Weak Ends to A career

[Mr Miyagi]

Steve Smith though

He's now played more tests than Bradmam so we can hardly say his career hasn't been long enough

Smithy has been outstanding, and I take your point over the test matches played, but until that India 2014/15 tour to Australia, he was best known as either being a Fab 4 prediction of Crowe (Aug 29 2014) http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/774705.html
or the former leg spinner with the strange technique.

He really hadn't even won over a lot of the Aussie cricket fan support at this point from what I've read on threads on Australian social media. That India series changed that for him at home.

So I think while Smithy has blazed through 41 more tests on his way to or soon thereafter as a superstar, he is still fresh in a lot of people's thinking. I didn't quite believe in him 100% till he fought hard and made runs in India.

But he did and it was damn impressive.

It is going to be interesting how he comes back and how long he will last with his hand eye legside flick styles. But his peak has been impressive.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Steve Smith though

He's now played more tests than Bradmam so we can hardly say his career hasn't been long enough

Her name was Jessie

 

[Bolo]

Steve Smith though

He's now played more tests than Bradmam so we can hardly say his career hasn't been long enough

It's a bit early to be rating Smith IMO. 4 great years doesn't make a career. It would be practically impossible for him to fail to make this list, but I'm not adding him yet just the same

 

[MartinB]

It is a recent trend. Aus was a tough place to bat, but pitches have been soft this century.

Border 57/46
Waugh 56/48
Ponting 46/57
Hayden, Clarke, Hussey, Warner +-40 +-60

Cook is the same home and away. Add him to Root and England doesn't look the same (IDK anyone else's stats)
All the recent top RSA players are either about the same home/away or better away.

While Australia was a bit tougher to bat in the eighties and early nineties. Borders (and probably Waughs) technique was better suited to Overseas Conditions.
Other Australian batsmen (e.g. David Boon - Home 46/40 and Dean Jones - 48/42) of that period did better in Australia than.

 

[Black_Warrior]

Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar.

Ponting was averaging 57 at one point, ended with a tame 51

Tendulkar was averaging 56 around end of 2010 (South Africa series) but ended with 53

 

[OverratedSanity]

Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar.

Ponting was averaging 57 at one point, ended with a tame 51

Tendulkar was averaging 56 around end of 2010 (South Africa series) but ended with 53

Ponting was averaging exactly 59.99 after 100 tests and Tendulkar after that great series in SA was at 56.9

 

[bagapath]

Gordon Greenidge averaged 50 after 60 tests. finished at 44 after 108.

 

[a massive zebra]

Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar.

Ponting was averaging 57 at one point, ended with a tame 51

Tendulkar was averaging 56 around end of 2010 (South Africa series) but ended with 53

Pretty sure Tendulkar was averaging 59 at one point.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Pretty sure Tendulkar was averaging 59 at one point.

That was way earlier, maybe sometime in 2003 before the tennis elbow slump

 

[Bolo]

While Australia was a bit tougher to bat in the eighties and early nineties. Borders (and probably Waughs) technique was better suited to Overseas Conditions.
Other Australian batsmen (e.g. David Boon - Home 46/40 and Dean Jones - 48/42) of that period did better in Australia than.

You would expect to see variation like this unless a country is a ridiculously easy or difficult place to bat. IDK how representative any of these guys are- I just checked the stats of the two best of their times. Perhaps Boon and Jones are more representative- home advantage exists independently of the pitch conditions, but the discrepancy in their home/away averages is about 15%, which is fairly normal, and a far cry from the 50% we have been seeing this century.

Pretty sure Tendulkar was averaging 59 at one point.

59.16 in his 93rd test.

 

[the big bambino]

It's not really possible to single out individual away countries for performances any more. Teams are playing in too many venues. Sanga played in 11 countries, and only played more than 10 tests in two of them. Ponting played either one or two tests in 4 different countries. I'm not going to mark him down for not managing to average 40 in Zim given the fact that he only had one innings. I don't even mark him down too much for India, despite the fact that he played a lot there.

I tend to agree with your groups of countries idea. Ponting did well enough in the rest of Asia to make his India failing not so serious in this type of analysis. A lot of SC bats fall short on this. But not Sanga. He's very balanced if you look at successes and failures in groups of countries with similar pitches. Ponting is too, but he's just consistently not as good in this regard.

To try and group like this, with the possible exception of in Asia and outside Asia becomes very contrived though. Home away is a much simpler way to look at things, because it is universal.

