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Placing our bets on "Test Cricket's Young Fab Four"

Which of these "Young Fabbies" will make it the biggest?

  • Total voters
    46
  • Poll closed .
Spark

Spark

Global Moderator
Blocky said:
If Smith was as good as he's made out to be, considering he's also got Starc, Haze and co as a bowling attack, and Lyon who whilst being utterly ****, has a knack of taking fourth innings wickets when it looks like no one else would, his side would have the record that Ponting/Waugh/Border's teams had.

Name a tough series that the Smith generation has won,
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Staggeringly, there are 6 other batsman in the side.
 
Zinzan

Zinzan

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Blocky I'm sure Smith's ugliness at the wicket plays a massive part in you underrating him, because I was the same for a long time, before finally accepting that his style, as unorthodox as it is, is actually going to be successful for him.

I don't think he's quite as good a batsman to be averaging 60 though, but he's definitely up there with Root currently.

Let's also not forget quite a few great batsmen in recent years have been averaging close to 60 for a while before coming back down to earth... Ponting got to 59.99 in 2007 IIRC, Dravid, Kallis, Sanga were often touching the 58-59 mark, so I wouldn't get carried away with Smith potentially being a better test bat than say Ricky Ponting just yet, as I heard someone on the radio posing earlier today.
 
Spark

Spark

Global Moderator
Blocky argument: actually, Australia is garbage until I need to somehow say that Smith's record is meaningless, in which case Australia is actually incredible and underperforming.
 
Spark

Spark

Global Moderator
Zinzan said:
Blocky I'm sure Smith's ugliness at the wicket plays a massive part in you underrating him, because I was the same for a long time, before finally accepting that his style, as unorthodox as it is, is actually going to be successful for him.

I don't think he's quite as good a batsman to be averaging 60 though, but he's definitely up there with Root currently.

Let's also not forget quite a few great batsmen in recent years have been averaging close to 60 for a while before coming back down to earth... Ponting got to 59.99 in 2007 IIRC, Dravid, Kallis, Sanga were often touching the 58-59 mark, so I wouldn't get carried away with Smith potentially being a better test bat than say Ricky Ponting just yet, as I heard someone on the radio posing earlier today.
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Ponting, Dravid and Sanga all got to there after like 100 Tests too.
 
Blocky

Blocky

Banned
Zinzan said:
Blocky I'm sure Smith's ugliness at the wicket plays a massive part in you underrating him, because I was the same for a long time, before finally accepting that his style, as unorthodox as it is, is actually going to be successful for him.

I don't think he's quite as good a batsman to be averaging 60 though, but he's definitely up there with Root currently.

Let's also not forget quite a few great batsmen in recent years have been averaging close to 60 for a while before coming back down to earth... Ponting got to 59.99 in 2007 IIRC, Dravid, Kallis, Sanga were often touching the 58-59 mark, so I wouldn't get carried away with Smith potentially being a better test bat than say Ricky Ponting just yet, as I heard someone on the radio posing earlier today.
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It works for him when there is nothing available for the bowlers to counter-act it... when you're running across your stumps and pinging everything into the leg side, the moment there is some movement, he's all at sea... but hell, this is the worst period for swing, there is literally nothing even with a swing demon like Amir or Starc bowling, it's also the worst period for spin, there has been nothing in this wicket at all.
 
Slifer

Slifer

International Captain
I think the argument is that somehow kw and joe root are better than Steve Smith. Steve Smith is ugly as hell at the crease but the bugger can bat and is far and away the best in the world atm. He could go to India and flop, wouldn't make a difference to me. KW flopped at home to pakistan recently and root flopped away to Bangledesh, yes Bangladesh!!!

People make these ridiculous arguments about Smith playing on roads at home (bs) conveniently forgetting that he's the only one of the so called big 4 averaging 50+ away. When that didnt work they nit pick stats versus certain teams, as if some how Smith is the only batsmen who's gotten to bat againat lesser attacks, again joe root failed vs Bangladesh!!

Face it people Steve Smith is the man right now ans no amounf of nit picking stats is going to change that.
 
Blocky

Blocky

Banned
The argument isn't that KW is better than Smith, KW is demonstrably worse than Smith. The argument is that Smith in the scheme of top batsmen isn't anything other than a guy who happens to be batting at the right time for the type of technique he has, he's also highly likely to suffer amazing form dips due to his technique too.

Also "The only one of the big 4 averaging 50 away" - that's mostly due to his series in the West Indies and the fact that he hasn't actually played many teams away from home for more than a series.
 
Zinzan

Zinzan

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Blocky said:
It works for him when there is nothing available for the bowlers to counter-act it... when you're running across your stumps and pinging everything into the leg side, the moment there is some movement, he's all at sea... but hell, this is the worst period for swing, there is literally nothing even with a swing demon like Amir or Starc bowling, it's also the worst period for spin, there has been nothing in this wicket at all.
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Can you cite some examples of matches like this?... genuine question, because he does seem to score runs pretty much everywhere across any reasonable sample sets.
 
Blocky

Blocky

Banned
Zinzan said:
Can you cite some examples of matches like this?... genuine question, because he does seem to score runs pretty much everywhere across any reasonable sample sets.
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He scores big centuries, or fails.

It inflates his average, but he's not even able to do what Sangakarra did for his entire career once he dropped the gloves, where he scored more than 100 runs per test in every test he played. His series averages have all been inflated by a good knock, because he's had so many 2 test and 3 test series.

Let's watch India, when he's in trying conditions where other teams have struggled and see what happens to him. I guarantee Warner does more than him.
 
Zinzan

Zinzan

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I'm assuming Blocky is questioning whether Smith's technique only holds up on modern wickets against modern bowlers, and is possibly questioning (as I have) how that technique and style would have held up in say the 1980s against bowlers like Hadlee, Marshall, Ambrose; or even his countryman McGrath in the 90s.
 
Blocky

Blocky

Banned
Zinzan said:
I'm assuming Blocky is questioning whether Smith's technique only holds up on modern wickets against modern bowlers, and is possibly questioning (as I have) how that technique and style would have held up in say the 1980s against bowlers like Hadlee, Marshall, Ambrose; or even his countryman McGrath in the 90s.
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McGrath would walk all over Smith like nothing, he's the perfect bowler to get Smith out early every single time they play.
For some stupid reason, bowlers think they need to target the stumps against Smith, which is impractical unless the ball is moving off the seam or in the air.

But seriously, something seems to be ****ing wrong with the ball in the past three to four years, guys who are prodigious swingers can't get anything more than a little bit of swerve occasionally with the Kookaburra, that combined with better bats, smaller boundaries and the lack of genuine match winning all condition spinners has seen it become a golden era where more batsman than ever are averaging mid 40s or more.

Look at the fact that Warner before this test was being said to have a bad year, he was averaging as much as Taylor/Atherton averaged across their entire esteemed careers.
 
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