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Greatest LIVING Cricketers
- Thread starter Fusion
- Start date
Athlai
Not Terrible
Been done. Dead won I think.Incidentally, as a kind of related thought, has CW ever done the heaven v earth XIs? Meaning those cricketers now sadly deceased versus those still on this mortal coil.
Anyone like to hazard a guess as to what the teams would look like and who would hold the whip hand?
BoyBrumby
Englishman
Must've passed me by. Linky?
Instinctively favoured heaven (Hobbs, Braddles, Barnes et al), but would be interested to see what folk thought.
Slifer
International Captain
Imo:
a. Viv Richards
b. Viv Richards
c. Viv Richards.
Viv is the only batsman i have seen whose record (to some not me) doesnt stack up with the best in history but is constantly ranked in (atleast) the top 5 greatest batsmen ever. There must be a reason for this. Sobers is accorded similar reverance but atleast his records stack up.
Uppercut
Request Your Custom Title Now!
Heaven vs. Earth vs. Hell in a tri-series would be plenty of fun. If a tad disrespectful to the Hell XI.Incidentally, as a kind of related thought, has CW ever done the heaven v earth XIs? Meaning those cricketers now sadly deceased versus those still on this mortal coil.
Anyone like to hazard a guess as to what the teams would look like and who would hold the whip hand?
Fusion
Global Moderator
Wow, to be able to see him from such short distance! I really envy you SJS.Yes I did. He played in Delhin in 1966 I think against the Board President's XI where Bedi first made his mark. He got 3o odd in one of the innings. I also watched him from right behind the nets the day before the game. It was like, 15 feet behind him
Fusion
Global Moderator
I’ve always had the opinion that King Viv is somewhat underrated on this forum (relatively speaking as compared to other all-time greats). I think a huge part of that reason is because of his stats, which do not stack up favorably against other legendary batsmen. We've done the "stats don't tell you the whole story" argument plenty of time, so no need to get into it here. As for me, if I had to choose one batsman from my lifetime to bat for my life, it would be Viv without question.
fredfertang
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I'd agree on a. and b. but not c. - everybody loved Sobers - he was such a gent to go with his cricketing genius- IVA on the other hand was, to us non WIndians, an arrogant ****
SJS
Hall of Fame Member
I was already playing in the Delhi senior division league by then and was a member of the DDCA which meant I had automatic access to the grounds.Wow, to be able to see him from such short distance! I really envy you SJS.
There was no massive security in those days. In fact, there was no security at all if police and armed guards are what we talk of as security. All you needed was a DDCA pass with your picture on it and you could enter the grounds. Then since the groundsmen and staff recognised you as one of the DDCA players no one stopped you from walking around the premises.
Life was much simpler.
Somtimes a visiting side would request DDCA to arrange for spinners from local talent and we all hoped someone from our club would be called because Madras Cricket Club or MCC (the club I played for) was in those days considered Delhi's major talent hub. That status got diluted after the early 70's when DDCA decided to have an official academy right next to ours at Delhi's National Stadium and finally booted the MCC out of the place (after three decades of great service to Delhi cricket) because with nets running side by side, any visitor could see the difference in standards on the two sides of the nets.
They ran the nets on the India gate lawns for many years where they had originally started and It still runs in some college I think. Sehwag is a product of MCC.
From my perspective the difficulty with these questions is that they require me to compare the two best batsmen I have seen - not the easiest thing in the world. Anyway, I believe that the answer to the first two questions is Garry Sobers.
(a) Most cricketers admire Richards, but even more describe Sobers as the best batsman they have seen. The list includes Boycott, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Griffith, Hall, Illingworth, Knott, Snow, Underwood, Walcott, Wasim Bari and Weekes. If you were to take a poll asking Test cricketers to identify the greatest living batsman Sobers is likely to win.
(b) Sobers was more consistent than Richards, and less likely to get himself out when he got going. For these reasons I think that he was a more valuable batsman.
He was more vulnerable at the start of his innings (for some reason most left handers other than opening batsmen are nervous starters). If he survived the first half hour or so bowlers had to wait until he made a mistake.
Richards was the most consistently exciting batsman I ever saw. He virtually never batted badly, although like anyone else he could be dismissed for low scores. He always sought to dominate bowlers and usually succeeded. I think, however, that Sobers at his very best (e.g. in the century he scored in the tied Test or the 254 for the Rest of the World against Australia) was at lest his equal in these respects because, as Ted Dexter observed, Sobers had a wider range of strokes.
