Hobbs, Hutton, Hammond, and wouldn't be surprised to see Sutcliffe shortly.
Reminder we rank Sachin the same
Depending on how I'm doing it and where Hobbs is, he's either 2nd or 3rd, and I have him virtually tied with Viv with him being slightly ahead due to longevity.
Agreed
At this stage smith ahead of prince but every chance of decline (of reflexes )by end of his career which means average comes down and maybe rated below bcl and srt
Fair enough, on that we're agreed.
Yeah, though I don't have him about SRT at this point. Not even the same tier.
He is 3rd for me.
The 5k runs difference between Smith and sachin is largely due to runs against lower ranked Teams.
Smith though haven't even passed the volume / average point of guys like Punter / Kallis and Sanga.
It's mostly just Compton, and I don't need to spin anything, this is the era where hyper aggressive players played under 50 strike rate. Hutton's scoring tempo was simply not seen as a problem by anyone, his ability to attack is something even Compton agreed that he was one of the best at, how about we let the greatest English captain since the war decide how to bat instead of trying to enforce Bazball on him?
"Hutton’s sedate progress throughout this innings – his strike-rate was 42 runs per 100 balls – typecast him as a cautious player."
lol, do you actually know the context of this match/inning?
Of course.
cautious =/= dour, every batsmen worth a damn is cautious, he played at a 42 SR in a timeless match where Hammond was terrified of declaring because he thought there was always the possibility that Bradman would come in and make more, the whole plan was to go into 1000s of runs and hope pitch degradation sets in.
Every bat is cautious at the start but then usually accelerates, except dour bats.
There was no need to, as your captain wants to go in 1000s and the game is timeless anyway, the more you spend on the pitch, the higher the chance of the pitch breaking down.
The perception of him as one was outside just that innings.