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Angelo Mathews vs Ross Taylor

Who is the better test batsman?

  • Total voters
    21
ataraxia

ataraxia

International Coach
LRPL has kinda lost his eye recently tbh. Wouldn't back him to be better than Marcus Harris atm. Easily superior to Nicholls and Crawley tho
 
Athlai

Athlai

Not Terrible
Mathews should be far better but I don't think he ever realised his potential. Ross did.
 
Flem274*

Flem274*

123/5
Pretty equal until Mathews gets to 80 and throws it away. Taylor also spent his career batting a tad higher.

But you all knew I was voting Ross.
 
thierry henry

thierry henry

International Coach
Similar players in that for a while their averages were pushing up around 50, but the 45-ish they're at finally/currently is probably more reflective of how they're perceived.

Nevertheless it still really niggles me that Taylor's average at retirement was the lowest it had been for years...he really was visibly playing pretty badly for the last few years of his career. Bit of a minnow basher but it shouldn't be overlooked that (a) the relatively modest first part of his career may have been modest by global standards, but made him by far NZ's best player and (b) he had a prolific middle phase of his career even as KW and BMac got the fanfare and Ross's eye seemed to desert him both literally and figuratively.

But yeah really I just like Ross.
 
Burgey

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
What was the story with Taylor losing the captaincy? I always thought he handled that with very little fuss and rancor, but also it seemed to me he got royally screwed over.
 
_Ed_

_Ed_

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Burgey said:
What was the story with Taylor losing the captaincy? I always thought he handled that with very little fuss and rancor, but also it seemed to me he got royally screwed over.
Click to expand...
That's a fairly accurate summary, tbh.
 
thierry henry

thierry henry

International Coach
Burgey said:
What was the story with Taylor losing the captaincy? I always thought he handled that with very little fuss and rancor, but also it seemed to me he got royally screwed over.
Click to expand...
Well it was certainly very rancorous in NZ....popular opinion would be that Taylor did indeed handle it with minimal fuss (I tend to think he was a bit passive-aggressive about it all tbh, but he was right to be pissed off).

Basically in 2011 McCullum and Taylor were pitted against each other as captaincy candidates and Taylor won. In 2012 coach Hesson pretty much decided his mate McCullum was the better option and sacked Taylor. Timing was terrible as we'd just won a test in SL and Taylor was MOTM. Taylor, while not a demonstrative character, did not hide his displeasure and chose to sit out the South Africa tour that followed.
 
Bahnz

Bahnz

Hall of Fame Member
It wasn't just the fact that Taylor got sacked. There was a pretty toxic culture in the dressing room, with a number of senior players (I forget who but I'm pretty sure Mills and Oram were amongst them) being very open about their contempt for Taylor's captaincy credentials. Taylor is a pretty non-confrontational character who struggled to deal with this, so the whole environment just got worse and worse, especially after John Wright (Taylor's main backer) left as coach.

If Hesson wanted McCullum as captain, that's fine. Having read the biographies of both Ross and Baz, I'd probably agree with him that Taylor was less well equipped to lead the side. But what really irked the fans was how they made the bizarre decision to tell him that he was going to be sacked in the middle of the SL series (i.e. "This next test is going to be your last mate"). Then when NZ won that game, they decided to turn around and try and say "Oh we didn't mean we were going to axe you from the test captaincy, we were just intending to hand over the limited overs captaincy to Baz, but we still want you for tests!" Shane Bond subsequently made a public statement saying that that was bull****, and that it was clear to him that the intention was to fire Ross from all 3 formats, at which point the NZC closed ranks and basically told everyone "If you want to keep your jobs then stfu". It was just a complete dog's breakfast.
 
Prince EWS

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
Bahnz said:
It wasn't just the fact that Taylor got sacked. There was a pretty toxic culture in the dressing room, with a number of senior players (I forget who but I'm pretty sure Mills and Oram were amongst them) being very open about their contempt for Taylor's captaincy credentials. Taylor is a pretty non-confrontational character who struggled to deal with this, so the whole environment just got worse and worse, especially after John Wright (Taylor's main backer) left as coach.

If Hesson wanted McCullum as captain, that's fine. Having read the biographies of both Ross and Baz, I'd probably agree with him that Taylor was less well equipped to lead the side. But what really irked the fans was how they made the bizarre decision to tell him that he was going to be sacked in the middle of the SL series (i.e. "This next test is going to be your last mate"). Then when NZ won that game, they decided to turn around and try and say "Oh we didn't mean we were going to axe you from the test captaincy, we were just intending to hand over the limited overs captaincy to Baz, but we still want you for tests!" Shane Bond subsequently made a public statement saying that that was bull****, and that it was clear to him that the intention was to fire Ross from all 3 formats, at which point the NZC closed ranks and basically told everyone "If you want to keep your jobs then stfu". It was just a complete dog's breakfast.
Click to expand...
Sounds like the LibDems tbh. Brutal.
 
Flem274*

Flem274*

123/5
thierry henry said:
Similar players in that for a while their averages were pushing up around 50, but the 45-ish they're at finally/currently is probably more reflective of how they're perceived.

Nevertheless it still really niggles me that Taylor's average at retirement was the lowest it had been for years...he really was visibly playing pretty badly for the last few years of his career. Bit of a minnow basher but it shouldn't be overlooked that (a) the relatively modest first part of his career may have been modest by global standards, but made him by far NZ's best player and (b) he had a prolific middle phase of his career even as KW and BMac got the fanfare and Ross's eye seemed to desert him both literally and figuratively.

But yeah really I just like Ross.
Click to expand...
Rossco had a weird career where for the first half he was a massive uphill skier who couldn't minnow bash to save himself and then transitioned into a guy with a much higher average but who was far more vulnerable to quality bowling.

He took over being our senior batsman with a **** top order in his 6th test match at Lords. Debut him as a 24 year old in 2015 and that 24-30 year old career patch is monstrously good rather than just solid imo.

edit - basically this: http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/thr...end-of-21-22-summer.85616/page-3#post-4714888
 
Last edited:
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