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Ian Bell vs VVS Laxman

Who the better Batsman

  • Ian Bell

    Votes: 3 10.0%
  • VVS Laxman

    Votes: 27 90.0%

  • Total voters
    30

Starfighter

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I'll go Laxman cause he was a) better and b) didn't bat us out of the 2013 Ashes with a million dabs down to third man.
 

Adders

Cricketer Of The Year
I'll go Laxman cause he was a) better and b) didn't bat us out of the 2013 Ashes with a million dabs down to third man.
hahaha, no argument from me that VVS comfortably wins this, but for b) don't hold that against Ian Bell, blame Michael Clarke and his #intent ffs.
 

Starfighter

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
hahaha, no argument from me that VVS comfortably wins this, but for b) don't hold that against Ian Bell, blame Michael Clarke and his #intent ffs.
I know the captaincy was stupid. Didn't make it less heartbreaking to watch.
 

Adders

Cricketer Of The Year
I know the captaincy was stupid. Didn't make it less heartbreaking to watch.
From an English POV what was really awful about that series was that was when Warne really took to Cook over his captaincy.......and it was brutal if you recall. And yet while that was going on there was barely a whisper about Clarke not cutting off this scoring option for Bell, who milked it for close to 600 runs for the series. It was braindead tbh.

England win the series 3-0 and Cooks reputation as a skipper was in tatters. And just ftr I don't even think Cook was a particularly good captain.......but no way was he as bad as he was being made out to be.
 

Starfighter

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
It was such a weird series. You'd have thought the Australia was winning easily the way the media chatter was going. It wasn't the most lively cricket from England but you'd think they'd combined sixties negativity with Chanderpaul-bad captaincy the way people were going on. People just seem to go 'aggressive = good' automatically, and Clarke had a lot of that.
 
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vcs

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In terms of "fairly closely contested series that ended up with a lopsided scoreline", Ashes 2013 = India tour of England 2018.
 

OverratedSanity

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My respect for batsmen like Bell from England's previous generation has gone up greatly in recent years. He wasn't close to a truly great batsman but a 20 ton, 40 average career is nothing to scoff at. None of England's middle order looks capable of doing that. Wasn't my favourite batsman by any means but he was seriously good.

VVS on the other hand is my favourite batsman ever. People always talk about his 281 and his other knocks against Australia, but he was pretty much the king of the " pull the team out of a hole and win the game " role. Just in 2010, in three consecutive tests he scored 73* in a one wicket win, a 4th innings ton in a difficult run chase in Colombo to square the series, and a 91 when India were 15-5. Followed that up with a match winning 96 at durban on a very difficult track a few weeks later. Without those innings, India probably don't stay at number 1.

He's also the greatest ever at making the "how did that get me out" face which he'd often pull out even if he'd just missed a straight ball.
 

Howe_zat

Audio File
My respect for batsmen like Bell from England's previous generation has gone up greatly in recent years.
Completely agree - although being an arrogant git, I tend to see it more as vindication for arguing with other gits that thought you should drop any batsman that's having a bad run regardless of Test pedigree.

Should get back in the side. We've still not replaced him, the circumstances over his dropping are long since irrelevant (James Taylor can't play), he's still one of the best batsmen in the country, and apparently can't play just because of some religious dogma that says you can recall a batsman in his mid thirties.
 

harsh.ag

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
But you finally have Moeen Ali at number 3 and Jos Buttler at number 7. What more could one want
 

wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
In terms of "fairly closely contested series that ended up with a lopsided scoreline", Ashes 2013 = India tour of England 2018.
The most ludicrous thing about the 2013 series was some of the commentators opining that England would win both that series and the subsequent one in Australia 5-0 after Aus horror show at Lord's. Oh, and Aus had just been trashed in India, which obviously dictates what would happen elsewhere. Botham to the fore with that particular line of thought, iirc.
 

Starfighter

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
The most ludicrous thing about the 2013 series was some of the commentators opining that England would win both that series and the subsequent one in Australia 5-0 after Aus horror show at Lord's. Oh, and Aus had just been trashed in India, which obviously dictates what would happen elsewhere. Botham to the fore with that particular line of thought, iirc.
Why does anyone listen to Botham on cricket? No-one really foresaw how good Johnson was going to be but it should have been clear it would be a tough contest.
 

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