How good was Basil D'Oliveira?

[Dissector]

No, they weren't. You prove yourself to be very good by succeeding at the highest level: ie test matches. A good first class record may be promising but it doesn't mean much until you succeed in test cricket.

 

[Richard]

I've gone through this before but when you've got a collection of players some of whom have Test performances on their side and some of whom have superlative First-Class careers, before and after, on their side, then it's pretty obvious it's a superlative team.

There's no reason to presume any of those performers would not have had good Test careers over the following year or 3 as far as I'm concerned.

 

[fredfertang]

There's no reason to presume any of those performers would not have had good Test careers over the following year or 3 as far as I'm concerned.

And happen John Traicos might have become the great spinner and that would be that - great shame we will never know - Denis Compton had a point - not a good one but a point nonetheless

 

[Dissector]

I've gone through this before but when you've got a collection of players some of whom have Test performances on their side and some of whom have superlative First-Class careers, before and after, on their side, then it's pretty obvious it's a superlative team.

There's no reason to presume any of those performers would not have had good Test careers over the following year or 3 as far as I'm concerned.

There is no reason to assume that all or even most of them would have had successful test careers either. For one thing the vast majority of their cricket would have been in England and South Africa. How do we know they would have succeeded in the sub-continent or even the West Indies? The bottom line is that first-class cricket is a lower, less challenging form of cricket and success at this level doesn't guarantee test success.

 

[Dissector]

I just compared Barry Richards to Ramprakash, Hicks and Manjrekar and they have pretty similar first-class records. So how do we know that he wouldn't have fizzled out at the top level like the others? The answer is we don't. No matter how good he looked at county cricket there is no guarantee he would have been able to handle the greater challenges of test cricket.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

I just compared Barry Richards to Ramprakash, Hicks and Manjrekar and they have pretty similar first-class records. So how do we know that he wouldn't have fizzled out at the top level like the others? The answer is we don't. No matter how good he looked at county cricket there is no guarantee he would have been able to handle the greater challenges of test cricket.

Except Barry Richards played County Cricket when each county had four or five Test players on show where as Ramprakash has made hay against journeyman allrounders from Denmark and the Australian 4th XI.

 

[Dissector]

Each county had four of five test players for the typical game that Barry Richards played? I am seriously skeptical of this. Care to provide evidence?

Of course Barry Richards is only the best case. There are several players in that SA side with mediocre to decent first-class records which is pretty thin evidence for them becoming top notch test players.

 

[fredfertang]

Let us not forget that teams develope - Tony Greig, Ken McEwan, Clive Rice, Vintcent Van Der Bijl and that leggie whose name I forget - I'm sorry dissector but your wrong mate - they would have been awesome for at least a decade

 

[Richard]

There is no reason to assume that all or even most of them would have had successful test careers either. For one thing the vast majority of their cricket would have been in England and South Africa. How do we know they would have succeeded in the sub-continent or even the West Indies? The bottom line is that first-class cricket is a lower, less challenging form of cricket and success at this level doesn't guarantee test success.

No, the bottom line is that things aren't black-and-white. There have been times in cricket's history when some domestic cricket has been stronger than some international cricket. In general, the gap was considerably smaller in the early-1970s than it is currently.

 

[Richard]

And happen John Traicos might have become the great spinner and that would be that - great shame we will never know - Denis Compton had a point - not a good one but a point nonetheless

Never quite been able to fathom why it is that Traicos is talked about and Grahame Chevalier, whose Currie record was far better, if shorter-term, is completely ignored. Perhaps because the SA selectors made the same odd choice in that series.

Truly, the calibre of that side blows my mind. Two of the best batsmen ever to have played the game in Graeme Pollock and Richards, one top-of-the-tree all-rounder in Procter, two other good ones in Goddard and Lance, two exceptional specialists who also offered something with the other discipline in Barlow and Peter Pollock, an excellent wicketkeeper-batsman in Lindsay, a fine backup batsman in Irvine, and two fine backup bowlers in Trimborn and Chevalier. And to round it all off, a fine batsman and terrific captain in Ali Bacher.

