The Sean
Cricketer Of The Year
It's not that people are forgetting Barrington, it's that they're talking about openers.
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Why do England struggle to produce undisputedly great players?
- Thread starter ImpatientLime
- Start date
Jacknife
International Captain
Agree, unless you've played for the amount of years the likes of Tendulkar, Kallis & Ponting have played it's very hard to be seen as a ATG while still playing
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zaremba
Cricketer Of The Year
Oh dearie me. You can do better than that surely
Burgey
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No I don't think so, not for a first world country with a population base that size.
weeman27bob
International Vice-Captain
Track cycling, obviously.
Jacknife
International Captain
Compared to which country are you basing that on.
As a country though I don't know any other that competes in as many sports as England maybe apart from the US which have their own collection of sports, especially when compared to other European countries like Germany or France.
Uppercut
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He's definitely a cash-in merchant though. It's not even that there are question marks against his ability to handle the best fast bowling- everyone knows he can't do it. I don't think he'll be considered an ATG very widely unless he sorts that out.
Still got a lot to do but I reckon Broad's the most likely of the current bunch.
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uvelocity
International Coach
Jacknife
International Captain
Bahamas rock, India doesn't.
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Jacknife
International Captain
My point still stands.
Burgey
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I'd think we compete in as many sports as England.
Jacknife
International Captain
Yes you probably do.
tooextracool
International Coach
Would absolutely love to hear your arguments as to why Sehwag and Hayden werent btw. Unless you don't consider either of them cash in merchants.
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Migara
International Coach
SL is not there btw. 2 olympic medals in total for a population of 20m, placing at 65, 4 above China!
Evenin all - just to get back to the original question regarding England and its lack of great players in the last 25 years:-
The term 'all time great' is such a subjective term that it's worth drilling down and trying to establish where the line is between world class in one's own era and someone who transcends the era in which they played.
Is it about stats and averages? The difficulty with this as a pure form of analysis is it rewards individuals solely for being in sides that dominated and won matches at the time. It's a much smoother ride merely as a good player when you're in a side that is expected to win and commands fear in its opponent than the other way around.
True ATG players will continue perform at that level as individuals even when the team struggles - there was a debate about Martin Crowe earlier and I'd class him as an ATG player for that reason. Hadlee is my favourite of the 80s all-rounders and between the two of them, they essentially gave a mediocre team a glimmer against virtually anyone.
Shane, Murali, Marshall, etc.. would always take wickets. Viv would always score runs. Nobody doubts that.
The debatable areas arise when stats become inflated by either a) good players benefiting from being in domiant sides and looking like world beaters or b) matches against cannon fodder having the same effect - we couldn't apply the same logic in soccer for instance as Australia's players would have been considered the best on earth when their world cup qualifiers were against New Zealand, Tahiti, American Samoa and a bunch of guys who got off a boat and fancied a game.
England have been ordinary or worse for large parts of the last 25 years. Even their record now is built largely on being unbeatable in English conditions and nicking the odd series away from home. They're a good side, but not a great one like West Indies in the 1980s or Australia from 1995-2008.
There isn't an ATG player, which tends to mean the scope for 'perceived greatness' in merely good players does not exist. Sides with only one individual possessing a claim on ATG status tend to be quite rare for this reason - there are usually none in a poor or ordinary side, or the stats to suggest that half of that team might be.
England has a strange attitude towards most sports as a country and tends to go for 'rounded' players rather than enabling extreme brilliance and freakish talent to blossom. We certainly over-coach our footballers and knock the flair out of them with rigid tactics and structured games almost from the day they can walk. An over-emphasis on coaching manuals, and 'correctness' tends to blunt the edges of any competitor and produces fair-to-middling and stodgy players.
All the great players had at least one extreme skill, be it defence, power hitting, timing/placement, bowling incredibly quick, generating bounce, turning it sharply, swinging it prodigiously, being ridiculously accurate. A player without one is never going to be an ATG and by definition very few will have the potential to become one in the first place. The trick is not knocking the talent out of what rough diamonds you have.
