Who faced easiest bowling attacks and conditions?

[pskov]

For what it's worth, test match batting averages by decade -

1870s 18.71
1880s 19.38
1890s 25.25
1900s 25.08
1910s 27.55
1920s 33.42
1930s 32.69
1940s 35.77
1950s 28.60
1960s 32.27
1970s 32.80
1980s 32.64
1990s 31.64
2000s 34.17
2010s 35.39

Mean of all test cricket - 32.04

 

[GotSpin]

Bradman faced some pretty good bowlers. Their Test averages were perhaps a bit dented by playing so much against him and the rest of the outstanding Aussie batting of the era, but Larwood, Voce, Verity, Tate, Wright, Bedser and Farnes were pretty useful.

Indeed.

 

[Sanz]

Tendulkar is facing pretty mediocre bowling on batting wickets at the moment. However during his career in the 90's he was facing some of the toughest bowling in better bowling friendly wickets.

Therefore Tendulkar's career must be split up into the different parts.

Mediocre bowling in what way ? The bowling attack in the Recent England series was pretty good, the series before that was against SA, again pretty good attack. These attacks may not have an atg in them but I would not call them mediocre in any sense, these are pretty good attacks.

 

[GotSpin]

TBF, aside from England and South Africa, current bowling attacks aren't much to write home about. Nevertheless, Tendulkar faced some immense attacks throughout his career so I don't see how the current lack of quality bowling can be held against him just because the standards have fallen away in the past few years

 

[Burgey]

The stats I just did in the other thread tend to suggest it was Richards. The attacks the others faced on average all stack up pretty close.

Sobers - 34.79
Hobbs - 35.04
Tendulkar - 35.32
Bradman - 36.16
Richards - 39.29

I really cbf explaining how I got those figures, and they're probably not exactly what you think they are, but the timing of this made me post it anyway. All in all it's a pretty useless post.

I'd be having another look at your methodology then.

 

[BlazeDragon]

For what it's worth, test match batting averages by decade -

1870s 18.71
1880s 19.38
1890s 25.25
1900s 25.08
1910s 27.55
1920s 33.42
1930s 32.69
1940s 35.77
1950s 28.60
1960s 32.27
1970s 32.80
1980s 32.64
1990s 31.64
2000s 34.17
2010s 35.39

Mean of all test cricket - 32.04

Just looking at the overall average of each decade is a quite unfair. Its quite clear that as the game progressed the tally of competitive teams increased in numbers.

 

[Bun]

Tendulkar is facing pretty mediocre bowling on batting wickets at the moment. However during his career in the 90's he was facing some of the toughest bowling in better bowling friendly wickets.

Therefore Tendulkar's career must be split up into the different parts.

Good post.

However it's amazing he failed against a NZ attack at home but dominated against a Steyn-led SA attack in SA.

That man, I tell you....

 

[centurymaker]

that was due to pressure to score the 50th 100


i'd like to add that tendulkar never faces pakistan or west indies thesedays...

hasn't played against west indies since early 00s

 

[hang on]

interesting article about batting 'difficulty' by decade as encapsulated by average and 100s per innings.

The decade of the batsmen | Regulars | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

 

[Bun]

interesting article about batting 'difficulty' by decade as encapsulated by average and 100s per innings.

The decade of the batsmen | Regulars | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

A cut above the rest, wasn't he? Champion! (All this before he turned 27!)

 

[Bun]

that was due to pressure to score the 50th 100


i'd like to add that tendulkar never faces pakistan or west indies thesedays...

hasn't played against west indies since early 00s

Maybe just pointing out that he does thrive against difficult attacks as he demonstrated in SA>

 

[hang on]

They did indeed, till it rained

quite.

but when it didn't.....

That's not really true actually, Dirk. As pitches got better (it's a mistake to think that uncovered necessarily means worse) and teams adapted their tactics it became common for matches to go on beyond five days. In the 1928-29 Ashes the fourth Test lasted seven days and the fifth Test lasted eight. In 1931-32 the deciding Test between England and West Indies went to nine days before being abandoned so England could get the boat home. In fact between 1926 - when timeless Tests were in introduced in England - and 1939 19 Tests such lasted longer than five days.

a comment by bull btl in the guardian.

 

[weldone]

I imagine Bradman would take the biggest hit, and would thus go from being 45 points ahead of the rest of them to merely 40 points better.

Agreed entirely. Actually there should have been a 'none of them' option.

