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Best of the big 4?

tooextracool

International Coach
Swervy said:
i will disagree..Bothams batting was better than Imrans on the whole,especially in those first 5 years of his test career.Imran for say all but his last 6 years or so was considered a decent lower order batsman,his technique developed into something a bit more solid and later on he was a good middle order batsman....dont just look at the averages of over 50 in the last few years...look at how many hundreds he got compared to Botham,that might be a more telling indication.

I will still go with Botham on this one over Imran
arggh what i meant was that overall imran was better with the better bowling but theres no doubt that botham was the best batsman out of the 4.
imran would get 9/10 with the ball and 7/10 with the bat
botham would get 7/10 with the ball and 8/10 with the bat.

imran=16
botham=15
and dont forget imran was the better captain of the 2 as well
 

tooextracool

International Coach
onemangang said:
People who rates Bothom so highly should remember one thing,the guy played most of his matches on green top wickets and shyed away from dusty turf of subcontinent.In contrast Kapil played matches everywhere and proved himself.

Bothom was a good allrounder, but i can't place him higher than 4th on thelist.
u are forgetting something...if he bowled on green top wickets he also had to bat on them!!which means he had to face the WI and australian attack on those wickets and he still got runs against them(marshall,holding,croft,lillee, alderman etc on those seaming wickets wouldnt have been easy would it???). in contrast kapil dev got a better chance to bat on those dusty wickets and hence improve his batting avg
 

Craig

World Traveller
The New Zealand teams of the 80's was perhaps one of NZ's greatest ever teams. Certaintly at home where they knocked off the WI (That had Lloyd, Sir Viv, Croft, Holding and co.) and even drew with them. They never lost a Test series at home.

The series was in 79/80 where Croft acted like a spoiled little brat. No offence Liam. Lloyd lost control of his players big time.
 

Swervy

International Captain
onemangang said:
People who rates Bothom so highly should remember one thing,the guy played most of his matches on green top wickets and shyed away from dusty turf of subcontinent.In contrast Kapil played matches everywhere and proved himself.

Bothom was a good allrounder, but i can't place him higher than 4th on thelist.
have a look at Bothams figures in India:

Played 7 tests:
Batting Ave:61.55 HS 142 2 100's 4 50's
Bowling Ave: 30 wickets at 25.53 B/B 7-48 5wickets 3 times

Bloody good figures from what I can see
 

Swervy

International Captain
BlackCap_Fan said:


Botham was good on his day but was too inconsistant.
Botham became inconsistant after his back started playing up,I dont really think you could say he was inconsistant in those first 5 years,apart from when he was captain (he captained for something like 10 tests vs an extremely powerful WI and a couple vs a decent Aussie team).

Up to the end of the 82 series vs Pakistan he averaged about 38 in 54 tests scored 11 100's 12 50's and took 249 wickets at about 23 with 20 wickets hauls and 4 10 wicket matches...and of those games he single handedly won the matches for England in a number of them....for that time there really wasnt a better swing bowler in the world.

As for his captaincy,he really wasnt that bad.His form did suffer (he is convinced that that had nothing to do with captaincy,just a bad run of form...and look who he captained against ...mostly the WI's),but when you look at the results,The WI's didnt murder England in those Botham captaincy days,and England were playing with there best player out of form ie.Botham.

Imran captained Pakistan during a time where they had a very talented team,so to compare the two captains is a bit unfair.
 

Mr Mxyzptlk

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Hadlee's take on the issue:
(quoted from the official Cricket Web interview)

Q/ In the post-Sobers era, you have been widely considered as one of the four great all-rounders. The others being Kapil Dev, Ian Botham and Imran Khan. Each of you have taken well over 300 wickets and scored over 3000 runs. Who do you consider the greatest all-rounder of all-time?

Sobers is regarded as the best ever – his record speaks for itself. He had all the skill and the versatility. He would be one of the first selected in any world team. Wisden rated him 2nd to Bradman says it all.

During the 80’s it was the ‘Battle of the Allrounders’ – it was a real contest between the four of us. We all knew what each

other was doing around the world and when we played against each other there was a will and desire to outdo your opponent. Of the four of us I would rate Imran as the better player because of his all round consistency with the bat and ball. He could play any type of innings and make the Pakistan team as a batsman alone. He was a potent strike bowler and an influential player in many of Pakistan’s wins.
 
Swervy said:
have a look at Bothams figures in India:

Played 7 tests:
Batting Ave:61.55 HS 142 2 100's 4 50's
Bowling Ave: 30 wickets at 25.53 B/B 7-48 5wickets 3 times

Bloody good figures from what I can see
And his figures against Pak and Sl while playing away from homeis even more impressive!
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Botham could exploit all conditions, don't worry about that. And he could score runs in them too.
The thing is, so could Hadlee, Kapil and Imran.
 
Richard said:
Botham could exploit all conditions, don't worry about that. And he could score runs in them too.
The thing is, so could Hadlee, Kapil and Imran.

Neve really questioned that, but its not about whether he COULD have done it or not,the point is that he never really put his heart to work on pitches(or places) he didn't liked.
 

Swervy

International Captain
as i say have a look at Bothams figures vs India IN India.

And by the way Hadlee also chose not to tour the sub continent as well (hence him only playing one series in Pakistan in the mid 70's,and only a few times tin India).
 

marc71178

Eyes not spreadsheets
Incidentally, all 4 will be taking part in the Second Season of A League for the Ages.

Currently taking applications for this game from anyone who knows their cricket!

More Details Here
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
onemangang said:
Neve really questioned that, but its not about whether he COULD have done it or not,the point is that he never really put his heart to work on pitches(or places) he didn't liked.
Well, in that case he didn't need to - he got good figures without putting his heart to work.
 
Rik said:
To be fair Sobers was much more effective when he bowled fast-medium in his early days, but his batting soon took priority and he started messing around with other styles, a sort of more effective Tendulkar. It's almost impossible to be a top-class all-rounder with both bat and ball because, after all, we are only human! Batting takes a lot of concentration and having to bowl afterwards was an added strain, so he started bowling spin which was less tiring. I have no doubt that just as a seamer he would have got a place in the side, but he tended to bat so long it put too much of a strain on him and he had to adapt, even though his seam bowling was more effective. People tend to work on one side of their game more than the other, take Kallis who is the best all-rounder in the world at the moment, his batting has taken off and he's bowling less now and is mainly less effective than he was a few years ago, but you don't want to wear him out. Also if you have just batted for a long time you find it hard to focus on bowling, and also having less overs than normal can affect your performance, since it's harder to get into the swing of things when you are only on for short spells.
good post & to answer this question, out of those four, imran then hadlee then botham then dev
 

Swervy

International Captain
onemangang said:
Neve really questioned that, but its not about whether he COULD have done it or not,the point is that he never really put his heart to work on pitches(or places) he didn't liked.
erm..well i never ever saw Botham not put 100% into trying to help his team win
 
Richard said:
Well, in that case he didn't need to - he got good figures without putting his heart to work.

I was referring to his figures in Pakistan and SL, as i said he didn't place his heart at work on places he didn't liked!
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
So he liked India and not Sri Lanka... odd choice, that!
No real difference in cricketing conditions.
 

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