Not going to let you get away with that, tbh.
Lindwall and Miller? Come on. The 1955 series was the only time Sobers faced those two and his career was just beginning and Lindwall and Miller were arguably past their best.
Fazal Mahmood he faced on totally lifeless decks in the West Indies in 1958. He did come up against Mahmood later on that year or 1959 in Pakistan on mattered wickets, though.
Trueman and Statham of course in 1957 were in prime form. In the 1960 series in the West Indies they were nullied by flat pitches.
Benaud, yes, he faced in the 1961 series in Australia and did very well.
Chandra and Gupte, and Bedi, okay, maybe, but again, on lifeless decks in the West Indies in 1962 and by 1971.
Underwood I guess was a worthy opponent in England in 1966.
The thing is that most of the time Sobers faced these great bowlers he either had flat pitches to ease the impact of said bowlers or he had a lot of support from fellow batsmen so was never under as great an amount of pressure as Lara was basically from 1995 onwards. The number of one-man shows that Lara performed were simply amazing when you think about it.
Lara also faced Warne and McGrath and Murali countless times when both bowlers, especially McGrath, were on song, and succeeded regularly under the most pressure any batsmen of his time has been placed under by his teammates. That is why I rate Lara as better, but I also rate Sobers as a great, great batsmen. 2nd best lefthander ever.
Let's take these points in order.
1. Quality of bowling. I presented a long list of bowlers that Sobers faced in his Test career. That list includes Lindwall, Miller, Trueman, Statham, Davidson, McKenzie, Snow, Fazal Mahmood, Bedi, Benaud, Chandrasekhar, Gupte, Laker (omitted from my original post) and Underwood. Sobers faced great bowlers throughout his career, and - unlike Lara - did not have the opportunity to fatten his average by feasting on bowlers from Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. You have listed Warne, McGrath, Murali and Donald as great bowlers that Lara faced. It would, however, be extremely misleading to maintain that he spent most of his career batting against bowlers of this quality, since less than half of his career was spent playing against Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka. I see no evidence that over the course of his career Lara on average faced better bowling than Sobers did. If anything, the evidence points in the other direction.
2. Pitches. You attempt to belittle Sobers' successes by claiming that his runs were scored on "flat pitches." In my original post I pointed out that (a) Lara played a higher proportion of his Tests in the West Indies than Sobers did, and (b) Sobers had a better home AND a better away batting average than Lara did. To date I have not seen any reply to these points.
If you want to claim that West Indian pitches were better in Sobers' day than they were in Lara's you need to provide evidence in support of that view. I note, however, that Lara scored tons of runs on the same "flat" pitches of the Caribbean. His innings of 375 and 400 not out come to mind. Perhaps revealingly, both of those matches were drawn, while when Sobers scored 365 not out the West Indies won by an innings. In any event, you can't simply dismiss any runs scored in the West Indies as easy. One of Sobers' greatest innings was an unbeaten century at Sabina Park in 1968 on one of the worst pitches ever seen in international cricket. And, of course, we know that Sobers was more successful away from home than Lara was.
3. Support. You claim that Sobers "had a lot of support from fellow batsmen so was never under as great an amount of pressure." This is not a statement that anyone familiar with the history of West Indian cricket in the 1960's and 1970's would make. While it is true that Sobers played in a better batting team than Lara did, on at least one occasion in every series West Indies would be desperately short of runs. In fact, one of the reasons why Sobers is regarded so highly is precisely because of his ability to bat under pressure. His innings at Lords in 1966, Madras 1967, Sabina Park 1968 and 1971, Melbourne 1972 and Bridgetown 1972 among others show this.
Lara is an all-time great, but most observers who saw both him and Sobers consider Sobers to be the greater batsman. Nothing in their respective records or in your arguments provides any compelling evidence to the contrary.
but in general the quality of posting in this forum is extremely high. There are at least a dozen contributors whose views are always interesting even if I disagree with them.
