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Best performed cricketers across all conditions and vs any opponent

Dan

Hall of Fame Member
Which, incidentally enough, is generally where I've seen the cut-offs for statistical ATG-ness.
 

Migara

Cricketer Of The Year
3000 runs at 45+ -- 68 players
100 wickets at <28 -- 66 players

Seems like this could be a rough equivalence.

A wicket being worth 30 runs seems relatively fair; 45 and 28 seem like decent averages to use as cut-offs for pushing ATG status. Obviously there will be exceptions.


FTR 3000 runs at 42+ and 100 wickets at sub-30 gives exactly 100 players each.
I think this has a problem. There are 6 top class batsman while only have 4 bowlers. The ratio of players should be 3:2 in favor of batsmen.
 

viriya

International Captain
While I agree with the assertion that 30 is a good bowling average, you need to alter your search criteria there. You're treating 2000 runs and 100 wickets as equivalent. You're basically stipulating that a wicket is worth 20 runs. It is plainly obvious that only the elite bowlers manage that. You'll need to either bump up the career run requirement or lower the wickets requirement.
The reason I went with 2000 and 100 was because we tend to match those 2 when considering careers (10000 runs with 500 wickets etc).

Another way of going about it is:

There are 161 bowlers with 100+ wickets
There are 161 batsmen with 3105+ runs.

Say we expect batsmen to outnumber bowlers by 1.2 (since more batsmen than bowlers in a team):
There are 193 batsmen with 2750+ runs.
There are 161 bowlers with 100+ wickets

Those with a batting average of >40 of that, and finding the bowling average that keeps the 1.2:1 batsmen to bowler ratio:
There are 124 (1.2 x 103 = 124) batsmen with 2750+ runs and 40+ avg
There are 103 bowlers with 100+ wickets and <30.33 avg

So looking at it this way, equating 40 batting = 30 bowling seems fair enough, but like I pointed out before bowling average on its own is a poor statistic for a bowler (compared to batting average), it would be better to go with (wkts/match) * 300 / bowlingAvg, but that would make the comparison too complex.
 
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Dan

Hall of Fame Member
I think this has a problem. There are 6 top class batsman while only have 4 bowlers. The ratio of players should be 3:2 in favor of batsmen.
Which I more-or-less addressed in the following post (roughly a 6:5 ratio though).

3000+ @ 45+
100+ @ <27
 

the big bambino

International Captain
While I agree with the assertion that 30 is a good bowling average, you need to alter your search criteria there. You're treating 2000 runs and 100 wickets as equivalent. You're basically stipulating that a wicket is worth 20 runs. It is plainly obvious that only the elite bowlers manage that. You'll need to either bump up the career run requirement or lower the wickets requirement.
While that is true his calculation ends by equating a 30 bowling average to a 40 batting average from that starting point. Which doesn't seem unreasonable as it would appear to be consistent with Dan's ratios which seems to equate 45 batting and 27 bowling averages.
 

the big bambino

International Captain
A batsman even on the ATG scale with a batting average is great to even ATG, on a similar scale a bowler with an average of 32 is below average at best.
32 or 33 is about the decadal batting ave so I'd think 32 would be around the average for a bowler but yeah 40 is good for a batsman.
 

G.I.Joe

International Coach
While that is true his calculation ends by equating a 30 bowling average to a 40 batting average from that starting point. Which doesn't seem unreasonable as it would appear to be consistent with Dan's ratios which seems to equate 45 batting and 27 bowling averages.
His calculations seem to equate 40 with 32 or 35, tbh.
 

G.I.Joe

International Coach
Changing the bowling criteria to 27 gives you 59 players, which is roughly equivalent to your factor of 1.2

Batsmen with 3000+ runs at 45+
Bowlers with 100+ wickets at sub-27


EDIT: 59, not 56.

Interestingly though, the lowest number of matches required to qualify as a batsman was 42; as a bowler, 17. Something that needs to change, perhaps?
Yeah, revisiting those lists for the batsmen and bowlers, if you average out the matches played, there's a significant difference between the batsmen and bowlers. Makes sense because bowlers generally have shorter careers. This would also lead to a greater turnover among bowlers than batsmen. So perhaps the total number of bowlers in history need not be lower than the number of batsmen after all.
 
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G.I.Joe

International Coach
Average number of matches played by the 68 batsmen = 90.47
Average number of matches played by the 59 bowlers = 55.47

Ratio of career length = 1.63
Team composition ratio of batsmen and bowlers = 5.75/4.25 = 1.35
Therefore bowlers to outnumber batsmen by 1.63/1.35 = 1.2 :ph34r:
 

G.I.Joe

International Coach
Before we go math-crazy, is bowling average really a comparative enough statistic to batting average? What if a bowler gets just 2 wickets a match on average at 20 runs/wkt?
What I'm going maths-crazy over is not the statistical exercise we deserve, but the statistical exercise we need right now.
 

G.I.Joe

International Coach
Players with their batting and bowling flipped, using the equivalent averages (i.e, batting all-rounders converted to bowling all-rounders and vice versa):

I know it is not an accurate representation because it does not take plenty of relevant factors into account. I don't care. It's fun.

Garry Sobers - bowl ave 19, bat ave 32
Jacques Kallis - bowl ave 21, bat ave 36
Aubrey Faulkner - bowl ave 30, bat ave 46

Richard Hadlee - bat ave 51, bowl ave 41
Imran Khan - bat ave 51, bowl ave 32
Keith Miller - bat ave 51, bowl ave 32
Ian Botham - bat ave 44, bowl ave 33
Kapil Dev - bat ave 42, bowl ave 34
Wilfred Rhodes - bat ave 46, bowl ave 35
Vinoo Mankad - bat ave 37, bowl ave 34
Chris Cairns - bat ave 42, bowl ave 33
Andrew Flintoff - bat ave 35, bowl ave 34

Malcolm Marshall - bat ave 56, bowl ave probably 50+
Wasim Akram - bat ave 50, bowl ave probably 50+
 
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