Opening batsmen for Post WW2 XI

[bagapath]

gavaskar and hutton win this poll by a mile

 

[Slifer]

The point wasn't that Greenidge's side had the best attack, like Australia's. The point was a lot of the great bowlers during Greenidge's era were in his own side. Hadlee is an all-time great, but he is surrounded with the Chatfields. Imran is great, but he is surrounded by the Sarfrazs (until the late 80s where Wasim and Waqar show). And was generally poor whenever he faced Lillee. IIRC he was pretty good when Botham was at his peak though - also against Willis. That's about it for great attacks of his time, the majority of good pacers were in his own side: Roberts, Marshall, Holding, Garner, Ambrose, Walsh, Croft, Bishop, etc I wouldn't call these great attacks anymore than I would the Sri Lanka of the late 90s.

And amongst contemporaries: Hayden is top, Greenidge probably 3rd.

P.S. during Greenidge's time, Sri Lanka were minnows, you should remove them if you are going to remove Bangladesh/Zimbabwe for overall averages.

WI never played Sri Lanka

 

[Ikki]

WI never played Sri Lanka

Yeah, but the others did. So if you are taking a gauge of how "all" certain players did against each other you should take out the clear minnow which will inflate batting averages and deflate bowling averages - I mentioned that because he was doing that for B/Z.

 

[Burgey]

Hughes,Give him some time mate. Every batsman gets better with experience
its crap talking about eye getting weak in the 30,s fact is shewag is improving and adding more to his game his legside play has improved so has his defence and he has addd the pull shot also.

this'll be the interesting thing with Hughes - how he copes with having to learn a lot about his own game "on the job" in test and international cricket.

 

[bagapath]

sunny gavaskar had said somewhere that the third year is the most difficult one for an international cricketer, especially for someone with a successfull start. he claims the opponents would've figured out the technical problems in the first two years and the true test of a player is in him learning to improve his game even more to stay in the race. i also want to add the problems of celebrity and other non-cricketing issues that are more pronounced in this era. how hughes, or any new comer tasting early success, handles these remains to be seen.

 

[JBH001]

Yes, the worst thing is to be the next big thing.

 

[0RI0N]

sunny gavaskar had said somewhere that the third year is the most difficult one for an international cricketer, especially for someone with a successfull start. he claims the opponents would've figured out the technical problems in the first two years and the true test of a player is in him learning to improve his game even more to stay in the race. i also want to add the problems of celebrity and other non-cricketing issues that are more pronounced in this era. how hughes, or any new comer tasting early success, handles these remains to be seen.

/Vinod Kambli?