Where does Vettori rank all-time as an all-rounder?

[Athlai]

ok, fine. agreed.



in his dreams....

Player? Probably not. Character? Could do.

 

[bagapath]

Player? Probably not. Character? Could do.

of course. he may not have the talent to stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best. but he does play the game the way it is meant to be played. he is a spirited, committed, hard working cricketer. he doesn't look like the kind of cricketer who could be swayed by leather jackets or expensive watches. he has always played to win despite his limited repertoire. in that sense, he is a role model and certainly a great ambassador of his country.

 

[Uppercut]

But for those Bangladesh wickets for Vettori, Harby gets to play on home spinning decks all the time. How does Bangladesh explain Harby's deficiency to Vettori in England and Australia. It doesn't, so you choose to ignore it.

Bowling spin in the subcontinent, especially in India and Pakistan, isn't necessarily easy. Everyone points to Warne but an awful lot of spinners struggle there with the slowness of the pitches and blinding heat (Vettori included). India, for the last ten years, has been the easiest place to bat in the world. Having grown up there, Harbhajan's tailored his bowling to be very successful in the long run on subcontinental-style tracks, just as Kumble did. You've got to respect that, it's not "playing on home spinning decks all the time", he's one of very few bowlers who can make those decks work in his favour.

On an unrelated topic, do you really think wickets including those against Bangladesh are a better measure of someone's ability than wickets without? Each of the Australian domestic sides is better than Bangladesh. Are the Aussie cricketers' FC records a better measure of their ability than their test records?

 

[Uppercut]

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | Cricinfo.com

Check out those averages. Gotta respect Harby's ability to bowl spin successfully in India/Pakistan, it's a lot more difficult than is commonly thought.

 

[aussie]

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | Cricinfo.com

Check out those averages. Gotta respect Harby's ability to bowl spin successfully in India/Pakistan, it's a lot more difficult than is commonly thought.

Is Harbhajan really good in PAK though?. I seem to remember Harbhajan bowling on some roads in PAK 2006 & largely being ineffective.

Plus by limiting your criteria to last 10 years. You left out the series where Vettori actually did sort of well in IND 99/00.

 

[JBH001]

I suspect he was attempting to dry up runs at one end and have the pacers take the wickets from the other; whilst also attempting to give his three pacers a bit of a rest. It wasn't a great tactic to give the two batsmen free singles, granted, but on that wicket it was always going to be the pacemen who would cause the damage.

That is a plausible explanation, but in my view a poor one. It also under-rates Vettori as a captain.

I dont see the point of drying up runs at one end (which Vettori was not doing) by giving easy singles in a match where Pak did not face a huge run rate to win. Neither were the three pacers really in need of a rest, after all, it had only been about an hour or so of play (and it was the last day of play) before Vettori came on. From recollection he then went at about 4 an over before coming back to bowl 2 - 3 more and polish off the tail for a haul of 2 for 42 off 11 overs. More to the point, when he could have led from the front with his bowling on the last day against a young man on test debut and an out of form Malik he chose to back off and give away easy runs. I really dont see this as tactics but either as an implicit acknowledgement of his bowling (or lack of against decent opposition) or a lack of steel when the game is on the line which would mean that SJS is correct about him. I am not sure about this latter myself yet. But I disagree with your view of the situation.

 

[JBH001]

fixed

There is a joke there but I dont get it.

I had forgotten how fast debates can move on CW - dont visit all that much these days.

 

[Zinzan]

in the 80s the best spinner in the world was abdul qadir. i still cant rank him among the greatest from the other eras like laker, gupta, tayfield, gibbs, bedi, chandra etc. vettori will always have his place among the accumulators for the sheer amount of workload he has done and the number of wickets he has taken but he should never be ranked with the greats.

Haha, hang on a second, make up your mind, one moment you're saying he should not be ranked with the greats - which practically everyone commenting on this thread agrees with.

Then you go from there, to the statement below that he's a poor cricketer at test level, which is just being straight vindictive & is what most have a problem with.

Like it or not, he's a 'Good Test cricketer" nothing more, nothing less......it's more important how his fellow cricketers around the world rate him than you with your selective stats of only removing minnows and failing to look at anything other factors. i.e the obvious one that he's rarely bowls in helpful conditions & the fact because he's had average bowlers around him (apart from Bond), hence has so often had to do the donkey work when sides score 450+ against us, & batsman just sit on him knowing the other bowlers are easier to face & score off. Only an idiot would suggest his bowling average wouldn't be better had he had stronger bowlers around him most of his career. I'd guess his record when Bond plays in much better for example.

