Average age of test cricketers increasing?

[Pratters]

That really is just about the most painful, arrogant and snotty argument that I've ever seen on here. If your posts were worthy of more debate than his, they'd probably get it. You've no right to tell someone what he may or may not argue; it's his argument. And I, for one, am finding it fascinating.

I have every right to tell my views as long as I am not insulting some one personally and stuff. I don't think x shouldn't reply to posts, just that x shouldn't necessarily reply to each post.

 

[neville cardus]

I have every right to tell my views as long as I am not insulting some one personally and stuff. I don't think x shouldn't reply to posts, just that x shouldn't necessarily reply to each post.

I fail to see how that makes it any better. There's an annoying, tacit, deep-seated understanding, it seems, that he who starts the thread owns it. Utter bollocks, I say.

 

[biased indian]

thats upto him rite......if he is always talking alone then we can understand he always evokes some response from somebody..its not that it always the same guys who is talking with him...try to live with Rich thats the best thing u can do

 

[neville cardus]

thats upto him rite......if he is always talking alone then we can understand he always evokes some response from somebody..its not that it always the same guys who is talking with him...try to live with Rich thats the best thing u can do

Hear, hear.

 

[Pratters]

I fail to see how that makes it any better. There's an annoying, tacit, deep-seated understanding, it seems, that he who starts the thread owns it. Utter bollocks, I say.

Haha. You brush aside a point by saying:

I fail to see how that makes it any better.

Yawn. Dire way to debate.

In other news, your perception is misplaced and deserves another yawn. Good night.

 

[Pratters]

thats upto him rite......if he is always talking alone then we can understand he always evokes some response from somebody..its not that it always the same guys who is talking with him...try to live with Rich thats the best thing u can do

It certainly isn't upto me what he does and what he doesn't. You think it's a fair enough approach he adopts because its not always the same guys who is talking with him. I obviously don't. Will agree to disagree here. Cheers.

 

[Pratters]

You have to be a registered cricinfo user to read it. Any chance of a quick C&P (crediting author, obv) for those of us who aren't?

Fortifying the Over-Forties

By Nick Mason

When he appeared in the first Lord's Test of 2003, Alec Stewart was already past his 40th birthday. The man who scored 100 in his 100th Test on the Queen Mother's 100th birthday might also have been expected to make himself the 100th player to play in a Test aged 40 or above.

In fact, Stewart was No. 102 - Jimmy Cook of South Africa was the 100th. Stewart might, however, be the last - at least for some time to come. For a cricketer over 40 to be selected for his country, he has always had to be pretty good; nowadays he has to be exceptional. With fielding ability and physical fitness the current watchwords, the adjective "veteran" is being applied ever more readily to sprightly 34-year-olds, and team physios these days have better things to do than strap up creaking joints just to squeeze an extra few Tests from a workhorse in decline.

That said, the statistics have shown no consistent sign that the supply of 40-year-olds is drying up. While the undoubted heyday of the aged Test player lay between 1920 and 1949 (more than half of all the quadragenarians worldwide played their relevant Tests in those three decades), the years since have conformed to no predictable pattern. The 1960s, for example, saw only three Test players in their forties: Tom Graveney and Bert Sutcliffe wound up two distinguished batting careers for England and New Zealand respectively, and Les Jackson was recalled by England for the second of his two Test matches a dozen years after his first.

Yet in the 1990s as many as eight oldies caught the selectors' eyes, from Graham Gooch, who was undroppable when he passed the 40-year milestone and went on to play a further 13 matches for England, to Gordon Greenidge, who had the distinction of completing the shortest quadragenarian Test career on record: the last day of his last Test for West Indies was his 40th birthday, and he was run out for 43 before lunch.

The great majority of the 102 players have been batsmen, whose technique, timing and experience have survived the inevitable decline in physical sharpness, eyesight and reaction speed. Fifty-eight would have been picked for their batting alone, and of the 15 genuine all-rounders in the club nearly all - Walter Hammond, Frank Woolley, Basil D'Oliveira, Warwick Armstrong, for example - were top-class batsmen who also happened to bowl very well, as opposed to the handful, like India's Lala Amarnath and Vinoo Mankad, who would have earned their place simply as bowlers.

