I hate to break it to you champ, but you really don't know as much about the game of cricket, as you seem to think you do. After reading some of your incoherent ramblings, it's safe to conclude that you are totally clueless, and shamelessly ignorant. I have never seen anybody who thought so highly of his own opinion, and yet was wrong on nearly every topic.
How someone with only 30+ posts and a few months membership knows the ins and outs in my posting is questionable enough...but having seen the majority of your posts I can tell the person who thinks too much of their opinion is yourself. The above was unnecessary, but we'll move on.
If you were at a dinner table full of cricket legends, and said some of the things about Sobers in their company, that you say on this cricket forum, they would take one disdainful look at you, and abruptly ask you to leave. Put simply, there is no living cricketer who is as revered amongst past and present champions, as Garry Sobers.
I would say Sobers bowling stats are under par and were poor for the majority of his career. This with respect to what he bowled, when he bowled and his varying success.
If they disagreed, then they're the ignorants. I'm not interested in glowing observations backed on little statistical backbone.
So, what did some of these men, have to say about Sobers:
Richie Benaud, p 36:
'He was the greatest all-rounder the world has ever seen. He also finished up being one of the greatest batsman the world has seen.'
Tells us nothing about
why.
Geoff Boycott, p 41:
'Blessed with so much natural talent, gifted beyond imagination, a natural genius, he allied all that to concentration, determination, and great stamina, which allowed him to play long innings and make big scores. If you're picking any side he's got to be number one, because he can win you games with either his batting or bowling.'
One can be blessed with the world's total in natural talent...unless the result justifies the praise then natural talent is all that is there. His bowling will rarely win you games. Anyone who suggests his bowling would do such a thing, with regularity, is taking the piss.
Sir Donald Bradman, p 42:
'Garry would be in my team for his batting alone....Garry was by far the best player of short pitched fast bowlers I ever saw. He was absolutely murderous, miraculous.... If you consider that he bowled left-hand fast-medium and spin with equal facility and great effect, he would also make any team as a bowler.'
Gary: great batsman and could bowl different ways.
However, he couldn't bowl very well for much of a period in his career.
Greg Chappell, p 47:
'He was the greatest all-round cricketer that I have ever seen, and am ever likely to see. He could have played in any team as a fast bowler or as a batsman alone. Garry would walk into any side and be the outstanding player. He is the best batsman I have ever seen.'
Again, opinion based on subjective perception. He could play on any team as a fast bowler? Hah.
Sunil Gavaskar, p 65:
'The greatest cricketer ever - he could do anything. He could bat, bowl fast, bowl spin and was a great fielder anywhere....You couldn't find a better all-round cricketer than him.'
He could do everything...but only some of them to a high degree.
Sir Richard Hadlee, p 81:
'Sir Garfield would have to be the best all-rounder in the history of the game....He was a natural timer of the ball with all the shots: cuts, pulls, hooks and had the ability to be dynamic and explosive with sheer brilliance. He was a lively new ball swing bowler and if conditions suited, he could bowl left-arm orthodox spin. Add his athletic fielding and superb close-in catching, is there anyone better?'
Lively pace bowler when the conditions suited...apparently they didn't suit him often enough. Bowled left-arm orthodox...not to much success.
Hanif Mohammed, p 83:
'The best player I ever played with or against. He was a four-in-one package of excellence. As a batsman he was sheer grace, as a new ball bowler he was very hostile in his first few overs, also a useful left-arm orthodox leg break, chinaman and googly bowler, and an excellent close-in fielder. There hasn't been another cricketer of comparable greatness to Garry Sobers.'
By that outline Andrew Symonds was a 4-in-one cricketer too.
Pretty much every tribute to Sobers was equally glowing, and left do doubt about his pre-eminence.
But pretty much every tribute falls short of assessing how poor his bowling is statistically for the duration of his career. And for that, no matter how glowing, he will continue to have detractors. Just because a lot of people believe something, doesn't make it true. At the risk of putting this thread off course...lots of people believe in a man in the sky.
