ODI ATG XIs

[Red]

It shouldn't need to be debunked. It's beyond obvious, except to the severely mathematically and logically challenged.

Horse ****, and your passive-aggro doesn't make you right. You hear people say "Bevan was the best ODI bat" (or something similar) based on his average of 53.

Look at runs per innings instead, and just look at Bevan's peers compared to him:

Bevan: 35
Hussey: 34
Ponting: 36
Gilchrist: 34
Watson: 34

He was nothing special and he contributed to the team the same as the other top 6 bats. His not outs inflated his average and created a myth around him, especially after he straight drove Roger Harper once for four.

I suppose you'll tell me Bill Johnston was the best batsman on the 1953 tour to England as well?

 

[Bolo]

Horse ****, and your passive-aggro doesn't make you right. You hear people say "Bevan was the best ODI bat" (or something similar) based on his average of 53.

Look at runs per innings instead, and just look at Bevan's peers compared to him:

Bevan: 35
Hussey: 34
Ponting: 36
Gilchrist: 34
Watson: 34

He was nothing special and he contributed to the team the same as the other top 6 bats. His not outs inflated his average and created a myth around him, especially after he straight drove Roger Harper once for four.

I suppose you'll tell me Bill Johnston was the best batsman on the 1953 tour to England as well?

Your key word is contribute. He didn't contribute more, but a lower order bat is necessarily more limited in potential for contribution. Average is a better measure of quality.

 

[NZTailender]

I don't base Bevan's ODI ability on his average, I base it on watching him play, his ability to rotate strike, keep the singles flowing, picking gaps, running between wickets that turned 1s into 2s etc. The fact his average was significantly higher than anyone else, including players in other teams with the same role who had the same chances as to remain not out, is an indicator of how well he played the 2nd innings finisher role.

 

[jimmy101]

I would have thought that Bevan's high amount of not outs would be a plus to his name, considering he is a 'finisher'. If Bevan was not out at the end of the 50th over it means he did his job.

 

[stephen]

I would have thought that Bevan's high amount of not outs would be a plus to his name, considering he is a 'finisher'. If Bevan was not out at the end of the 50th over it means he did his job.

Yeah and Australia didn't lose if he was not out.

He was as good as the hype and for most of his career, better than his final average suggests. He was the master of ODI batting. Understood what was needed and chased things down that others couldn't.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Horse ****, and your passive-aggro doesn't make you right. You hear people say "Bevan was the best ODI bat" (or something similar) based on his average of 53.

Look at runs per innings instead, and just look at Bevan's peers compared to him:

Bevan: 35
Hussey: 34
Ponting: 36
Gilchrist: 34
Watson: 34

He was nothing special and he contributed to the team the same as the other top 6 bats. His not outs inflated his average and created a myth around him, especially after he straight drove Roger Harper once for four.

I suppose you'll tell me Bill Johnston was the best batsman on the 1953 tour to England as well?

I don't care about Bevan.

Not. Outs. Do. Not. "Inflate". Averages.

If you have more not outs than another guy who has scored the same amount of runs, you have a higher average because you have gotten out less and have batted better. It's not bloody rocket science.

The idea that a given batting average is worth less if you have a lot of not outs is just so ****ing dumb. It's the kind of thing you hear from children who don't quite understand how cricket or mathematics works, I used to hear it all the time in under-12s but thankfully not much since then. Until this forum.

If anything, it should be worth more because you've had to stop more innings not out when you've played yourself in and start again next innings.

 

[TheJediBrah]

And using "runs per innings" instead is equally meaningless. Worse than meaningless. You're just going to favour players that bat up the order. It says nothing about how good a batsman is, or how well they played that the batting average doesn't already tell you a lot better and more accurately.

 

[mr_mister]

Horse ****, and your passive-aggro doesn't make you right. You hear people say "Bevan was the best ODI bat" (or something similar) based on his average of 53.

Look at runs per innings instead, and just look at Bevan's peers compared to him:

Bevan: 35
Hussey: 34
Ponting: 36
Gilchrist: 34
Watson: 34

He was nothing special and he contributed to the team the same as the other top 6 bats. His not outs inflated his average and created a myth around him, especially after he straight drove Roger Harper once for four.

