he was every bit Lara's equal in terms of attacking strokeplay and brutality. He may have lacked the leftie's elegance, but he was hardly a blocker in the Kallis mould. He might never have quite finished off games like Lara; Lara gets a lot of credit, but Sachin had more than a few "visceral" innings of his own. The Sharjah knocks, the first hundred against Warne, the hundred in the lost cause against Pak in Chennai.... those have the emotional resonance that ppl generally equate with Lara.
And in this context, I know we are only supposed to discuss test performance on this forum when talking about cricket in general, but that is just grossly unfair to Sachin in him v Lara debate. Sachin has played so many great one day knocks compared to Lara. And I know I am opening Pandora's box a little here, but you just don't ignore one day performances like that, and claim he wasn't a match-winner because he won bagful of matches in one dayers. much much much more than Lara ever did. Same goes for Viv.
 

Satyanash89

Banned
Yeah Tendulkar played his own fair share of attacking, match changing innings in the first decade and a half of his career. After around 2002, he started playing more of the standard methodical runs machine role. But somehow people make him out to be a Kallis-Dravid like plodder when comparing him with Lara which is far from true.
 

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