Most of the old timers be it former cricketers, journalist or just fans rate him as their favourite batsman. have always wondered what made the great man even more special among the special players.
He does not have the
best average among his peers, nor is he the
highest run getter unlike a Sachin he was not a
100 scoring machine or has
mammoth scores like Lara. yes his SR is much higher then batsman in his era but Sehwag in this era has
an even higher SR but people don't put him above the likes of Sachin or Ponting.
So what was the actual selling point of the great man. Would love to hear some views from old timers like SJS and Archie
The five criteria by which you think the best batsman should be decided have just one thing in common, they are purely statistical and what better criteria can we think of than numbers - dry cold statistics !!
Batting Average :
Barrington has a higher batting average than Gary Sobers. But one wonders why no one who has any idea of the game considers Barrington anywhere in the same category. The contemporaries of the two do not ever discuss of them as equals - not one of them does. Not fair . . .
Mammoth Innings :
Hayden, Jayawardane and jayasuriya have bigger (mammoth ?) test innings than Sachin and they are contemporaries too yet . . . . I guess I should add Sehwag in that list too with his two triple hundreds . . . Not fair . . .
Highest Run getter :
I came across a priceless piece of information today. It is a list of the greatest batsmen of all time at different times in the history of the game. I would like to share it with all of you.
Code:
Period Greatest
1877 -1881 Bannerman
1881-1884 Ulyett
1884-1886 Murdoch
1886- 1902 Shrewsbury
1902-1924 Hill
1924-1937 Hobbs
1937-1969 Hammond
1970-1980 Sobers
1981-1983 Boycott
!983-1993 Gavaskar
1993-2005 Border
2005-2008 Lara
2009-2011 Tendulkar
This is magic. I also managed to get similar lists for all countries as well the ability to predict who will become the next greatest !!
Chanderpaul, for example, is not only the second best West Indian batsman of all time but has a fairly strong chance to "become" THE BEST before he retires. Not by taking his batting a couple of notches higher but by just staying around long enough to score the 2300 odd runs that separate him and Lara. Phenomenal.
By the way, Alec Stewart will be tickled pink to be informed that he is the second best English batsman of all time :-)
100 scoring machines
Talking of Sir Vivian, why Tendulkar even MoYo is a greater batsman than him. They both have 24 test hundreds but the Pakistani legend took 31 tests less than the West Indian pretender !!!
Strike rate :
I will have to request to be excused from discussing this criteria for some of the names it threw up are a bit embarrassing even to a "statistophile" like yours truly . . .
:-)
Okay. Before my good friend Xuhaib takes offense at what may appear to be biting sarcasm, let me say that while it is sarcastic, it is not aimed at him at all.
The point I am trying to make is that statistics are not and need not be the final arbiters of such a debate. Of course when we talk of great batsmen across time, their individual statistics wont be something to make fun of for a good batsman will notch up a a decent statistical record as well but that is not and should not be the criteria for such a debate.
Yes Bradman is considered almost universally as the greatest batsman ever and his statistics have a lot to support that argument but Bradman was great not because his stats are great. He was an unbelievably phenomenal batsman. His stats are incidental to his great and wondersome attributes as a batsman. When the WW2 started he had just scored over 5000 runs at 97plus. When the war ended and Australia played the first post war series, 7 years later, he was a year and a half short of his 40th birthday. He was n ot sure he wanted to play again for Australia and said so. He doubted if he was good enough. Of course we know now that he was still very good. But lets suppose that in those 18 tests at the age of 39 had yielded a 1000 runs less. H would still have been averaging 50 plus post war. A phenomenal achievement for we know what happened to his great contemporary and rival Hammond. The world would have continued to hail his mastery with the willow but he would have ended his career with an average of 85 odd.
The difference of 14 points in average is very high but would it have meant that Bradman was any less a phenomenon than we consider him to be today . . . of course not. He would still have been one. He could have averaged just 25(post war) and averaged in the high 70's (overall) and he would still have been the greatest batsman by far the world had seen. He need not have played at all after the war and it would still be true.
That is something we need to be able to discern. He was great because of what he could do with a bat at the crease, because of his footwork, the type of which has never been since. Because of his ability to score at very quick pace without hitting the ball in the air. Because of his insatiable appetite for runs, his amazing running between the wickets, his ability to pull anything even a few inches shorter than good length, his ability to dance down the track to spinners and medium pacers alike and rarely be stumped. His phenomenal temprament. Irrespective of the match situation he spent twenty years on the cricket fields of Australia and England always coming ion with the same mild smile and briskly walking to the crease to tap the first ball for single and on getting out (at blob or 300) tucking his bat under his arm and briskly walking off the ground with the same mild smile on his face.
He went to work to office and returned back when he was done.
He was a phenomenon and his dominance of bowlers around the world was so great that combined with his insatiable appetite for runs and a refusal to EVER in the most unimportant of games, to throw away his wicket, was such a deadly combination that runs in unprecedented numbers just followed him throughout his career. There have been some other batsmen in the history of the game who had his cricketing skills, others who had his temrament, and others who had the insatiable appetite for runs but here it was all combined into one individual. That hasn't happened since and had not happened before him. Till that does happen, other batsmen before and after will have to be compared on a combination of qualities which are never going to be the same in each.
People seem to forget that before Bradman, the consensus , unanimous consensus, in the cricketing world was that the greatest Australian batsman had been Victor Trumper. His batting average, by the way, was 39.05. Yet no one, not in Australia and not in any other country in the world doubted his claim as Australia's greatest ever.
I suppose the point I am trying to make about statistics being an unreliable way of deciding who was the greatest. Well not deciding really for that is not something anyone except the most stupidly arrogant can proclaim to do but using just raw statistics to butteress one's argument over who he/she considers the best smells distinctly of not knowing enough to present a better case (even for the same candidate)
So when I say, I think Richards is the best I have seen, I say it not because I know I am right but because this is my opinion (very subjective) and to support that opinion I do not use statistics although Sir Vivian does not have the worst record amongst the game's greats. I do not use statistics because I consider statistics even more subjective (I can hear roars of protest) and the refuge, mostly not always, of the ignorant. I can say why I think Richards is better than the others and that would be my opinion. Different from yours and yours and with no claims to be right but then its just an opinion. :-)
Okay so why do I consider Richards the best I have seen . . .
to be continued . . .