But as I said Bag, stick with your easy, simplified method of just removing the minnows & looking at nothing else at all.

Also, If you want to disadvantage world spinners for their performances against poor nations of spin, you should remove any performances against NZ from their stats as well, because we've been just as poor against good quality spin as Bang in recent times, but of course you wouldn't want to do that, because that might be unhelpful to your argument right. Lets just stick to removing the minnows from Vettori's stats, because thats the most helpful to you & lets look at no other factors aye.

I've had a similar argument with you before in one of your alltime great threads, when I mentioned if you were going to exclude the minnows for Kallis & Cairns, then similarly you should remove stats for other greats in the past like Hammond (scoring 300 against NZ ) when NZ were minnows themselves, but of course you never made this adjustment despite the fact it took NZ 26 years to win a test....now thats minnow status if ever there was. You didn't make that adjustment simply, because it wouldn't have helped your argument. Mr selective aye

only vettori. the others are superb in one disciple for sure. some were outstanding in both. vettori is a world beater with neither bat nor ball. he is a bits and pieces cricketer who has played so many games for his country because new zealand could not field a decent XI in his time. he is definitely a poor cricketer by test standards. in no other country could he have played so many games.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

Plus by limiting your criteria to last 10 years. You left out the series where Vettori actually did sort of well in IND 99/00.

Selective use of stats by the "Vettori isn't good enough for Test cricket" Brigade? Surely not!

Harbhajan gets to bowl on home decks against New Zealand, England and the West Indies at the very least. Poor batsmen against spin (in general). Regardless of how easy Indian pitches have become to bat on, at least they are conducive to spin. Vettori plays on greentops in NZ, which occasionally may spin on the 4th/5th day. Dunedin certainly didn't, for example, as Ajmal equally demonstrated.

Also, this fails to explain Vettori's clear superiority over Harbhajan in Australia and England using my highly selective stats.

 

[Uppercut]

If you want to disadvantage world spinners for their performances against poor nations of spin, you should remove any performances against NZ from their stats as well, because we've been just as poor against good quality spin as Bang in recent times

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | Cricinfo.com

http://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?bowling_pacespin=2;class=1;filter=advanced;groupby=overall;opposition=25;orderby=wickets;spanmax1=30+Nov+2009;spanmin1=30+Nov+2004;spanval1=span;template=results;type=bowling

Spinners in the last five years average 31 against New Zealand and 20 against Bangladesh. You're doing your team a ****ing huge disservice .

 

[Uppercut]

Selective use of stats by the "Vettori isn't good enough for Test cricket" Brigade? Surely not!

I didn't bother responding to aussie because he's invariably full of poo, but since you quoted him I feel compelled to point out that Vettori averaged 45 in the aforementioned series and had I inexplicably chose to use the last 10 years and 2 months as my time period, his figures would have been even worse.

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

I didn't bother responding to aussie because he's invariably full of poo, but since you quoted him I feel compelled to point out that Vettori averaged 45 in the aforementioned series and had I inexplicably chose to use the last 10 years and 2 months as my time period, his figures would have been even worse.

Haha. Touche. But why 10 years? Bagapath did the same and I don't quite understand why - it seems incredibly arbitrary. What's wrong with using any players whole career?

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

Spinners in the last five years average 31 against New Zealand and 20 against Bangladesh. You're doing your team a ****ing huge disservice .

What about NZ batting in the subcontinent in the last 5 years? Some of that 31 average is likely to be due to batting in NZ where seamers are more likely to have success, aye?

 

[aussie]

I didn't bother responding to aussie because he's invariably full of poo, but since you quoted him I feel compelled to point out that Vettori averaged 45 in the aforementioned series and had I inexplicably chose to use the last 10 years and 2 months as my time period, his figures would have been even worse.

Haa i dont able with Cwers & yall internet tuff talk. Brett Lee averages 40 in 2005 Ashes & Hilfy averaged 52 in SA this year. Would you say they bowled as poorly as those figures suggested?. Clearly not. Same thing goes for Vettori in that series.

The only thing poo is your bashing of Vettori that i've been seeing over the past few days. No one is saying he is a world beater, but you trying wayy to hard to ridicule the big man.

 

[JBH001]

My point is that his bowling average isn't much worse (if at all) than the likes of Qadir, Saqlain, Harbhajan etc and his batting average is on the rise.Definitely on his way to become an all-time great.A very underrated cricketer.