Surely no other squad can have been so complete. West Indies had the depth of seam-bowling but not depth of batting. And the Invincibles had almost everything but the wicketkeeper was no batsman of note and the batting order (with "only" Barnes, Morris, Bradman, Hassett and Loxton) was a little short if incredibly good with what it did have.

 

[TT Boy]

Very probably true by 1970 when they had just become No. 1, and also very likely around the time of their very good side in the late 1950's. Less certain imo around the side's transitional period in the early 1960's unless BD really was a complete one-off. And who knows who else missed out in the decade or so after WW2? Actually, TTBoy may have some idea - I think he's read far more into this than the rest of us.

I think it’s a pretty difficult question to answer for coloured cricketers not only played on mat stripes but also were void of the cricketing ‘start’ their white counterparts enjoyed.
For example Barry Richards had cricketing lessons five days a week and his batting coach was Denis Compton. In comparison Natal’s ‘best’ black cricketer, Yacoob Omar, who according to Alf Gover not only played like D’Oliveira but “will be a better player than him in a year or two”, didn’t pick up a bat until he reached high school. Yacoob’s school team also had no coach which meant the players regularly went to the library to take books out on how to bat and bowl. The vast disparities were so great that Yacoob never saw a turf wicket let alone play on one until his mid-twenties and when he did, under the watching eyes of Richards and the University of Natal he smashed the ball all over the place whilst Richards according his captain on the day, Bill Robinson, was “pinned down” by a Black offie called Baboo Ebrahim.

From what I have read, Richards Natal team of the 1970s on 'merit' would have contained at least two possibly even four Black cricketers, which is startling considering the inequalities.

 

[Dissector]

I have been looking at a few first-class records now and in the 70's and I don't see much support for the SA team being one of the great teams or even close. You could easily find an English bowling attack in 1970-71 with first-class records equal to or better than their SA counterparts and a lot more test experience as well.

Similarly when it comes first-class batting I just don't see the evidence that it's become easier to average 50+ today than it was 30 years ago. Ramprakash and Hicks probably have the finest first-class records of the last 15 years and better records than the top England players of the period. They are probably as dominant in the first-class game as Barry Richards was in his day. All it goes to show is that first-class success doesn't mean that much.

There are so many obstacles that the SA team might have stumbled on in the 70's had they been allowed to fully play international cricket. How would they have coped with the heat and turn of the subcontinent? How would they have coped with Lillee and Thompson let alone the later West Indies battery?

The bottom line is that South Africa had a very promising team which might have become no.1. We will never know. To simply anoint them the no.1 team is a stretch and to declare them an all-time great team is frankly delusional.

 

[Dissector]

To give a concrete example, let's look at the England team playing against the ROW in 1970. They had a bunch of different bowlers but almost all of them averaged below 25 in first-class cricket.
For example there was a Yorkshire bowler called Wilson who averaged 21, better than Peter Pollock, in first class cricket.
http://content-www.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/22469.html

Are we supposed to believe that Wilson was some kind of all-time great bowler because of his first-class record?

Incidentally that 1970 series saw some fairly average performances from some of the South African players including Pollock and Richards. England came quite close to drawing the series 2-2 in the fourth test and I could easily see them beating SA if they had turned up that summer.

 

[wpdavid]

There are two separate claims here, and they need to be treated quite separately otherwise this gets rather pointless.

1. That the 1970 SA side was the best in the world at that moment in time, based mainly on their 4-0 demolition of Aus, WI being weak, and sensible evaluations of other sides at the time. fwiw my take on the matter is that SA overtook England when they won over here in the mid60's and by 1970 they were even stronger with the emergence of Richards, Procter & others. I would expect them to have beaten all comers in SA and probably won in all non-Asian countries. The extent of their thrashing of Aus was such that I can't conceive any reason why that wouldn't happen. England, despite a fine record in the late 1960's going into the e arly 1970's weren't outstanding, and I think SA would have beaten them. They may have struggled in India, but that would be about it. To my mind, that's enough to place them on top of the pile at the time of their ejection from international cricket. As I said previously, I couldn't extend that to the mid70's when Aus & WI produced their outstanding pace attacks, or even when Pakistan began to emerge as a serious threat, but that's another matter.

