What worth are rankings anymore?

[Flem274*]

I must say the competitiveness of test cricket really has gotten good since almost everyone found a decent attack.

 

[Flem274*]

Anderson 98 @ 23
Broad 64 @ 24
Bresnan 31 @ 20 or Tremlett 36 @ 25 or Finn 46 @ 25
Swann 87 @ 27

Steyn 76 @ 22
Philander 51 @ 14
Morkel 61 @ 26
Tahir 18 @ 37

Siddle 54 @ 26
Hilfenhaus 48 @ 27
Pattinson 25 @ 18
Lyon 29 @ 28
Watson 29 @ 23

Gul 61 @ 29
Cheema 20 @ 27
Ajmal 89 @ 23
Rehman 64 @ 26 or Riaz 17 @ 34

Edwards 32 @ 29
Rampaul 31 @ 29
Sammy 32 @ 32
Bishoo 39 @ 36

Martin 45 @ 30
Bracewell 30 @ 22
Gillespie 11 @ 22 or Boult 8 @ 33 or Southee (censored)
Vettori 40 @ 35

Herath 62 @ 27
The rest (censored)

Zaheer 46 @ 25
Kumar 27 @ 25
Yadav 23 @ 32

Need to go now (can you tell I'm procrastinating?) but bowling is back baby.

 

[marc71178]

Last 2 years

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/en...0;spanval1=span;template=results;type=bowling

That truly shows how **** Sharma is.

 

[zaremba]

One thing rankings never tell you is who the best is now. What they do (with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy) is to tell you how good teams have been in the fairly recent past, ie the period over which the performance is measured. 6-12 months ago England may have been the best team in the world. Not now. Same with India immediately before them. Takes a while for the ratings to catch up.

 

[honestbharani]

The test number 1 ranking is more clear cut when someone is some distance ahead... at the moment there's three good teams (England, India, South Africa) and Pakistan and Sri Lanka are also pretty dangerous at home. It just means the ranking will get passed around for a while I reckon.

You are being way too nice classifying our team in its present state as "good".

 

[honestbharani]

Not all that surprising seeing as you don't know what you're talking about either.

Not all that surprising that you two can't put out better posts than än "I hope it is sarcastic" oneliner and an equally silly gif...


Not that I think English bowling hasn't been awesome.. but God I wish some of these posts were like the English bowling than like the English batting..

 

[smash84]

One thing rankings never tell you is who the best is now. What they do (with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy) is to tell you how good teams have been in the fairly recent past, ie the period over which the performance is measured. 6-12 months ago England may have been the best team in the world. Not now. Same with India immediately before them. Takes a while for the ratings to catch up.

I agree with HB there. India have been dismal of late (for almost a year now). Can't see them as a good team in this state tbh

 

[unam]

so does anyone have insight on how ICC calculates ratings?

 

[Arachnodouche]

I think the quality of cricket has generally deteriorated. The present state of teams makes for exciting cricket, pulsating cricket, but I'm not sure I'd put it on the same page as Ind-Aus '01 or the Ashes '05. The bowling has stepped up a peg or two as compared to the previous decade when there were 5 all-time greats dominating the game. Batting has surely plummeted, even fielding seems to be experiencing a bit of a downturn; traditionally strong fielding sides like Australia seem to be mucking up far too often these days.

 

[Jono]

That's just perception. 2001 and 2005 had some seriously poor cricket too, with plenty of dropped catches and horrible collapses. But it was exciting.

 

[honestbharani]

yeah, I really find it hard to qualify the "quality" of cricket, tbh.. It is tough for me to tell people if the level of the game was high or low even in games I participate in. So to say that from watching games as an audience, live or on TV, is just icky, for me... The same outswinger may look like an awesome delivery to one batsman and a par-for-course one to another. Just so many intangibles there...

 

[Arachnodouche]

I think declining batting standards are fairly easily quantifiable. How many teams can pile on 600 runs on a Headingley '02 sort of opening day pitch/conditions anymore? Teams are hardly getting past 50 overs in testing conditions, so bowler endurance, patience, etc isn't exactly being put under examination.

 

[Spark]

Can't win, can they? Batsmen score lots of runs = must be a road, batsmen aren't that good. Bowlers do well = batsmen must be ****, bowlers aren't that good.

 

[Flem274*]

I think the quality of cricket has generally deteriorated. The present state of teams makes for exciting cricket, pulsating cricket, but I'm not sure I'd put it on the same page as Ind-Aus '01 or the Ashes '05. The bowling has stepped up a peg or two as compared to the previous decade when there were 5 all-time greats dominating the game. Batting has surely plummeted, even fielding seems to be experiencing a bit of a downturn; traditionally strong fielding sides like Australia seem to be mucking up far too often these days.

You see, this line of argument really ****s me off. I don't mean to single you out here, because you are far from the only person who believes this.

If every person who said what you have said was right, then cricket was at its peak in the 1700s and has declined ever since. It's rose tinted glasses and nostalgia, and nothing more. The Ashes 2005 featured Ashley Giles ffs.

You know how you just said bowling has improved but batting has gotten worse? They're directly related to each other. You cannot get periods where every batsman averages 40-50 and every bowler 30-20. The maths doesn't work. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. The batting is currently **** because ****s like Philander are walking all over them. In the 00s, batsmen walked all over bowling attacks.

International cricket was, is, and always will be, cyclic and ever changing. Just like individual matches, and series in isolation, sometimes bowling will dominate a period and sometimes batting. Sometimes they will be fairly even, in which case you get a whole pile of batsmen averaging in the late 30s and bowlers in the low 30s with a few stand outs in each side. You know what people will say then? They will say everyone sucks and Ponting/Marshall would destroy the bowlers/batsmen in that era.