Under-rated? Perhaps. An all-time great? No. And very unlikely to ever be one.

 

[Avada Kedavra]

Under-rated? Perhaps. An all-time great? No. And very unlikely to ever be one.

If he ends up with 450 wickets at 28-29 and 5000 runs at 31-32, you still wouldn't call him an all time great ?

 

[Uppercut]

Haha. Touche. But why 10 years? Bagapath did the same and I don't quite understand why - it seems incredibly arbitrary. What's wrong with using any players whole career?

It's just a reasonable time scale. Short enough for notable recent changes in conditions to be taken into account but not so short as to give too small a sample size. If I was just looking at Vettori's record I'd use his whole career, but I was trying to demonstrate that bowling spin in India these days is actually much more difficult than is commonly believed so 10 years seemed as good a number as any.

It is a bit arbitrary, but I still think it helps demonstrate my point. People always talk about "the subcontinent" as if it's all one place with similar conditions throughout when in fact Sri Lanka is significantly more helpful to bowlers than India or Pakistan. I had a quick look at the average runs per wicket in each test-playing country a while back, and for the 2000s India was the best place for batting by quite a distance while Sri Lanka was the worst. I wouldn't say that Harbhajan benefits from "helpful subcontinental conditions", I'd say that he's done exceptionally well in finding a way to use particular home bowling conditions to his advantage.

The other common assumption that ties in with this is that there are "helpful" and "unhelpful" conditions to bowl spin on, which is a bit of an over-simplification. Helpful conditions for Kumble or Harbhajan are useless to Shane Warne, and vice versa. How well a spinner- any bowler, in fact- adapts his game to suit the conditions he plays in goes a long way to determining how successful a career he has. Vettori got a bit of a bum deal no doubt, of all the home conditions in the cricketing world, he has the hardest to make work.

In any case, it's pretty simple for me as to why Vettori's record in Australia is better than Harbhajan's. It's just because Vettori's a better bowler than Harbhajan in Australian conditions.

 

[Uppercut]

What about NZ batting in the subcontinent in the last 5 years? Some of that 31 average is likely to be due to batting in NZ where seamers are more likely to have success, aye?

For the purposes of determining whether figures against New Zealand should be included in a spinner's stats, that isn't relevant. But I'll have a look anyway, because it'll be interesting.

Spinners average 33 against New Zealand outside of New Zealand, 30 against New Zealand in New Zealand and 26 on the sub-continent.

Fair to say you have a point- but even on the subcontinent, they're still light years ahead of Bangladesh.

 

[aussie]

In any case, it's pretty simple for me as to why Vettori's record in Australia is better than Harbhajan's. It's just because Vettori's a better bowler than Harbhajan in Australian conditions.

Thats not true. Vettori record vs AUS in test is home & away.

The reason he is better againts AUS is because his strenght as a bowler is that when batsmen want to get after him which the AUS do againts spinners - Vettori is excellent. That strenght makes his a superb ODI bowler.

Harbhajan not so flash record in AUS is because when batsmen are aggressive againts him, he becomes defensive he is afraid to toss the ball up & bowls quicker.

 

[Flem274*]

Bagapath: "he is a bits and pieces cricketer who has played so many games for his country because new zealand could not field a decent XI in his time."

I think the phrase you are looking for is better spinner.

Regardless of your opinion of the Flemings, Richardsons, Astles, McMillans, Cairnss, Orams, McCullums, Taylors, Ryders, Styriss, Doulls, Bonds, Franklins, Martins, O'Briens, Tuffeys, Nashs etc of this world, none of them threaten the place of the spinner in the side.

NZ, whilst not fielding any line ups to rival the Australias and South Africas over Vettori's career, have had a steady stream of average to very good to world class (Bond and Cairns) players. However those players have all been batsmen, allrounders or seamers. The spinners have been rank poor, bar Bruce Martin, who seems to have been dropped from ND in favour of a player who fits your description of Vettori.

I can agree that Vettori has kept his place at times due to there being no better spinner. These spinners listed below are his current rivals:

Jeetan Patel | New Zealand Cricket | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
Luke Woodcock | New Zealand Cricket | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
Mark Houghton | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
Robbie Schaw | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
http://www.cricinfo.com/newzealand/content/player/326971.html
Nathan McCullum | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
Bruce Martin | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
Anton Devcich | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com
Tarun Nethula | Cricket Players and Officials | Cricinfo.com

Not much there at all.

However now that Vettori can bat well enough to play at six, with any luck he will elevate himself to take over Orams position, and still be our fifth bowler.