Name an overrated and an underrated cricketer

[the big bambino]

You can def divide average to determine superiority as long as you are talking about contemporaries..

Bradman = 2* McCabe is a fair assessment..

But by some obscure logic if you come up with theory like McCabe = Ponting then I find it little tough to digest.. Classic case of rose tinted specs

Ah the old time worn rose tinted specs analogy. Used instead of presenting a factual argument. Kind of ironical really. Look, modern era chauvinism isn't particularly enlightening either.

Now don't ever let me catch you composing or discussing ATG teams. Since you can only rate contemporaries you can't make judgments across eras necessary to discuss all time selections.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Underrated: Voges
Overrated: New Zealand

 

[Jono]

Overrated - ben stokes the batsmen
Underrated - ben stokes the bowler

unlucky

 

[Heboric]

Overrated - Herschelle Gibbs , Andrew Flintoff (You can only stretch "stats dont mean everything" to a certain point)
Underrated - Kallis (born in the wrong country I suppose) , Swann

 

[Francis]

Overrated: Sir Richard Hadlee
Underrated : Sir Ian Botham

Ian Botham, to me, is cricket's best example of a player who is so much better than his statistics. Statistics don't indicate impact! Beefy had a knack of making a breakthrough at the right time.

Juxtaposed to this would be someone like Murali. I saw many matches Murali played where he barely got a wicket in the first 30 overs he bowled. But then after 50 overs he'd have seven or eight. Sri Lanka would lose the Test, because wickets weren't taken at the important times. He'd bowl 80 overs, take eight wickets, and his strike rate would hardly suffer.

If you assess cricket from the point of view of impact, not stats, then Beefy is the most underrated cricketer ever. Honestly, he should unanimously be regarded one of the 20 best cricketers ever.

 

[Coronis]

Overrated: Sir Richard Hadlee
Underrated : Sir Ian Botham

Ian Botham, to me, is cricket's best example of a player who is so much better than his statistics. Statistics don't indicate impact! Beefy had a knack of making a breakthrough at the right time.

Juxtaposed to this would be someone like Murali. I saw many matches Murali played where he barely got a wicket in the first 30 overs he bowled. But then after 50 overs he'd have seven or eight. Sri Lanka would lose the Test, because wickets weren't taken at the important times. He'd bowl 80 overs, take eight wickets, and his strike rate would hardly suffer.

If you assess cricket from the point of view of impact, not stats, then Beefy is the most underrated cricketer ever. Honestly, he should unanimously be regarded one of the 20 best cricketers ever.

Too bad he became fat and **** at cricket halfway through his career.

 

[SteveNZ]

Overrated: Sir Richard Hadlee

What? What could possibly prompt you to think a guy who took a then world record 431 wickets at 22s, almost single-handedly contributed to arguably the most golden period in his country's Test history, scored test hundreds and vital runs while also being a gun in the ODI arena is overrated? I mean, his FC average was 18. 1490 wickets. FOURTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY.

I can't fathom why you posted that.

 

[Zinzan]

Francis has always taken a liking to bashing kiwis tbf, which is bizarre if by Wellywood he means Wellington.

A massive lol @ his citing Murali as someone to take meaningless late order wickets, when if there's anyone who's singlehandedly won more games for his country than anyone else arguably in history... it's him.

 

[SteveNZ]

Francis has always taken a liking to bashing kiwis tbf, which is bizarre if by Wellywood he means Wellington.

A massive lol @ his citing Murali as someone to take meaningless late order wickets, when if there's anyone who's singlehandedly won more games for his country than anyone else arguably in history... it's him.

That'll explain it. I don't understand trolls nor could I ever understand the rationale of saying Sir Richard is overrated. Not the greatest bloke I'll give him that, but a bonafide ATG.

