The 'better player' argument

[OverratedSanity]

An ATG XI will never take the ground though. That is really, really irrelevant.

Wish we'd stop talking about every cricketer from a fictitious ATG team perspective. It's a disturbing trend.

This is so true

 

[kyear2]

It's not totally irrelevant as we are trying to discussing these players in historical reference and compare them to other ATG players. Not necessarily for an ATG team but from that perspective.
But it is mainly about the team situation for whom the individual is being picked.
For this current W.I. side with Chanderpaul already there as the anchor batsman, I would prefer a Lara or Ponting (sticking to players of era) over a Kallis as that alpha male game changing batsman over the extra bowling Kallis would bring, because the team needs that game changer. Though in most other scenarios Kallis could be the better option.
Also as I posted earlier, in the W.I team of the '80's I wouldn't trade Marshall for Imran because I belive what Marshall brought to the team was more valuable that the extra runs Imran might produce as that wasn't our weakness and Maco was more than good enough in that no. 8 batting role for the team.

 

[smash84]

An ATG XI will never take the ground though. That is really, really irrelevant.

.

But it is the ultimate cricketing fantasy exercise.

 

[Zinzan]

It's not totally irrelevant as we are trying to discussing these players in historical reference and compare them to other ATG players. Not necessarily for an ATG team but from that perspective.
But it is mainly about the team situation for whom the individual is being picked.
For this current W.I. side with Chanderpaul already there as the anchor batsman, I would prefer a Lara or Ponting (sticking to players of era) over a Kallis as that alpha male game changing batsman over the extra bowling Kallis would bring, because the team needs that game changer. Though in most other scenarios Kallis could be the better option.
Also as I posted earlier, in the W.I team of the '80's I wouldn't trade Marshall for Imran because I belive what Marshall brought to the team was more valuable that the extra runs Imran might produce as that wasn't our weakness and Maco was more than good enough in that no. 8 batting role for the team.

Nah, you just make up rules as you go along to fit your favourite players. You'd conveniently ignore that same logic if it looked unfavorable on Marshall or Sobers being selected.

 

[watson]

An ATG XI will never take the ground though. That is really, really irrelevant.

Wish we'd stop talking about every cricketer from a fictitious ATG team perspective. It's a disturbing trend.

Just to go off on a tangent - Counterfactual thinking is an important pastime as it allows us to gain a better view of history - in our particular case, cricket history. Even classy historians like Niall Ferguson use counterfactual thinking to help unravel the past;

Book Review

Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals

Niall Ferguson, ed.,Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. London: Picador, 1997. x + 548 pp.

This collection of essays aims to present not ordinary historical writing but a history of the subjunctive and contrary-to-fact conditional: "What would have happened if . . . ?" The essays, written by nine English and American historians, thus explore nine such roads not taken in actual history. What if no English Civil War or no American War of Independence had occurred? What if Ireland had never been divided? What if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Hitler had invaded Britain or had defeated the Soviet Union? What if the Soviets had won the Cold War? What if Kennedy had lived longer? And, finally, what if there had been no Gorbachev and Soviet Communism had not collapsed?

This kind of "counterfactual" history should prove interesting not only to historians but also to literary theorists, especially those who study the dividing line between history and fiction. Counterfactual history is a kind of writing whose status may raise interesting questions in this regard. For instance, to what extent does it rest on truth claims that are supposed to characterize historical writing, and what -- if anything -- distinguishes it from fictional narratives whose plots are based on the assumption that, at certain branchings in history's garden of forking paths, some path other than the one that produced our world had been chosen? Examples of the latter are Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (What if Germany had won the Second World War?) or Kingsley Amis's The Alteration (What if the Reformation had not taken place in England?).

