India's opening pair

[Richard]

apparently averaging 31 when almost every other player averaged more than him in india cant be deemed a failure too. but of course if vaughan who averaged 36(the best in the english side) it must be failure!

Presuming you're talking about Sri Lanka, no, Vaughan didn't fail in that series - but he did fail at Galle and SSC. He succeeded, spectacularly, at Kandy.
Equally, in 7 of the 8 Test-matches preceding Kandy he'd failed (not a single half-century), and in the 4 after it he failed (not a single half-century). However, his scores of 156 and 140 meant, still, no questions were asked of his opening the batting.
Fortunately, Strauss' accidental emergence dealt with the problems.

 

[Swervy]

Wrong, you've included the innings where he's opened the batting.
When you exclude them it comes to 37, believe me, I've looked.

How the hell am I wrong, you were talking about his play from 1998 onwards,and therefore they are the figures I provided..... OK, so we will take away some of the figures you dont want to be included(to go with all his innings before 1998)...and he has an average of 37.I am afraid that is barely good enough for a number 4 test batter...have a look at number 4 batsman around the world and see how successful they have been

No matter what perceptions about match-turning, the fact is it's a good average that keeps a batsman in the side, and defines who's better than who, otherwise Lara would unquestionably be better than Tendulkar and IMO he's not...
I can assure you that his 48 at The Oval in 1997 was instrumental in that success, and it is an example of the fact that centuries aren't the be-all-and-end-all - everything's relative, sometimes centuries aren't neccessary (one of the most influential innings, IMO of England's Test history, is Michael Atherton's 45 at Lord's in 2000 against West Indies), sometimes they're nowhere near enough, ie if you're replying to 650.

Of course each innings needs to be taken in context of the match situation,but 2 hundreds in 57 innings and 26 times failing to score 20 in that same 57 innings period is just not good enough(and those 57 innings being in the time you specified ie from 98), especially for a man of his obvious talent.For me , he was a bigger let down for England than Hick was.

 

[Swervy]

Someone who fails for a long time is a proven failure. But some people, like Ramprakash, show afterwards that that failure was misleading, by going on to succeed.

erm....you are the only person I have ever heard say that Ramprakash was an England success at any point in his career...but i guess everyone else is wrong

 

[Richard]

How the hell am I wrong, you were talking about his play from 1998 onwards,and therefore they are the figures I provided..... OK, so we will take away some of the figures you dont want to be included(to go with all his innings before 1998)...and he has an average of 37.I am afraid that is barely good enough for a number 4 test batter...have a look at number 4 batsman around the world and see how successful they have been

Ramprakash was more a number-five and six from 1998 onwards - when he batted further up than that it was usually makeshift. 43 were from five down, just 4 at four and 1 at three.
37 isn't a bad average and certainly lack of centuries can't count for much - it's his failure to make half-centuries that ultimately counted against him.

Of course each innings needs to be taken in context of the match situation,but 2 hundreds in 57 innings and 26 times failing to score 20 in that same 57 innings period is just not good enough(and those 57 innings being in the time you specified ie from 98), especially for a man of his obvious talent.For me , he was a bigger let down for England than Hick was.

Hick always had a very obvious weakness against the short-ball. Ramprakash's problem, up to 1997 and in the New Zealand series of 1999 and 2002, was temperament.
Remember, 6 of those 26 were as an opener, so that's actually 20 out of 50. Still disappointing, but you'll find it's quite similar to plenty of other good players. Ramprakash's real problem was not converting 20s and 30s to half-centuries and 70*s.

 

[Richard]

erm....you are the only person I have ever heard say that Ramprakash was an England success at any point in his career...but i guess everyone else is wrong

Well that's probably because most people are far too happy to just look at one, simple, thing - 26.something. Not do the sensible thing and look for change from abysmal failure (16.something) to relative success (37.something). And certainly not have the sense to remove the innings in which a middle-order batsman was picked as an opener (13.57, even worse than the pre-1998 one).

