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Viv Richards vs Herbert Sutcliffe

Who was the greater test batsman?

  • Viv Richards

    Votes: 18 72.0%
  • Herbert Sutcliffe

    Votes: 7 28.0%

  • Total voters
    25

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
And I include WSC matches, considering everyone who played them thought that they were the highest standard of cricket
I should probably include County matches in Test comparisons for a lot more cricketers then too.
 

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
I don't know why you keep mentioning this. Sutcliffe having a 60+ average his entire career doesn't really show consistency. It merely shows he had a phenomenal start to his career, averaging 75+ in his first 3 series. He had some bad series later on but because his good series came early in his career, he had a buffer which allowed his cumulative average to stay up. If you simply switched up the order of these series and Sutcliffe had started off with a few series averaging in the 30s and then had massive series later to slowly get his average up to 60 would you say he was less consistent? Of course not.

Also, Sutcliffe low key has a pretty big skew between his peak vs the rest of his career too. He averaged 70 in his first 38 tests. And only averaged a shade above 40 with only 1 hundred in his last 16.


That's not quite as consistent as you're making out imo.
No doubt he had a drop later on. But say compared to Viv’s discussed peak of 40/120 tests I’d take 38/54 tests any day.
 

Ashes81

State Vice-Captain
It's a really tough one to compare players from such different eras for all the reasons people have stated.

Also none of obviously saw Sutcliffe but he was was clearly a top notch player, one of the very best from his era.

Viv is the best batsman I've ever seen although there are many with better records. The main criticism I'd level at Viv, is that his record should have been better - he really should have been averaging around 60 not 50.

With Viv though, it was how he scored his runs rather than how many runs he scored that was so impressive. I've never seen any other batsman play so positively as he did. He could intimidate a bowling attack by his sheer presence. Even the way he walked to the crease was intimidating.

I'd go with Viv as I'd pick him above any other batsman that's played the game bar Bradman.
 

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
Oh and I’ll be clear, I have no problem with Viv being rated above Sutcliffe, I think they’re both excellent players, when it comes down to it a lot of these batsmen in the top 15-20 of all time can be interchangeable, with my preferences often changing. I don’t mind admitting either that I probably have a bit of a bias for pre-70’s players in general. The main things that annoy me with these two batsmen on here are Viv being compared with the very top batsman after Bradman (I think the likes of Sobers, Hobbs and Tendulkar are clearly better than him) and Sutcliffe almost seeming as an afterthought in many threads I’ve seen discussing openers, or even people calling Richards a better test batsman.
 

Shady Slim

International Coach
Side note: I've developed a habit of calling Sutcliffe "Sutters Sutcliffe" for some reason. I don't know how it started but I blame @Shady Slim and his shadyisms.
i do this for some bloke at work ("dodders dodwell") but i do think it's done around here for one or multiple cricketers too, but because it's at the point where it's reflexive rather than deliberate i can't think of who lmao! will sleep on it and hope i remember otherwise it'll gnaw at me too
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
i do this for some bloke at work ("dodders dodwell") but i do think it's done around here for one or multiple cricketers too, but because it's at the point where it's reflexive rather than deliberate i can't think of who lmao! will sleep on it and hope i remember otherwise it'll gnaw at me too
Forkers Faulkner on dayboo was a common one.
 

Godard

U19 Vice-Captain
I should probably include County matches in Test comparisons for a lot more cricketers then too.
The difference between County matches and WSC is a lot, cmon. WSC is considered by many to be the most competitive level of cricket played till then since it involved the best cricketers of that time: Lilee, Holding, Khan, Chappel(both), Richards(both) etc. Richards played it for 2 years at his physical peak and missed test matches played by the national side, who were anyway playing mediocre oppositions due to the best players of most countries(except India maybe) involved in WSC. So if anyways he would have cashed in on easier oppositions, people would have been criticising him not for playing WSC just like they do Gavaskar.
 
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Godard

U19 Vice-Captain
Richard’s peak is scoring some 4700+ runs at an average of 59-60 from 74-80 including WSC. Also Richards peak from 74-80 does consist of 40 or so odd matches along with 14 WSC matches , but he averages close to 50 from 84-88 at an SR of 77 as well in 44 test matches. He didn’t only play poorly post 80. He was mediocre in 82-83(averaging around 39-40, not exceptionally bad), but real decline only was 89-91. To choose Sutcliffe’s peak of 38/54 just because it is a higher proportion out of matches played is misleading, he played less than half tests Viv did and we wouldn’t know how he would perform in 100+ tests. Viv has a peak the length of Sutcliffe’s career from 74-80, and was the best batsmen from 84-88, because of average of 50 with SR of 77.
 
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a massive zebra

International Captain
It's a really tough one to compare players from such different eras for all the reasons people have stated.

Also none of obviously saw Sutcliffe but he was was clearly a top notch player, one of the very best from his era.

Viv is the best batsman I've ever seen although there are many with better records. The main criticism I'd level at Viv, is that his record should have been better - he really should have been averaging around 60 not 50.

With Viv though, it was how he scored his runs rather than how many runs he scored that was so impressive. I've never seen any other batsman play so positively as he did. He could intimidate a bowling attack by his sheer presence. Even the way he walked to the crease was intimidating.

I'd go with Viv as I'd pick him above any other batsman that's played the game bar Bradman.
Viv played more positively than Sehwag or Gilchrist?
 

ankitj

Hall of Fame Member
As such all the players have already been compared to all other players in threads like these:

 

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
As such all the players have already been compared to all other players in threads like these:

What we really need is the 50 worst batsmen and bowlers threads.
 

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