Nothing you are saying is making much sense atm, whether in or our of context.
It's subjective, but Gillespie was knocking over everyone at that stage of his career and subjectively, many people had him ahead of McGrath as a bowler, despite McGrath's better average and returns.
Nah. Australia played ****. Which means Pakistan also didn't really play great. Which means NZ only drew that series in UAE because Pakistan are ****. NZ suck too. And the same NZ beat SL and India. And England lost a test each vs those two teams. So England are laughably poor (as always).
I kind of get his point about conditions. Them being **** in the UAE justifies the point that there attack isn't that amazing on flat pitches. But I'd argue there's still quite a lot of difference between UAE flat and Australia flat, for the reasons of pace and bounce. Australian pitches are always like this to an extent, and were when England, 2011 India, and the rest were struggling on them.
Amazing.
the silliest thing is that this has all come about as a result of an insistence to rebut something that literally no one has said.
They won in SA due to having Johnson at his best, something you can't claim he is here.. but I take your point, they were bloody good against South Africa but to try and say Johnson is anywhere near the bowler he was last season is misleading, just look at his stats.
Gillespies "numbers" during that time period were only behind Warne, McGrath and Muralitharan.
quite, but the point remains that to use that to lampoon the idea that aus 2014/5 > aus 2003/4 (which no one has said) is ridiculous, because the conditions are significantly different, and forgets the basic point that we were missing arguably our best bowler in the uae.
And Smith's 'numbers' is an average of 54 in UAE, South Africa, and at home vs England in the year leading up to playing India.
This almost needs its own thread, because I'd say unquestionably that 2014/2015 Australia would never be rated anywhere near 2003/2004 Australia - but it suits the purpose of people in this thread to compare that they are.
No one is seriously suggesting India's bowlers are anything other than utter **** and that making runs against them here should be a sure sign you're going to make runs anywhere, against anyone.
Yeah look I agree about Johnson but your point about "just look at his stats" is what is frustrating people. Maybe his stats are bad because India played a blinder? Obviously it's not that simple, it's a bit from A and a bit from B. However, what you're doing is making the assumption that someone like Kohli isn't good enough to do this, then when he does, instead of readjusting your opinion on him, you're readjusting your opinion on the Australian bowlers, thinking "actually they're not as good as I thought they were because this player is doing something I didn't consider him capable of". The pitches are flat and Johnson hasn't been as good as he was last season, but that core logic makes no sense and it's used all the time to justify not crediting good performance.
An average of 54, with two centuries across three series.
the reason people say the 2003/4 aus attack was **** was because it was.
you are aware that the average of 54 contains two 90-odd scores yes
Lololololololololol.
Johnson's form in the UAE vs say Trent Boult's form in the UAE is also another tell, also watching Johnson in this series will show anyone that he's down on pace, erratic and not at his best.
I never argued otherwise.