Thilan Samaraweera: a victim of black magic?

[Uppercut]

I reckon pitches in India have been as flat as anywhere since 2001/02 but not neccessarily Sri Lanka. And I know Pakistan was notorious for road decks as far back as the 1960s.

Of course, relative weight of scoring is not neccessarily a good reflection of flatness of pitch. Other factors (ground size especially, but also sometimes skill of home bowlers) will also impact on that.

A flat pitch at The ARG or Taunton (to pick two places notorious for them) will produce totally different patterns of scoring than a flat pitch at Derby or (until recently) The Oval. The former two are postage-stamp sized and the latter two nice and big.

It's hard to separate the quality of the home team from the quality of the pitches though. Murali and Vaas became expert at exploiting the very conditions that hindered visiting bowlers. That's to their credit.

Essentially, I wasn't actually trying to measure "flatness of pitches" by looking at that. Rather "ease of batting" was what I wanted to determine. That incorporates quality of attacks and ground size anyway. It's all one and the same when trying to devalue a batsman's career by using where he played his cricket.

 

[Ikki]

The problem is is that he doesn't play outside of Asia enough to bring down his average to what it should be. 12 out of 49 tests out of the subcontinent hardly gives an indication of how good or otherwise he is. This is for all the same reasons Ponting would not be seen the best since Bradman because he averages 60+ in Oceania.

Except that Ponting averages in the 50s away too. Bad example.

 

[Ikki]

The "flat sub-continental pitches" idea is a funny one. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from. Here's a breakdown of the overall average for each country over the past 20 years:

South Africa- 28.88
West Indies- 29.94
New Zealand- 30.39
Sri Lanka- 30.77
Pakistan- 31.79
Australia- 31.84
England- 31.95
India- 32.29

It's not a perfect analysis, but it's hard to argue with. Truth be told, batting really isn't that much easier in Asia. What this particular breakdown demonstrates to me is that Jacques Kallis is ridiculously underrated.

Lock your seat-belt. Myth-busting is a dangerous past-time.

 

[G.I.Joe]

Is it possible to see those numbers for this decade only? I don't think anyone is claiming the subcontinent pitches were highways in 1989. If there's still no significant difference then fair play.

Closest I could find to a decade study: Cricinfo - The best batting pitches in Tests

4 Australian, 3 English and not a single Indian ground among the top 10 in the period studied.

 

[Ikki]

You are speaking bull crap. Australia has the flattest tracks of all, where batsman averages about 34 per wicket since 2000. India is the next with 33 odd. SL is one of the worst place for batsman to score with average of about 29 per wicket, with NZ and SAF. Better look at the figures before you put out your subjective crap.

And Bangladesh and New Zealand are the lowest. Hmm. I think you should reconfigure that analysis. Take out the host country's team and that'll probably give a fairer view.

It's no wonder that Australia are near the top...they've had easily the best batting line-up for a decade and have smashed everybody at home.

 

[Richard]

It's hard to separate the quality of the home team from the quality of the pitches though. Murali and Vaas became expert at exploiting the very conditions that hindered visiting bowlers. That's to their credit.

Hmm, well I'd just say that they're two bowlers who can exploit virtually any surface. So have other visiting bowlers similar to them (eg, Darren Gough and Shane Warne), it's just being tourists they've obviously not done so as often. But those two've had success elsewhere, and it's very surprising if truth be told how there's been virtually no other Lankan spinner who's achieved long-term success during Murali's career. A fair few have had odd games - series' even - but no-one has had a long spell of playing and taking the figures.

Obviously, though, it's a given that if certain pitches become commonplace at your "home" (be that your club's home which is one ground or your country's home which is a number of them) then bowlers who specialise in exploiting (or defying - in the case of swing-bowlers and possibly to an extent wristspinners) them are also very likely to become a majority.

 

[Ikki]

It took a while but I decided to check up the batting records of countries without the hosts included, since 2000.