Now, when I try and accurately assess the greatness of Garry Sobers the cricketer, who am I going to believe? Is it these countless cricket legends who are in complete awe of the man, and can provide me with first-hand accounts and testimonies, accurately describing the sheer genius of his play. Or is it some lightweight on a cricket forum, who has never played international cricket, never even seen Sobers play, and ignorantly chooses to completely ignore the overwhelming evidence declaring his pre-eminence.
Instead, he prefers to base his skepticism, on nothing more than his ability to analyze statistics.
Gee, that's a tough one.....
You can believe what you like...that's the beauty about opinions. The reality about his bowling - i.e. his stats - are facts. It has little to do with opinions. Facts show he was a crap bowler for the majority of his career. Bar the period in the 60s when he was a genuine pace bowler, for most of his career he was averaging 40+ and striking near 100 balls per wicket. That's just embarrassing.
You must be seriously delusional, if you actually think that you know more about the game of cricket, than these countless legends who are in complete agreement, that Sobers is the best of the best. You are basically trying to argue, that the likes of Bradman, Benaud, Chappell, Miller, Gavaskar and the rest of them, essentially don't know what they are talking about, and that you do.
Like I said, delusional.
Nah, you have to be delusional to believe a player who, for most of his career, was averaging 40+ and striking near 100 balls per wicket could get into any team for his bowling alone.
I noticed you said, that some of Sobers statistics were 'rubbish'. And, exactly which statistics would they be. Would it be his record in West Indian victories, where he averaged 77 with the bat, and 24 with the ball. Would it be the fact, that of the 26 centuries he made in Test cricket, his team lost only one of those matches. Or perhaps it's that he averaged over 70 with the bat, in seven calendar years.
Yes, these statistics do look quite 'rubbish'.
Sobers was a fantastic batsman...but I am talking about his bowling. It wasn't fantastic.
Now when you combine this with his versatile bowling, and his fielding genius, then you have the greatest all-rounder of them all. Sobers didn't just take basic catches, he took brilliant catches that won cricket matches. He was a game-changing fielder, the equal of anybody in the game's history. There are some brilliant reflex catches taken off Lance Gibbs at short leg, that illustrate this. They were completely instinctive, and only a
genius would have been able to pull them off. I think there is a clip of some of them, on You Tube.
Yes, fielding and batting, he was fantastic. Bowling, he was average at best - and he really wasn't if you look at it objectively.
There are certain things in life that become the gospel truth, because everybody who should know, is in total agreement. When you talk to historians, every authority figure on the subject believes that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington are the two greatest presidents in American history. Likewise, every cricket authority believes that Don Bradman is the greatest batsman in cricket history, and that Sir Garfield Sobers is the
greatest all-rounder in the cricketing pantheon.
It's ironic that you use the word "gospel" because it's that kind of blind devotion to hearsay that keeps people dumber.
There is not a cricket legend, alive or dead, who would dispute that claim. Some of you people, who never even saw the man play, simply have to accept this fact, and quit trying to engage in some form of revisionist history. Once you have done that, then you can quietly move on with your lives, if you actually have one.
See...there are certain things... like averaging 50 with the bat over a career, where even if you haven't watched a game of cricket you should know that it is a great feat. But arguments like Sobers could be in
any team because of his bowling alone are too stupid to begin arguing with. No matter how many "glowing observations" you can't make that record anything higher than average.
So, let me break it down for you champ: You know absolutely nothing about the game of cricket. Your opinions are nonsensical, and appear to be flying in the face of 50 years of conventional wisdom, while your arguments are embarrassingly flawed and illogical. There is a general expectation, that if you plan on sharing your opinion in a public discourse, that you at least have some command of the subject being discussed. You, quite clearly, do not. Until that day arrives, please refrain from embarrassing yourself, with your breathtaking ignorance, and your complete and utter cluelessness.
Let me break it down for you, in case you think I care about your opinion: I don't. I might be inclined to if you actually have proper evidence to persuade me. Your opinion being based on another opinion is not an intelligent argument. When your argument is down to merely the perceptions of others - other than cold hard facts - that shows you have no real argument.
"Sobers was great because X said he was great". What a convincing argument!