2. That the 1970 SA side is maybe the finest test side ever assembled is, imo, far more questionable. Basically it's pure guesswork and, for me, unsustainable given the lack of test match evidence to support it.

 

[Dissector]

Fair enough. I wouldn't agree fully with the first part but it's a reasonable enough argument. I would note that though South Africa won in England in 1965, England had won in South Africa earlier in the year. So the two teams were evenly matched at that point. And though SA had improved by 1970, so probably had England with the likes of Snow and Underwood. As I mentioned earlier, the SA stars as a whole, didn't really shine in England in 1970 as part of the ROW.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Fair enough. I wouldn't agree fully with the first part but it's a reasonable enough argument. I would note that though South Africa won in England in 1965, England had won in South Africa earlier in the year. So the two teams were evenly matched at that point. And though SA had improved by 1970, so probably had England with the likes of Snow and Underwood. As I mentioned earlier, the SA stars as a whole, didn't really shine in England in 1970 as part of the ROW.

I always found it rather curious that the South Africans were allowed to play. It being the case I don't know why they didn't just pick all South Africans but name them Rest of the World.

 

[Richard]

To give a concrete example, let's look at the England team playing against the ROW in 1970. They had a bunch of different bowlers but almost all of them averaged below 25 in first-class cricket.
For example there was a Yorkshire bowler called Wilson who averaged 21, better than Peter Pollock, in first class cricket.
http://content-www.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/22469.html

Are we supposed to believe that Wilson was some kind of all-time great bowler because of his first-class record?

No. Don Wilson was a fingerspinner, and most of his career came in the era of uncovered wickets. There is no way he was the remotest of patches of Peter Pollock, Michael Procter, Pat Trimborn or anyone else as far as likely performance on covered pitches is concerned.

However, but for Derek Underwood he might indeed have had something of a successful Test career. He was a very fine fingerspinner.

Of those who played in the vs ROW series, John Snow and (at that time) Derek Underwoood were top-drawer Test performers, while Chris Old, David Brown and (at that time) Raymond Illingworth were excellent backup Test performers. Peter Lever was a late debutant and had he got a chance earlier might well have been the same.

England's side that summer was decent, but it'd be stretching credulity to suggest it'd have beaten South Africa.

Incidentally that 1970 series saw some fairly average performances from some of the South African players including Pollock and Richards. England came quite close to drawing the series 2-2 in the fourth test and I could easily see them beating SA if they had turned up that summer.

I can't. You seriously overrate that side. It was one of England's better teams of recent years, but lost (admittedly with hindrance from rain) to India at home a year later. Now, until recently that was the strongest Indian team away from the subcontinent, by miles, in history, but losing at home to India always means a team can't be taken too seriously.

 

[Dissector]

Wilson was just an example. As I said almost every England bowler had an impressive first-class record and overall the first-class records of the England team were roughly equal to SA.

Now, until recently that was the strongest Indian team away from the subcontinent, by miles, in history, but losing at home to India always means a team can't be taken too seriously.

This is such a weird argument. If we can't take England seriously because they lost to India then we can't take Pollock and Richards seriously because they couldn't score heavily against England just the previous year. We can't take the 99 Australian team seriously because they lost to Sri Lanka for the first time. We can't take the 1981 Australia team seriously because they lost a test match at home to India. Any time a player performs under par against a weak team we can't take him seriously. Ridiculous argument really.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Forget the merits of India beating England in 1971, they were saved by rain twice and were also struggling in the match they won until a freak spell by Chandra bowled England out cheaply in the second innings.

 

[fredfertang]

This is such a weird argument. If we can't take England seriously because they lost to India then we can't take Pollock and Richards seriously because they couldn't score heavily against England just the previous year. We can't take the 99 Australian team seriously because they lost to Sri Lanka for the first time. We can't take the 1981 Australia team seriously because they lost a test match at home to India. Any time a player performs under par against a weak team we can't take him seriously. Ridiculous argument really.

Do you have an opinion on the best Test team of all time?