Conversely, of the nine wicket-keepers (six Englishmen, three Australians), only Stewart was a genuine Test batsman as well. Among the bowlers ten, surprisingly, were still regularly entrusted with the new ball in their forties (Gubby Allen was probably the fastest of them, Sydney Barnes the deadliest); double that number were out-and-out spinners.

Of the 102, 52 have been Englishmen, led by James Southerton, the longserving round-arm bowler who was more than ten years older than any other player in the inaugural Melbourne Test in 1877. Sixteen Australians and a dozen South Africans make up the bulk of the rest, though a healthy challenge from the younger ranks has meant that only two Australians born in the 20th century have played a Test in their forties - Bill O'Reilly in the one-off destruction of New Zealand early in 1946 (only later recognised as a Test) and, to his and everyone else's surprise, Bobby Simpson, fully ten years into Test retirement, recalled as captain during the Packer crisis. Steve Waugh was six months short of his 39th birthday when he retired earlier this year. Neither India nor Pakistan have fielded a 40-year-old since the 1950s.

Understandably, Test careers for quadragenarians tend to be short. More than a quarter of the total, 26 players, appeared in only a single Test in their forties, and another 13 played in only two. Against these fly-by-nights, though, there is a select gallery of 21 cricketers who have succeeded in appearing in at least ten Tests after their 40th birthday. Of them Armstrong, W. G. Grace, Ray Illingworth and Simpson were captain in all their Tests over 40, and Freddie Brown in all but one of his.

For some in this list, their latter years represented a genuine late flowering: the remarkable Bert Ironmonger, slow of foot and incompetent of bat, did not win his first cap until he was nearly 47, yet for five years his niggardly left-arm slow-medium was considered almost essential for Australia in their home Tests. And Bob Taylor, who celebrated his 40th birthday in the middle of the pivotal Headingley Test match of 1981, went on to complete another 29 as England's wicket-keeper - more than half his Test career - and a record tally of over-40 appearances that might never be beaten.

The only cricketers to come near him on that score are Patsy Hendren and Jack Hobbs, both of whom had truly enviable quadragenarian careers. (Hobbs, let us not forget, scored 98 of his 197 first-class hundreds after his 40th birthday.) Hendren averaged 48.12 in 44 innings and Hobbs, with eight Test centuries and 11 fifties, averaged an astonishing 58.10, a figure even more remarkable considering all but seven of his 27 matches were against Australia. In all, eight of these 21 men had better Test batting averages after their 40th birthday than in their Test careers as a whole, and five of the 12 who regularly bowled also improved their figures, notably Clarrie Grimmett, who took 96 Test wickets in his forties at a cost of only 21.11 each.

If one match could stand as the ultimate memorial to veterans'Test cricket, it would have to be the final, interminable Test in Kingston, Jamaica, in April 1930. England's team in that game (abandoned as a draw after nine days, two of them washed out) was the oldest ever fielded in any international contest. Wilfred Rhodes, in his 53rd year, was completing an epic Test career that had spanned five separate decades; George Gunn, too, was over 50 and three more - Nigel Haig, Ewart Astill and Hendren - were in their forties. And the man of the match - had such fripperies been on the menu in 1930 - would have been Andrew Sandham, whose 325 was then the highest Test score ever made, and who was playing his last game for England at the tender age of 39 years and nine months.

Nick Mason is a sports historian and journalist who was a long-serving executive on the sports desks of The Sunday Times and The Guardian. He is over 40.

Source - Wisden Cricketer's Almanack, 2004.
.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Source - Wisden Cricketer's Almanack, 2004.

Thanks.

 

[Richard]

Curse that wretched thing. Why is it not working for me?

 

[Richard]

I don't think that I'd've cited that particular article were I you, Richie: "The great majority of the 102 players have been batsmen, whose technique, timing and experience have survived the inevitable decline in physical sharpness, eyesight [my italics] and reaction speed."

I have to say, though, that was a sentence I found somewhat contradictory: timing is all about your physical sharpness, eyesight and reaction-speed. A good technique can keep you going for longer than otherwise, undoubtedly, but the ability to time the ball (and, by extension, the ability to not edge it or miss it completely) requires the retention of a good eye and reactions.

