Greatest Bowler

[Coronis]

For the record, I have nothing against Walsh, and I think he was a great fast bowler, but the second or third greatest fast bowler of all time? Never, ever seen anybody rate him that highly.

 

[the big bambino]

I rate what you post generally, but this seems a bit OTT to me. Walsh was a great fast bowler.

Maybe you're right. I had cause to look at Walsh's record v Aus as background to a post from Satyanash that I'll respond to when I find it. Its actually pretty damn good. I would have sworn he was a 30+ bowler against us in our prime but he isn't. He averaged under 30.

Which is bloody good when you'll see him compared to other top bowlers and their record v Aus. So lets say I'll have to upgrade my opinion of him. But I can still remember that time when Ambrose was injured and the pressure just came off. So alot better than I thought but perhaps suffering in recollection due to fine company he kept.

 

[Slifer]

Look Walsh was alright but there's a reason he lived in Ambrose's shadow. I remember a tight series in 96/97 when an injury to Ambrose gave us the break we were looking for. All of a sudden the series was busted wide open. No pressure and with Walsh leading the attack - well lets just say he looked all alone and badly out numbered. Same with Bishop.

Walsh did the dirty work bcos he wasn't good enough to be the lead man. Can't help but feel he was made to look good associated with a group of glamour fast bowlers. Longevity is admirable but lets not parlay it into greatness.

I remember that series vividly. It was the 4th test where Amby was injured and then Hayden made a hundred where he was dropped at least 5 times. I honestly think that had Amby been fit, then the WI would have been in with a shot of maybe squaring the series.

Still though, Walsh is a great bowler just not in the top tier with the Amby's and Mcgrath's of the game. I like to make the analogy that he is like an Allan Border when it comes to bowling.

 

[Slifer]

Maybe you're right. I had cause to look at Walsh's record v Aus as background to a post from Satyanash that I'll respond to when I find it. Its actually pretty damn good. I would have sworn he was a 30+ bowler against us in our prime but he isn't. He averaged under 30.

Which is bloody good when you'll see him compared to other top bowlers and their record v Aus. So lets say I'll have to upgrade my opinion of him. But I can still remember that time when Ambrose was injured and the pressure just came off. So alot better than I thought but perhaps suffering in recollection due to fine company he kept.

TBH along with Lara, Walsh is the one who really kept us in the 99 series at home to Oz and I distinctly rememeber a series away to India in 94 i think (where incidentally Amby was unavailable) and Walsh lead from the front and was quite instrumental in helping us to square a series in India vs an excellent batting line up.

 

[the big bambino]

You're right. I'll just have to make repairs to my opinion of him. He's alot more impressive than my recollection would have it. Your analogy that has him an effective accumulator with the ball, as Border was with the bat, is pretty useful too. A good way to remember him and judge his contribution.

 

[NUFAN]

I always remember Walsh vs Healy - he absolutely pawned the ex good QLD wicketkeeper / current inept commentator.

 

[Prince EWS]

For the record, I have nothing against Walsh, and I think he was a great fast bowler, but the second or third greatest fast bowler of all time? Never, ever seen anybody rate him that highly.

It depends what you value. Not even I would have Walsh that high and my values seem to align to his contribution a lot more than most, but I certainly think you could make a case for him being as good as someone like Lillee, even if it feels intuitively wrong. Sure he didn't lead a great attack like Lillee did, and sure he never reached the heights of skill that Lillee did, but in terms of what actually matters - contributing as positively as possible to the results of as many games as possible - they're very comparable.

As a neutral observer of a match you'd obviously take what Lillee brought to the table every time, but if you had a long-term stake in the results of a cricket side, would you rather take someone who was a rockstar in his prime but declined after he turned 32 and stopped playing altogether at 35, or someone who was always a very fine bowler and gave you world class service until he was 39? Sure, Walsh wasn't as eye catching and you certainly wouldn't take him at his best over Lillee at his best, but as someone with a stake in the performances of their teams, the fact that Walsh was an infinitely better bowler when he was 38 than Lillee was when he was 38, for example, is just as relevant as the comparison of them at 28.

When we look at picking all-time teams and such we're not really looking at what a team would give up over a 20 year period and nor should we because it's not exactly an exciting way to form a team, but when we look at who was better over a career, someone's ability to continue to perform at an elite level for a long time is very under-rated. I think we get a little wrapped up in players' peak skill and our all-time eleven thought processes when rating players instead of looking at what they'd actually add to different teams across history. Maintaining the ability to perform at an elite level is a skill in itself, even if it's not exactly an exciting one.

 

[kyear2]

I prefer to look at how great a player was, now how long he played. Longevity isn't overly important to me. It' s a bonus but the the main criteria.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

There has to be a certain amount of longevity, but to rule someone out of being the greatest anything ever just because they played on past they best makes no sense.

In Courtney Walsh's case he went from young man in a great side to main man in a crap side.

 

[Prince EWS]

There has to be a certain amount of longevity, but to rule someone out of being the greatest anything ever just because they played on past they best makes no sense.

