How good could Gilly have been if he never kept

[Teja.]

Gilchrist's career lasted 8-9 years.

If you consider only Viv's first 9 years (upto 1985), his record looks absolutely dominant.

I'm not blaming Gilchrist for having a short career but purely as batsmen it's hard to compare the raw batting stats of a guy who debuted and played in his prime to a guy who played the full spectrum from 22 to 38.

 

[Teja.]

Gilly was facing Shoaib, Wasim and Waqar that series though.

Who'd Viv put to thr sword in '76? Tony Greig?

Point is two can play that game so best not to play it

The fact is their actual career test records are pretty close.

Eh?

Maybe people actually want to objectively get at the truth or debate in good faith and are not trying to cynically play 'the game' to big up one of the candidates?

 

[honestbharani]

So maybe Gilly during that series had something to do with his decline

yeah, he did do something with Wasim's decline, he took advantage of it.

 

[mr_mister]

yeah, he did do something with Wasim's decline, he took advantage of it.

Two hatricks in SL series
In next series against Aus gets carted by Gilly for 81 and 149*

Its all too easy to say he was past it before the series began instead of after it

Who's to say Wasim and Waqar were ever any good then? Didn't they have their best success against subpar English batting sides?

 

[mr_mister]

Eh?

Maybe people actually want to objectively get at the truth or debate in good faith and are not trying to cynically play 'the game' to big up one of the candidates?

It just becomes a huge slippery slope of caveats, every time

So much chicken or the egg type stuff

 

[srbhkshk]

Based on my spreadsheet, I have come up with the following standardised average for Gilchrist

Umpires make errors 31% of the time.
Of this 31%, roughly 62% are in the batsman's favour.
This percentage increases to 93% when it comes to Australian batsmen (15% is purely due to '08 Sydney).
Gilchrist walked a total of 42 times in his career.
0.31*0.93*42 = 12.11 innings where Gilchrist would have continued batting had he not walked.

After running the figures Gilchrist's average would increase by 2.64, putting him ahead of Viv by 0.01.

This assumes that batting averages has anything to do with actually batting, which is controversial to say the least.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Gilchrist's career lasted 8-9 years.

If you consider only Viv's first 9 years (upto 1985), his record looks absolutely dominant.

I'm not blaming Gilchrist for having a short career but purely as batsmen it's hard to compare the raw batting stats of a guy who debuted and played in his prime to a guy who played the full spectrum from 22 to 38.

you're making the assumption here that the shorter career helped Gilchrist. Can definitely see the logic behind that but it's far from a certainty

 

[h_hurricane]

funny that you can make posts like this on one hand and make fun of Stephen for doing the same thing with Warne on the other

Warne was a clear and total failure against India lol. Stephen is discounting every one of those failures. You are equating that to Gilchrist playing in his backyard and dominating Wasim and Waqar in one series on their last legs.

 

[trundler]

It's an interesting hypothetical but there's nothing to go by, really. Did Gilchrist ever play a season or 2 as specialist batsman? Keepers have given up their gloves in the past and not done better before and ABdV's keeping had no effect on his keeping. Counter examples would be Sangakkara and Imran, not a keeper obviously but it's the same principle. Plus, #3 and #7 are impossible to compare. I tend to value runs higher up the order more but it's equally likely Gilchrist could've averaged more if he spent more time in the middle. So no way to tell, really. Too many what-ifs.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Warne was a clear and total failure against India lol. Stephen is discounting every one of those failures. You are equating that to Gilchrist playing in his backyard and dominating Wasim and Waqar in one series on their last legs.

This is just such a short-sighted and dumb argument. That was such a great innings and any attempt like this to try and talk it down just comes across really lame. Tbf not just you and probably more the fault of the guy that originally advertised it as "against Wasim and Waqar" which is barely scratching the surface. Shoaib was better than both that series, and the other bowler that bowled far more overs than W + W combined that innings was Saqlain who was a bigger threat than all 3 on a day 4 and 5 wicket.

It's, as Teja put it, "playing 'the game' to big up one of the candidates" (or in this case big down) at it's worst.

edit: from memory I'm not sure that Gilchrist even faced that much of either Wasim or Waqar in that innings, but looking at the scorecard he barely would have. So just a really dumb line of discussion all around.

