Look I think it was Coronis who mentioned first you may have a defensiveness bias towards WI cricketers. I didn't think much of it, but honestly it would explain why you react the way you do towards anyone pointing out a weakness of Marshall and Ambrose and Viv and Lara. And why Imran who did best against WI has to be downgraded a bit.
As for Imran, Kimber who you respect so much clearly has him in the ATG XI and treats him as a given. Other experts don't. But he clearly has a high enough rep that he can fit there without anyone raising a fuss, except you.
You have him in your third ATG XI despite claiming you see him as a top ten cricketer. The only way I can explain that is bias.
Like how Coronis has a defensive bias against English and Australian cricketers? The older the better?
As I said, no one did better against us than Punter and McGrath. Hutton did extremely well against us, loved him to death from the first time I read about him, doing well against us.
Ambrose could be too defensive at times, primarily after his surgery. But he always maintained control and was an ATG till the end.
Lara was too inconsistent, but when he was son, he's the best batsman I've ever seen. I still rate him below Smith. I rate Viv below Sachin, even though the more one looks at Sachin's career, the more it's not quite what it's cracked up to be. Sobers bowlers himself too damn much and as a result batted way too much at 5 and 6. That's why I rate him below Viv and Sachin.
Marshall was the most complete cricketer I've ever seen. Forget the numbers, watch him bowl, evaluate the skill set that he possessed, the impact that he had. and then at how he mastered most conditions and how adaptable he was. I make no apologies for that opinion either.
And no, you want to believe that's why I'm critical of Imran, despite the fact that I've repeated told you why. And I still only have 9 players rated ahead of him, all time. I have no desire to downgrade anyone.
Dude he's in my 2nd XI, my teams are literally updates every 6 months and was done last week and he's still there in the 2nd one. You can literally check in the ATG thread.
The part that bothers me about you, Smali, the XI idiot and short pitched, is that I'm painted as the only one who doesn't think that Imran isn't a walk in for the AT team, when there's been an active poll about the ideal attack for the AT XI, taking into account batting and Imran is tied 4 with 30% of the vote and is almost doubled up by McGrath.
I'm not the only one, in fact I'm in the majority, I'm just the one who entertains these discussions.
I can give you all of the reasons in the world, but for me personally Imran doesn't make mine because of two major reasons. I don't trust him away from home and he was limited by being a primarily and predominantly an inswing bowler. That's limiting in most scenarios. Wasim could move it both ways, old ball and new, and was better overall with the old ball.
What the hell is wrong with that?
But you have to believe that it's something personal, because surely there's no reason he can't be there. I'm not the one in the minority.
And yes, from comments I believe his team is likely Marshall, McGrath and Imran, he's a statistician. He also thinks Barry was the best and post war he goes with Barry and probably Sunny if he's not prodded by Bumble.
Does that impact your perception of Barry?