Cricketweb decides the second best batsman ever. 32 player bracket, Contest Thread!

[mr_mister]

So it's 16-10, Viv won't catch up from here.

The top 12 according to this tournament, yes these are very rough... and unreliable but it's based on the results here. Grace didn't make the final 8 of the tournament but he lost narrowly to the runner up and so makes the top 8 based on that.

Sobers
Viv
Sachin
Hobbs
Lara
Grace
Hutton
Headley
Gavaskar
Hammond
Pollock
Richards

 

[honestbharani]

A brackets style competition never really tells you who was rated above whom. It simply, for the most part, tells you the winner of that contest. Choosing #2 and #3 in KO style competitions is silly IMO. I would rather say that CW has chosen Sobers as the second greatest batsman of all time and leave it at that.

 

[mr_mister]

sure, it was just a bit of trivia i felt like posting coz i was bored. Sobers is the second greatest

 

[Red]

Viv is the best batsman I’ve ever seen. It’s true that for a judgement such as this there’s a lot to count against him. Once he was established in the team he wasn’t prepared to bat forever like Lara. I believe that if he’d played in a side as weak as Lara he would have made more runs simply because he had to. He often wasn’t prepared to play himself in before attempting to dominate the bowler. He even got out to the likes of Devon Malcolm for this reason. His overall stats are “Great” but he doesn’t stand out from the rest of the greats, and indeed is below many of them (and below some not so greats). He should really have averaged 60 plus and the fact that he, to an extent, underachieved is another black mark against him.

Having said all that I’m voting for him anyway, so up yours ugly.

Richards.

I don't think he "underachieved" at all. He played his natural game which was to be ultra aggressive and dominate the opposition. That's what made him epic.

 

[watson]

So it's 16-10, Viv won't catch up from here.

The top 12 according to this tournament, yes these are very rough... and unreliable but it's based on the results here. Grace didn't make the final 8 of the tournament but he lost narrowly to the runner up and so makes the top 8 based on that.

Sobers
Viv
Sachin
Hobbs
Lara
Grace
Hutton
Headley
Gavaskar
Hammond
Pollock
Richards

If you pick the highest placed specialist openers, and highest placed middle-order batsman, then that gives us a top 6 of......

01. Jack Hobbs
02. WG Grace
03. Don Bradman
04. Sachin Tendulkar
05. Viv Richards
06. Garry Sobers

......which iirc is the same top 6 that Wisden picked for their ATG team.

 

[Saint Kopite]

I think a case can me made for each of Sir Garry/Sir Viv/Sachin/Lara/G Chappell/Barry Richards/Hobbs/Hutton as the second greatest batsman ever. Out of them, I feel Sir Garry holds the edge but Sir Viv and Sachin aren't far off, IMO.

 

[mr_mister]

and watson that makes the second XI batting lineup this I guess

Hutton
Gavaskar
Hammond
Lara
Headley
Pollock

Middle order hard to place as they all batted in the top 4 but oh well.


It'd be funny if Lara outperforms Sachin tomorrow in the All-stars games and people decide they've voted wrong in that match

 

[mr_mister]

...and the third XI

Barry Richards
Trumper
Ponting
Sanga
Greg Chappell
Steve Waugh


everyone else got thrashed(except for ABDV) in their first round match

 

[kyear2]

A brackets style competition never really tells you who was rated above whom. It simply, for the most part, tells you the winner of that contest. Choosing #2 and #3 in KO style competitions is silly IMO. I would rather say that CW has chosen Sobers as the second greatest batsman of all time and leave it at that.

Of course it gives you an idea of who is better. They went against each other head to head and prevailed. How many would argue that the top four in this competition is the top 4 after Bradman.

The fact that Lara also ran Sachin so close also gives an idea that the forum rates him next in line, which basically it does.

 

[kyear2]

If you pick the highest placed specialist openers, and highest placed middle-order batsman, then that gives us a top 6 of......