(c) Not much difference here - both players were widely admired.
Sanz
Hall of Fame Member
I am sure Anju and Nina will Disagree.
bagapath
International Captain
and macko opening the bowling for them with freddie and barnes, tiger and nuggets to follow the living batsmen would wish they were dead
Migara
Cricketer Of The Year
If both of them played in current era, Sobers > Richards, depending on the quality of spinners going around in this era. Murali, Warne, Kumble. Saqlain, Harbhajan and Mushtaq Ahmed are too much for a era of 15 years (1992 - 2007). Chandra and Qadir both had their moments against Viv more than any other bowler played against him. The first three at least are better than Qadir and Chandra, so expect more moments from them. Having said that Sobers also did not play against spin of above quality, but what ever presented to him, he had the upper hand most of the time.
SJS
Hall of Fame Member
Thats not true. Here are the occasions when Sobers faced one or more great spinners in a series and his figures against them.
1. 1954-55 vs Australia
- Spinners : Benaud and Johnson
- Sobers Stats : 231 at 38.5
- Spinners : Laker and Lock
- Sobers stats : 320 runs at 32.0
- Spinners : Mankad and Gupte
- Sobers stats : 557 runs at 92.8
- Spinners : Benaud
- Sobers stats : 430 runs at 43.0
- Spinners : Durrani, Prasanna and Bapu Nadkarni
- Sobers stats : 424 at 70.7
- Spinners : Underwood and Titmus
- Sobers : 722 runs at 103.1
- Spinners : Chandra, Bedi, Prasanna, Venkat
- Sobers : 342 runs at 114.0
- Spinners : Gleeson* and Mallett
- Sobers : 497 runs at 49.7
9. 1970-71 - India
- Spinners : Bedi, Prasanna, Venkat, Durrani
- Sobers : 597 runs at 74.6
- Spinners : Underwood and Illingworth
- Sobers : 306 runs at 76.5
That is a round ten series in which there was at least one world class spinner in the opposition and Sobers has over 4400 runs at 63.2 !!
Migara
Cricketer Of The Year
I don;t think Lock, Benaud, Illinworth, Underwood, Venkat, Durrani, Mankad, Johnson are better than the secon tier of modern spinners like Kumble, Harbhajan, Qadir, Saqlain, Mushtaq Hogg and McGill. Laker, Chandra, Gupte and Bedi who were better than above guys (except Kumble and Qadir perhaps) are no match of four greatest spinners of cricket i.e. Murali, Warne, O'Riely and Grimmet. (Laker is somewhere behind these two layers with Kumble)
Sobers did not play a spinner of supreme quality. Bedi, Chandra, Gupte and Laker are the closest he had. if he had to play Murali and Warne? I expect spinners to do well, but Sobers will be much better than Richards against these leends of spinners
Sobers did not play a spinner of supreme quality. Bedi, Chandra, Gupte and Laker are the closest he had. if he had to play Murali and Warne? I expect spinners to do well, but Sobers will be much better than Richards against these leends of spinners
bagapath
International Captain
the greatest batsmen of the modern era, sachin and lara, did quite well against warne and murali. i expect sobers to do at least equally well if he were to be pitted against them. also if he did so well against some past masters on uncovered wickets he can be expected to do better if the imaginary match were to take place on a covered wicket. on the other hand warne and murali, being masters themselves, have dismissed/ caused problems (so that vaas or mcgrath can get them out enough) to the best batsmen of their era that they would get sobers out at times. in the end i expect the battle to be 60:40 in favor of sobers.
Fusion
Global Moderator
Since there is a lot of comment on Sobers (my pick for the greatest living cricketer), thought to post the article below from Cricinfo.
Man and superman
Off the field he may have been an awkward hero, on it Garry Sobers was "evolution's ultimate specimen"
Gideon Haigh
May 16, 2009
In Cricket In The Leagues, John Kay describes a match in which Garry Sobers represented Norton and was hit back over his head. Sobers reportedly turned, ran towards the boundary shouting "leave it to me" and took the catch just in front of the sightscreen.
