*Official* Warne vs Murali Discussion

[akilana]

..... And to reiterate for the umpteenth time: this is with Murali bowling in SL and Warne in Aus half the time.

so if India was home to Ponting, he would've averaged 25 half the time and would have ended up with overall average of 40.

 

[vcs]

Yeah, there's really nothing new to be said here. Still people keep going on and on...

 

[akilana]

oh thanks finally I see the light at the end of the tunnel. After so many years, I'm convinced Warne > Murali.

 

[Ikki]

Ikki, one out of every (about) 20 posts you make on CricketWeb is in this thread. You pretty much just come here to talk about Warne and Ponting these days. Why do you devote so much of your time to it? Surely you've said everything that needs saying in this thread by now.

I'm a masochist I guess.

Generally, new members come, spout stuff argued against before and then think you an idiot for holding an opinion to the contrary; then you have to go through the process of talking about it again.

Also, I guess I believe if people get showed the other side even if they don't accept it then they'll agree eventually.

 

[Ikki]

so if India was home to Ponting, he would've averaged 25 half the time and would have ended up with overall average of 40.

Nope. There is no inherent reason why Ponting does poorly in India. He scores oodles of runs against spin bowlers and has excelled in like conditions against other teams. Comically, Harbhajan is probably the biggest factor.

Murali on the other hand has a reason to do badly in Aus: it has unfavourable pitches towards spin and Australians are fine players of spin - not a factor if Murali isn't facing them though. That's why for example Warne does worse at home than he does away. And conversely, Sri Lanka is an excellent place to bowl spin and it shows where Warne does better in SL than he does practically everywhere else. It is also shown by how much better Murali is home than away.

There is nothing really difficult about scoring runs in India - in fact the opposite is probably true (it is one of the places where runs are most scored).

 

[akilana]

Already convinced Warne > Murali. And I'm beginning to see Ponting > Sachin.

 

[zaremba]

The thing is, Ikki, this thread reminds me a bit of that thing which happens when you repeat one word - any word - often enough: it becomes meaningless, surreal and amusing and quite divorced from what it started as.

Try it with any word - for instance, say the word "sausage" 30 times and see how it sounds by the end of it. Now read any 5 posts from this thread, at random, and you'll experience the same phenomenon

 

[DingDong]

Also, I guess I believe if people get showed the other side even if they don't accept it then they'll agree eventually.

a bit like gobbels from the nazi party lol

 

[Cricketismylife]

What Ikki cannot get into his head is that no wicket is worthless. Even getting Chris Martin out has some worth, although obviously a very low worth, and should not be wiped out. The BEST way to account for it so far has been done on 2 other threads.

I don't see why Ikki can't understand that deleting wickets and nit picking stats to suit a player is a completely biased assessment. Somehow its ok to remove Zim and Bang, which would then make Murali's wickets of higher value than Warne, and therefore an assessment biased towards Warne.

As said before, the ICC rankings have accounted for wicket quality, as have 2 other threads, and after working these out has shown that Murali is ahead. So AFTER factoring the quality of wicket in Murali is higher.

Ikki, you need to realise that your nit picking to adjust the quality of wicket is incredibly inaccurate. The 2 models we have seen plus the ICC model are not perfect, but far more accurate than your attempts to work out the quality simply by deleting wickets.

Murali's 5 dismissals of Andy Flower are clearly worth more than Warne's dismissals of say Harmison. Yet you want to include Harmison in the sample, but remove Andy Flower.
How on earth could that be fair to Murali?

If you want to compare Murali and Warne, at least make sure that their quality of wicket is factored in precisely, not by deleting parts of cricket history.

 

[robelinda]

Ive never even thought of it being Warne VS Murali, different bowlers, different teams, different roles, different skills. Both are amazing. There is just no end to any debate comparing players, its pretty much stupid to witness people going hammer and tongs for no real reason or outcome. Aint you guys got something better and more constructive to talk about? Because this thread aint goin nowehere. Loads of people trying to downgrade professional cricketers achievements is so useless IMO.

 

[Migara]

You are missing some things. Namely, you left out WIndies and Sri Lanka for Warne. Also; their SRs. Warne strikes about as fast as McGrath in the 00s.

Warne avg. 25.10 sr. 50.8
Murali: avg. 23.49 sr. 56.1

You didn't remove Windies or uncommon teams for Murali. His figures would be this. And to reiterate for the umpteenth time: this is with Murali bowling in SL and Warne in Aus half the time.

Di Warne play against Windies in 00's?

 

[DingDong]

Ive never even thought of it being Warne VS Murali, different bowlers, different teams, different roles, different skills. Both are amazing. There is just no end to any debate comparing players, its pretty much stupid to witness people going hammer and tongs for no real reason or outcome. Aint you guys got something better and more constructive to talk about? Because this thread aint goin nowehere. Loads of people trying to downgrade professional cricketers achievements is so useless IMO.

yes agreed 100%. but most of these guys are huge fanbois and they wont be happy until the other party admits they are wrong which is not going to happen either. expect this thread to be still going strong in 2020.

 

[Avada Kedavra]

so if India was home to Ponting, he would've averaged 25 half the time and would have ended up with overall average of 40.

 

[Shri]

Thread has been a ****ing farce from the first post where two countries that played test cricket were removed. The elitism doesn't start at the ICC, it starts here. They might have been crap but they deserve some respect.