It's just blatant crap. I've been waiting for someone to point to this mythical pinnacle of cricket standards for some time. Some point me to the 80s, others the 90s, but in those eras there were some very **** teams, **** players and on the flipside there were some very dominant players, who were part of dominant teams.

Someone has to win, and someone has to lose.

 

[Flem274*]

I think declining batting standards are fairly easily quantifiable. How many teams can pile on 600 runs on a Headingley '02 sort of opening day pitch/conditions anymore? Teams are hardly getting past 50 overs in testing conditions, so bowler endurance, patience, etc isn't exactly being put under examination.

I don't remember what that ground was like in 2002, but if it was green, only the very best teams in history ever would. If it was flat, then wheel the ****ing thing out against a current mid-table side and watch the runs flow.

 

[Spark]

You see, this line of argument really ****s me off. I don't mean to single you out here, because you are far from the only person who believes this.

If every person who said what you have said was right, then cricket was at its peak in the 1700s and has declined ever since. It's rose tinted glasses and nostalgia, and nothing more. The Ashes 2005 featured Ashley Giles ffs.

You know how you just said bowling has improved but batting has gotten worse? They're directly related to each other. You cannot get periods where every batsman averages 40-50 and every bowler 30-20. The maths doesn't work. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. The batting is currently **** because ****s like Philander are walking all over them. In the 00s, batsmen walked all over bowling attacks.

International cricket was, is, and always will be, cyclic and ever changing. Just like individual matches, and series in isolation, sometimes bowling will dominate a period and sometimes batting. Sometimes they will be fairly even, in which case you get a whole pile of batsmen averaging in the late 30s and bowlers in the low 30s with a few stand outs in each side. You know what people will say then? They will say everyone sucks and Ponting/Marshall would destroy the bowlers/batsmen in that era.

It's just blatant crap. I've been waiting for someone to point to this mythical pinnacle of cricket standards for some time. Some point me to the 80s, others the 90s, but in those eras there were some very **** teams, **** players and on the flipside there were some very dominant players, who were part of dominant teams.

Someone has to win, and someone has to lose.

Or basically what I said

Good post nonetheless, absolutely right. Sometimes we have to accept that, yes, _____ really is that good.

 

[Jono]

Yeah happy with that effort Flem. Good stuff.

If Arachnodouche was here in 2006 he'd have seen how everyone was saying the batting quality was not really that good, just the bowlers were poo.

 

[smash84]

Can't win, can they? Batsmen score lots of runs = must be a road, batsmen aren't that good. Bowlers do well = batsmen must be ****, bowlers aren't that good.

true.....

I do agree with a lot of what you say but I also do believe that if you watch cricket (and not just glance at scorecards) you can tell if the level of cricket being played is good or bad. There must be a middle ground somewhere

When the 2 Ws used to bowl I knew I was watching some high quality pace bowling. When Ambrose and Walsh were bowling I could see that it wasn't easy for the batsmen to hit them around the park. With McGrath's bowling line and length (and the bounce he would get off a good length) you knew that it was just good bowling.

Same with quality batsmen I feel.

 

[Arachnodouche]

You see, this line of argument really ****s me off. I don't mean to single you out here, because you are far from the only person who believes this.

If every person who said what you have said was right, then cricket was at its peak in the 1700s and has declined ever since. It's rose tinted glasses and nostalgia, and nothing more. The Ashes 2005 featured Ashley Giles ffs.

You know how you just said bowling has improved but batting has gotten worse? They're directly related to each other. You cannot get periods where every batsman averages 40-50 and every bowler 30-20. The maths doesn't work. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. The batting is currently **** because ****s like Philander are walking all over them. In the 00s, batsmen walked all over bowling attacks.

International cricket was, is, and always will be, cyclic and ever changing. Just like individual matches, and series in isolation, sometimes bowling will dominate a period and sometimes batting. Sometimes they will be fairly even, in which case you get a whole pile of batsmen averaging in the late 30s and bowlers in the low 30s with a few stand outs in each side. You know what people will say then? They will say everyone sucks and Ponting/Marshall would destroy the bowlers/batsmen in that era.

It's just blatant crap. I've been waiting for someone to point to this mythical pinnacle of cricket standards for some time. Some point me to the 80s, others the 90s, but in those eras there were some very **** teams, **** players and on the flipside there were some very dominant players, who were part of dominant teams.

Someone has to win, and someone has to lose.

I get what you're saying, and I'm not for rose-tinted glasses myself, but modern batsmen, be it a result of more slap-dash cricket or whatever, definitely seem ill-equipped to handle the challenges of Test match cricket. Taking nothing away from Philander's spectacular achievements, but I 'm just saying: Rahul Dravid batted 263 balls (from memory) for his 95 on debut at Lord's in 1996. How many Michael Clarke/Kane Williamson style counter-attacking/grinding, ass to the wall knocks are we seeing today?

 

[Flem274*]

true.....

I do agree with a lot of what you say but I also do believe that if you watch cricket (and not just glance at scorecards) you can tell if the level of cricket being played is good or bad. There must be a middle ground somewhere

When the 2 Ws used to bowl I knew I was watching some high quality pace bowling. When Ambrose and Walsh were bowling I could see that it wasn't easy for the batsmen to hit them around the park. With McGrath's bowling line and length (and the bounce he would get off a good length) you knew that it was just good bowling.

And Philander/Steyn/Broad/Anderson etc aren't bowling well?