 

[Swervy]

Well that's probably because most people are far too happy to just look at one, simple, thing - 26.something. Not do the sensible thing and look for change from abysmal failure (16.something) to relative success (37.something). And certainly not have the sense to remove the innings in which a middle-order batsman was picked as an opener (13.57, even worse than the pre-1998 one).

it is still no justification for a permanent position in the England team...just face it, he wasnt made of the right stuff to truely be considered international standard on a consistant level, he had many opportunities to do so, but didnt.

By the way, what were Ramprakash's first chance averages during this golden spell

 

[tooextracool]

And you really don't know how to use the word "potential", do you?
Potential is something which can be guessed at. It is not something which is certainly there.
Someone who has failed first then succeeded afterwards (not always "in the short-term" - 5 years [Flintoff and Rhodes] and 6 years [Stephen Waugh] is not short-term at all).
A proven failure would not be incapable of success at the international level, he would have failed over a long time-period, a time-period that not many have failed over then gone on to be successful.
Someone who fails for a long time is a proven failure. But some people, like Ramprakash, show afterwards that that failure was misleading, by going on to succeed.

and someone like ramprakash failed in 10 out of his 11 years, must be a proven failure!
and i notice how you distort steve waughs career. steve waugh wasnt a failure for 6 consecutive years as you make it out to be. he had 3 mediocre years where he was still averaging over 30, then had one brilliant year where he averaged 86, 3 miserable,ramprakshesque years and then the rest was history.
and if you managed to look at rhodes' record clearly you would see that in his first 2 years he averaged in the high 40s and then had 4 miserable so where you come up with those 5 poor years from i'll never know. interestingly enough in 2 of those years he only played 2 test matches, and even though he failed in those 4 years he was a brilliant fielder and made the side because of that.

 

[tooextracool]

Presuming you're talking about Sri Lanka, no, Vaughan didn't fail in that series - but he did fail at Galle and SSC. He succeeded, spectacularly, at Kandy.

something which ramprakash wasnt capable enough of doing, that is playing a matchwinning or a match saving innings.

Equally, in 7 of the 8 Test-matches preceding Kandy he'd failed (not a single half-century), and in the 4 after it he failed (not a single half-century). However, his scores of 156 and 140 meant, still, no questions were asked of his opening the batting.
Fortunately, Strauss' accidental emergence dealt with the problems.

oh yes in the same way that ramprakash failed in 7 out of his last 8 tests before the third test in india?

 

[tooextracool]

Yes, and given that neither of us agree on those likelihoods and neither can be proven or guranteed, neither means all that much!

yes so the fact that tendulkar averages 7 runs more than ganguly at the top ATM it means that he is a far better player at the top.

I hardly think it's likely he's failed every run-chase.

so then lets hear it,how many times did he succeed in run chases? given that batting at 4 requires you to be somewhat competent in run chases especially considering hes been move down from a far more successful position for this.

I really cannot believe this "only 38" stuff - 38, for most players, is an exceptional achievement.

for a player as exceptional as tendulkar it is ordinary, and the fact that hes doing far better job at the top than he is at 4....

So how on Earth can you know for certain that Tendulkar does a better job in the middle-overs when he's come in at the top of the order? I'd like to see some stats to show that, not that I think it would be possible to construct any..

so lets see all his scores from the 99 wc at 4 then shall we?
140* 4 not out 1 W World Cup 15 v Ken in Eng 1999 at Bristol
2 4 bowled 1 W World Cup 21 v SL in Eng 1999 at Taunton
22 4 caught 1 W World Cup 25 v Eng in Eng 1999 at Birmingham
0 4 caught 2 * W 5th ODI v NZ in Ind 1999/00 at Delhi
13 4 bowled 1 * L C&U Ser. 2 v Pak in Aus 1999/00 at Brisbane
12 4 run out 2 * L C&U Ser. 3 v Aus in Aus 1999/00 at Melbourne
34* 4 not out 2 W 3rd ODI v WI in WI 2001/02 at Bridgetown
65 4 bowled 1 W 5th ODI v WI in WI 2001/02 at Port of Spain
1 4 lbw 2 W NW Series 2 v Eng in Eng 2002 at Lord's
49 4 caught wk 2 W NW Series 3 v SL in Eng 2002 at The Oval
105* 4 not out 1 N NW Series 5 v Eng in Eng 2002 at Chester-le-Street
19 4 caught 2 W NW Series 6 v SL in Eng 2002 at Birmingham
36 4 caught wk 2 L NW Series 8 v Eng in Eng 2002 at The Oval
113 4 caught 1 W NW Series 9 v SL in Eng 2002 at Bristol
14 4 bowled 2 W NW Series F v Eng in Eng 2002 at Lord's
7 4 caught 1 W ICC KO 3 v Zim in SL 2002/03 at Colombo
9* 4 not out 2 W ICC KO 11 v Eng in SL 2002/03 at Colombo
16 4 run out 1 W ICC KO SF v SA in SL 2002/03 at Colombo
0 4 lbw 2 W 5th ODI v NZ in NZ 2002/03 at Wellington
1 4 caught wk 2 W 6th ODI v NZ in NZ 2002/03 at Auckland

