stephen
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I think you'll find that many bowlers and batsmen have substantial differences between home and away records - even those widely considered the best. Murali averages 20 at home and 28 away. Bedser has virtually identical stats to Anderson. Kumble averages 25 at home and 35 away. And on the batting side, the aforementioned Warner probably has the largest home/ away split of them all.Ya, fair play.
The question for me is do we regard 19 (lara) or 21 (ponting) as fundamentally different to 33 fot jimmy?
It is not a question of comparing actual quality. They are atgs in my book, and jimmy is not. But we do need to apply the same principle to both., even if the magnitude differs.
Home/ away differentials tend to be influenced by many factors. Pace bowlers don't seem to get as large home/ away gaps as spinners. Subcontinental batsmen struggle to adjust to South African and Australian pace and bounce, while the reverse also tends to be true for Aus/SA batsmen facing spin in the subcontinent.
Of course the opposite is sometimes true as well. Both Border and Waugh had better overseas records than home records. Barrington was monstrous overseas and less so at home. Graham Smith was far better in foreign conditions than at home. It is typical for a dodgy finger spinner to find fame in a test series in India only to be dropped forever more afterwards.
Perhaps we should be rating these players more highly for their overseas efforts but the other side of the coin is that home conditions tend to be more important because winning at home is important for the health of the sport in that country. So I guess there's pros and cons to consider.
Personally I tend to rate overseas performances more highly than home performances, which is why I rate Border in the West Indies so highly and Smith's 2017 India tour as being one of the finest performances of all time. But it would be foolish to call a player like Warner or Anderson bad because they are only amazing at home. Flawed, perhaps, but not bad, but also not great outside their home niche.