The term 'all time great' is such a subjective term that it's worth drilling down and trying to establish where the line is between world class in one's own era and someone who transcends the era in which they played.
Is it about stats and averages? The difficulty with this as a pure form of analysis is it rewards individuals solely for being in sides that dominated and won matches at the time. It's a much smoother ride merely as a good player when you're in a side that is expected to win and commands fear in its opponent than the other way around.
True ATG players will continue perform at that level as individuals even when the team struggles - there was a debate about Martin Crowe earlier and I'd class him as an ATG player for that reason. Hadlee is my favourite of the 80s all-rounders and between the two of them, they essentially gave a mediocre team a glimmer against virtually anyone.
Shane, Murali, Marshall, etc.. would always take wickets. Viv would always score runs. Nobody doubts that.
The debatable areas arise when stats become inflated by either a) good players benefiting from being in domiant sides and looking like world beaters or b) matches against cannon fodder having the same effect - we couldn't apply the same logic in soccer for instance as Australia's players would have been considered the best on earth when their world cup qualifiers were against New Zealand, Tahiti, American Samoa and a bunch of guys who got off a boat and fancied a game.
England have been ordinary or worse for large parts of the last 25 years. Even their record now is built largely on being unbeatable in English conditions and nicking the odd series away from home. They're a good side, but not a great one like West Indies in the 1980s or Australia from 1995-2008.
There isn't an ATG player, which tends to mean the scope for 'perceived greatness' in merely good players does not exist. Sides with only one individual possessing a claim on ATG status tend to be quite rare for this reason - there are usually none in a poor or ordinary side, or the stats to suggest that half of that team might be.
England has a strange attitude towards most sports as a country and tends to go for 'rounded' players rather than enabling extreme brilliance and freakish talent to blossom. We certainly over-coach our footballers and knock the flair out of them with rigid tactics and structured games almost from the day they can walk. An over-emphasis on coaching manuals, and 'correctness' tends to blunt the edges of any competitor and produces fair-to-middling and stodgy players.
All the great players had at least one extreme skill, be it defence, power hitting, timing/placement, bowling incredibly quick, generating bounce, turning it sharply, swinging it prodigiously, being ridiculously accurate. A player without one is never going to be an ATG and by definition very few will have the potential to become one in the first place. The trick is not knocking the talent out of what rough diamonds you have.
hazsa19
International Regular
If Anderson and Broad maintain their current form for 3-5 years they'll have ATG-esque stats.
I love how people trott out England's population in arguments such as this to have a dig. If you could calculate the amount of English people that actually play cricket, and work out how much cricket they play over the course of a year, it would obviously be dwarfed by our friends in the Southern Hemisphere.
In my school of 1000 students, there were no more than 2 or 3 kids per year group that played cricket for a club and with any ability whatsoever. I didn't play a single organised fixture for my school!
Since this season began, i've been available every Saturday bar one. I've played a grand total of two matches, mainly due to the weather. One match was called off because the opposition couldn't raise a team.
From my pov it seems impossible to overstate how much of a minority sport Cricket is in England. The fact that we're no.1 in the world at Test Cricket, produce players as good as Flintoff, Strauss, Anderson, Broad etc is testament to our much improved development system, coaching and infrastructure.
I love how people trott out England's population in arguments such as this to have a dig. If you could calculate the amount of English people that actually play cricket, and work out how much cricket they play over the course of a year, it would obviously be dwarfed by our friends in the Southern Hemisphere.
In my school of 1000 students, there were no more than 2 or 3 kids per year group that played cricket for a club and with any ability whatsoever. I didn't play a single organised fixture for my school!
Since this season began, i've been available every Saturday bar one. I've played a grand total of two matches, mainly due to the weather. One match was called off because the opposition couldn't raise a team.
From my pov it seems impossible to overstate how much of a minority sport Cricket is in England. The fact that we're no.1 in the world at Test Cricket, produce players as good as Flintoff, Strauss, Anderson, Broad etc is testament to our much improved development system, coaching and infrastructure.
Debris
International 12th Man
So English too lazy to even play?