I don't really see how you got that from what I said. Retiring earlier may give you better averages but it'd give you worse longevity, so if anything a longevity-heavy approach to rating players would help players who played on past their best to the detriment of their raw statistics. There's actually little that annoys me more than someone saying Player X was better than Player Y because he had a better career average even though Player Y actually had a much better record than Player X at the age Player X retired.

The thing with Walsh though is at the same age as other bowlers were declining or retiring, he was getting better (at least maintaining his skill). And he deserves credit for that. Factors other than how good you were at your absolute best need to be taken into account when you're rated as a player, and while there's no doubt there are many bowlers with better peaks during their primes than Walsh, he made up a hell of a lot of ground in terms of how much he was worth as a cricketer with how he performed after he turned 33 or so.

 

[Howe_zat]

It depends what you value. Not even I would have Walsh that high and my values seem to align to his contribution a lot more than most, but I certainly think you could make a case for him being as good as someone like Lillee, even if it feels intuitively wrong. Sure he didn't lead a great attack like Lillee did, and sure he never reached the heights of skill that Lillee did, but in terms of what actually matters - contributing as positively as possible to the results of as many games as possible - they're very comparable.

As a neutral observer of a match you'd obviously take what Lillee brought to the table every time, but if you had a long-term stake in the results of a cricket side, would you rather take someone who was a rockstar in his prime but declined after he turned 32 and stopped playing altogether at 35, or someone who was always a very fine bowler and gave you world class service until he was 39? Sure, Walsh wasn't as eye catching and you certainly wouldn't take him at his best over Lillee at his best, but as someone with a stake in the performances of their teams, the fact that Walsh was an infinitely better bowler when he was 38 than Lillee was when he was 38, for example, is just as relevant as the comparison of them at 28.

When we look at picking all-time teams and such we're not really looking at what a team would give up over a 20 year period and nor should we because it's not exactly an exciting way to form a team, but when we look at who was better over a career, someone's ability to continue to perform at an elite level for a long time is very under-rated. I think we get a little wrapped up in players' peak skill and our all-time eleven thought processes when rating players instead of looking at what they'd actually add to different teams across history. Maintaining the ability to perform at an elite level is a skill in itself, even if it's not exactly an exciting one.

Y'know I'm not sure it is, even looking at it from an "overall value" point of view. Isn't the marginal gain from very good to amazing worth that much more at the top level?

We like to think of bat versus ball in terms of a sliding continuous scale and probabilities (no doubt averages play their part here) but sometimes it can be more discrete, sometimes there's an amount of skill and craft and thought that you have to get to to beat the opposition, and in the rarely agreed upon world of ATG selection that amount might be very very high indeed.

It's like the photoelectric effect. Or top trumps, or something.

In particular I'm thinking of that first Test against SA this summer where Amla and Kallis piled up 600 odd. England's attack, in the main, bowled fairly well. The the difference was pretty marginal - but it was consistently marginal all day. So England's seamers bowling consistently and roughly as well as they had done with success against Pakistan didn't do anything, and Amla and Kallis were too good for it on that. The difference in skill wasn't huge - but sometimes it's the nature of cricket that you don't have to have that much more to break through, you just have to have the skill to do it.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

I don't really see how you got that from what I said.

I didn't. My post was a general comment, not a specific reply to yours. I read on here recently that had Ian Botham retired in 1985 he would be a contender for the greatest all-rounder ever. As far as I'm concerned he was a great player for long enough that the overweight medium pace trundler years don't alter his status in the game.

 

[Prince EWS]

Y'know I'm not sure it is, even looking at it from an "overall value" point of view. Isn't the marginal gain from very good to amazing worth that much more at the top level?

We like to think of bat versus ball in terms of a sliding continuous scale and probabilities (no doubt averages play their part here) but sometimes it can be more discrete, sometimes there's an amount of skill and craft and thought that you have to get to to beat the opposition, and in the rarely agreed upon world of ATG selection that amount might be very very high indeed.

It's like the photoelectric effect. Or top trumps, or something.

In particular I'm thinking of that first Test against SA this summer where Amla and Kallis piled up 600 odd. England's attack, in the main, bowled fairly well. The the difference was pretty marginal - but it was consistently marginal all day. So England's seamers bowling consistently and roughly as well as they had done with success against Pakistan didn't do anything, and Amla and Kallis were too good for it on that. The difference in skill wasn't huge - but sometimes it's the nature of cricket that you don't have to have that much more to break through, you just have to have the skill to do it.

Yeah, and I wouldn't pick Walsh in a theoretical all-time world XI for that reason. But in terms of how good he was at a level of cricket that actually exists, he was already at that "amazing" level. He took 500 wickets at 24; he wasn't just very good.

At a theoretical level above Test cricket, I think someone like Lillee would be better than him by enough during the peak period to count for more than the longevity, but that level of cricket doesn't actually exist, so it's a bit of an irrelevance for me in deciding who the better bowler was. In the real world of Test cricket, I think Walsh's ability to be in the top 1% of Test bowlers at the time for six years longer than Lillee did is more more than Lillee's ability to go up to the top 0.5% during his absolute peak. At a level above you'd probably only use Lillee during his peak and not use Walsh at all so Lillee would be the more useful of the two - a bit like how Chapple is a better county bowler than Simon Jones but Simon Jones was the better Test bowler, lets say - but Test cricket is our ultimate at the moment.

