Best English Batsman Since 1990?

[burr]

This thread just makes you realise how dire England's talent pool has been in the last 10 or so years. Sad really.

 

[Richard]

Graham Gooch > or at least = all Australian batsmen of the same time apart from Stephen Waugh and Ponting. (Bearing in mind Border was no more than good in the early 1990s and Hussey is a "TBC")

 

[burr]

lol Graham Gooch. I liked him as a commentator

 

[garypleavin]

Difficult choice between Gooch and Thorpe for me. Probably Gooch just shades it.

 

[Goughy]

The clincher for me is that its realistically possible to argue that for a period Gooch was the best batsman on the planet whereas Thorpe would have found it difficult to have even cracked a place in a World XI at any point in his career.

 

[Anil]

1. graham gooch
2. graham thorpe
3. kevin pietersen

the three world class batsmen since 1990 for england...

 

[Richard]

Atherton was more World-class than Thorpe for a fair while TBH.

 

[Beleg]

Ponting, Hayden, Langer, Gilchrist, Waugh > Thorpe

 

[Richard]

Nah, no way is Langer better and CERTAINLY not Hayden.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Thorpe just didn't convert enough 50's into 100's, especially early in his career. Without bothering to sift through stats I think at one point he had around 17/18 half centuries but only 2 centuries, one of those being in his first Test.

 

[Anil]

Atherton was more World-class than Thorpe for a fair while TBH.

if you consider their entire careers, thorpe was by far the better player but i don't want to get into an argument about atherton, we've been down that road before and it will just go into a never-ending loop....

 

[Perm]

Nah, no way is Langer better and CERTAINLY not Hayden.

Uhm. Could this be the new Hayden-Hussain? Richard's love of 90's English batsmen is sickening.

But seriously, we all know your thoughts on Hayden. Why isn't Langer better?

 

[NUFAN]

Uhm. Could this be the new Hayden-Hussain? Richard's love of 90's English batsmen is sickening.

But seriously, we all know your thoughts on Hayden. Why isn't Langer better?

I think Thorpe and Langer are very evenly matched.

I'd probably pick Thorpe narrowly though, although obviously if you look at just stats, Langer wins.

 

[Perm]

I think Thorpe and Langer are very evenly matched.

I'd probably pick Thorpe narrowly though, although obviously if you look at just stats, Langer wins.

I reckon they are pretty evenly matched too, but the way Richard worded his sentence, he obviously thinks Langer isn't close to Thorpe as a Test batsmen. Averages are similar, but I might just investigate a bit further.

 

[Richard]

if you consider their entire careers, thorpe was by far the better player but i don't want to get into an argument about atherton, we've been down that road before and it will just go into a never-ending loop....

He certainly wasn't by far the better player, but no, I do recall well your (IMO extremely harsh) ratings of Atherton. So we'd probably best not go there again.

 

[Richard]

Uhm. Could this be the new Hayden-Hussain? Richard's love of 90's English batsmen is sickening.

Well Thorpe, Hussain, et al aren't exclusively 90s players, but obviously Thorpe was almost always superior to Hussain, and given Hussain's superiority to Hayden, Thorpe's too is merely a matter of course.

But seriously, we all know your thoughts on Hayden. Why isn't Langer better?

Thorpe was a far better all-round batsmen and scored far more runs against tough bowling than Langer did.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Well Thorpe, Hussain, et al aren't exclusively 90s players, but obviously Thorpe was almost always superior to Hussain, and given Hussain's superiority to Hayden, Thorpe's too is merely a matter of course.

Thorpe was a far better all-round batsmen and scored far more runs against tough bowling than Langer did.

So the argument that no one else on the entire Planet agrees with that places Hussain above Hayden automatically makes Thorpe superior to Hayden as well.
Not overly compelling.

 

[Richard]

So the argument that no one else on the entire Planet agrees with that places Hussain above Hayden automatically makes Thorpe superior to Hayden as well.

Well even ignoring the fact that there are almost certainly plenty on the planet who place Hussain ahead of Hayden (there's even 1 or 2 on this forum) it's clear, simple maths:
Thorpe > Hussain
Hussain > Hayden

What does that mean for the Hayden vs Thorpe case? Yes, Thorpe > Hayden. Not rocket-science, as such.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Well even ignoring the fact that there are almost certainly plenty on the planet who place Hussain ahead of Hayden (there's even 1 or 2 on this forum) it's clear, simple maths:
Thorpe > Hussain
Hussain > Hayden

What does that mean for the Hayden vs Thorpe case? Yes, Thorpe > Hayden. Not rocket-science, as such.

The "Planet" statement is a figure of speech, a bit like the "countless hundreds" of bowlers who should have been selected ahead of Liam Plunkett.

One day I will get around to reading the Hayden/Hussain debate that gave everyone such a good laugh. I've no doubt there's not much rocket science there either.

 

[Richard]

No, there isn't, rocket-science and cricket have pretty well nothing to do with one another.