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Fitness

Jayro

U19 12th Man
How important it is when we rate a player,for eg when we rate a player to dubb him as ATG tier who has a particularly small career due to injury issues, do we have to consider this parameter also while assuming that he should make it into an all time eleven, even speaking hypothetically if they were mostly missing matches when they were playing what point it is to think they could be available for a hypothetical team all the time?
 

Burgey

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I think the problem with guys who have a lot of injuries (say a Bruce Reid, Simon Jones or a Shane Bond for example) is the injuries rob us of a big enough sample size to properly compare them to ATers. You can say those blokes could well have been all timers, and they may have, but we just don't know so if there's a fella who has similar stats across a broader range of conditions they get the nod pretty easily.

Pat Cummins was another bloke who was heading that way - he went six years between tests and kept getting injury after injury. We've just been fortunate he's managed to get back on the park long enough now to have put a body of work together which allows some comparison with other bowlers across a wide range of conditions.

I don't think he's played anywhere near enough tests to be considered an all-timer btw, just saying he gets mentioned as a potential one, when in about 2018 it looked like he would be another Shane Bond or Bruce Reid at best.

There's nothing to stop people picking those guys anyway, of course. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule, but the guys who managed to be on the park for longer and produced similar stats will (rightly imo) get the nod.
 

Lillian Thomson

Hall of Fame Member
Ian Botham should be in the top five greatest ever. The fact that he isn’t is down to his lack of dedication in the nets and not keeping himself fit. All pretty much self inflicted. Others work hard but are fragile anyway.
 

trundler

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I think the problem with guys who have a lot of injuries (say a Bruce Reid, Simon Jones or a Shane Bond for example) is the injuries rob us of a big enough sample size to properly compare them to ATers. You can say those blokes could well have been all timers, and they may have, but we just don't know so if there's a fella who has similar stats across a broader range of conditions they get the nod pretty easily.

Pat Cummins was another bloke who was heading that way - he went six years between tests and kept getting injury after injury. We've just been fortunate he's managed to get back on the park long enough now to have put a body of work together which allows some comparison with other bowlers across a wide range of conditions.

I don't think he's played anywhere near enough tests to be considered an all-timer btw, just saying he gets mentioned as a potential one, when in about 2018 it looked like he would be another Shane Bond or Bruce Reid at best.

There's nothing to stop people picking those guys anyway, of course. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule, but the guys who managed to be on the park for longer and produced similar stats will (rightly imo) get the nod.
With pace bowlers, another thing to consider is that those injury prone guys would likely have had to remodel their actions and who knows how that would've affected their effectiveness. A less injury prone version of Bumrah probably doesn't have such an explosive action and who's to say how he'd do with a run of the mill action.
 

Flem274*

123/5
I think injury prone great talents lose out to peers on their ability level, but real world selection shows time and again that they are always picked ahead of those less talented in teams who actually win games regardless of what a great servant the lesser bowler has been.

And real life selection is the only selection that matters tbh.
 

Kirkut

International Regular
With pace bowlers, another thing to consider is that those injury prone guys would likely have had to remodel their actions and who knows how that would've affected their effectiveness. A less injury prone version of Bumrah probably doesn't have such an explosive action and who's to say how he'd do with a run of the mill action.
Most fast bowlers generate pace from lower body, but Bumrah gets all his pace from back and shoulders instead.

He is not express but gets the ball to explode off the pitch with all those lean fast twitched muscle fibres. Unfortunately this is not an action worthy of a long life and he needs to be managed carefully like a Jaguar car.
 
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Jack1

International Debutant
Longevity is very important. That is why James Anderson is an All Time Great Test Match Fast-Medium Bowler.
 

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