Australia: Avg. 26.73 SR. 47.76

Bangladesh: Avg. 49.06 SR. 55.45

England: Avg. 31.78 SR. 50.79

India: Avg. 32.89 SR. 49.39

New Zealand: Avg. 31.22 SR. 48.38

Pakistan: Avg. 32.42 SR. 50.40

South Africa: Avg. 29.22 SR. 49.11

Sri Lanka: Avg. 27.34 SR. 45.45

West Indies: Avg. 35.39 SR. 48.76

Zimbabwe: Avg. 40.52 SR. 50.50

 

[Shri]

Thilan Samaraweera: a victim of black magic?

Indeed.

Bullets to confirm.

 

[Uppercut]

Interesting, ikki- so in fact, India is the second-easiest tour for batsmen after the West Indies. Repercussions for the anti-Ponting case.

 

[wfdu_ben91]

lol @ you

How anyone can argue that the subcontient isn't the most flattest and favourable batting conditions for home teams is beyhond me. How many subcontient batsman have averaged over 50 in first-class cricket and hardly/never played International cricket? They've even had batsman averaging almost 70.

Better yet, anyone who laughs or thinks subcontient bullies like Jayawardene, Samaraweera, Sangakkara, YKhan, Yousuf, Inzamam, Sehwag, etc are close to Ponting, Lara, Kallis, Pietersen and Hayden is even more depressing.

 

[G.I.Joe]

lol @ you

How anyone can argue that the subcontient isn't the most flattest and favourable batting conditions for home teams is beyhond me. How many subcontient batsman have averaged over 50 in first-class cricket and hardly/never played International cricket? They've even had batsman averaging almost 70.

Better yet, anyone who laughs or thinks subcontient bullies like Jayawardene, Samaraweera, Sangakkara, YKhan, Yousuf, Inzamam, Sehwag, etc are close to Ponting, Lara, Kallis, Pietersen and Hayden is even more depressing.

Yeah, lets just ignore the stats that tell the opposite story.

 

[wfdu_ben91]

Yeah, lets just ignore the stats that tell the opposite story.

Yeah, these stats back me up perfectly.

Cricinfo Statsguru - Test matches - Batting records

 

[Evermind]

lol @ you

How anyone can argue that the subcontient isn't the most flattest and favourable batting conditions for home teams is beyhond me. How many subcontient batsman have averaged over 50 in first-class cricket and hardly/never played International cricket? They've even had batsman averaging almost 70.

Better yet, anyone who laughs or thinks subcontient bullies like Jayawardene, Samaraweera, Sangakkara, YKhan, Yousuf, Inzamam, Sehwag, etc are close to Ponting, Lara, Kallis, Pietersen and Hayden is even more depressing.

Here on CW, people generally read posts before theirs before they comment. I suggest you start doing the same, to avoid embarrassment.

 

[Faceless void]

lol @ you

subcontient bullies like Jayawardene, Samaraweera, Sangakkara, YKhan, Yousuf, Inzamam, Sehwag, etc are close to Ponting, Lara, Kallis, Pietersen and Hayden is even more depressing.

Genius!

Sangakkara a subcontinent bully.
Since when exactly have you been watching cricket? You really rank among satheesh , precamb, and Co.
Though I'm sure precamb would definitely see it as an insult. Sorry if so.

 

[wfdu_ben91]

Genius!

Sangakkara a subcontinent bully.
Since when exactly have you been watching cricket? You really rank among satheesh , precamb, and Co.
Though I'm sure precamb would definitely see it as an insult. Sorry if so.

Since I was 6 years old.

The subcontient farce is inevitable. The fact that Samaraweera can get away with an average of over 50 but yet a much, much, much better batsman like AB de Villiers only averages 42 is a joke.

Not that AB deserves an average of over 50 but if I asked the majority of people who I've played cricket with over the past 8 years who Thilan Samaraweera was then I doubt many of them would know.

