3 Spin All-Rounders for ODI

[tooextracool]

Is Sehwag, Gayle or Afridi any different? Gayle had been Vaas' bitch, even when Vaas was bowling at 125k. Any body who can move it, Gayle is easy pickings. Afridi is woeful against pace. So is Shewag. That's the type of batsmen they are. Better technicinas will score on tough conditions, but these players if fire, will win you the match.

yes im not denying that they arent dissimilar. Afridi is clearly a couple of notches below the 2 of them, but Gayle and Jayasuriya are in the same league. I dont believe that anyone can claim that one is considerably better than the other.

 

[tooextracool]

IMO Jayasuriya's destructiveness makes the difference. His average opening is just 1 less than Gilchrist's, and SR 4 points behind. And I'd take Gilchrist as opener ahead of Gayle without blinking once, even if he didn't keep wickets. It's the X factor [(c) marc71178].

Think people make too much of this 'destructiveness' aspect with players. There are players like Tendulkar who could take apart an attack whenever they wanted to, but they also had the common sense to bat sensibly when the conditions demanded for it. A player that has 5 gears is more useful than a guy who has just an accelerated 5th gear.

 

[vcs]

Have to watch it again now....

at Sachin's reaction at 2:16 after chucking those pies at him.

This innings would be Sanath's counterpart of Sachin's Sharjah knocks in '98, I guess.

 

[Arjun]

Difficult to choose, as each has his own strengths and weaknesses. Gayle is by far the better batsman as he'll last longer, while Sanath can tear apart any attack when he's in. Afridi has quite an impact when he gets in, but lasts a lot shorter than the others. He can, however, get a lot more wickets than the others, and is effective. The pecking order can change with any intention- Afridi, Gayle and Sanath as just batsmen who can send down overs often, or Gayle, Sanath and Afridi for big runs, or a close one between Afridi and Sanath, with Gayle behind, on strike rate.

 

[Debris]

I think this is Jayasuriya for both batting and bowling. He reputation has been tarnished a bit by playing on for way too long but for a couple of years he was clearly the best ODI opener in the world. And his bowling is sneaky good.

 

[weldone]

To me,

Batting: Jayasuriya>Gayle>>Afridi
Bowling: Jayasuriya>Afridi>Gayle

Overall: Jayasuriya>Gayle>>Afridi

Having said that, Gayle's career isn't finished yet!

 

[Migara]

You can add the fielding there as well. Jaysuriya > Afridi > Gayle

 

[Faisal1985]

Afridi! Afridi! Afridi! Any day any time...lol..just having some fun lads.

 

[Athlai]

To me,

Batting: Jayasuriya>Gayle>>Afridi
Bowling: Jayasuriya>Afridi>Gayle

Overall: Jayasuriya>Gayle>>Afridi

Having said that, Gayle's career isn't finished yet!

Would say that Afridi is the best bowler of the lot by a small distance, though easily the worst batsman.

Batting: Jayasuriya>Gayle>>>Afridi
Bowling: Afridi>Jayasuriya>>Gayle

Overall: Jayasuriya>>Gayle>Afridi

 

[tooextracool]

Cant help but feel that the people who rate Jayasuriya as a better bowler than Gayle are more or less biased from having watched him being successful on the slow turners that he primarily got at home. Gayle has just as good, or actually marginally better ODI bowling record than Jayasuriya and yet pretty much everyone rates Jayasuriya as a better bowler.

 

[Noble One]

Agree somewhat with tooextracool.

Jayasuriya is undoubtedly one of the greatest ODI cricketers ever, but his bowling is vastly over-rated. Unless playing in Sri Lanka he was not a bowler who Sri Lanka could rely upon to bowl 10 inexpensive over’s.

A quick Statsguru search shows the following;

Home: 128 ODI's, 119 Wickets @ 28.31, ER of 4.44
Away: 148 ODI's, 92 Wickets @ 42.42, ER of 5.03
Neutral: 168 ODI's, 11 Wickets @ 41.01, ER of 4.84

I'm not a big fan of using statistics as the only judgement of a player, but those are some significant discrepancies’. His bowling value rests with his record at home, and I'm sure Jayasuriya has bowled Sri Lanka to many more victories at home than many other all-rounders/semi part timers have in an entire career.

