Keith Miller v Sir Garry Sobers

[Ikki]

He was not a great all-rounder because he could dry up an end. The ONE and ONLY point in mentioning him doing this was - as I've said it four times already - was that someone said that he on average bowled a lot of ball between wickets. This figure is inflated because of the spells when he bowled a lot of balls as a spinner keeping it tight at one end. No one is glorifying him for doing it, it's just a fact that he did.

Okay, thank you for your response. I acknowledge that myself. It really did not need explaining because I was considering it myself. My point was, to what extent do you think it's inflating his figures? Enough to make much of a difference in an appraisal like my own?

When I say that Sobers is lauded for his few amazing all-round feats...would you personally disagree with that? Because I can't for the life of me figure out how he could have been a consistently effective all-rounder based on such a record.

For me, this poll - if we are considering what we generally deem all-rounders to be - has a huge gap and people do not seem to like discussing Sobers' great weak point in this area. It's not like the Chappell/Richards discussion where some people seem to look back on their records and often make silly arguments based on a few runs here or there. There is a large deficit here that never gets talked about.

Sobers must have been something to watch because having not witnessed his career it beggars belief to hear how conclusively he is rated the best all-rounder.

 

[weldone]

Overall Bowling figures for Sobers' era:

Overall Batting figures for Miller's era:

The problem with this is that only bowlers bowl, but only batsmen don't bat...I'm sure if you take batting record of only all 'batsmen' of Miller's era it won't come as low as 29...

Though I too feel Sobers was an average bowler at test level...

 

[BhupinderSingh]

That's exactly the reason I stopped arguing with him. His admiration for Imran Khan is blinded that he will post crap after crap about other great cricketers. When forum members confront him he will change his stance and then only to do it again in another discussion.

It is so boring.

I honestly didn't know that posting stats means 'posting crap'.

 

[weldone]

Good contest on for 2nd position in this poll till now ...

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Hey someone just said that "Sobers was an overrated allrounder".

And that automatically means disrespect to Sobers and that he was not a great allrounder?
Some people are more biased in favour of Sobers than I'm(told to be I'm) in favour of Imran Khan(which I think I'm not as whatever opinions I have are based on stats which mean lot more than personal opinions of different people and are best possible way of rating players,especially those whom you've never seen playing).

 

[aussie]

It depends on the person though, if you come across to me as a great student of the game that hardly shows much bias towards your own (on this forum for example SJS, Archie_mac, LT, wpdavid, Swervy, Goughy) i would very much take their opinion on past players since they are usually AFAIC pretty accurate in comparison to older people around me who have also seen great players over the past 78 years.

Stats could never give a clear indication about great players especially those who probably on those some stats don't seem as perfect than others.

If stats where a better choice of judgement to those who saw past players it would be fairly easily to conclude that Ken Barrington was the greatest batsman England has produced, Dennis Lillee could not bowl outside ENG or AUS, Zaheer Abbas was FTB, Warne & Murali are crap in India (hope no-one starts up you know what with this point) to name an immediate few that come to mind..

 

[Ikki]

The problem with this is that only bowlers bowl, but only batsmen don't bat...I'm sure if you take batting record of only all 'batsmen' of Miller's era it won't come as low as 29...

Though I too feel Sobers was an average bowler at test level...

I think it's 34 counting batsmen from 1-7.

It depends on the person though, if you come across to me as a great student of the game that hardly shows much bias towards your own (on this forum for example SJS, Archie_mac, LT, wpdavid, Swervy, Goughy) i would very much take their opinion on past players since they are usually AFAIC pretty accurate in comparison to older people around me who have also seen great players over the past 78 years.

Stats could never give a clear indication about great players especially those who probably on those some stats don't seem as perfect than others.

If stats where a better choice of judgement to those who saw past players it would be fairly easily to conclude that Ken Barrington was the greatest batsman England has produced, Dennis Lillee could not bowl outside ENG or AUS, Zaheer Abbas was FTB, Warne & Murali are crap in India (hope no-one starts up you know what with this point) to name an immediate few that come to mind..

The problem with that is those kind of arguments sound silly because people are haggling over 1-2 runs or a few SR points. The difference in this case is quite quite large. It should be evident just looking at them. For me, it's akin to arguing a batsman that averages 35 is as good as one that averages 55 - that black and white. The only thing that would put such differences under a microscope is their era's averages...and as I listed it really isn't that complicated.