 

[Trumpers_Ghost]

lol @ you

How anyone can argue that the subcontient isn't the most flattest and favourable batting conditions for home teams is beyhond me. How many subcontient batsman have averaged over 50 in first-class cricket and hardly/never played International cricket? They've even had batsman averaging almost 70.

Better yet, anyone who laughs or thinks subcontient bullies like Jayawardene, Samaraweera, Sangakkara, YKhan, Yousuf, Inzamam, Sehwag, etc are close to Ponting, Lara, Kallis, Pietersen and Hayden is even more depressing.

noticed that you left off Sachin and Laxman and Gambhir while including the very best that non-asian teams have presented this century.

And to call Sangakkara a "subcontient bully" is either a huge disrespect to one of the most gun cricketers of modern times (and one of crickets finest people) OR you know something about these players bowel related medical conditions that no-one else does.

 

[wfdu_ben91]

noticed that you left off Sachin and Laxman and Gambhir while including the very best that non-asian teams have presented this century.

And to call Sangakkara a "subcontient bully" is either a huge disrespect to one of the most gun cricketers of modern times (and one of crickets finest people) OR you know something about these players bowel related medical conditions that no-one else does.

I'm pretty sure I said earlier in the thread that both Tendulkar and Dravid are the only real formidable subcontient batsman of the modern era.

I mean no disrespect to Sangakkara but he is nowhere near the class of Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting, Kallis, Dravid and Hayden.

 

[King Pietersen]

I can't say I agree with Sangakkara being one of these Farce batsmen, but some of the players averages from that region are pretty ridiculous. Younis Khan averaging over 50 in Test cricket, Kamran Akmal averages over 50 in Pakistan and then you look at the sheer amount of Indian FC players that averaged over 50 in their FC careers but failed to convert to International cricket, as their records were massively enhanced by playing on some very flat subcontinental tracks first up (2nd innings is a different story as the pitches in especially India do turn as the pitch gets older).

Here's a nice list of Indian's that average over 50 in FC cricket:

Ajay Sharma (4th highest FC average of all-time, awful ODi record and only 1 Test)
Shantanu Sugwekar
KC Ibrahim
Vinod Kambli
Sachin Tendulkar
Vijay Hazare
Surendra Bhave
Subramaniam Badrinath
Sridharan Sriram
Uday Merchant
Rahul Dravid
Sanjay Manjrekar
Ajay Jadeja
Gautam Gambhir
Raman Lamba
Rusi Modi
Cheteshwar Pujara
Dilip Vengsarkar
Polly Umrigar
Amarjit Kaypee
VVS Laxman
Sunil Gavaskar
Yashpal Singh
Dheeraj Jadhav
Sridharan Sharath
Ashok Malhotra
Shyam Mitra
Pankaj Dharmani
Santosh Jedhe

Now, how many of those went on to forge successful and prolonged Test careers? Not alot of them. That's a ridiculously long list, and it must surely help to back up the point that if you grow up on Subcontinental pitches that they're incredibly easy to bat on, first up at least. I doubt there's a country with anywhere near as many batsmen averaging over 50 in FC cricket than India. It's pretty amazing tbh.

 

[Migara]

For a change see the number of SL batsmen who average more than 50 in FCC. That will give a good idea on "flatness" of te pitches. Don't forget to compare it with the test averages as well.

 

[Prince EWS]

but if I asked the majority of people who I've played cricket with over the past 8 years who Thilan Samaraweera was then I doubt many of them would know.

Precisely the point of this thread.

No-one's suggesting he's one of the best batsmen in the world. Hell, all I suggested in my opening post was that he was a good allrounder at First Class level and deserved more of a run in the team! Obviously he's been given that now and the results speak for themselves, but that's besides the point. You seem to be thinking "Wow, this guy's record is inflated because no-one's heard of him" when my POV is "Wow, this guy's under-rated - no-one rates him and his record is fantastic!".