as you can see clearly that same tendulkar failed in the entire 99 wc batting at 4, yet of course we all know that if he had batted 4 in the 03 edition india would have won the cup. its also interesting to note that he failed in his last 6 innings at 4(7 if you count the match in NZ where he batted at 3) so his being sent back to the top was justifiable. the 38 average is also inflated by his 140* against kenya in the 99 wc so it should probably be a lot lower than that.

So Kaif, who averages 31 in his supposed "in-position" position, plus 33.75 one place down from that, far less than he does at seven\eight combined, is as good as Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid?
Forgive me, but I think not..

look at it in context, all his scores have come when hes been sent in to bat early, his 87* vs england, 111 against zimbabwe, 68 against NZ, 95 vs SA,64 vs NZ and the 71 vs pak

Ganguly, meanwhile, has averaged 24.67 when batting at four, five or six - sure, that suggests he's a master of the middle-overs.
Dravid certainly is a master of the middle-overs IMO, but equally to give him and Tendulkar the best chance of batting for most of them is the best formula if you ask me.

nope ganguly has been good at 3 so he bats at 3, dravid at 4, kaif at 5 and yuvraj at 6 suggests to me to be the right batting order. theres no place for tendulkar there IMO

And as I have told you many, many times, there are plenty of players who have failed the way Chopra, Stephen Waugh, Atapattu and Rhodes (I'd hardly call Atapattu or Rhodes "great" batsman - very good, yes, underachievers, yes, but "great", no) did in their early careers, who have not gone on to achieve anything.

yes but if you had done the same thing with those players then they wouldnt have got their chance to become as good as they are today. that suggests to me that they deserve more chances at the intl level.

Wrong again. I've never said that I'll dismiss a player automatically just because he hasn't achieved my ideal in 15 innings or so.
Believe it or not, I too do believe in giving chances beyond that which has been earned to those who I believe have potential.
I do not know, so therefore you certainly do not, whether I would have given Rhodes, Stephen Waugh and Atapattu the chances they got. I reckon, looking at their domestic averages, I probably would have.

yes and looking at chopras appalling first class average of nearly 50, he clearly doesnt deserve any more chances.....

Yes, he scored at Trent Bridge when the ball was turning. Yes, he scored in the NZ-Ind 2002\03 series when it was seaming all over the place.

and how many other seaming or turning wickets has he played on?? not many and the fact that he has succeeded in several of them suggests to me that he cant be considered a flat track bully.

However, mostly he hasn't and it certainly was not turning in Sri Lanka in 2003, otherwise there would have been far lower scores than there were.

rubbish , you didnt even watch that series! yes the first test wicket was flat, but the 2nd test wicket was a blatant turner. paul wiseman took 4 wickets in the first innings and the totals in the respective innings were 305,298,183,72/1, those arent high scores at all. and surprise surprise richardson scored 2 50s. any more stuff from handpicking.com?

New Zealand were exceptionally lucky in Sri Lanka and India that they did not encounter any real turn, otherwise they would have scored much lower scores and very probably have been beaten very comfortably.
So, in conclusion, Richardson has played the odd good innings where there has been something for the bowlers. I have always described him as a "flat-track-bully" which would suggest to most people a batsman who isn't that good when the ball is moving at all - whether seam, turn, swing or drift. However, he has played well in bowler-friendly conditions occasionally. No rule is without exceptions..

any more tripe that you are going to bring up? ramprakash is don bradman's third cousin so he must be great?
id like to see how many innings on seamer friendly or turning conditions that richardson has failed on!