"Leave it to me" - and you could. To Ray Robinson, Sobers was "evolution's ultimate specimen in cricketers". He combined faculties of the game as no other, batting from one to nine in the West Indies order, bowling every variety of left-arm delivery, fielding in every position with uniform excellence and captaining with a knowledge that his predecessor Frank Worrell described as encompassing "everything" - this for two decades, with only the barest attenuation in performance as age encroached. Incorporate Sobers' matches leading world XIs and his international record stretches from horizon to horizon: almost 9000 runs at 58, 265 wickets at 33, and 121 catches.
All this was accomplished, furthermore, with a unique elasticity and elan. Of his batting Barry Richards once observed that Sobers was "the only 360-degree player in the game"; that is, his follow-through ended where his pick-up began, swinging "right through every degree on the compass". The generosity of swing was matched by a generosity of spirit, for Sobers was also a walker throughout his career - not only a mark of sportsmanship but indicative of a confidence in his abilities that needed no help from luck. And one notes of his bowling that, despite operating under front- and back-foot laws, he bowled only a handful of no-balls in his entire career. Such was his instinctive feeling for cricket's calibrations.
In the post-colonial West Indies, not surprisingly, Sobers was a point of pride, almost a divine. CLR James - and none wrote better of Sobers than James - saw in him "the living embodiment of centuries of tortured history", and "a West Indian cricketer, not merely a cricketer from the West Indies".
The appointment of Worrell to lead West Indies to Australia in 1960-61 is generally regarded as the defining moment in Caribbean cricket. But, as Brian Stoddart suggests in Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture, Sobers' succession, taken on the field in March 1965, was "the real break with the past". Worrell was courtly, tactful, educated at an English university, a Freemason; Sobers' background was both indigenous and indigent. He was raised by a widow in a small shack in Bridgetown's Bay Land, a tenantry created for plantation workers after the cessation of slavery in 1838. Between docks that were a crucible of industrial dispute and a local cricket club for whites only. His rise from exclusion to eminence, Hilary Beckles contends in The Development of West Indies Cricket, sent "a signal of hope for collective redemption".
In some senses, however, Sobers was an awkward hero in the cause of West Indian self-affirmation through sport. He did not view defeat in a Test as setting back the struggle for national prestige: "Cricketers are entertainers", he said, when he scandalised fellow countrymen with his costly declaration in Trinidad in 1967-68.
He was awkwardly apolitical too. He explained his controversial visit to Rhodesia for a double-wicket competition in September 1970 by saying he "knew nothing of politics at the time". His avowal that "there should be no barriers in sport" smacked of an apology for sporting contact with South Africa. (Sobers, in fact, makes clear in The Changing Face of Cricket that he did not play in South Africa himself only because he had "had my fill of publicity and criticism" during the Rhodesian affair; it had "nothing to do with what was happening in the country".)
He was as slow to militancy as some of his successors were quick. It is interesting, for example, to contrast Sobers' and Viv Richards' responses to Tony Greig's vow to make the 1976 West Indians "grovel". In Hitting Across The Line, Richards recalls it as a "racist dig", which "gave strength to a lot of the West Indian guys". In Twenty Years At The Top, Sobers dismisses it as a throwaway line.
On the face of it, then, there is a tension here. Sobers was, for many fellow countrymen, a cultural embodiment. Yet he could appear remote, removed from dimensions of that culture. Why? It may be instructive to consider one of the most intriguing events in West Indian cricket history - or, to be precise, non-events, for ultimately it did not happen.
After his first few years in Test cricket Sobers followed the well-trodden route of many West Indians into the English leagues, representing Radcliffe in the Central Lancashire League from 1958 to 1962. After his feats in 1960-61 he was also lured to South Australia for three seasons, inspiring their first Sheffield Shield win in a decade. "My kind of cricket is world cricket," he explained breezily in Cricket Crusader. "And the jet plane makes all-year-round cricket possible for the individual world player."
It was as an "individual world player" representing South Australia that, in early 1963, the invitation from the West Indies board to tour England found him. The tour fee, a derisory £800, irked Sobers: he could earn far more in a summer of one-day-a-week league cricket. He equivocated, discussing the tour with Donald Bradman and Richie Benaud. Both urged him to go, although Bradman agreed that "with your standing you should get more money than anyone in the game", and Sobers remained ambivalent. What finally persuaded him was a strongly worded letter from Worrell reminding him of his patriotic duty.