And as I say - Alec Stewart still had 20:20 vision at 37 (and was also hardly perfect technically). Many other players have still been fine batsmen at such ages, suggesting their vision didn't go rapidly downhill.

Perhaps Mr Mason would have been more accurate had he said: "batsmen, whose technique has stood them in good stead and whose eyesight and physical sharpness has survived longer than most of their contemporaries".

Stephen Waugh, for instance, was still sharp as a tack at 37. Yet remarkable eyesight had never been the most striking feature of his play.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

There's more to the eye deterioration subject than just straight forward quality of vision. People like Zaheer Abbas, Geoff Boycott and Clive Lloyd etc couldn't see their own reflection from six feet away so bunged on a pair of glasses. The eye contains muscles that become weak with age just like any other part of the body. It's possible to have 20/20 vision or correct vision with glasses but the speed of eye deteriorates with age even if the vision doesn't.

 

[Richard]

And the eye, like all muscles, can be trained and have its imperfections, especially those that grow with age, exercised out. You look after your eyes, unless you have bad luck with a certain condition, and you can still have excellent vision very late in life.

 

[Swervy]

And the eye, like all muscles, can be trained and have its imperfections, especially those that grow with age, exercised out. You look after your eyes, unless you have bad luck with a certain condition, and you can still have excellent vision very late in life.

the eye is a muscle now is it????

 

[Richard]

Well, no, rather it's a set of muscles.

 

[Swervy]

Well, no, rather it's a set of muscles.

Seriously though (and I am genuinely interested), how does one exercise ones eye?

(It may have been talked about earlier, but I have missed it)

 

[Richard]

Not sure myself, have never felt the need to indulge, but there are many ways one can do so it would seem.

I'd guess a search on Google for "eye exercises" might reveal more.

 

[neville cardus]

Haha. You brush aside a point by saying:
I fail to see how that makes it any better.

Yes, I do, and that it successfully brushes aside your point emphasises just how weak a point it was.

Yawn.

You really ought to sleep before posting. It'd improve the quality of your posts.

Dire way to debate.

Infinitely preferable, though, to the stringent adherence to (and prohibition of digression from) one debate, which is what you're advocating.

In other news, your perception is misplaced and deserves another yawn. Good night.

Flee, weak sister! Flee! We're all the better for your absence.

 

[Richard]

Guys, a plea from me - I like and respect the both of you, and much as I appreciate being defended by someone who, relatively speaking, doesn't know me terribly well I don't feel it's a completely unfair criticism of myself.

For a far more lucid (mostly, at least) discussion of the issue, pop over here (and please read all the thread before replying) and then we can avoid dragging this issue out unneccessarily in this forum.

 

[Pratters]

Yes, I do, and that it successfully brushes aside your point emphasises just how weak a point it was.

You really ought to sleep before posting. It'd improve the quality of your posts.

Infinitely preferable, though, to the stringent adherence to (and prohibition of digression from) one debate, which is what you're advocating.

Flee, weak sister! Flee! We're all the better for your absence.

Brushes aside your points.

 

[Goughy]

Seriously though (and I am genuinely interested), how does one exercise ones eye?

(It may have been talked about earlier, but I have missed it)

Its an area that cricket is rapidly embracing after being behind baseball for a long time.

There are numerous methods.

One you can do yourself is focus on an object that is moving than then rapidly switch to a stationary one. The eye is trained to adjust quicker.

Cricketers have often done this in the car by driving and focusing on a sign that is coming up and then quickly adjusting to a set number on the speedometer. Repeated over many times the eye gets quicker in picking up and readjusting.

Another one Ive used is with tennis ball. A group of 6 or more tennis balls, all with different coloured stickers on them. The ball is hit and the fieldsman has to call the colour of the sticker out.

Once this has been done to a level where there is improvement, the stickers are replaced by balls that have numbers written on them. The fieldsman has to then call out the numbers.

Obviously, like any form of training there has to be large number of reps over a decent length of time.

However, the eye can be trained and improvements gained just like any other body part.