 

[aussie]

Everyone who watched or played against him has no doubt he was the best batsman and fine bowler and a great fielder, so I take little notice of this crap that he could not bowl or would not bowl in a better team

It is the same people who say Richards is over rated because he does not average enough, and Lillee can't bowl because he did not destroy them in India

Ha, yea the fact the Sobers helped WI achieved World Championship status in the 60s as part of a 4-man attack of Hall/Griffith/Gibbs againts some strong AUS, ENG batting-lineups especially should be enough to tell you Sobers bowling at his peak had to have been top-class.

 

[aussie]

The problem with that is those kind of arguments sound silly because people are haggling over 1-2 runs or a few SR points. The difference in this case is quite quite large. It should be evident just looking at them. For me, it's akin to arguing a batsman that averages 35 is as good as one that averages 55 - that black and white. The only thing that would put such differences under a microscope is their era's averages...and as I listed it really isn't that complicated.

I'm only quoting the bolded since you have kind of confused me with the rest of your post here dawg.

But yea of course no one can possibly argue that. Its when people go through the painstaking task of trying the split great players based on almost nothing at all especially the ones they have not seen play. If you haven't seen them the best thing you can do is listen and learn plus read a book about the player if you can get hold of one, don't go to stats guru and start creating useless debates..

 

[fredfertang]

Sobers seldom bowled spin from the 60/61 series against Australia onwards

Strangely given that they were not strong during his time at the top Sobers has a poor record against New Zealand

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Sobers seldom bowled spin from the 60/61 series against Australia onwards

God help us. Anyway I see the spreadsheets have come out so..........bye.

 

[Richard]

Strangely given that they were not strong during his time at the top Sobers has a poor record against New Zealand

Sobers did OK in the one home series he played against New Zealand, and poorly in the one away series he played during the time they were a serious Test side (rather than the Bangladesh of their day) and he was a serious Test batsman.

It's really rather annoying that Sobers didn't play more than that single series in '68/69 in 14 whole years, as that's a small gap in an otherwise magnificent CV.

 

[fredfertang]

He averaged 23 with the bat in his 12 tests against NZ which in the context of an overall batting average of 57 is why i used the word poor - its all to be taken in context of course - 57 over a 93 test career is, with the obvious exception, as good as anyone.

 

[Richard]

I'm actually surprised it's as many as 12 that he played TBH.

From the top of my head, I presume that'd be 6 in 1972, 3 in '68/69 and 3 in whatever 1950s series it was. But it'd never seemed to stack-up like that.

 

[fredfertang]

4 in NZ in 1955/56, 3 in NZ in 68/69 and the 5 home tests in 71/72 - for some reason I had it in my head that he was Bruce Taylor's bunny but that certainly isn't correct - mind you so sure was I that there must be someone pretty useful who Taylor had the measure of but as to who ......... perhaps I'll try and look it up tomorrow

 

[archie mac]

No, it isn't. There is absolutely zero correlation whatsoever in these three things you try to draw a line between. To take three examples who "converse" regularly on these three players: myself, KaZoH0lic and BhupinderSingh.

Myself:
Sobers - I say he's the greatest all-rounder there's been, but not a genuinely rounded all-rounder. Even at his best, batting was undeniably stronger than bowling.
Lillee - I say he's one of the best seamers ever, but not the greatest and there's a perfectly acceptable case for him not being in the top four seamers, and I'd not have him in a post-1900 XI. But I don't have any real truck with someone considering him the second-greatest after Marshall.
Richards - I say he's a very fine batsman who could easily have done more, but as he didn't do as much as so many say he could have, he's not someone I'd consider a top-ten batsman and to consider him the second-greatest batsman ever is ludicrous. However, I have no truck with anyone saying he's top-ten material or even including him in all-time (or post-1900) XIs.

KaZoH0lic:
Sobers - says he's not the greatest all-rounder ever and that he wouldn't have bowled much in stronger teams.
Lillee - says he's the greatest bowler ever............... apart from Shane Warne.
Richards - says he's the second-greatest batsman ever.

BhupinderSingh
Sobers - pretty much the same as KaZoH0lic.
Lillee - pretty much the same as me.
Richards - same as KaZoH0lic.

As you see - no-one routinely trashes all three.

Duplicate accounts?

 

[steve132]

I'm late to this thread, but it's more or less a continuation of a previous one. So here's my two cents....

