Hadlee, Khan, Dev, Botham - Who was the best allrounder?

[Avada Kedavra]

After 25 tests, so an established player, Botham averaged more than 40 with the bat and less than 20 with the ball - no one has come close to matching that

Imran in his last 50 odd tests averaged 50 with the bat and 19 with the ball.How many have come close to matching that?

if only he hadn't got the idea in his head that all he had to do was turn up then, as Mr Z says, he'd be remembered as the greatest all rounder, imo by a Bradmanesque distance

If's and but's can change a lot of things.

 

[Ikki]

Imran in his last 50 odd tests averaged 50 with the bat and 19 with the ball.How many have come close to matching that?

At least for the last 4 years of that he barely bowled and enough has already been said about his batting. As aforesaid, that is one of the most overrated stats in cricket.

 

[Avada Kedavra]

52 tests - that is about 60% of Imran's career-spread out over a period of 10 years,2516 runs@51.34 and 216 wickets@19.16

All-round records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | Cricinfo.com

That is no statistical oddity.

 

[Sir Alex]

Subcontinental bowlers don't deserve extra praise for bowling well at home.

Hate this subcontinental usage. Use Pakistani/Indian/Sri Lankan/Bangladeshi FFS. They are as similar as chalk and cheese, except on occassions when roads are rolled out, which anyway does not help the bowler, whether home ground or not.

 

[Furball]

Ian Bell's also maintained a career ODI bowling average of less than 15 for 77 ODIs.

 

[Furball]

Hate this subcontinental usage. Use Pakistani/Indian/Sri Lankan/Bangladeshi FFS. They are as similar as chalk and cheese, except on occassions when roads are rolled out, which anyway does not help the bowler, whether home ground or not.

At the same time, guys like Wasim, Waqar, Imran, Shoaib, Kapil and Srinath don't deserve extra praise for bowling well at home.

 

[Sir Alex]

At the same time, guys like Wasim, Waqar, Imran, Shoaib, Kapil and Srinath don't deserve extra praise for bowling well at home.

Disagree with Kapil. The poor guy was almost always a one man attack on mostly lifeless Indian grounds. Pitches vary within India, and players who rarely play more than 4-5 times at one particular ground. Conditions vary within India. Kapil grew up in Chandigarh where during the season, the bowl swings a lot. Completely in contrast to say a pitch like Chennai which even during the peak winter months doesn't offer any swing. Then there are the dust bowls, where pacers are just excuses for roughening up the ball.

I am not an expert in Pakistani cricket during the 80s or the conditions/pitches, but yep they were on the whole much more conducive to pace bowling than India.

 

[Furball]

Disagree with Kapil. The poor guy was almost always a one man attack on mostly lifeless Indian grounds. Pitches vary within India, and players who rarely play more than 4-5 times at one particular ground. Conditions vary within India. Kapil grew up in Chandigarh where during the season, the bowl swings a lot. Completely in contrast to say a pitch like Chennai which even during the peak winter months doesn't offer any swing. Then there are the dust bowls, where pacers are just excuses for roughening up the ball.

I am not an expert in Pakistani cricket during the 80s or the conditions/pitches, but yep they were on the whole much more conducive to pace bowling than India.

Irrelevant, they're still his home conditions.

 

[Avada Kedavra]

Ian Bell's also maintained a career ODI bowling average of less than 15 for 77 ODIs.

Are you for real?6 wickets picked in 80 odd ODI's = 216 test wickets?

 

[Sir Alex]

Irrelevant, they're still his home conditions.

As I said, it is not much of an home advantage if you have 10-15 home grounds, each having a nature of it's own and you hardly get much exposure in FC or test cricket on them.

 

[Migara]

At the same time, guys like Wasim, Waqar, Imran, Shoaib, Kapil and Srinath don't deserve extra praise for bowling well at home.

Let's see whether you bring out the same argument for English bowlers in English conditions.

 

[Matt79]

At the same time, guys like Wasim, Waqar, Imran, Shoaib, Kapil and Srinath don't deserve extra praise for bowling well at home.

Irrelevant, they're still his home conditions.

Pretty illogical argument given they are conditions that fast bowlers have traditionally found extremely difficult to prosper in - especially India. If it's simply the case that being familiar with conditions allows you to bowl well there, then it's passing strange that Kapil Dev remains the sole great Indian quick after the best part of a century for a game with a fanatical following there.

 

[Furball]

Let's see whether you bring out the same argument for English bowlers in English conditions.

I'd argue the same with any bowler.

Great bowlers bowl well whatever the conditions. But guys like Wasim don't deserve an extra level of praise for bowling very well at home that guys like McGrath or Donald don't get.

 

[Ikki]

Are you for real?6 wickets picked in 80 odd ODI's = 216 test wickets?

You're missing the point. Imran kept his better figures because he continuously bowled less and less. Around the last 5 years of his career he took only about 80 wickets. In his last 4 he only about 40. It's in this same period he scored 4 of his 6 100s and 9 of his 14 50s. It shows that he had a remarkable spike in his batting performances as he bowled much much less.