I suppose you'll tell me Bill Johnston was the best batsman on the 1953 tour to England as well?

But those players generally came to the crease before Bevan therefore had far more overs to allow themselves more runs per innings over a career.

Bevan when he was batting 6 came to the crease in the final 10 of the first innings countless times. Thatl dent anyone's runs per innings.

He scored 6 tons and none above 108. RPI is a poor measurement of his skill

 

[Prince EWS]

Bevan's runs per innings being as good as those top order players actually surprised me; I thought it'd be lower given every so often he'd come in with a few balls to go and end up with something like 7*. Ironically enough Red Hill's argument made me rate Bevan a little higher than I already did.

 

[jimmy101]

Imo Bevan, along with Pigeon, Warney, Punter & Gilly are locks for the AT Aussie ODI XI.

 

[jimmy101]

My team would look something like this.

M Waugh
Gilchrist+
Ponting
Jones
Hussey
Symonds
Bevan
Lee
Warne
McDermott
McGrath

 

[NZTailender]

Bevan's runs per innings being as good as those top order players actually surprised me; I thought it'd be lower given every so often he'd come in with a few balls to go and end up with something like 7*. Ironically enough Red Hill's argument made me rate Bevan a little higher than I already did.

I was looking at his stats breakdown to see this massive first innings/second innings difference that people talk about....and his SR is 12 points higher, though his average is 5 runs lower and not outs have reduced.

So he scored, on average, 51 runs @ 79 in a first innings as opposed to 56 @ 67 in the 2nd dig. I was expecting a bigger disparity tbh. And a SR of 79 for that era wasn't bad at all.

 

[Prince EWS]

I was looking at his stats breakdown to see this massive first innings/second innings difference that people talk about....and his SR is 12 points higher, though his average is 5 runs lower and not outs have reduced.

So he scored, on average, 51 runs @ 79 in a first innings as opposed to 56 @ 67 in the 2nd dig. I was expecting a bigger disparity tbh. And a SR of 79 for that era wasn't bad at all.

Yeah I actually think the disparity is a point in his favour. I've used it as such in debates before. If he was averaging 56 with a bunch of not outs but striking at 67 in the first innings of games and his team was often finishing only 4 or 5 down that could well have been argued to be a waste of resources, but his overall strike rate takes a big hit from his second innings runs when chasing low totals. In the first innings he was quite capable of "going bang" as Gazza would say when setting a total, at a still exceptionally high average.

 

[Bolo]

The split is a good thing across innings, and the sr difference is pretty pronounced, but I dont think the split itself is unusual.

Dhoni is 1st 52@95 and 2nd 50@81. AB is 51@106 and 57@95.

Not outs are interesting. Bevan has 1st/2nd 37/30, Dhoni 33/38 and AB 10/29. Batting position makes a bit of a difference, but the fact that bevan has more 1st innings NOs seems to indicate he wasnt putting his foot down as hard as he could have at the end of the 1st innings.

 

[stephen]

Here is the list of ODIs Australia lost while Bevan was playing, sorted by runs scored in the opposition's innings.

Team records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

The main criticism of Bevan as an ODI batsman was that he didn't score fast enough. I wanted to test this hypothesis by looking over the games lost by Australia while Bevan was playing. Particularly those where the opposition set large totals, or chased down the total set by Australia.

It makes sense then that we need to take into account a) the size of the total the opposition set/chased; and b) Bevan's innings in that loss.

Low total innings are obviously not important for this, since strike rate doesn't matter very much at all if you are chasing 250 or less (average strike rate 83).

Full Scorecard of Australia vs Sri Lanka, Australian Tri Series (CB Series), 6th Match - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

Pretty large defeat. Bevan struck at 80 in a chase, scoring 41. Martyn batted 4 and scored 40 at a lower strike rate. Hayden scored 35. No other batsman contributed. Conclusion: Bevan was one of the top two Australian batsmen during that innings. Loss was due more to other batsmen failing than Bevan's strike rate.