When Jayasuriya was bowling well, it's actually quite hard to see how he didn't have more success away from home. His key attributes were his tight containing line, ability to spear the ball into the yorker region, and capability of using the surface to make the ball quite hard to hit off the square. These are not attributes totally unique and only useful in Sri Lanka, they are the very same attributes that make Chris Gayle a reliable bowler both home and away. The problem with Jayasuri in my opinion was he always appeared to struggle for bowling form when playing away from home, maybe it was a confidence issue. I recall many of his bowling efforts in Australia being 3-4 nice containing deliveries followed by a quick spearing ball heading down the leg-side that was duly struck for four.

 

[G.I.Joe]

Jayasuriya's bowling stats suffer because he bowled left arm spin on wickets that suited Murali's off spin, and left arm slow floaters on wickets that suited left arm spin

 

[Migara]

Jayasuriya in his prime was a death bowler. His left arm darts became deadly when they spun. Obviously he did not find that help on foreign pitches, but no one would deny when conditions suited he just ran through sides unlike Gayle. Best example would be Kolkata semi final of 1996, where he got the ball to spit off the pitch, which any of the other spinners of both sided were not able to. He basically broke the back of India with the ball in the semi final. Afridi nor Gayle ahs done death bowling close to Jayasuriya. But his ER does not significantly change according to the place he played. His value was to stop runs more than taking wickets.

 

[Athlai]

Agree somewhat with tooextracool.

Jayasuriya is undoubtedly one of the greatest ODI cricketers ever, but his bowling is vastly over-rated. Unless playing in Sri Lanka he was not a bowler who Sri Lanka could rely upon to bowl 10 inexpensive over’s.

A quick Statsguru search shows the following;

Home: 128 ODI's, 119 Wickets @ 28.31, ER of 4.44
Away: 148 ODI's, 92 Wickets @ 42.42, ER of 5.03
Neutral: 168 ODI's, 11 Wickets @ 41.01, ER of 4.84

I'm not a big fan of using statistics as the only judgement of a player, but those are some significant discrepancies’. His bowling value rests with his record at home, and I'm sure Jayasuriya has bowled Sri Lanka to many more victories at home than many other all-rounders/semi part timers have in an entire career.

Gayle

Home: 92 ODIs (77 bowled) 69 wickets @ 33.40, ER 4.54
Away: 75 ODIs (57 bowled) 50 wickets @ 35.52, ER 5.05
Neutral: 53 ODIs (43 bowled) 37 wickets @ 35.51, ER 4.73

Keep in mind that Gayle would bowl more overs if conditions suited, while Jayasuriya was used in the death at times as well. Also I think it's worth noting that the West Indies in the last decade has been pretty friendly to spinners.

Gayle in my mind is a useful option, usually economical. Jayasuriya is more of a frontline bowler that can be bowled under pressure situations.

Afridi the best of the lot though tbh.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Gayle has been often utilised up until the 45th, or around, over.

 

[akilana]

I read the Jayasurya story about what happened in Singapore and it doesn't come as a surprise to me. When SL and Pak were playing in a T20 tri series final in Toronto two years back, we went to see the match and he gave middle finger to Tamil guys who were sitting there and cheering for Pakistan. It was disappointing and I lost all the respect for this guy.

 

[honestbharani]

Gayle was bowling the slog in his first year of international cricket..



Will give it to Jaya between these 3, mainly because of his destructiveness against us.. But agree it is closer than what few have suggested.

 

[Migara]

rofl.. Are you actually suggesting this to a poster who says he was there and saw it live???????

So you believe him to be saying the truth, nothing but the exact truth?

 

[G.I.Joe]

Nah, we'd rather believe the man with an agenda against an entire ethnic group.

 

[silentstriker]

Miagra, it's inappropriate to single out an entire ethnic group like that. This is a warning. I've deleted the post.