Many sportsmen of that period struggled to reconcile the prestige of international sport with its paltry rewards. But Sobers' position was more complex than that of, say, an Australian tennis player choosing between the patriotic tug of the Davis Cup and the enticements of the professional circuit. Cricket was at the heart of West Indian cultural identity, more than a game, more than a job. Its devotees were unready for an "individual world player" who decoupled sport and politics.
None of which is to say that Sobers should have rejected Worrell's overtures; one rejoices that he did not, for his 322 runs and 20 wickets were decisive in one of Test cricket's greatest series. Nor is it to say that Sobers went altogether unrewarded. When England admitted overseas professionals in 1968, Sobers was comfortably the best paid on £5,000 a season. He says himself in Changing Face that he "lived well in my 20 years in the game", even if "my mind boggles at the earnings of today's players".
But there was a paradox in his position. In participating in the emancipation of West Indian cricket, the outstanding cricketer of his generation had to consent to his own continued economic exploitation. To optimise his rewards his only recourse was to play virtually without interruption: in Test, first-class, league and one-day cricket he batted almost 900 times for nearly 40,000 runs and bowled more than 92,000 deliveries for close to 2,000 wickets.
Sobers' experiences account for his rallying to the cause of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket in 1977 "because I wanted to see the leading players earn more money from the game". He oversaw the toss in the first Super Test, lent his name to the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy and acted as a Packer ambassador. It also explains his reluctance to criticise the West Indian rebel tours of South Africa in 1983-85. Sobers felt a sympatico with players "who saw an opportunity to put themselves on a more financially viable footing".
In what one might call the Jamesian chain of cricket heroes - linking Learie Constantine, George Headley, Worrell, Sobers and Richards - Sobers is an unusual presence, one who did all things on the cricket field with ease, but who encountered the difficulty off it of having to be all things to all men.
Gideon Haigh is a cricket historian and writer. The Movers and Shapers series of articles on cricket's most influential players was first published in Wisden Asia Cricket magazine
Man and superman
Off the field he may have been an awkward hero, on it Garry Sobers was "evolution's ultimate specimen"
Gideon Haigh
May 16, 2009
In Cricket In The Leagues, John Kay describes a match in which Garry Sobers represented Norton and was hit back over his head. Sobers reportedly turned, ran towards the boundary shouting "leave it to me" and took the catch just in front of the sightscreen.
"Leave it to me" - and you could. To Ray Robinson, Sobers was "evolution's ultimate specimen in cricketers". He combined faculties of the game as no other, batting from one to nine in the West Indies order, bowling every variety of left-arm delivery, fielding in every position with uniform excellence and captaining with a knowledge that his predecessor Frank Worrell described as encompassing "everything" - this for two decades, with only the barest attenuation in performance as age encroached. Incorporate Sobers' matches leading world XIs and his international record stretches from horizon to horizon: almost 9000 runs at 58, 265 wickets at 33, and 121 catches.
All this was accomplished, furthermore, with a unique elasticity and elan. Of his batting Barry Richards once observed that Sobers was "the only 360-degree player in the game"; that is, his follow-through ended where his pick-up began, swinging "right through every degree on the compass". The generosity of swing was matched by a generosity of spirit, for Sobers was also a walker throughout his career - not only a mark of sportsmanship but indicative of a confidence in his abilities that needed no help from luck. And one notes of his bowling that, despite operating under front- and back-foot laws, he bowled only a handful of no-balls in his entire career. Such was his instinctive feeling for cricket's calibrations.
In the post-colonial West Indies, not surprisingly, Sobers was a point of pride, almost a divine. CLR James - and none wrote better of Sobers than James - saw in him "the living embodiment of centuries of tortured history", and "a West Indian cricketer, not merely a cricketer from the West Indies".
The appointment of Worrell to lead West Indies to Australia in 1960-61 is generally regarded as the defining moment in Caribbean cricket. But, as Brian Stoddart suggests in Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture, Sobers' succession, taken on the field in March 1965, was "the real break with the past". Worrell was courtly, tactful, educated at an English university, a Freemason; Sobers' background was both indigenous and indigent. He was raised by a widow in a small shack in Bridgetown's Bay Land, a tenantry created for plantation workers after the cessation of slavery in 1838. Between docks that were a crucible of industrial dispute and a local cricket club for whites only. His rise from exclusion to eminence, Hilary Beckles contends in The Development of West Indies Cricket, sent "a signal of hope for collective redemption".
