Reality of 99.4 Average?

[srbhkshk]

People who are claiming batting has become easier are either saying that the batsman have become worse (given that the averages have remained the same) Or that the bowlers have massively improved, which one is it(again given that the averages have remained the same)?

Don't confuse tests with ODIs, test batting is no easier today then it was in the 50s, if anything the bowling standards are a lot sharper now.

 

[trundler]

I don't think it's become easier. I'm saying that batsmen have a bunch of new advantages to counter the improved fielding and bowling standards.

You could claim that openers have gotten worse because of LO cricket though.

 

[trundler]

One thing I agree with is that those extra 30ish tests Ponting and Dravid played make a huge difference that's often overlooked. 150+ tests is truly a staggering feat. But hey, Bradman may well have smacked 10k runs if not for the war.

 

[Red]

Of course, there is that possibility - I'm not denying that. It's possible he would have done the same and averaged 90+.

It's just my opinion that what is more likely is that Bradman probably would have averaged somewhere between 60-75 (maybe 60 is too low - let's go 65-80 then) and that's because of how increasingly difficult it is to average anywhere close to that these days (especially over a whole career - we'll have to see how Smith does...). You don't see it anymore in the test arena, whereas there are plenty of instances of players hitting high 50s and even touching 60 in the past.

Depends how you define "plenty". There really aren't that many instances of players averaging high 50s or 60.

In fact, there's only 16 guys who have played 20 + tests and averaged more than 55 in the entire history of tests.

Only 6 guys who have played more than 20 tests have averaged 60+ (Bradman, Smith, Voges, Pollock, Headley, Sutcliffe).

I'm unsure what your point is. You say it's "increasingly difficult it is to average anywhere close to that these days", yet we have seen Smith (and Voges and Labuschagne) as outliers, averaging 60ish, in the same way Bradman's contemporaries (Headley, Sutcliffe) did. So nothing has changed, apart from the fact no one is averaging 100...

 

[AndrewB]

OTOH, only about 6% of the people who've played 20+ Tests debuted between the wars, so for them to include 3 of the 6 with an average of 60+ suggests it was an easier era than most to achieve that.

 

[stephen]

OTOH, only about 6% of the people who've played 20+ Tests debuted between the wars, so for them to include 3 of the 6 with an average of 60+ suggests it was an easier era than most to achieve that.

Or it's easier to have statistical outliers when you have smaller sample sizes.

 

[the big bambino]

Yes and not only that it had no impact on the decadal batting averages which remain fairly constant.

 

[trundler]

Headley barely creeps in, like Voges and Pollock. Plus, his debut series was against a literal 2nd XI and I've always thought one team participating in 2 tests at once was a bit of a farce. Sutcliffe still stands though and Hammond too kinda sorta (only brought down by a couple of tests he really shouldn't have played) but that's opening another can of worms.