Who doesn't?
. It wouldn't mean your bowling was assisting your team in match situations. It just accumulates into a large wicket-pile.
Exactly. I'm not too sure what ohtani's jacket is trying to get at, if you bowl enough then chances are you will take wickets. Average and Strike Rate must be taken into consideration, not just the number of wickets taken.Who doesn't?
You can take 800 wickets for what anybody cares. If you let off 100 runs a piece and take a 100 balls to take each wicket it would just mean you bowled and lived a lot
You have to be good enough to get the chance to bowl. If Sobers really had been poor at bowling, I assume he wouldn't have been given the ball.
Nobody is arguing that he was a poor bowler, just that he is over-rated as a bowler which isn't true IMO. The thing with Sobers was that he was good enough to bowl 3 different kinds of bowling and that is one reason why his average suffered. He filled the gap in order to get team balance right, and that is a very valuable asset.
Ok, let's say a bowler had 200 wickets and averaged 40 runs per wicket at a strike rate of 96.
Sobers was an all-rounder. All he had to do is be economical (which he was) - and pick up a wicket here and there (which he often did).
Right, so he wasn't playing for his average nor was he playing as a bowler -- just contributing to the team in whatever way he could -- so why should we be concerned with his average?
That's fine and please don't think I don't respect your views, because I do and if I might say so you've put your points prett damn well imo - I just don't happen to agree with them on this point, or abide by the same approach to the points you are making.
On a related note, how the hell is it possible to be a selfish bowler? I'm trying to think of a way, but I really just can't.
His average is a reflection of his ability with the ball. His battting is his strong point and his bowling comes second to that, although it's not to say that his bowling was unimportant, which would be a lie. He was not in the team as a specialist bowler, but often he could do the job of 3 different bowlers, depending on the needs of the team.
stats don't lie. Of that I have no doubt. But they never tell the whole story unless the ppl take into account various other factors that wud have influenced those stats. By pure stats, cricket is #2 spectator sport in the world, or at least close to #2.
Fine points, but to clarify: I am not advocating their performances as they aged had meant Imran was better than Sobers, for example. No, what I meant is that it's different to pick out a part of a player's career in which he was indeed great at that discipline, to where you look at him totally a changed player of that discipline. I am not regarding their form but their skill.
, well I was not saying one person can actually do that. I was trying to convey an extreme and to get the point across that taking lots of wickets doesn't mean anything if your average is poor and so is your strike rate. Because, really, it means you didn't help your team at all but just accumulated wickets.
nope, the biggest part has to be having watched the player play and also his contemporaries, having an idea of what being a "good" player in that era was like vis-a-vis the other eras and u can't do all that if u weren't even born at that time and are just passing judgement on a player based on his numbers alone..... Imran Khan thinks he is not as good as Sobers too, not just others. Guys like Gavaskar and Chappell, who rate Imran very very high, esp. as a bowler have said that Sobers is the best.
yeah, but I have been saying that for ages in this thread and no one wants to take these into account. Obviously, the only stats that matter are Imran's and other bowlers' of the post Sobers era's bowling averages and how Sobers is "poor" compared to them.
Shouldn't "perspective" by definition include the fact that his stats need to be compared vis--vis the bowlers and batters of that era than ones of the latter eras?
Maybe so, could you normalise his stats then? To me, regardless of era, an average of 34 and a strike rate of 92 with little 4-fers and 5-fers wouldn't translate into much else than what has been said. I've heard of series averages being inflated but not era averages being inflated that much.
nope, for all rounders, esp one who always bowled the type that the pitch gave least help to, I think it is a fair enough figure, esp. if the best bowlers of that era were averaging mid 20s. Combining that with his enormous batting potential (people only say that he didn't do justice to his talent, in terms of batting average) and the fact that he performed against the best almost all the time (the World XI test match stats don't get counted but take a look at his performances then). I think his average is decent enough for him to be regarded as a good enough bowler at the international level.
But by that accord, Sobers was not only a great batsmen but a great bowler - which I find really hard to believe. Sobers was a batting all-rounder who was handy with the ball. That's about as much as I can believe right now.
