Virender Sehwag vs Sanath Jayasuriya

[ret]

There is no "overall". It's either as Test openers or ODI openers. Or as bowlers, or something else. Jayasuriya is clearly far better than Sehwag at ODI opening, Sehwag is clearly far better at Test opening, though neither are from the top drawer in the Test department. Everything aside from this is a sideshow.

why can't someone take overall? for e.g. if someone says that you can only pick one to play both the tests and the ODIs for your team then you pick one that you think is better overall duh

 

[Uppercut]

Jayasuriya's average and strike-rate over a long time as a ODI opener is exceptional though, even though he is obviously mostly only capable of bashing weak bowling. Sehwag's only good performances as a ODI opener came in 2002, averaging 42.55 in his first 37 innings. From the 14th of January 2003 onwards he averages less than 31, which is very poor and much less than Jayasuriya averaged over a period of 14 years.

Well the thing is, when you take Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the non-test playing nations out of the equation, Jayasuriya only averages one less. So unless you pull a quick stat-juggling act where you only count the games when he played well, the "weak-bowling demolisher" theory doesn't stand up particularly well.

Also, his strike rate is appreciably lower than Sehwag's. So while Jayasuriya's achievements make him worthy of more respect, the difference in overall ability between the two as ODI openers is not as much as you seem to believe. Jayasuriya only averages 32 himself, remember.

 

[Richard]

why can't someone take overall? for e.g. if someone says that you can only pick one to play both the tests and the ODIs for your team then you pick one that you think is better overall duh

Well personally I don't - I never pick players to play both forms, I pick each based on their own merits. If I have to pick a team which is exactly the same for Tests and ODIs - which I'd never, ever have to do - then I'd simply pick the best Test team because I don't believe ODIs are important enough to merit weakening your Test team.

 

[Richard]

Well the thing is, when you take Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the non-test playing nations out of the equation, Jayasuriya only averages one less. So unless you pull a quick stat-juggling act where you only count the games when he played well, the "weak-bowling demolisher" theory doesn't stand up particularly well.

Also, his strike rate is appreciably lower than Sehwag's. So while Jayasuriya's achievements make him worthy of more respect, the difference in overall ability between the two as ODI openers is not as much as you seem to believe. Jayasuriya only averages 32 himself, remember.

As I said - Jayasuriya averages 35, IIRR at a strike-rate of about 90, opening against ODI-class teams. You can't really use any stat breakdown to show that he was a popgun-attack bully - you need to have watched him to do that, and ditto Sehwag (though with Sehwag it's a charge that relates much more to Tests - Sehwag has failed against many poor-quality ODI attacks).

Sehwag averages just 30 opening against ODI-class teams, and for most of the time it's been less than that too, it just went up in his last 3 or 4 games or something and will probably go down again next time he plays, from 2003 onwards. Sehwag was only for a very brief time a particularly good ODI opener, against good attacks or poor, and that brief time was now a long while ago. For the vast part of his ODI-opener-against-ODI-class-teams career he's been poor. The same cannot be applied to Jayasuriya, even though Jayasuriya is someone who will smash poor bowling and offer little against good-quality seamers.

 

[Uppercut]

As I said - Jayasuriya averages 35, IIRR at a strike-rate of about 90, opening against ODI-class teams. You can't really use any stat breakdown to show that he was a popgun-attack bully - you need to have watched him to do that, and ditto Sehwag (though with Sehwag it's a charge that relates much more to Tests - Sehwag has failed against many poor-quality ODI attacks).

Sehwag averages just 30 opening against ODI-class teams, and for most of the time it's been less than that too, it just went up in his last 3 or 4 games or something and will probably go down again next time he plays, from 2003 onwards. Sehwag was only for a very brief time a particularly good ODI opener, against good attacks or poor, and that brief time was now a long while ago. For the vast part of his ODI-opener-against-ODI-class-teams career he's been poor. The same cannot be applied to Jayasuriya, even though Jayasuriya is someone who will smash poor bowling and offer little against good-quality seamers.