It's why forming an all-time world XI and ranking Test cricketers are two pretty different exercises for me.

 

[Prince EWS]

I didn't. My post was a general comment, not a specific reply to yours. I read on here recently that had Ian Botham retired in 1985 he would be a contender for the greatest all-rounder ever. As far as I'm concerned he was a great player for long enough that the overweight medium pace trundler years don't alter his status in the game.

Ahh okay, fair enough. I don't mark players down for playing on at all. I just mark them up if they can do it successfully. If Botham retired before he became a joke cricketer I'd rate him exactly as I rate him now.

 

[fredfertang]

Beefy is a particularly irritating case though because he was so crap for so long it tarnished his reputation in the eyes of most - made it worse that he didn't choose to give up his bloody bowling after that back injury and concentrate on becoming the really great batsman he had the potential to be - but he just couldn't be arsed

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Beefy is a particularly irritating case though because he was so crap for so long it tarnished his reputation in the eyes of most - made it worse that he didn't choose to give up his bloody bowling after that back injury and concentrate on becoming the really great batsman he had the potential to be - but he just couldn't be arsed

Agreed his reputation is tarnished amongst statsmongers and people who think longevity at peak of performance is important. The irritating thing is that he could have been twice the cricketer the eternally lauded Imran Khan was but he had about 5% dedication compared to Imran's 100%.
Still it was his life and he enjoyed pissing about more than he enjoyed playing cricket. Even now he wouldn't be seen within a million miles of a cricket ground if it wasn't his living.

 

[Howe_zat]

Yeah, and I wouldn't pick Walsh in a theoretical all-time world XI for that reason. But in terms of how good he was at a level of cricket that actually exists, he was already at that "amazing" level. He took 500 wickets at 24; he wasn't just very good.

At a theoretical level above Test cricket, I think someone like Lillee would be better than him by enough during the peak period to count for more than the longevity, but that level of cricket doesn't actually exist, so it's a bit of an irrelevance for me in deciding who the better bowler was. In the real world of Test cricket, I think Walsh's ability to be in the top 1% of Test bowlers at the time for six years longer than Lillee did is more more than Lillee's ability to go up to the top 0.5% during his absolute peak. At a level above you'd probably only use Lillee during his peak and not use Walsh at all so Lillee would be the more useful of the two - a bit like how Chapple is a better county bowler than Simon Jones but Simon Jones was the better Test bowler, lets say - but Test cricket is our ultimate at the moment.

It's why forming an all-time world XI and ranking Test cricketers are two pretty different exercises for me.

Yeah, you've explained all this before, but my point is it's not just selection of all-time XIs and wotsits, it's that sometimes that higher level exists within Test cricket and you don't ever want the opposition to be just too good.

Test cricket level isn't actually very level at all, it's got mountains of good form, it's got steep inclines of pitch deterioration and the occasional crevice of incompetence. It's broad and rich and that's why we love it. Sometimes, you'll face two people who are playing above the level you're supposed to be in.

For me having the ability to face down that situation and still come up on top is invaluable and so any marginal amount of extra a player has demonstrated gives them a case at being the best, even if it was relatively brief.

But I guess I'll leave it there as we'd likely just be doing this tango forever

 

[fredfertang]

Agreed his reputation is tarnished amongst statsmongers and people who think longevity at peak of performance is important. The irritating thing is that he could have been twice the cricketer the eternally lauded Imran Khan was but he had about 5% dedication compared to Imran's 100%.
Still it was his life and he enjoyed pissing about more than he enjoyed playing cricket. Even now he wouldn't be seen within a million miles of a cricket ground if it wasn't his living.

All very true - I'm probably being slightly selfish, but it is sad that the likes of Bhupinder Singh can rattle on about Imran's stats when Botham's might, for want of a bit of dedication, have been so much better than they actually are

 

[smash84]

Agreed his reputation is tarnished amongst statsmongers and people who think longevity at peak of performance is important. The irritating thing is that he could have been twice the cricketer the eternally lauded Imran Khan was but he had about 5% dedication compared to Imran's 100%.
Still it was his life and he enjoyed pissing about more than he enjoyed playing cricket. Even now he wouldn't be seen within a million miles of a cricket ground if it wasn't his living.

So to you longevity at peak of performance is not important?

 

[Howe_zat]

Agreed his reputation is tarnished amongst statsmongers and people who think longevity at peak of performance is important. The irritating thing is that he could have been twice the cricketer the eternally lauded Imran Khan was but he had about 5% dedication compared to Imran's 100%.
Still it was his life and he enjoyed pissing about more than he enjoyed playing cricket. Even now he wouldn't be seen within a million miles of a cricket ground if it wasn't his living.

I don't think you have to dismiss someone as a "statsmonger" if they suggest that an extra 95% dedication is worth something.