01. Jack Hobbs
02. WG Grace
03. Don Bradman
04. Sachin Tendulkar
05. Viv Richards
06. Garry Sobers

......which iirc is the same top 6 that Wisden picked for their ATG team.

And apart from Grace over Hutton, it is also the top order for the cricinfo batting order and the CW XI.

So the process worked, of course this kind of conclusion will not be possible on the bowling side as 2 of the top 5 bowlers of all time are facing each other in the second round.

 

[marc71178]

No knock out tournament will ever give any definitive result apart from the winner of it. To get a listing you need some sort of points based voting.

 

[mr_mister]

lol. for the best all rounder ever there should be an 8/16 man round robin between the big guns

 

[mr_mister]

just for curiosity sake and I know stats are like crack for cricket fans

(test average, test tons, fc average, fc tons)

CW 1st XI

01. Jack Hobbs (56.94 with 15 tons and 50.70 with 197 tons)
02. WG Grace (32.29 with 2 tons and 39.45 with 124 tons)
03. Don Bradman (99.94 with 29 tons and 95.14 with 117 tons)
04. Sachin Tendulkar (53.78 with 51 tons and 57.84 with 81 tons)
05. Viv Richards (50.23 with 24 tons and 49.40 with 114 tons)
06. Garry Sobers (57.78 with 26 tons and 54.87 with 86 tons)

Combined test batting average: 58.49
Combined FC batting average: 57.90
Combined test 100s: 147, with 24.5 per player
Combined FC 100s: 719, with 119.8 per player

CW 2nd XI

01. Len Hutton (56.67 with 19 tons and 55.51 with 129 tons)
02. Sunil Gavaskar (51.12 with 34 tons and 51.46 with 81 tons)
03. Wally Hammond (58.45 with 22 tons and 56.10 with 167 tons)
04. Brian Lara (52.88 with 34 tons and 51.88 with 65 tons)
05. George Headley (60.83 with 10 tons and 69.86 with 33 tons)
06. Graeme Pollock (60.97 with 7 tons and 54.67 with 64 tons)

Combined test batting average: 56.82
Combined FC batting average: 56.58
Combined test 100s: 126, with 21 per player
Combined FC 100s: 539, with 89.3 per player

CW 3rd XI

01. Barry Richards (72.57 with 2 tons and 54.74 with 80 tons)
02. Victor Trumper (39.04 with 8 tons and 44.57 with 42 tons)
03. Ricky Ponting (51.85 with 41 tons and 55.90 with 82 tons)
04. Kumar Sangakkara (57.40 with 38 tons and 50.49 with 55 tons)
05. Greg Chappell (53.86 with 24 tons and 52.20 with 74 tons)
06. Steve Waugh (51.06 with 32 tons and 51.94 with 79 tons)

Combined test batting average: 54.30
Combined FC batting average: 51.64
Combined test 100s: 145, with 24.2 per player
Combined FC 100s: 412, with 68.7 per player


A lot of Outliers in the 1st and 3rd XI but they kind of even each other out (Grace/Bradman, Trumper/Richards... at least when discussing test averages)

The stats descend accordingly as we should expect.

 

[honestbharani]

Of course it gives you an idea of who is better. They went against each other head to head and prevailed. How many would argue that the top four in this competition is the top 4 after Bradman.

The fact that Lara also ran Sachin so close also gives an idea that the forum rates him next in line, which basically it does.

Coz I assume Viv Vs Sachin/Lara would have been very different, for starters. And same for any of them Vs Hobbs etc. I just said earlier that Sachin V Lara seemed way too early in this poll.

 

[smash84]

Of course it gives you an idea of who is better. They went against each other head to head and prevailed. How many would argue that the top four in this competition is the top 4 after Bradman.

The fact that Lara also ran Sachin so close also gives an idea that the forum rates him next in line, which basically it does.

You can only conclude that if you run a pairwise head to head for each possible player.