Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
Harby is a good Test bowler. Vettori is one of our best Test batsman of this decade, and up there in terms of bowling as well.Dilshan and Oram at their best are far superior ODI players, Tuffey too has mostly made his name in the shorter form.
Waugh, Gayle and Astle were all about equally good in either form. Gayle and Astle being two of their countries best Test batsman and IIRC averaging more in that form. Flintoff 05 might a not big enough example but his ODI record is hardly that great either? Bond did fine in the Tests he played.
Nah, Dilshan has never been that good in ODIs until he got pushed up to open the batting - even now his Test record is miles better than his ODI one.
Oram can be a good ODI player yes but he has been a good Test one much more often.
Tuffey is in my book hopeless at ODIs but I've always thought he was potentially a very good Test bowler.
Mark Waugh, Gayle and Astle as I say were all excellent ODI batsmen; Waugh and Astle were merely decent Test ones and Gayle is barely Test-class. Harbhajan and Vettori are indeed good-ish Test bowlers but both are outstanding ODI ones.
Flintoff has been a good-to-outstanding ODI player since 2001/02; in Tests he was only such a thing from 2003 to 2006.
And yes Bond did fine in the Tests he played but he's also done superlatively in the ODIs he's played - he's one of the best if not the best of recent times, something no-one could possibly claim him to be in Tests even if only on the basis that he's hardly played any of the things.