Yes, as demonstrated by the fact that he can bowl all types of penetrative techniques.

oh yes bowlers have penetrative techniques too now dont they?

McGrath, meanwhile, can't, and on the rare occasion that the batting's good on a decent wicket he'll not threaten.
On a seaming or up-and-down pitch he's deadly and you'll not get a better bowler. In fact, he's exactly like Pollock.

yet hes taken so very many wickets in non seaming conditions, the 15.35 average in the most spinner friendly conditions in india in 2001 certainly is a valid example isnt it?

 

[Richard]

it is still no justification for a permanent position in the England team...just face it, he wasnt made of the right stuff to truely be considered international standard on a consistant level, he had many opportunities to do so, but didnt.

By the way, what were Ramprakash's first chance averages during this golden spell

I'm not totally sure, certainly the few big innings were all chanceless, he did get a couple of unfair dismissals but I can't believe there won't be a dropped catch or six somewhere.
All I want people to recognise is that Ramprakash didn't make a career averaging 26, he averaged 16 for 6 years, then made a significant improvement and only failed in 2 series out of his last 8. He was also forced to open the batting and that made an impact.
I have never said that he could have many complaints about being dropped the second time (2001\02) but he was unlucky to be left-out after 1999.
And he should never have been picked where he was picked in 2000, so that doesn't matter.

 

[Richard]

and someone like ramprakash failed in 10 out of his 11 years, must be a proven failure!
and i notice how you distort steve waughs career. steve waugh wasnt a failure for 6 consecutive years as you make it out to be. he had 3 mediocre years where he was still averaging over 30, then had one brilliant year where he averaged 86, 3 miserable,ramprakshesque years and then the rest was history.
and if you managed to look at rhodes' record clearly you would see that in his first 2 years he averaged in the high 40s and then had 4 miserable so where you come up with those 5 poor years from i'll never know. interestingly enough in 2 of those years he only played 2 test matches, and even though he failed in those 4 years he was a brilliant fielder and made the side because of that.

And if you managed to look at things series-by-series, even match-by-match, instead of relatively-speaking wholly useless year-by-year averages you might get a better picture.

 

[Richard]

something which ramprakash wasnt capable enough of doing, that is playing a matchwinning or a match saving innings.

Except the 48 which played a huge part in turning the Sixth Test in 1997, and the Murali-defying 42 on the final day at The Oval which came pretty close to saving the day and was only ended when a completely unplayable delivery was bowled, and except the 67* which turned-out to be crucial in the Fourth Test in 1998.
No, he wasn't capable of doing so at all!
He didn't do it very much, as demonstrated by his average, but he wasn't incapable of doing so altogether.

oh yes in the same way that ramprakash failed in 7 out of his last 8 tests before the third test in india?

No, not like that at all.
Vaughan was regularly out in single-figures, and there was a sameness about his dismissals that shouted-out "not Test-opening-batsman material".
Ramprakash didn't make a single single-figure score between his recall in 2001 and his final Test.

 

[tooextracool]

And have you ever heard me say he did? No.
He was extremely fortunate to get a recall for that Sixth Ashes Test in 1997, but he took the bull by the horns, scored 47 on a tricky pitch, forced his way onto the winter tour and hasn't looked back from then on - except when he played New Zealand and, wholly understandibly, when he was forced to open.

so the fact that he didnt even deserve to be in the side in the first place says that he cant be unfortunate to be dropped in 2002 as well.

And no, Chopra hasn't failed like Tendulkar - because Tendulkar's average of 41 after the same number of innings as Chopra isn't going to be a failure in most people's opinion.

no you said that 10-15 innings would be enough time to judge whether a player is good enough or not and after 13 innings tendulkars average was in the high 20s

None of the wickets in that series offered anything more or less to the bowlers than another - except that Antigua one where there was help for the seamers early on.

yes but his failure was in the 2nd innings of that test match on the flattest wicket in the series.