There's a point there about Jayasuriya, but the trend of him bullying poor attacks is nowhere near as strong as you make out, otherwise the stats would reflect it in one way or another. Indeed, he actually averages appreciably less than 35 against teams that are not ODI-class. This isn't an anomaly; Jayasuriya has played 418 ODIs, so the stats are far, far more reliable than the impression you have gotten from "watching him bat", although I doubt you will be able to accept that, given your poor understanding of basic statistics.

 

[ret]

Well personally I don't - I never pick players to play both forms, I pick each based on their own merits. If I have to pick a team which is exactly the same for Tests and ODIs - which I'd never, ever have to do - then I'd simply pick the best Test team because I don't believe ODIs are important enough to merit weakening your Test team.

thus Sehwag, i guess [overall ]

 

[silentstriker]

Sehwag is the better batsman in cricket. His bowling, while not at the level of Jayasurya, is frequently creditable, and has improved. Jayasurya is the better fielder, but Sehwag has a pretty safe pair of hands, and has taken some excellent ones.

 

[Richard]

There's a point there about Jayasuriya, but the trend of him bullying poor attacks is nowhere near as strong as you make out, otherwise the stats would reflect it in one way or another. Indeed, he actually averages appreciably less than 35 against teams that are not ODI-class. This isn't an anomaly; Jayasuriya has played 418 ODIs, so the stats are far, far more reliable than the impression you have gotten from "watching him bat", although I doubt you will be able to accept that, given your poor understanding of basic statistics.

I don't have poor understanding of basic statistics, as I said - for some odd reason you just managed to interpret an apple as an orange.

The reason you can't use basic (ie, team breakdown) stats is because teams do not always bowl similarly well. Obviously stats - ie, scores - are the neccessary thing to look at to see what his performances were like. But you can't just say "he averaged <number> against <team> and <number> against <team> so that shows he's a weak-attack bully". You need to look at each game and try to work-out whether the attack was a particularly good one or not.

I'm aware of Jaysuriya's rather mystifyingly poor record against substandard ODI teams. This is simply a matter of chance - apart from Bangladesh, he's not exactly faced any of them with much regularity. If he played the Canadas, Bermudas etc. more often he'd almost unquestionably bash them very badly indeed.

If you watch Jayasuriya bat against a variety of teams who have fielded a variety of different strength attacks I'd say you'd struggle to get any impression other than someone who'll mercilessly crucify wayward bowling and won't all that often do all that much against good accurate seamers who can move the ball. Of course, when you play as many innings as he has done you'll play some very fine ones indeed in there and I could find plenty of examples of Jayasuriya smashing what would normally be perfectly decent balls to the boundary a few times and throwing normally good bowlers off their lines and lengths. But mostly such bowlers have had the better of him.

 

[Richard]

thus Sehwag, i guess [overall ]

Nah, Sehwag... for Tests. And no more.

 

[ret]

Nah, Sehwag... for Tests. And no more.

but you can only pick 11 players, and you are the 12th man so would you take Sehwag's place in ODIs

Richard ----> <---- Sehwag

 

[Uppercut]

I don't have poor understanding of basic statistics, as I said - for some odd reason you just managed to interpret an apple as an orange.
.

Die-rolls are hardly comparable to let-offs. A coin-toss is far more viable, in that there are 6 possible values to a dice and just 2 for a coin or a let-off.

As I said - you'll almost certainly have to do a flip-coin experiment one hell of a lot of times before you get 500 heads and 500 tails out of 1000 flips.

Wow.

Talk about talking out of your ass.

P (Heads = 500, 1000 coinflips) = 1000! / [500!*(1000-500)!] *0.5^500*0.5^500 = 2.5%

ie. you have to do it approximately 40 times to get exactly 500 heads and 500 tails.

