Virat Kohli, the greatest ODI bat ever?

[MrPrez]

The only real arguments one could make for de Villers > Kohli are SR and Kohli playing a significant portion of his matches on flatter Indian pitches (AB averages 70@114 in ODIs in India in a sample size of 20 matches).

That said, Kohli averages 87.7 in 17 ODIs in SA so that's not really an easy sell either.

There's no shame in ABdV being the second best ODI batsman of this generation, particularly considering that it also places him in the top 5 ODI batsmen in history.

 

[Bolo]

I don't know the stats, but I doubt playing on Indian pitches makes much of a difference these days. Everywhere is flat for ODIs.

 

[trundler]

All kinds of records for sixes and runs were broken in the Caribbean recently. 350+ scores are regularly posted in England. We all know how flat Australian wickets are. Aside from the odd green seamer, South African pitches are generally very batting friendly also. Subcontinental wickets are all flat and some have ridiculously short boundaries. Only the UAE has pitches where batting is somewhat difficult, because of their slow and low nature.

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

All kinds of records for sixes and runs were broken in the Caribbean recently. 350+ scores are regularly posted in England. We all know how flat Australian wickets are. Aside from the odd green seamer, South African pitches are generally very batting friendly also. Subcontinental wickets are all flat and some have ridiculously short boundaries. Only the UAE has pitches where batting is somewhat difficult, because of their slow and low nature.

Welcome to 2019.

It's amazing how homogenous this format is. A few days after the ODI series, Windies couldn't even buy a run.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

stop with this total bollocks please.

f a c t

 

[trundler]

Welcome to 2019.

It's depressing how homogenous this format is. A few days after the ODI series, Windies couldn't even buy a run.

Fixed that for you

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

Kohli is obviously the best of this era, but this era is just bonkers easy for batting. All these would be ATG stats before 2015.

Exactly.

Now for comparison
Top 7 century scorers

Since 2016
Kohli 18 X 100 in 60 innings
Rohit 14 X 100 in 62 innings
Warner 10 X 100 in 41 innings
Babar. 8 X 100 in 50 innings
Dhawan. 8 X 100 in 58 innings
Root. 8 X 100 in 60 innings
Guptil. 7 x 100 in 47 innings

Between 9 SEP 1994 - 8 Nov 1999

Sachin 24 X 100 in 144 innings
Anwar. 11x 100 in 125 innings
Mark Waugh 10 X 100 in 121 innings
Lara. 9 X 100 in 91 innings
De Silva. 9 X 100 in 123 innings
Ganguly. 8 X 100 in 117 innings
Ijaz 8 X 100 in 129 innings


Based on this , I think Sachin is still the century king. And by a huge lead .

 

[Bolo]

Exactly.

Now for comparison
Top 7 century scorers

Since 2016
Kohli 18 X 100 in 60 innings
Rohit 14 X 100 in 62 innings
Warner 10 X 100 in 41 innings
Babar. 8 X 100 in 50 innings
Dhawan. 8 X 100 in 58 innings
Root. 8 X 100 in 60 innings
Guptil. 7 x 100 in 47 innings

Between 9 SEP 1994 - 8 Nov 1999

Sachin 24 X 100 in 144 innings
Anwar. 11x 100 in 125 innings
Mark Waugh 10 X 100 in 121 innings
Lara. 9 X 100 in 91 innings
De Silva. 9 X 100 in 123 innings
Ganguly. 8 X 100 in 117 innings
Ijaz 8 X 100 in 129 innings


Based on this , I think Sachin is still the century king. And by a huge lead .

You cherry-pick far too many stats to support players you like with no uniformity in time periods, and no consistency in what statistics are important. Pick an approach on how to assess players and apply it to all players. Don't change your approach every two minutes simply because a different approach works better for proving how awesome a player you like is.

 

[Burgey]

I think we can all agree that Sachin would have won India last night’s game.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

You cherry-pick far too many stats to support players you like with no uniformity in time periods, and no consistency in what statistics are important. Pick an approach on how to assess players and apply it to all players. Don't change your approach every two minutes simply because a different approach works better for proving how awesome a player you like is.

You don't understand ,
People claiming this 18 100s in 60 innings (it's 61 now actually) is unprecedented frequency of century scoring , hence kohli is the best ever.
Reality is Rohit , Warner ..etc are scoring 100s in almost same ratio ( Rohit scored 14 in 51 actually)
But a similar period from Sachin's era showing he is way ahead of Lara the 2nd best.

Sachin always maintained these kind of domination over his contemporaries since he became the opener. You can check it.