In some senses, however, Sobers was an awkward hero in the cause of West Indian self-affirmation through sport. He did not view defeat in a Test as setting back the struggle for national prestige: "Cricketers are entertainers", he said, when he scandalised fellow countrymen with his costly declaration in Trinidad in 1967-68.
He was awkwardly apolitical too. He explained his controversial visit to Rhodesia for a double-wicket competition in September 1970 by saying he "knew nothing of politics at the time". His avowal that "there should be no barriers in sport" smacked of an apology for sporting contact with South Africa. (Sobers, in fact, makes clear in The Changing Face of Cricket that he did not play in South Africa himself only because he had "had my fill of publicity and criticism" during the Rhodesian affair; it had "nothing to do with what was happening in the country".)
He was as slow to militancy as some of his successors were quick. It is interesting, for example, to contrast Sobers' and Viv Richards' responses to Tony Greig's vow to make the 1976 West Indians "grovel". In Hitting Across The Line, Richards recalls it as a "racist dig", which "gave strength to a lot of the West Indian guys". In Twenty Years At The Top, Sobers dismisses it as a throwaway line.
On the face of it, then, there is a tension here. Sobers was, for many fellow countrymen, a cultural embodiment. Yet he could appear remote, removed from dimensions of that culture. Why? It may be instructive to consider one of the most intriguing events in West Indian cricket history - or, to be precise, non-events, for ultimately it did not happen.
After his first few years in Test cricket Sobers followed the well-trodden route of many West Indians into the English leagues, representing Radcliffe in the Central Lancashire League from 1958 to 1962. After his feats in 1960-61 he was also lured to South Australia for three seasons, inspiring their first Sheffield Shield win in a decade. "My kind of cricket is world cricket," he explained breezily in Cricket Crusader. "And the jet plane makes all-year-round cricket possible for the individual world player."
It was as an "individual world player" representing South Australia that, in early 1963, the invitation from the West Indies board to tour England found him. The tour fee, a derisory £800, irked Sobers: he could earn far more in a summer of one-day-a-week league cricket. He equivocated, discussing the tour with Donald Bradman and Richie Benaud. Both urged him to go, although Bradman agreed that "with your standing you should get more money than anyone in the game", and Sobers remained ambivalent. What finally persuaded him was a strongly worded letter from Worrell reminding him of his patriotic duty.
Many sportsmen of that period struggled to reconcile the prestige of international sport with its paltry rewards. But Sobers' position was more complex than that of, say, an Australian tennis player choosing between the patriotic tug of the Davis Cup and the enticements of the professional circuit. Cricket was at the heart of West Indian cultural identity, more than a game, more than a job. Its devotees were unready for an "individual world player" who decoupled sport and politics.
None of which is to say that Sobers should have rejected Worrell's overtures; one rejoices that he did not, for his 322 runs and 20 wickets were decisive in one of Test cricket's greatest series. Nor is it to say that Sobers went altogether unrewarded. When England admitted overseas professionals in 1968, Sobers was comfortably the best paid on £5,000 a season. He says himself in Changing Face that he "lived well in my 20 years in the game", even if "my mind boggles at the earnings of today's players".
But there was a paradox in his position. In participating in the emancipation of West Indian cricket, the outstanding cricketer of his generation had to consent to his own continued economic exploitation. To optimise his rewards his only recourse was to play virtually without interruption: in Test, first-class, league and one-day cricket he batted almost 900 times for nearly 40,000 runs and bowled more than 92,000 deliveries for close to 2,000 wickets.
Sobers' experiences account for his rallying to the cause of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket in 1977 "because I wanted to see the leading players earn more money from the game". He oversaw the toss in the first Super Test, lent his name to the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy and acted as a Packer ambassador. It also explains his reluctance to criticise the West Indian rebel tours of South Africa in 1983-85. Sobers felt a sympatico with players "who saw an opportunity to put themselves on a more financially viable footing".
In what one might call the Jamesian chain of cricket heroes - linking Learie Constantine, George Headley, Worrell, Sobers and Richards - Sobers is an unusual presence, one who did all things on the cricket field with ease, but who encountered the difficulty off it of having to be all things to all men.
Gideon Haigh is a cricket historian and writer. The Movers and Shapers series of articles on cricket's most influential players was first published in Wisden Asia Cricket magazine
Maximus0723
State Regular
...and obviously cricinfo visits this forum. 