Not "one hell of a lot of times"
.

That took some digging, but it demonstrated your statistical failings as well as anything I could hope to find.

The point is, 418 ODIs is a pretty huge sample, so it's hard to believe that he is indeed merely a weak-attack bully. The fact is, everyone should average less against good attacks- that's why they're good attacks. For someone to be labelled a weak-attack bully, they should be averaging significantly less against the top teams. When someone averages more against ODI-class teams, and appreciably more at that, over the course of no less than 418 ODIs, to label them a weak-attack bully and write the statistics off as completely anomalous is somewhat ridiculous.

 

[Richard]

That took some digging, but it demonstrated your statistical failings as well as anything I could hope to find.

I don't think it does. I didn't spot that post when it was made for whatever reason, but, well... it's wrong. Simple as. I'll leave it at that because whatever I say it's unlikely to convince you now, you seem to have made-up your mind.

The point is, 418 ODIs is a pretty huge sample, so it's hard to believe that he is indeed merely a weak-attack bully. The fact is, everyone should average less against good attacks- that's why they're good attacks.

Of course they should, that's something I've striven to get across myself many times. If someone has averaged less against weaker teams they've committed a cardinal sin of failing to cash-in when the going's good that every batsman needs to fulfil his potential.

For someone to be labelled a weak-attack bully, they should be averaging significantly less against the top teams.

As I said - Jayasuriya does average significantly less against the strongest attacks than he does against weaker ones. But when you play for 15 years, the best bowlers don't always stay in the same teams. I'm not about to dig-out some form of self-defined criteria of what constitutes a strong attack and what doesn't then go through every single Jayasuriya opening innings (I'd imagine there'll be about 300) and see what they fall into. I'm quite confident in my ability to spot general patterns without taking down extensive match notes every game.

When someone averages more against ODI-class teams, and appreciably more at that, over the course of no less than 418 ODIs, to label them a weak-attack bully and write the statistics off as completely anomalous is somewhat ridiculous.

How is it possible to label Jayasuriya's 1 ODI against Bermuda, 1 against Canada, 1 against Ireland, 2 against Holland and 1 against UAE anything but anomalous? They're odds and sods scattered here and there. Even his 5 against Kenya are pretty similar. The only substandard ODI team Jayasuriya has faced with any regularity is Bangladesh in 20 games, and amazingly enough he averages 57 against them. He's also faced Zimbabwe 6 times since they became substandard and done very poorly, which is no real measure either. In any case, I really don't know where you get the idea that he's overall done worse against substandard sides than better - with Bangladesh included his substandard-ODI-team average is 44, considerably higher than his ODI-class-team one of 35.

 

[Uppercut]

In any case, I really don't know where you get the idea that he's overall done worse against substandard sides than better - with Bangladesh included his substandard-ODI-team average is 44, considerably higher than his ODI-class-team one of 35.

I got the idea from you, actually, because when I filtered the stats for Sehwag+Jayasuriya against good ODI teams for the purpose of comparison i didn't include Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, whereas you did.

Somehow we've managed to go full-circle in the discussion..

Also, gwo's binomials look pretty sound to me, care to share your problem with them?

 

[Richard]

I got the idea from you, actually, because when I filtered the stats for Sehwag+Jayasuriya against good ODI teams for the purpose of comparison i didn't include Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, whereas you did.

Somehow we've managed to go full-circle in the discussion..

Bangladesh have never been ODI-standard. Zimbabwe were until WC2003 and have not been since. That's always the way I've seen it.

Also, gwo's binomials look pretty sound to me, care to share your problem with them?

No, I don't - maybe if I come across whichever thread it's from again at some point I might. In my experience though a post by gwo which has anything to do with me is accurate approximately 0% of the time.

 

[Days of Grace]

Jayasuriya in ODIs, Sehwag in tests, and I'm talking just about batting here.