Every player has peaks and troughs. Ponting was a bit more extreme than most. But even for his peak (99-2006) he only averaged about the same away as Sanga did over an entire career, and Sanga had a monster peak himself. Ponting averaged 74 home in the period, so the discrepancy between home and away actually increases when examining his peak.

Pontings away average is good. I don't class him as a proper HTB or FTB as I would for a number of subsequent AUS bats. But he comes up short in comparison with just about any of his great contemporaries in this regard.

Actually universal figures are the most misleading metric of all. Which is why your conclusion on Ponting is erroneous. So for example Ponting's universal stat against India is an impressive 54. To leave it at that would suggest no difficulty with India's bowlers. But it disguises the facts that he averaged 86 at home and only 26 away. as the bowling personnel was much the same it suggests he had difficulty with Indian conditions.

You can meaningfully adjust for the quality of the opposition (Zim and BD for eg) and the proportion of matches a man plays against an opponent (Ponting in India for eg), but these adjustments would favour Ponting in comparison with Sanga. A point I alluded to when I speculated Sanga's overall record is misleadingly superior. Fact remains Sanga failed in three countries, Ponting really only one. Its only through a distortion of the universal home/away record that disguises Sanga's comparative inferiority. Ponting's fall in his away average is simply down to his last 2 years and not a feature of his whole career, which would be a necessary condition for your point to hold. It isn't so it doesn't. Because you have relied on the misleading universal stats.

 

[morgieb]

It's odd that this basically seems to happen to batsman but not bowlers all that much. Guess physicality has something to do with it but batsman who are still great at the end of their careers seem to be an anomaly.

 

[trundler]

Is no one going to say Mr Miyagi?

 

[OverratedSanity]

It's odd that this basically seems to happen to batsman but not bowlers all that much. Guess physicality has something to do with it but batsman who are still great at the end of their careers seem to be an anomaly.

Bowlers are just dropped sooner and aren't persisted with once they hit a really bad patch because of the perception that a physical decline affects them more.

 

[morgieb]

Is no one going to say Mr Miyagi?

this implies he had a strong start to his career

 

[morgieb]

Bowlers are just dropped sooner aren't persisted with once they hit a really bad patch because of the perception that a physical decline affects them more.

Yeah, fair point. I think bowlers also seem to cop the blame more when the side starts to struggle (se: Australia circa 2011, when in fact since the 09 Ashes it's mostly been our batsmen that have been costing us matches)

 

[Starfighter]

Yeah, fair point. I think bowlers also seem to cop the blame more when the side starts to struggle (se: Australia circa 2011, when in fact since the 09 Ashes it's mostly been our batsmen that have been costing us matches)

Or the English strategy recently 'the batting failed, let's drop the third seamer'.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Bowlers are just dropped sooner and aren't persisted with once they hit a really bad patch because of the perception that a physical decline affects them more.

Was going to say this. If anything bowlers tend to decline even more rapidly, they just don't keep playing for years

 

[R!TTER]

Was going to say this. If anything bowlers tend to decline even more rapidly, they just don't keep playing for years

Does Ishant Sharma count

 

[cnerd123]

I think it takes longer to determine if a batsman is past their prime too. It's not visually apparent if a batsman has lost his physical ability, unless they are facing pace bowling (then it's really clear they're past it - see Ponting and Dravid). The losses in reflexes/timing/coordination are all so subtle that it just looks like they're making small mistakes, and in between dismissals they usually continue play good shots, giving the impression of still being Test quality. It takes an extended sequence of low scores and small errors accumulating before we can conclusively say that a great batsman is now done. In some cases we see technical flaws creep in, as a result of their bodies being broken down and not being able to move the same way, but even that has to be going on for a good number of games before we know that it is a permanent problem, and not just a minor glitch that can be fixed in the nets. This can take 10-20 Tests, leading to the 'Weak ends'

With a bowler you're going to get to see them bowl for 20-50 overs in a Test, and that's plenty of data to determine if they're beyond their prime or not. A bowler who is past their prime is a lot more visually apparent - they're unable to touch the same speeds/revs they used to, they've lost some of their variations due to their body being unable to bowl them, their action looks labored or is falling apart. Even if they're able to still manage the workload, the moment they prove to be ineffective they get dropped. So we don't see these prolonged 'Weak ends' for a lot of bowlers, and the cases we do see it it's because that bowler brings in secondary skills to the table (batting/captaincy) or because the side in question just has no other alternatives.