In a long introductory essay Niall Ferguson endeavors to lend historical "respectability" to the essays in the book, distinguishing them both from fictional writing and from earlier attempts to write counterfactual history on a wide scale. He condemns these attempts for their wishful thinking, lack of seriousness, and reliance on anachronistic assumptions. He claims that in order to avoid such pitfalls, the essays in this book deal only with likely alternative possibilities: "The counterfactual scenarios we therefore need to construct are not mere fantasy: they are simulations based on calculations about the relative probability of plausible outcomes" (85). To insure that the exploration of unrealized alternatives will not slip into improbability, Ferguson suggests the methodological constraint of focusing on such alternatives as can be shown, on the basis of contemporary evidence, to be those that people at the time actually considered (and in many cases seemed to them more probable than those which have actually materialized). He argues that paradoxically only by adopting the perspective of contemporaries, for whom our "closed" past was still an "open" future, can we be faithful to the past as it actually was. In this context, Ferguson engages in a polemic with deterministic conceptions of history that, he believes, fail to appreciate fully the role of contingency. They succumb to the illusion of inevitability created by the hindsight that derives from our present knowledge of how things have eventually turned out.

Considering the expectations that arise from the book's introduction and the titles of its essays, the counterfactual pieces themselves may appear somewhat disappointing, at least from a theoretical viewpoint. Most of the essays concentrate not so much on developing the counterfactual scenarios promised in their titles but rather on an analysis of the events that actually occurred, presenting an antideterministic interpretation of them by arguing that things could indeed have turned out differently. The counterfactual alternatives themselves, however, seldom run beyond vague generalizations. (Somewhat exceptional in this regard is the witty afterword "A Virtual History, 1646-1996" also written by Ferguson, in which he adds up all the alternative scenarios outlined in the preceding essays into one continuous narrative.) On the whole, therefore, the counterfactual does not achieve an autonomous status in this book but remains one of many methodological aids to a better understanding of the factual.

https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/poetics_today/v022/22.4segal01.html

 

[the big bambino]

But what if they did..?

 

[watson]

But what if they did..?

Exactly.

So 'Bradman V Imran' is really a facinating historical question that compares the 1930s to the 1980s. And just because I do a lousy job of comparing 1930s batting to 1980s bowling doesn't mean that I shouldn't at least have a go, or be unable to draw-out some viable conclusions.

 

[kyear2]

Nah, you just make up rules as you go along to fit your favourite players. You'd conveniently ignore that same logic if it looked unfavorable on Marshall or Sobers being selected.

One, you could belive what you wish.

Second, The main reason Sobers is rated so high is mainly because his batting is that highly rated. He is the equal or better of Tendulkar/Richards/Hobbs plus the bowling. No need for compromise. Only player where the compromise would be required when considering Sobers to counterbalance his all round abilities is Bradman.

 

[the big bambino]

@ Watson. You better understand history by studying what actually happened. Whereas the counterfactual examples described are fictions. You don't need to imagine a mythical confrontation btwn players from different eras. What's there to learn when their stats tell you they were both champion players?

 

[kyear2]

Exactly.

So 'Bradman V Imran' is really a facinating historical question that compares the 1930s to the 1980s. And just because I do a lousy job of comparing 1930s batting to 1980s bowling doesn't mean that I shouldn't at least have a go, or be unable to draw-out some viable conclusions.

After all it is a cricket forum.

 

[Crazy Sam]

Andrew Symonds is better than Glenn Maxwell.

 

[watson]

@ Watson. You better understand history by studying what actually happened. Whereas the counterfactual examples described are fictions. You don't need to imagine a mythical confrontation btwn players from different eras. What's there to learn when their stats tell you they were both champion players?

I don't need 18 year old Glennfiddich whisky either, bit that doesn't mean that I shouldn't enjoy drinking it.

As for champion players - they are only champions is their specific decades. When constructing an ATG XI you have little alternative but to form theories on how 1890s batsmanship would fair against 1980s fast bowling if you've just chosen WG Grace as an opener for your team, and kyear has already chosen Marshall. There is no choice in such a 'counterfactual setting' / 'thought experiment' - you have to do the history.

 

[the big bambino]

Its a choice Watson. Glenniddich v a glass of water. Known statistics or a BS musing about how Grace would go against Marshall. What do you think would happen? Its not a fair fight is it? No different to rating Hannibal against a modern army.

Yet Hannibal is still thought the greatest general. You can only rate players (or generals) from the same base line. Put them in the same circumstances. Don't give one the advantage of all the improvements since the other guy last played. We all know whats going to happen.

So when you are looking for a common baseline look at a player's stats. They are a common measuring point across all eras. That's how you rate them. Its already there for you.