Hobbs faced really tough conditions, he was a real champion on sticky dogs.

Sobers faced some great attacks (the English attack of his time is among the ATG bowling attacks, the Aussie attack was very very good too - and the South African attack of his time was great and very very underrated).

Viv Richards faced some great fast bowlers, though he didn't have to face the fearsome foursome with whom he played.

Sachin Tendulkar played on two different eras. The 90s decade was quite possibly the most difficult decade for a batsman among the last 8 decades. Just like the 70s and the 80s, 90s decade was full of champion fast bowlers - Ambrose, McGrath, Wasim, Waqar, Donald, Pollock, Walsh. But unlike the 70s and the 80s, 90s decade had two all-time great spinners in Warne and Murali. On the other hand, his last 10 years were comparable to Bradman's in terms of difficulty as a whole. (Yes, Bradman faced relatively tough conditions and relatively easier opponents but as a whole the difficulty was like the 2000s.) In this decade, he faced some great bowlers like McGrath, Steyn, Warne, Murali too but the overall quality of bowling was in no way comparable to the 90s.

Bradman faced some superb English attacks. But all other teams he faced were either minnows or just out of the 'minnow' tag. But the greatness of Bradman lies in the fact that he dominated the English attacks of his time like anything. Yes, in his time there were some sticky dogs too, but batting averages in those days are comparable to batting averages in the 2000s.

So yes, in essence what 'The Sean' is saying is true. If Bradman's average is to be adjusted for era and opposition, it'll become 96.09 or something. Big deal!

 

[weldone]

there's not much in it between them. Certainly not enough to take off 20-30% of a certain batsman's average off

+1

 

[weldone]

The stats I just did in the other thread tend to suggest it was Richards. The attacks the others faced on average all stack up pretty close.

Sobers - 34.79
Hobbs - 35.04
Tendulkar - 35.32
Bradman - 36.16
Richards - 39.29

I really cbf explaining how I got those figures, and they're probably not exactly what you think they are, but the timing of this made me post it anyway. All in all it's a pretty useless post.

A few years ago I did a similar exercise for most of the ATG-class batsmen which I think was pretty spotless (never posted the results in CW, and have lost the excel sheet somewhere ).

The steps I followed are these:
1. For a batsman I noted down the exact dates of his debut and his last test.
2. Then I took the combined batting average of all top 7 batsmen (excluded the tailenders on purpose) against all the attacks he faced (i.e., only excluded the country he represented) between exactly those two dates.

I remember, re-running the process for all those batsmen was pretty time-consuming. But, is this somewhere close to what you did?

Edit: If PEWS' answer is yes, I would like to change my vote to Viv Richards.

 

[ankitj]

People taking a piss and voting for Tendulkar?

Now that I think about it again, there's not much point to it except the question whether Sobers can give Bradman a real fight for the tag of greatest ever cricketer.

 

[Daemon]

Just an honest question, don't jump on my back.

There are obviously many times the number of players playing cricket in the world at the moment as there were before due to an increase in human population and spreading of the game in other parts of the world. So naturally there's a higher probability of there being 5 great batsmen in this era as compared to 1 in the early days. Therefore when people compare with contemporaries of their generations, isn't it a bit flawed to do so? For example saying that because one bowler was way above the rest in the 1900s as compared to 1 bowler now who's in the company of 5 such bowlers, therefore that 1900s bowler was better than the ones today. (Keyword is probability, I understand it may not be the case)

 

[ankitj]

Yeah. Smaller the sample, smaller the absolute standardized z-score for same amount of deviation from the mean is what you are saying.

 

[NasserFan207]

Just an honest question, don't jump on my back.

There are obviously many times the number of players playing cricket in the world at the moment as there were before due to an increase in human population and spreading of the game in other parts of the world. So naturally there's a higher probability of there being 5 great batsmen in this era as compared to 1 in the early days. Therefore when people compare with contemporaries of their generations, isn't it a bit flawed to do so? For example saying that because one bowler was way above the rest in the 1900s as compared to 1 bowler now who's in the company of 5 such bowlers, therefore that 1900s bowler was better than the ones today. (Keyword is probability, I understand it may not be the case)

Yes, thats (one of the reasons) why direct comparison doesn't work.

 

[Bun]

Yeah. Smaller the sample, smaller the absolute standardized z-score for same amount of deviation from the mean is what you are saying.

ooh was he?.