If I was Jayasuriya, I would be disappointed to have only averaged 40 in tests. I felt he could have done a little better.

 

[gwo]

Bangladesh have never been ODI-standard. Zimbabwe were until WC2003 and have not been since. That's always the way I've seen it.

No, I don't - maybe if I come across whichever thread it's from again at some point I might. In my experience though a post by gwo which has anything to do with me is accurate approximately 0% of the time.

That's almost sweet.

Enjoy another one.

Well, if you were trying to argue that luck evens itself out in every case and every case was the same... yes, you would.

Look at it this way. You do the coin-flip-1,000-times experiment 100 times. Each of these experiments is equable to one player's career. While many of them will come fairly close to 500\500, it's very unlikely you'll get any that are exactly that, and it's also very unlikely you'll get any two cases which produce the exact same result (say, 468 heads and 532 tails). You will also probably get one or two very anomalaic cases (say, 406 heads and 594 tails).

What you are doing in the post above is basically akin to combining every delivery faced by every batsman into one whole, and having no individual cases.

You get 406 heads or less once every 661874421 times(ie I'm giving you 0 heads all the way to 406 heads). If you wanted to get exactly 406 heads...you would get it once every 2046791790.

Stop talking out fo your ass.

Richard "I understand statistics" Dicky.

 

[Perm]

C'mon guys, play the post, not the poster. Gets boring after about 2 seconds.

Anyway, as others have said it's Sehwag in Test cricket and Jayasuriya in ODI cricket. Given that most value Tests above ODIs, I guess you could loosely say that 'overall' Sehwag is the better batsman.

 

[Prince EWS]

I think people are confusing "Jayasuriya scores most of his runs against poor bowling" with "Jayasuriya scores most of his runs against poor bowling attacks". No-one has even accused him of being a "minnow-basher" to my knowledge, but what both myself and Richard have noted is his more-than-usual tendancy to really cash in when bowlers bowl inaccurately and struggle when they find the right areas.

Obviously, this is the case with basically every batsman, but I think it's much more exaggerated with Jayasuriya. Whether you're Peter Ongondo or Alan Donald, you will generally get Jayasuriya early if you bowl in the right areas - moreso than other batsmen in his league. By the same token, however, he will punish you more than any I can remember in one day cricket if you're off your game - again, whether you're bowling banana inswingers at 160km/h or just putting it there at 125km/h is of little consequence.

 

[vic_orthdox]

But the point is that the margin of error for Jayasuriya is so small. Once he gets going, he's so hard to stop. Too straight and he flicks you over backward square leg, too wide and the only bloke stopping it is the bloke in the 6th row at deep backward point. Maybe cover point, if you're only a medium.

 

[Top_Cat]

I think people are confusing "Jayasuriya scores most of his runs against poor bowling" with "Jayasuriya scores most of his runs against poor bowling attacks". No-one has even accused him of being a "minnow-basher" to my knowledge, but what both myself and Richard have noted is his more-than-usual tendancy to really cash in when bowlers bowl inaccurately and struggle when they find the right areas.

Hmmmmmm..... I have my doubts about this. I've seen many Jayasuriya knocks and the impression I got was that bowlers might start the spell well and early on you're in with a chance because he goes at the ball so hard. But after an initial onslaught, many bowlers, good or not, lose their nerve against him and he essentially turns them around from bowling well to bowling poorly and cashes-in accordingly.

Just think that saying bowlers or any sort bowling well will get him our is a bit simplistic and, in my view, not borne out by many of his really good knocks where it didn't really matter where you bowled to him. Consistent bowlers like McGrath and Gillespie troubled him more than others, sure, but they both went the journey a few times too. That same back-of-a-length ball which got the nick last time gets hit over cover for 6 next time, etc.

Frankly, I'd hate to bowl to either Sehwag or Jayasuriya. For me, it's Sehwag in Tests and Jaya in ODI's, like just abotu everyone else who's posted in this thread.