None of the posters who have criticized Sobers' bowling appear to have ever seen him bowl, and their judgment is based exclusively on statistics. As I pointed out in the previous thread, while statistics are illuminating they do not by any means tell the whole story. If they did you would conclude that Ken Barrington was a better batsman than Peter May, since he averaged 58 in a longer Test career than May, who averaged 46. No one who saw them both believes that. You need to understand the context of the game in order to evaluate players - which means reading match reports, player biographies and the like as well as statistics.

As someone who actually saw Sobers play many times I am amazed at some of the statements that I see here. Sobers could and did hold his place exclusively as a bowler in a strong West Indies team that was considered the best in the world. In the mid-1960's the bowling lineup consisted of Hall, Griffith, Sobers and Gibbs. Players like the Jamaican fast bowler Lester King and the Guyanese slow left arm bowler Edwin Mohammed played little or no Test cricket because Sobers was around. His cousin, the keg-spinner David Holford, who joined the team in 1966 was the fifth bowler, not Sobers.

At his peak (1966-67) in the series against England and India Sobers not only averaged over 100 with the bat but also finished second in terms of wickets taken and bowling average to Gibbs. He repeated this performance in the Rest of the World series against England. Despite the claims made for some other all rounders, I can identify several teams (West Indies in the 1960's, 70's and 80's, England in the mid 50's) that Miller, Imran or Botham would not have made with the bat alone.

Ultimately, however, the sheer hubris of some of the comments made here is quite breathtaking. After all, I am not the only person who believes that Sobers is the greatest all rounder in history (or at least since W.G. Grace). So do the three generations of players and fans who saw him play - those born between 1900 and 1920, his contemporaries, born between 1920 and 1950, and those like me born after 1950. Without undue effort I can identify the following players, journalists and officials who share my view:

John Arlott, Trevor Bailey, Bishan Bedi, Dickie Bird, Don Bradman, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Denis Compton, Colin Cowdrey, Ted Dexter, Jack Fingleton, Tom Graveney, Charlie Griffith, Wes Hall, Ray Illingworth, Brian Johnston, Alan Knott, Jim Laker, Dennis Lillee, Clive Lloyd, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Hanif Mohammed, Barry Richards, John Snow, E.W.Swanton, Derek Underwood, Clyde Walcott, Peter Walker, Everton Weekes, Ian Wooldridge.

Does anyone know any other candidate for the title of greatest all rounder who could draw this type of support from first class cricketers? Is there any reason to believe that any of the posters on this forum is a better judge of cricketing talent than the collective wisdom of this group?

There is a reason that Sobers obtained 90 votes out of 100 in the poll for Wisden cricketer of the century - more than Miller, Imran, Botham, Kapil Dev combined. Hint: it wasn't solely because of his batting, great though that was. Hobbs, who was an even greater batsman, won only 30 votes.

 

[JBH001]

^^

This topic has just been pwned.

/Close thread.

 

[Perm]

Contemplated voting for Cousins, but the drugged up wee prick just isn't as good as somebody who has been knighted.

FWIW I agree wholeheartedly with steve132, who has just made the best post of this thread. Sobers is a giant, a cricketing immortal, and will forever be remember as one of the finest players to grace the game. We've all looked at his record, we all know he average 58 with the bat and 34 with the ball. I feel that only Bradman surpasses him as a cricketer, and many also feel the same way. Not trying to deny Keith Miller anything, but I don't think he is as good as Sobers. Definitely a more 'rounded' all-rounder, to steal a frequently used CW term, but not the best.

In the end though, the argument comes down to what you are judging on. As a player? If so then Sobers would take it, as a pure all-rounder (where you want an equal balance of batting and bowling) then Miller would be the candidate.

 

[Richard]

As I pointed out in the previous thread, while statistics are illuminating they do not by any means tell the whole story. If they did you would conclude that Ken Barrington was a better batsman than Peter May, since he averaged 58 in a longer Test career than May, who averaged 46. No one who saw them both believes that.

Kenny Barrington was a better Test batsman than Peter May. There is no two ways about that. While there may be a decent amount of truth in the suggestion that May was superior against the seamers to Barrington and Barrington was much superior against spin than seam, the suggestion that Barrington was essentially incapable against top-quality seam is utter nonsense. And he'd have to be for May to have been a better batsman.

The place the May > Barrington claims come from is because they were both Surrey players, and as many of the assessments in those days came from those who watched domestic cricket as international. May was easily the better batsman of the two for Surrey, but he certainly wasn't for England.

This is indeed very odd, but it's the way it is. There's several reasons why it could have been, none of which completely explain such vast disparities.