 

[watson]

Its a choice Watson. Glenniddich v a glass of water. Known statistics or a BS musing about how Grace would go against Marshall. What do you think would happen? Its not a fair fight is it? No different to rating Hannibal against a modern army.

Yet Hannibal is still thought the greatest general. You can only rate players (or generals) from the same base line. Put them in the same circumstances. Don't give one the advantage of all the improvements since the other guy last played. We all know whats going to happen.

So when you are looking for a common baseline look at a player's stats. They are a common measuring point across all eras. That's how you rate them. Its already there for you.

Grace V Marshall is NOT like Hannibal V Modern Army. There is very good thread on CW about WG that shows plenty of stills of him batting. From what I can gather his footwork etc were technically excellent. So as I said before, a review of history can alter our perceptions about certain great players. In my estimation WG would go OK against Marshall, although admittedly he wouldn't be sensational (I think).

Taking players out of their real historical context does involve some 'BS musings', but there also no reason why we cannot also apply some common sense logic based on good contemporary writing, photos, and film (if available).

 

[Migara]

What did Marshall have extra than a fast bowler of 1900s?

Or did really cricket became better with time?

 

[the big bambino]

Grace V Marshall is NOT like Hannibal V Modern Army. There is very good thread on CW about WG that shows plenty of stills of him batting. From what I can gather his footwork etc were technically excellent. So as I said before, a review of history can alter our perceptions about certain great players. In my estimation WG would go OK against Marshall, although admittedly he wouldn't be sensational (I think).

Taking players out of their real historical context does involve some 'BS musings', but there also no reason why we cannot also apply some common sense logic based on good contemporary writing, photos, and film (if available).

Cricket, like almost every human endeavour, improves over time and teleporting an ancient to compete with a modern would constitute a mismatch considering that the modern has all the intervening advantages accruing to him.

But as I said not a problem. If their birth dates were reversed Grace would give Marshall a touch up. The only way to judge cricketers is to standardise their performances in a way to mediate the advantages one might have bcos they were born to play in a more modern era. Statistics have been remarkably uniform over the duration of test cricket. You can draw conclusions based on them. Both of them are proven champions and evidence Bradman's precise summation over the question of comparing players over a different eras; a champion in one era would have been a champion in any other - its just a matter of adaptation. You can see that in the careers of players like Grace or Hobbs, Hutton or Lloyd. They performed brilliantly over careers spanning 20+ years. A lot of improvements occur in a sport in that time and each player mentioned adapted to all of them. Their stats prove their greatness. But a simulation of a contest btwn an 1800s batsman and a 1980s bowler would not be a contest worth musing about.

 

[watson]

Cricket, like almost every human endeavour, improves over time and teleporting an ancient to compete with a modern would constitute a mismatch considering that the modern has all the intervening advantages accruing to him.

But as I said not a problem. If their birth dates were reversed Grace would give Marshall a touch up. The only way to judge cricketers is to standardise their performances in a way to mediate the advantages one might have bcos they were born to play in a more modern era. Statistics have been remarkably uniform over the duration of test cricket. You can draw conclusions based on them. Both of them are proven champions and evidence Bradman's precise summation over the question of comparing players over a different eras; a champion in one era would have been a champion in any other - its just a matter of adaptation. You can see that in the careers of players like Grace or Hobbs, Hutton or Lloyd. They performed brilliantly over careers spanning 20+ years. A lot of improvements occur in a sport in that time and each player mentioned adapted to all of them. Their stats prove their greatness. But a simulation of a contest btwn an 1800s batsman and a 1980s bowler would not be a contest worth musing about.

a champion in one era would have been a champion in any other

I agree with that statement as half the battle in Test cricket is mental stamina and strength. The current England touring team have proven that. So the arrogance of Grace and the aggression and determination of Spofforth would put them in good stead during any era. Combined with their their natural ability of course.

But a simulation of a contest btwn an 1800s batsman and a 1980s bowler would not be a contest worth musing about.

We will have to agree to disagree there. Comparison of players across eras is half the fun when discussing cricket. Admittedly it appeals more to certain kind of personality. That is, those people who think in 'shades of grey' are happier debating such things compared to someone who prefers the 'black and white'. It's the difference between an artist/writer and an accountant/electrical engineer.