 

[bagapath]

so if India was home to Ponting.........

..........he would have played no more than 10 tests. after failing in each one of them, he would have
been dropped for good; then he would have retired from cricket and become a bollywood extra.

you are right. why cant we look at what actually happened, for example murali played for SL and warne played for Aus, and look at how certain players performed with what was given to them instead of cooking up imaginary stats that would alter reality? murali had a statistically more successful career than warne. there is no way that can be changed now.

 

[Prince EWS]

Thread has been a ****ing farce from the first post where two countries that played test cricket were removed. The elitism doesn't start at the ICC, it starts here. They might have been crap but they deserve some respect.

I'm inclined to agree these days, to an extent anyway.

We should definitely recognise that Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are significantly weaker opponents and that it's easier to score runs and take wickets against them - but performances against them shouldn't be completely excluded. We should just weight them differently and take them into context. Murali's performances against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh were far, far better than the mean and he deserves credit for that. Just as players deserve credit for outstanding performances in First Class cricket.

 

[ankitj]

You showed that if a bowler did better than his own standard against better teams it would advantage him. Of course, doing better than you'd usually do against a good team seems logical to award. However, if two players perform under their own standard, the one facing the weaker side gets more of a benefit than the one facing a stronger side. Anyway, not sure this is relevant here since we removed minnows.

This may not be relevant but I really want to make sure that you do not criticize the method for a flaw that is not a flaw at all. In this post, I kept stressing "own standard", and there was a reason for that. In that example, if the two bowlers bowled at exact same discount to exactly one team each even if one against weak (Team C) and one against strong (Team D), they will have exact same discount because there will be no own standard to swing away from.

However in your example the two bowlers also bowled to Teams A and B. Since A and B are stronger than Team C, the overall discount will be closer to that against A and B for first bowler. And since A and B are weaker than D, the overall discount will be closer to that against D for second bowler. Where is the flaw? It's a simple question of how weights get assigned. Simple arithmetic.

 

[ankitj]

Bolded part is key. Heck, you can even make more points to make that difference seem negligible. For one, Warne had competition for upper order wickets. This means in many matches through no fault of his own the batsmen with the higher averages would be taken out by teammates. And if Warne has conceded runs to said batsmen and then takes a batsman with a lower average it hurts him. Something which is far less likely to occur for Murali who also tended to be brought on earlier.

At least I am willing to see where there is a point. How about you admitting that if you were to play against the best players of spin, India, Murali is a better bet by some distance. He has run through an Indian batting lineup in at least 3 tests and at least that many ODIs (if not mroe). Has Warne ever caused panic in Indian batting camp even once? In test or ODIs? That is a "key" too, a bigger one actually.

 

[Ikki]

At least I am willing to see where there is a point. How about you admitting that if you were to play against the best players of spin, India, Murali is a better bet by some distance. He has run through an Indian batting lineup in at least 3 tests and at least that many ODIs (if not mroe). Has Warne ever caused panic in Indian batting camp even once? In test or ODIs? That is a "key" too, a bigger one actually.

Warne was better against India in India in Tests. Murali was better than Warne against India in India in ODIs. There's a concession for you. Ironically I think my position is more reasonable than yours. You argue that objectively there is no way Warne is as good as Murali, yet I argue they're close but Warne slightly better. That is where this all began. People claimed statistically Murali is ahead and Warne was more bright lights and showman. I've shown exactly how comparable they are if not actually why Warne is better.

The problem is you won't concede the most obvious point: Warne was better away from home. With minnows, without minnows; standardized or not.

I'll say this for the last time and if people still disagree then that is on them. Murali played the minnows far more than most - if not all - bowlers, let alone Warne. Even as good as he played them, there are several bowlers with better ratios than him against them. However, even those bowlers have only played them a fraction of the time. Warne has played them even less than the bowlers mentioned in this thread wrt to performances against minnows. This is an important point because it means not only could he not build a reliable record for comparison, even if he had similar stats, the proportion of wickets Murali has against B/Z make overall ratio comparisons skewed further.

Now does this make those wickets worthless? No they're worth the same in matches and contributed to SL's cause. But for comparison between these two it really is worthless. Even when you weight them there is trouble because of the composition of B/Z's matches played and as aforesaid the fact that few bowlers (probably none of his calibre) had consistent matches against them.

 

[bagapath]

Warne was better against India in India in Tests. Murali was better than Warne against India in India in ODIs.

but murali had a very respectable overall record against india - 105 wickets at 32, no doubt helped by the 60 odd wickets taken at 24 in sri lanka, is a stat he could be proud of. he also took 7 five fers and 2 ten fers against them. no spinner can be expected to do better than that against sachin, sehwag and laxman. OTOH, warne's record against india, both home and away, was downright pathetic. please dont ever try to twist their records against india to make it look as though indians respected warne more than murali. no way. he was slaughtered like a club bowler again and again not just by sachin and sehwag but also by the not so great sidhu and azhar. but murali was capable of bowling out india on his own, and he did so on several occasions. warne, like all leg spinners who have played against india in the last 30 years, was not even remotely a threat. a sincere analysis from the indian perspective would put them both in the **** zone while playing in india and while playing in their respective home conditions, murali would be the biggest threat ever and warne would continue to languish in the **** zone.