The whole point of good wristspinners is they can conquer any conditions - MacGill, however, is not a good wristspinner, he is a poor one.
And in that West Indies series (which, incidentally, no, I didn't have the chance to watch), he averaged 45.09 if you exclude The Third Test. So your "if you exclude the last" comment works in reverse. However, given that he actually bowled like a good wristspinner in that match, which is very clear, it's not fair to remove it the same way it's not fair to remove any of the other three and say "he bowled well in the series". The fact of the matter is, he bowled poorly in the series and ended-up with an average of 34.

no he was instrumental in the success of the first 3 tests so he bowled extremely well.

No, I just don't set much stall by one-off Tests (and I don't call them "series"), and nor did I "miss" the West Indies series in 2000 - in fact, if you'll take a look, I mentioned it..

why dont you look at one off tests? considering that warne's place in the side was fixed thats all he got at the time and when he did he bowled well and picked up wickets. why shouldnt it be considered i'll never understand. it was against a quality team wasnt it?
so you cant count either?
the way i see it hes had 1 good series against england, 1 good series against pakistan and 2 good series against the WI.

And if you had the sense to ignore strike-rates and look at averages, which are the most-commonly-looked-at figures for a reason, you'd see that MacGill has very rarely been effective in authentic Test-cricket, except in a couple of one-offs against South Africa, a debut series in Pakistan and a series against England in 1998\99 when they were as hopeless against any wristspin, however rubbish, as you could wish to see.

sorry but how stupid is this? SR is the most important figure for any test match spinner because its far more important for them to take wickets than give away runs. id definetly take 2/58 over 1/25, especially considering the quality of the pace bowlers in the side it seems that keeping the runs down isnt completely necessary.

 

[tooextracool]

And if you managed to look at things series-by-series, even match-by-match, instead of relatively-speaking wholly useless year-by-year averages you might get a better picture.

why because it proves you wrong? you were the one that came up with the idea that rhodes failed for the first 5 yrs and waugh failed for 6, when i show you that you were wrong you characteristically change topic.

 

[tooextracool]

Except the 48 which played a huge part in turning the Sixth Test in 1997, and the Murali-defying 42 on the final day at The Oval which came pretty close to saving the day and was only ended when a completely unplayable delivery was bowled, and except the 67* which turned-out to be crucial in the Fourth Test in 1998.
No, he wasn't capable of doing so at all!
He didn't do it very much, as demonstrated by his average, but he wasn't incapable of doing so altogether.

2 of those scores were part of a losing cause in any case, just like most of the other ramprakash innings. the 67* could barely be considered a match winning innings considering that butcher scored more than him and also considering that england winning had more to do with the bowling of fraser and cork and then some good 2nd inning battin from atherton. interestingly all those innings you mentiond came over 4 years before his last test.

No, not like that at all.
Vaughan was regularly out in single-figures, and there was a sameness about his dismissals that shouted-out "not Test-opening-batsman material".
Ramprakash didn't make a single single-figure score between his recall in 2001 and his final Test.

and he only scored 1 100 in that period too....yes i'll agree that vaughan wasnt batting in the right position, in fact i posted it on here at the time. but vaughan when he scored he scored big and that was represented in those 3 big 100s that he scored in that period. ramprakash's inability to score 50s often enough showed everyone really that mentally he wasnt good enough to play international cricket

 

[marc71178]

A proven failure would not be incapable of success at the international level

So what would he be then?

Proven failure is pretty conclusive.

 

[marc71178]

Ramprakash's real problem was not converting 20s and 30s to half-centuries and 70*s.

No, his real problem was not having the physical or mental ability to cope with International Cricket.

 

[marc71178]

Ramprakash didn't make a single single-figure score between his recall in 2001 and his final Test.

But more importantly he only got over 40 twice in 16 innings and averaged 33.94

However, since his 133 and 58 are clearly anomalies and don't agree with any trend of his in the past, I'm going to adopt your method and strike them from the record, thus he only averaged 25.14 in that time.

 

[Arjun]

Some 'other' combination got 11 votes. What is that combination? I hope it' not Parthiv Patel opening the innings.

 

[Raj123]

Some 'other' combination got 11 votes. What is that combination? I hope it' not Parthiv Patel opening the innings.

sehwag, yuvraj??