Full Scorecard of India vs Australia 1st ODI 2001 - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

60 run defeat. Bevan scored 49@87. Second top scoring batsman for Australia. Conclusion: Bevan's strike rate non issue.

Full Scorecard of South Africa vs Australia 7th ODI 1997 - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

109 run defeat. Bevan 29@107. Second top scorer. Conclusion: Bevan's strike rate inconsequential. Possibly even too high for the match situation.

Full Scorecard of India vs Australia, Pepsi Triangular Series, 1st Match - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

41 run loss. Bevan top score with 65@79. Dismissed with 80 runs off 9 overs to go. Conclusion: could be argued (very weakly) his strike rate wasn't high enough. Loss was more due to other batsmen.

Full Scorecard of Australia vs India, ICC Champions Trophy (ICC KnockOut), 3rd QF - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

44 run loss. Bevan 8@57. Woeful innings. Part of the cause of the loss. The chase wasn't close enough to make the 14 balls he chewed up to be anywhere near the difference between victory and defeat.

Full Scorecard of Australia vs India, Australian Tri Series (CB Series), 5th Match - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

19 run loss. Bevan 41*@95. A rare chase where Bevan ended not out and Australia lost. His failure here was placing too much faith in the tail. All 4 bowlers striking at less than 70. Conclusion: strike rate not an issue but a failed chase.

Full Scorecard of India vs Australia 3rd ODI 2001 - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

118 run defeat. Woeful innings. Match best forgotten entirely. Aus all out in 36 overs. Conclusion: strike rate not an issue.

Full Scorecard of Australia vs Pakistan, NatWest Series/Challenge, 8th Match - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

36 run defeat. Woeful innings. The 9 balls he lasted didn't make a difference to the loss. Arguably if he'd had an innings of note Australia could have won the match. Conclusion: strike rate not an issue.

Full Scorecard of West Indies vs Australia 5th ODI 2003 - Score Report | ESPNcricinfo.com

39 run loss. Bevan 31@77. Arrived needing 140 runs in 18 overs. Lost the last recognised batsman needing 109 off 13 overs. Conclusion: left with too much to do. Strike rate not an issue.

I'm going to stop there. These were the top 9 batting performances by Australia's opposition during Bevan's playing time which resulted in an Australian loss. It can maybe be argued that his strike rate was an issue in one of those cases if you're being extremely hard on him. In every other loss Bevan's strike rate was a non issue. In many of them he had one of the highest strike rates in the side and was one of the leading run scorers.

 

[NZTailender]

So in other words, Bevan sometimes fails like all batsmen do.

 

[stephen]

The split is a good thing across innings, and the sr difference is pretty pronounced, but I dont think the split itself is unusual.

Dhoni is 1st 52@95 and 2nd 50@81. AB is 51@106 and 57@95.

Not outs are interesting. Bevan has 1st/2nd 37/30, Dhoni 33/38 and AB 10/29. Batting position makes a bit of a difference, but the fact that bevan has more 1st innings NOs seems to indicate he wasnt putting his foot down as hard as he could have at the end of the 1st innings.

Bevan's first innings strike rate when he finished not out was 92.

 

[stephen]

So in other words, Bevan sometimes fails like all batsmen do.

It would be better to argue that he was a relatively poor starter if you are looking for a reason not to rate him.

 

[vcs]

Runs/innings for the following:

Dhoni : 36.54
Tendulkar : 40.76
Richards : 40.24
AB de Villiers : 43.93
Kohli : 49.21

 

[h_hurricane]

Ntini was solid. I reckon I might pick him above steyn. Morkel as well. Not much separating them. They are all a notch below Donald, and two notches below pollock though.

I would also consider Hall for the final slot. Not as good, but his variety and death bowling might add more to the team. Plus he bats a bit.

Considering economy rate (one of the best of all time), Pollock should be the best of the lot. He has to be among the top 5-6 ODI all rounders of all time. If there was one world cup winning performance, he would have been at the top for many. Was amazing in the 1999 world cup semifinal.