Team full of batsmen or team full of bowlers? Which is stronger on paper?

[mr_mister]

Just using an example of the best bats ever verus the best bowlers ever

Batsman:

Hobbs
Hutton
Bradman
Sachin
Sobers
Viv
Lara
Hammond
Grace
S Waugh
Sanga+


Made sure to include a few blokes who could bowl a bit



Bowlers:

Imran
Hadlee
Jack Russell +
Marshall
Warne
Wasim
O'Reilly
Barnes
Murali
Ambrose
McGrath


made sure to include a bloke who could keep and wouldn't add that much with the bat


Who wins this match?

 

[Athlai]

More interesting question occurs to me, who is the best ever bowler that could keep to a decent level? Any of the greats?

 

[mr_mister]

Boucher had a test bowling average of 6

 

[Daemon]

Man Athlai's sig never fails to get me

 

[Daemon]

Wade is a decent bowler but I suppose he fails the being decent at keepig criteria?

 

[mr_mister]

I'm gonna answer my own question and say the batting team wins comfortably here

 

[TheJediBrah]

Tim Zoehrer was a genuinely first-class standard leg-spinner

 

[Hurricane]

Batting team always wins these contests. With that many batsman they should score 400 every inning and the bowlers will get out to people bowling Michael Hussey or Jonathan Trott style medium pace let alone sobers and Hammond

 

[HeathDavisSpeed]

Batting team always wins these contests. With that many batsman they should score 400 every inning and the bowlers will get out to people bowling Michael Hussey or Jonathan Trott style medium pace let alone sobers and Hammond

But the team of bowlers has genuine batting in there - Imran, Hadlee, Warne, Wasim.

Probably the issue being you've got equally genuine bowling in the batting side with Sobers and Grace and a lesser extent Richards and Waugh.

Of course, if Tendulkar was dropped for Kallis, then this'd be a no-brainer.

 

[Zinzan]

Batting team always wins these contests. With that many batsman they should score 400 every inning and the bowlers will get out to people bowling Michael Hussey or Jonathan Trott style medium pace let alone sobers and Hammond

Been meaning to ask if there is any reason you always use 'inning' as opposed 'innings'?

 

[TheJediBrah]

Been meaning to ask if there is any reason you always use 'inning' as opposed 'innings'?

in America "inning" is the singular of innings

guess they're largely interchangeable

 

[vcs]

It should always be "innings", never "inning". It's a pet hate of mine, many Indians also make this mistake.

 

[kiwiviktor81]

The batting side should be the stronger for the reason that each one of them adds something to the team, whereas there is no real reason to have more than 5 bowlers because each subsequent bowler just takes up overs that a frontliner could have had.

 

[G.I.Joe]

It should always be "innings", never "inning". It's a pet hate of mine, many Indians also make this mistake.

IMO the team should have an innings, but a batsman should have an inning.

 

[Hurricane]

But the team of bowlers has genuine batting in there - Imran, Hadlee, Warne, Wasim.

Probably the issue being you've got equally genuine bowling in the batting side with Sobers and Grace and a lesser extent Richards and Waugh.

Of course, if Tendulkar was dropped for Kallis, then this'd be a no-brainer.

Those four names you put in your first sentence are probably as good as an average Plunket Sheild batsman like Kitchen* for example. Given people like Anaru get out all the time to rank medium pacers like Ellis and Grobelaar - there is no question in my mind that even a bowler like Mike Hussey would be a handful. And then you look at the batting side and realise you have Hammond in it to bowl first change and you are away laughing.

The overall inference I wanted to make is forget about the names and great players and the ATG line ups. If I divided two club sides in my old grade and put all the batsman in one team and all the bowlers in the other team then the batsman would carve up. Primarily because the batsman would have some presentable bowlers out of eleven of them, and they would scythe through the bowlers when they batted. Bowlers are not very good at batting, while on the whole batsman can be mediocre bowlers more often than not.

It is easy to be a mediocre bowler but hard to be an average batsman.

I will also add that it is very difficult to be a good bowler, and equally hard to be good batsman.

Bowling has an easier learning curve you just have to master one action. Batting requires learning many many shots.


*Don't over analyse my Kitchen example - there is actually a wide discrepancy in the 4 all rounders you named with their appreciation for batting so it is hard to pick one batsman to approximate all of them. Nonetheless I reckon Kitchen would average high twenties in tests which is about what those folk did apart from Imran.

 

[watson]

I think it depends on the pitch. On a flat mud heap it would be draw as the Batting Team is too reliant on Sobers and Hammond who would have to be over bowled, and the Bowling Team would be too 'blunted'.

On a bowling paradise I can't see the Batting Team scoring enough runs against Marshall and Imran et al, or Murali and O'Reilly et al.

If the pitch is a typical Test wicket that is flatish on days 2-4 then I would tend towards the Bowling Team who would win narrowly. I think that their ability to rotate through a lot of fresh bowlers would give them a significant edge.

 

[AndrewB]

More interesting question occurs to me, who is the best ever bowler that could keep to a decent level? Any of the greats?

These are more on the lines of "best ever keepers who could bowl to a decent level", but:

George Brown kept wicket in his 7 Tests for England, but took over 600 wickets in county cricket.
Alan Smith was another England keeper who towards the end of his county career was picked as a bowler (and once took a hat-trick).

 

[Pothas]

Take Sobers out and I think the bowling side wins most of the time.

 

[Dan]

More interesting question occurs to me, who is the best ever bowler that could keep to a decent level? Any of the greats?

Andrew Hall.

 

[sledger]

I remember Pothas and I simmed a match between an all batsman team and an all bowler team on ICC 2002 once.

IIRC the batsman won out easily, with Dravid scoring 300+.