 

[Francis]

I actually agree that Murali won more games for his country than any other player. But in the process he padded up a lot of late innings wickets. This argument has been done to death that I hate to regurgitate it, but the wickets Murali took against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh really send his stats out of whack too. He's not as good as his stats indicate. I recall one year, I think it was 2006, where Murali took about 90 wickets, and I felt during his brief peak, Stuart Clark nearly had as good a year taking about 40-something wickets. But you can't tell this unless you watch a lot of cricket.

Hadlee was much the same - a great player, but he was in the perfect situation to benefit individually.

The all-rounders of that generation go: Imran Khan, Sir Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, and then Sir Richard Hadlee - all four of them were greats! The big knock on Hadlee was that he didn't score as many runs as he should have! Botham's great advantage was that he contributed more evenly with both. I think when people put Hadlee over Botham, they're influenced by Hadlee's far superior bowling stats.

Speaking of all-rounders reminds me: Jaques Kallis is overrated in ODI's. In Tests he was superb and an all-time great, but in ODI's he's overrated.

Not the greatest bloke I'll give him that...

This needs to be quoted in any dictionary defining the word "truth."

 

[Francis]

Oh and Kapil Dev is underrated - took 300 wickets in the toughest of situations. However, it took him forever to take over 400, and thus people don't realize the impact he first had when he came onto the scene. Not enough is made of the fact that he was successful in situations that not many fast bowlers are.

He's one of three players who are absolute lock-downs in any all-time India XI (along with Tendulkar and Gavaskar). Actually, an all-time India XI would be a great exercise... where's my main man, Jono?

 

[TheJediBrah]

What? What could possibly prompt you to think a guy who took a then world record 431 wickets at 22s, almost single-handedly contributed to arguably the most golden period in his country's Test history, scored test hundreds and vital runs while also being a gun in the ODI arena is overrated? I mean, his FC average was 18. 1490 wickets. FOURTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY.

I can't fathom why you posted that.

Anyone can be overrated regardless of how good they are. A lot of people think Bradman is overrated despite being comfortably the most outstanding cricketer in the history of the game, and they might not necessarily be wrong.

Basically, how good someone is largely irrelevant to whether they are "overrated" or not.

Now I'm not saying that Hadlee was overrated, but esentially your whole post is irellevent

 

[cnerd123]

but esentially your whole post is irellevent

Lol the irony



Also the Murali bashing is so meh, but i would be interested in how often Murali had to wait 30 overs for his first wicket (or even 15)

 

[SteveNZ]

Anyone can be overrated regardless of how good they are. A lot of people think Bradman is overrated despite being comfortably the most outstanding cricketer in the history of the game, and they might not necessarily be wrong.

Basically, how good someone is largely irrelevant to whether they are "overrated" or not.

Now I'm not saying that Hadlee was overrated, but esentially your whole post is irellevent

I hear the sentiment - essentially that you can be great and still be overrated. Like you didn't take a wicket every ball nor swat every ball for six (I'm being facetious)

But I don't think it could ever be explained to me how Bradman can be overrated when he's seen as the greatest of all-time, unless someone said he was perfect. Nor Hadlee, I mean he's rated as one of the greatest bowlers of all-time. No one's saying he was an all-rounder of Kallis' ilk, that he was a god who turned water into wickets etc.

If someone said Hadlee benefitted from not having another bonafide strike bowler in his side, then I hear that. But he's still incredibly good, ala McGrath was with Warne 'stealing' some of his wickets that Hadlee probably avoided having happen to him.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I hear the sentiment - essentially that you can be great and still be overrated. Like you didn't take a wicket every ball nor swat every ball for six (I'm being facetious)

But I don't think it could ever be explained to me how Bradman can be overrated when he's seen as the greatest of all-time, unless someone said he was perfect. Nor Hadlee, I mean he's rated as one of the greatest bowlers of all-time. No one's saying he was an all-rounder of Kallis' ilk, that he was a god who turned water into wickets etc.