Imran may have become adept at batting enough to class him as one of the great all-rounders, but he did not really do it simultaneously to the degree someone like Botham did.

In the 5 year period before that - or post 82 - he averaged 44 with the bat and 17 with the ball. This is probably more accurate. But you take a look at his batting and you see his average is propped up with a lot of not-outs. He has 2 centuries in 5 years - and those against India - and batted the majority of his time at #7. There is a reason why he is so behind Botham in terms of runs made per innings.

Technically, yes, he averaged 50 or so runs per dismissal (as that is what an average is) but it's misleading if you look at averages across the board and equate. What the above may suggest to some is that Imran was Gavaskar with the bat and Hadlee with the ball. He may have been supreme with the ball but nowhere near Gavaskar with the bat.

Pretty illogical argument given they are conditions that fast bowlers have traditionally found extremely difficult to prosper in - especially India. If it's simply the case that being familiar with conditions allows you to bowl well there, then it's passing strange that Kapil Dev remains the sole great Indian quick after the best part of a century for a game with a fanatical following there.

But not all fast bowlers are the same. There is a reason why a bowler like McGrath will have trouble and that is because he was conditioned as a seam bowler whereas Imran was conditioned as a swing bowler. The inherent difficulty McGrath had was not the same that Imran had. You can't equate the two when the way Imran bowled practically made the pitch irrelevant.

 

[slowfinger]

Only reason Imran didn't bowl at the end of his career was because he ad shoulder and shins problems so stfu.

 

[Ikki]

And? That doesn't detract from my point. It's harder to do two disciplines than just one.

 

[Fusion]

Only reason Imran didn't bowl at the end of his career was because he ad shoulder and shins problems so stfu.

Slowfinger, consider this an official warning to stop with that tone. You can make your point just fine without adding that last bit.

 

[zaremba]

Botham really didn't take care of himself as an elite athlete and that should be held against him when it clearly took its toll on his performances. Even if it was the days before elite conditioning in cricket, it wasn't rocket surgery that the fittest players lasted the longest as they got older.

Love it - a moment of genius in an otherwise barrel-scrapingly teeth-grindingly wrist-slashingly dreadful thread.

 

[Avada Kedavra]

You're missing the point. Imran kept his better figures because he continuously bowled less and less. Around the last 5 years of his career he took only about 80 wickets. In his last 4 he only about 40. It's in this same period he scored 4 of his 6 100s and 9 of his 14 50s. It shows that he had a remarkable spike in his batting performances as he bowled much much less.

Imran may have become adept at batting enough to class him as one of the great all-rounders, but he did not really do it simultaneously to the degree someone like Botham did.

In the 5 year period before that - or post 82 - he averaged 44 with the bat and 17 with the ball. This is probably more accurate. But you take a look at his batting and you see his average is propped up with a lot of not-outs. He has 2 centuries in 5 years - and those against India - and batted the majority of his time at #7. There is a reason why he is so behind Botham in terms of runs made per innings.

Technically, yes, he averaged 50 or so runs per dismissal (as that is what an average is) but it's misleading if you look at averages across the board and equate. What the above may suggest to some is that Imran was Gavaskar with the bat and Hadlee with the ball. He may have been supreme with the ball but nowhere near Gavaskar with the bat.

216 wickets in 52 tests is more than 4 wickets per test...not sure if that he could have done that if he had "hardly bowled"...

As for his batting average,why should we change the way averages are calculated?If he remained not out..i.e if the bowlers failed to dismiss him,that's a point in his favour,isn't it???By most accounts he wasn't a selfish player and never played for the not out.All said and done,2500+ runs in 50 odd tests @ an average of 51 is a stat that a top order bat would be proud of,let alone a world class bowler.

As for the match winner argument,just compare the number of MoM and MoS awards that Imran got to Botham's.You will be surprised...

 

[Ikki]

You missed it. That 52 test span is some 10 years. For the last 4 of those years he only took 40 wickets - which means he barely bowled. It's in that same period he had his best period with the bat.

The point with his batting is that he batted lower and was a plucky tailender who was hard to remove but who made little runs and then moved up some places and was generally a decent bat but who still didn't make a whole lot of runs but was still difficult to remove. Botham on the other hand was not a tailender-caliber ever and his runs per innings show how much more valuable he was to his side as a batsman.

I'll give you an example to illustrate my point, although not completely representative of the two players:

Batsman A bats at 5-6 and scores 100, 30, 20, 0 and 40. He ends up averaging 38.
Batsman B bats at 7-8 and scores 50*, 10*, 10*, 0 and 20. He ends up averaging 45.

The average is runs/dismissal so Batsman B's average is higher. In reality, Batsman A is the better batsman in most cases (apart from if the not-outs is rescuing a draw or something) as he actually scores more runs for his side. He also bats higher indicating his prowess with the bat. Imran also averages more than Miller - who batted at #5 for the Invincibles. It doesn't mean he was a better bat.

Using his average is misleading but only in the sense that people use averages to gauge players across the board. As I said, saying Imran averaged 50+ for the last 10 years of his career gives the impression that he was a rival for Richards, Border and Gavaskar with the bat...when he was actually only scoring ~37 runs per inning.