And please suggest me a proper criteria to compare Sachin with Kohli and his 18 100s in 60 innings.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

1994 to Sachin retirement

Top 7 hundred scorers

Sachin
49 in 390 innings

Ponting
30 in 365

Jayasoorya
28 in 389


Ganguly
22 in 299


Gibbs
21 in 240

Gayle
19 in 223

Kallis
17 in 307

Happy now ?

Result remains the same though

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

^^

Jayasuriya

 

[slippy888]

Kholi seems a cool guy these days less emotional

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

Starting from 2016 is not a good idea for supporting Kohli. Better start from 2008.

 

[Bolo]

The post you are replying to is a is a response to cherry-picked dates- you certainly aren't alone in doing so. 2008 would be better. But they start at the start of a calender year, not a random match specifically chosen to make kohli look best. Its also a reasonably logical one in that its something of an era (bat really dominant), although maybe 2015 would make more sense. I think Harsh posted them for this reason, not to pat kohli on the back. They end at a logical point. And its a complete list of stats.

You initially engineered a period specifically to suit your purposes that is not the same in either time or matches played. And picking a single statistic (100s) that suits your purposes that you dont mention when looking at, say, Dev.

Anyway 100s are a bit too arbitrary a measure for me, especially in ODIs. 120 since 2016 is probably less likely to be a matchwinning innings than 100 in the 90s. I fail to see the value in assessing a player if the value of 100s changes drastically over time.

 

[stephen]

Undoubtedly Kohli is partly responsible for this, but look at the number of hundreds scored in a calendar year:

Batting records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

The top three years for scoring hundreds are in the last 4 years.

Already this year we've had more hundreds scored than any year before 1994 and we're only in March.

There have been 31 hundreds scored in 41 matches. Compare that to 2009 (ten years ago) and there was only 68 in 150 matches.

In fact the number of ODIs per year has mostly stayed between 100 and 150 each year for the past two decades but the number of hundreds has continuously grown throughout that time.

Hundreds aren't an overly meaningful measure. They're a nice personal stat but they shouldn't be used for any serious analysis in ODI cricket. I'd rather watch a match winning 60* by Bevan in the 90s over a Shaun Marsh ton in 2018.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Kholi seems a cool guy these days less emotional

not from what I've seen tbh

reminds me a lot of Ricky Ponting, probably even worse tbh. I mean "worse" in the traditional sense, personally I like that kind of behavior/attitude

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

The post you are replying to is a is a response to cherry-picked dates- you certainly aren't alone in doing so. 2008 would be better. But they start at the start of a calender year, not a random match specifically chosen to make kohli look best. Its also a reasonably logical one in that its something of an era (bat really dominant), although maybe 2015 would make more sense. I think Harsh posted them for this reason, not to pat kohli on the back. They end at a logical point. And its a complete list of stats.

You initially engineered a period specifically to suit your purposes that is not the same in either time or matches played. And picking a single statistic (100s) that suits your purposes that you dont mention when looking at, say, Dev.

Anyway 100s are a bit too arbitrary a measure for me, especially in ODIs. 120 since 2016 is probably less likely to be a matchwinning innings than 100 in the 90s. I fail to see the value in assessing a player if the value of 100s changes drastically over time.

I am doing this to prove a point.
In this case , kohli's 18/60 is not the best ever stats in history over a period. I can start from any date as long as it stretches 3 years and more than 50 or 60 matches to become comparable.

The other example is Kapil's batting.
People dismisses him as a low 20 AVG batsman. But when you check closer ,
Kapil Dev is the top ranked Indian batsman for a decade in 80s
He managed 30 AVG and 100 plus SR between 1982-1988. 7 years and more than 100 innings. Many specialist batsmen avgd same at far lesser SR , 30 at 70 good enough for a specialist batsman then.

People rates Kapil the batsman as Afridi's equivalent , may be they are correct. But there is one difference. Kapil's best ever ranking was 5 or 6 and throughout the career he was inside top 20 batsmen in the world . Afridi's career best ranking was 25 or 26.

We are talking about 7 years , 10 years , 100 plus matches ..etc not 1 year or 15 matches.
So , when you read 23 at 95 you know there is more to it than you see.

And I am not a Sachin fan as you claim.
I rate Akram > Sachin in ODis , Gavaskar > Sachin in tests , Lara slightly better batsman than Sachin in tests .. all very close comparisons , but definitely against popular opinions.

 

[Arachnodouche]

Tendulkar fanboys are like flat earthers.

 

[harsh.ag]

Tendulkar fanboys are like flat earthers.

People who use the term Tendulkar fanboys to dismiss arguments are like fascists.