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CW Best Batsmen 26-50

Brian Lara

School Boy/Girl Captain
Mr Mister recently did that great thread listing the top 25 batsmen according to CW and I thought it would be fun to try to do the next 25 if anyone would be interested?

Also I was thinking of doing a re-rank of 20-30 after we complete this because I know some people felt strongly about some people missing the initial cut of the top 25.

I've excluded batsmen who haven't completed the bulk of their test career yet (Steve Smith, Kohli, Root, Kane etc).

My initial thoughts on batsmen 26-50 but open to opinions and changes:

Australia:
Michael Clarke
Adam Gilchrist
Neil Harvey
Matthew Hayden
Stan McCabe

West Indies:
Shivnarine Chanderpaul
Gordon Greenidge
Rohan Kanhai
Clive Lloyd
Frank Worrell

England:
Ken Barrington
Geoffrey Boycott
Denis Compton
Peter May

South Africa:
Hashim Amla
AB de Villiers
Aubrey Faulkner
Dudley Nourse
Graeme Smith

India:
Virender Sehwag

Pakistan:
Younis Khan
Inzamam Ul-Haq
Mohammad Yousuf

New Zealand:
Martin Crowe

Zimbabwe:
Andy Flower

Really tough omissions including Morris, Simpson, Hill, Hussey, Macartney, Laxman, Pietersen, Cook, Gooch, Jayawardene

Happy to revise it on opinions though.
 

Burgey

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Former test batsman, current Green Shield spectator & Parramatta club patron Doug Walters should definitely be in this list from an Australian pov. Averaged 48 over a lot of tests and did it playing entertaining cricket too.
 

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
A better idea would be to let voters each choose their own fifty players to vote on.
 

jimmy101

Cricketer Of The Year
Along with those mentioned, a few more names that spring to mind...

Clem Hill, Bill Lawry, Bob Simpson, Ted Dexter, Patsy Hendren, Graham Gooch, Alistair Cook, Richie Richardson, Herbie Taylor, Bruce Mitchell, Gary Kirsten, Vijay Hazare, Zaheer Abbas, Bert Sutcliffe. And probably more that I can't think of right now.

Even Gilly is worth a mention!
 

Brian Lara

School Boy/Girl Captain
Former test batsman, current Green Shield spectator & Parramatta club patron Doug Walters should definitely be in this list from an Australian pov. Averaged 48 over a lot of tests and did it playing entertaining cricket too.
Walters was very close to this list, but do you think he deserves it more than the likes of Hill, Hussey and Macartney who also didn't make the list?

I'd throw in Vijay Merchant
In place of who?

Arthur Shrewsbury
In place of?

A better idea would be to let voters each choose their own fifty players to vote on.
I could do it that way but I'm sure people would forget players if they didn't have a set pool of players to vote from. Also, doing a rerank of positions 20-30 or 18-32 for example should eliminate most differences that people had regarding people who did or did not make the cut.

Along with those mentioned, a few more names that spring to mind...

Clem Hill, Bill Lawry, Bob Simpson, Ted Dexter, Patsy Hendren, Graham Gooch, Alistair Cook, Richie Richardson, Herbie Taylor, Bruce Mitchell, Gary Kirsten, Vijay Hazare, Zaheer Abbas, Bert Sutcliffe. And probably more that I can't think of right now.

Even Gilly is worth a mention!
Gilly is actually in the final cut. As for the honorable mentions. Almost all of those guys are right on the cusp of making the top 50.


I guess rather than asking you all who you think missed out, a more logical and effective method is to ask whether you think anyone is in that list who shouldn't be there. Then we can choose someone to replace said person.
 

Burgey

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He certainly belongs in the argument. Walters' stats are pretty close to McCabe and Clarke's, though his role in the team was probably better aligned with Hussey's.

My son did a project last year at school comparing Walters and Hussey. Was an interesting exercise for him.
 

jimmy101

Cricketer Of The Year
Now that's what I call an education!

In regards to swapping players in & out of the list, I'm thinking that Andy Flower could possibly make way for Macartney (whom I completely forgot about before).
 

Burgey

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TBF he got to talk with Doug about it himself, so it was good for him. Dougie's reply when asked was "Oh Christ, I'm not as good as him!" but he's a pretty self-deprecating bloke at the best of times.
 

_00_deathscar

International Debutant
Strange how the 6th highest run scorer of all time doesn't make the top 50
And rightfully so - good player, but would he even make England's all time XI? He shouldn't be in a discussion for Top 50 batsmen of all time. I wouldn't have Chanderpaul in the discussion either for what it's worth.
 
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Brian Lara

School Boy/Girl Captain
He certainly belongs in the argument. Walters' stats are pretty close to McCabe and Clarke's, though his role in the team was probably better aligned with Hussey's.

My son did a project last year at school comparing Walters and Hussey. Was an interesting exercise for him.
No doubt Doug Walters is sniffing around the cut here. I just rate the middle order bats from australia like this:

Bradman (who isn't in this exercise)
Chappell, ponting, border, S. Waugh (who are all in the first 25)
Harvey
Smith (who we are excluding from the exercise)
McCabe
Clarke
Hill
Macartney
Hussey
Walters

You can throw a blanket on them from Clarke to Walters tbh. It's very hard to choose who to include and who to omit.

And rightfully so - good player, but would he even make England's all time XI? He shouldn't be in a discussion for Top 50 batsmen of all time. I wouldn't have Chanderpaul in the discussion either for what it's worth.
Kind of a harsh way to rate him when historically England have 4 of the 6 greatest opening bats of all time (Hobbs, Hutton, grace, sutcliffe) and great openers even after them. They comfortably have the greatest history of opening batsmen of any test nation.

But I do agree, he's not quite top 50. Top 75 for sure. Not sure he's greater than boycott or gooch though.
 

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
Nah he doesn't even make his country's second XI. Chanders most definitely worth being in the discussion seeing how he played over the 2nd part of his career. e.g post Lara's retirement, 5131 runs @ 64.13.
 

Zinzan

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Second Martin Crowe, I was dirty he missed out on scraping into the top 25. People need to consider eras and how the bowlers these guys primarily faced,
 

OverratedSanity

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Still salty Younis wasn't in the top 25. It's going to be a while before people realize how brilliant his record is.
 

Brian Lara

School Boy/Girl Captain
Nah he doesn't even make his country's second XI. Chanders most definitely worth being in the discussion seeing how he played over the 2nd part of his career. e.g post Lara's retirement, 5131 runs @ 64.13.
Yeah, without doubt for me. Chanderpaul was consistently excellent in a woeful WI side. He has to be in the second 25.

Second Martin Crowe, I was dirty he missed out on scraping into the top 25. People need to consider eras and how the bowlers these guys primarily faced,
Agreed. Strong argument that Crowe was the best bat in the world for at least a year if not more. An automatic selection.

It doesn't seem like there is an overwhelming argument against any of the guys from 26-50 on the list so shall we go ahead and start to rank them? If I extend this and do a 51-75 bracket after, we can always re-rank the people from the top of the third bracket against the bottom of the second bracket as I intent to do for the first 2 brackets.
 

Tom Flint

International Regular
Crowe averaged less than cook batting at no.4 lol
Talk about eras but its just another one of those threads where everyone reminiscis about how much better the game was 'back then.'
 

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