 

[h_hurricane]

This is just such a short-sighted and dumb argument. That was such a great innings and any attempt like this to try and talk it down just comes across really lame. Tbf not just you and probably more the fault of the guy that originally advertised it as "against Wasim and Waqar" which is barely scratching the surface. Shoaib was better than both that series, and the other bowler that bowled far more overs than W + W combined that innings was Saqlain who was a bigger threat than all 3 on a day 4 and 5 wicket.

It's, as Teja put it, "playing 'the game' to big up one of the candidates" (or in this case big down) at it's worst.

edit: from memory I'm not sure that Gilchrist even faced that much of either Wasim or Waqar in that innings, but looking at the scorecard he barely would have. So just a really dumb line of discussion all around.

I didn't talk down that innings. That was one of the great innings, one of the best 5th day innings ever.

Also, as you yourself said, Shoaib was better than both Wasim and Waqar in that series. It clearly indicates that they had dropped off a fair bit by that time.

 

[trundler]

This is just such a short-sighted and dumb argument. That was such a great innings and any attempt like this to try and talk it down just comes across really lame. Tbf not just you and probably more the fault of the guy that originally advertised it as "against Wasim and Waqar" which is barely scratching the surface. Shoaib was better than both that series, and the other bowler that bowled far more overs than W + W combined that innings was Saqlain who was a bigger threat than all 3 on a day 4 and 5 wicket.

It's, as Teja put it, "playing 'the game' to big up one of the candidates" (or in this case big down) at it's worst.

edit: from memory I'm not sure that Gilchrist even faced that much of either Wasim or Waqar in that innings, but looking at the scorecard he barely would have. So just a really dumb line of discussion all around.

A good post from you. I've seen it all

 

[h_hurricane]

Greenidge is the nearest you could think of, among contemporaries of Viv, if you want to compare batting wise to Gilly. Greenidge had a far longer career than Gilchrist, scored a lot more runs and averaged 4 runs lesser in a more difficult period for batting.

Still fair bit of gulf, if you compare with Viv.

 

[mr_mister]

even though it's been established now that he didn't even face Wasim that much in the 149*, I really don't buy that Wasim was past it at the beginning of the series. And it's a bit annoying to me that this was even pushed as a thing.

Not only did he average 24 with the ball in 2000, he was averaging 20 with the ball in 1999(with 2 hattricks) until that Aus series.

It looks like he came to Australia in good form with plenty of expectation, but the Australian batsmen played too well. To say they pounced on a past-it Wasim does a disservice to Gilly and co

 

[h_hurricane]

even though it's been established now that he didn't even face Wasim that much in the 149*, I really don't buy that Wasim was past it at the beginning of the series. And it's a bit annoying to me that this was even pushed as a thing.

Not only did he average 24 with the ball in 2000, he was averaging 20 with the ball in 1999(with 2 hattricks) until that Aus series.

It looks like he came to Australia in good form with plenty of expectation, but the Australian batsmen played too well. To say they pounced on a past-it Wasim does a disservice to Gilly and co

I think it is absolutely fair to rate the 149* innings very highly. But when you say that it came against Wasim, Waqar, Shoaib and Saqlain without the context, it is kind of inferred that it came against 2 ATG bowlers and 2 very good ones, which was not the case.
Akram hadn't played test cricket for 8 months. It isn't about a calendar year specifically, but from the australia series onwards, did he bowl any destructive spell apart from the 11 wicket haul against a weakened WI lineup ?

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Who knows? He might have been at 4 and had his toe broken by one of Waqar's yorkers before being replaced by ATG batting allrounder Michael Bevan who finished with career test averages of 45 (bat) and 25 (ball) as well as captaining Australia on the successful 2005 and 2009 Ashes tours. Bevan then groomed Shane Watson to become Australia's greatest captain and most reliable opening batsman.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Who's to say Wasim and Waqar were ever any good then? Didn't they have their best success against subpar English batting sides?

And sub par NZ sides (except Crowe who owned them and who Wasim rated the best batsman he ever bowled against).

 

[TheJediBrah]

Who knows? He might have been at 4 and had his toe broken by one of Waqar's yorkers before being replaced by ATG batting allrounder Michael Bevan who finished with career test averages of 45 (bat) and 25 (ball) as well as captaining Australia on the successful 2005 and 2009 Ashes tours. Bevan then groomed Shane Watson to become Australia's greatest captain and most reliable opening batsman.

This is a great timeline

 

[Engle]

 

[Engle]

Based on above stats, batting at positions 1-5, Gilly would have scored 496 runs in 11 innings avg. 55
If including positions 1-6, scored 1,141 runs in 25 innings, avg. 52