If someone said Hadlee benefitted from not having another bonafide strike bowler in his side, then I hear that. But he's still incredibly good, ala McGrath was with Warne 'stealing' some of his wickets that Hadlee probably avoided having happen to him.

me neither, but a lot of people think it

tends to often be younger Indian fans, incidentally

 

[Francis]

Lol the irony



Also the Murali bashing is so meh, but i would be interested in how often Murali had to wait 30 overs for his first wicket (or even 15)

Goodness! How was I bashing Murali? Because I find him somewhat overrrated.

Murali is one of the two best spinners ever, IMO. He's a good candidate with Warne for number one. He's easily Sri Lanka's greatest ever player. In my mind, he's unquestionably one of the five best bowlers (pace or spin) ever.

But if you judged him according to his stats only, then he's almost the Bradman of bowling, because he took far more wickets than anybody else, at a great economy and strike rate. I think few people who ever saw Murali would call him the Bradman for bowling.

I think he benefited from being in a side with a weak attack that allowed him to take extra wickets. I think Shane Warne put in the performance of a lifetime in the 2005 Ashes, but even in that series he padded up extra wickets when he needed to take wickets in earlier sessions.

I'm actually a Murali fan. I'm also a Kallis fan, but I think when people compare him to Garfield Sobers they are overrating him.

Why is it that nobody can criticize Murali without being accused of bashing him? Is it because he was vilified for much during his career?

 

[Francis]

Re: Bradman being overrated


I find it very difficult to rate "old timers." Steve Smith played an outrageous shot at the 20/20 World Cup - flicking a ball wide on the off-side for six on the leg-side - that wouldn't be possible in Bradman's day due to inferior bats.

You hear about Wally Hammond playing the innings of his life... 32 RUNS! But it was played on a wet pitch when Bill O'Reilly (a spinner no less) was bowling balls that were skidding over his head.

Cricket is also fortunate, unlike say rugby union, to be a sport where the basic hand/eye coordination skills have remained the same. If there's one area where cricketers are true professionals, it's in the field.

What's the difference between facing Frank Tyson bowling in the 1950s and Mitchell Johnson in 2011? Not much. They both bowled fast. So you could argue that it is actually harder for older generations because they didn't have protective gear and couldn't stand up to intimidating bowling.

But then again, in Bradman's day, I'm sure that the only two great countries were Australia and England. The West Indies had Headley and nothing else. South Africa came to Australia and Bradman had a batting average over 200. I guess they were like the Bangladesh of that day. Without that series, Bradman's numbers suffer. New Zealand were too busy giving woman voting rights to be good at cricket at that time.

Bradman's average against England was around 90 IIRC, which is still amazing. But if you take a professional approach to the game, then maybe it would be much lower.

He's the greatest cricketer ever. But an argument can be made that in this day he would make less runs.

 

[cnerd123]

An equally strong argument can be made that Bradman would score more runs too IMO. There is merit in both schools of thought.

 

[Furball]

Today I learned that taking late order wickets is not important.

 

[Francis]

Today I learned that taking late order wickets is not important.

They're important. But it's important to take wickets before important sessions are lost.

And yikes! I was speaking in generalities. I saw a "few" Tests where I felt Murali's seven and eight wicket innings weren't as good as his five or six wicket innings, because he took those wickets at more important times.

I hate using Shane Warne in the same post as Murali. But Warne's best ODI bowling performance, IMO, was when he took 4-27 against South Africa in 1999. After nine overs he had 3-13, then Riefel dropped Pollock, and Pollock smashed Warne for 14 runs in the last over. Then Warne took Kallis. That four wicket innings was better than any ODI performance where Warne took MORE wickets.

One of Warne's best ever performance was his four wickets at Adelaide in 2006/07 Ashes. He got smashed in the first innings, only took four wickets in the second. And yet that second innings performance was one of his greatest.

Stats and number of wickets don't indicate IMPACT. It's impact I'm judging players on. Sorry I used Warne, but I'm very familiar with his career.

Wow! Murali is one of the greats - I didn't expect things to be taken so far!!!