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Top Five Cricketers from each country

Malcolm

U19 Vice-Captain
Going to have to make the formula more complicated to fix that, and it highlights some of the difficulties of comparing players from different eras.
I would go with the following formula

Effective longevity of a player = (Number of matches he played / Number of matches his team played) x Career Span of that player

According to my formula,

Effective longevity of Sobers = ( 93/100 ) x 20 = 18.60
Effective longevity of Kallis = (166/175) x 18 = 17.07
 

h_hurricane

International Vice-Captain
Fair point.
166/200 = .83
93/200 = .465
So Kallis gains .365 from this measure only.
Going to have to make the formula more complicated to fix that, and it highlights some of the difficulties of comparing players from different eras.
Sobers gains from taking more wickets per innings though and kind of neutralizes this advantage of Kallis.
 

Dendarii

International Debutant
It is diffcult to sustain a particular level of high performance for a larger sample of tests. Kallis and Sobers both have their batting averages 70% above bowling average. That is **** awesome. To maintain that kind of performance for 73 more tests cannot be under-estimated. Kallis being 5% above Sobers in a statistical analysis is not an insanely inconceivable thought. We have not considered the strength of the opposition here,admittedly.

Not that I rate Kallis higher than Sobers. Garry remains the best cricketer ever to me.
Not that it can be measured, but as has been pointed out already in this thread, Kallis maintained that performance while bowling at a decent pace, fielding in the slips rather than getting a break a third man/fine leg, and batting at 3/4, so there were plenty of occasions when he'd be in early with little chance of a rest. And he did a similar sort of thing in over 300 ODIs - that's incredible stamina.
 

mr_mister

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Pollock had to take the new ball after spending a lot of time in the middle for one of those famous not outs he's apparently criticised for
 

aussie tragic

International Captain
I can't believe this is still being discussed. Botham was the greatest 80's allrounder, therefore the greatest allrounder ever, sorry Garry, but you never changed the game because of your bowling :)
 

Bolo

State Captain
Pollock had to take the new ball after spending a lot of time in the middle for one of those famous not outs he's apparently criticised for
You are forgetting to criticise pollock for his lack of hundreds etc. Sure, he had to go bowl after his inevitable not out. But he wouldn't have been tired from his brief stay at the wicket
 

mr_mister

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
You are forgetting to criticise pollock for his lack of hundreds etc. Sure, he had to go bowl after his inevitable not out. But he wouldn't have been tired from his brief stay at the wicket
Lol it wouldn't always be brief. Coming in at 7 and 8 it can often be an hour or two of batting til the 11 is dismissed. He got 16 fifties less we forget
 

Bolo

State Captain
I would go with the following formula

Effective longevity of a player = (Number of matches he played / Number of matches his team played) x Career Span of that player

According to my formula,

Effective longevity of Sobers = ( 93/100 ) x 20 = 18.60
Effective longevity of Kallis = (166/175) x 18 = 17.07
You are actually negatively penalising kallis as a result of the higher number of games he played. It just doesn't look that way because he stayed fit for an unreal portion of them. The more matches you play and the greater the frequency, the higher the proportion you can expect to miss. If you play only one match you score 100%- better by your calculations than the 166 kallis played
 

Bolo

State Captain
Lol it wouldn't always be brief. Coming in at 7 and 8 it can often be an hour or two of batting til the 11 is dismissed. He got 16 fifties less we forget
I wasnt taking it seriously, but you are right. It would have taken something out of him. Even coming in at 9 there was potential to bat for a while in a number of games with at least one guy who could build a decent partnership below him.

And he did struggle with having to perform in two departments at once. Didn't have the durability of kallis
 

Malcolm

U19 Vice-Captain
You are actually negatively penalising kallis as a result of the higher number of games he played. It just doesn't look that way because he stayed fit for an unreal portion of them. The more matches you play and the greater the frequency, the higher the proportion you can expect to miss. If you play only one match you score 100%- better by your calculations than the 166 kallis played
what ?
 

mr_mister

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Interestingly, 8 of Pollock's 16 fifties were not outs, including an unbeaten 99

He could have likely scored far more than 2 centuries if not for running out of partners
 

Test_Fan_Only

First Class Debutant
Interestingly, 8 of Pollock's 16 fifties were not outs, including an unbeaten 99

He could have likely scored far more than 2 centuries if not for running out of partners
Sometimes this stat might be a bit misleading because a player could get out at times trying to score runs quickly with a bad tail.
 

Pap Finn Keighl

International Debutant
I can't believe this is still being discussed. Botham was the greatest 80's allrounder, therefore the greatest allrounder ever, sorry Garry, but you never changed the game because of your bowling :)
Sobers with his batting alone , greater Cricketer than Botham.

Sobers bowling > Botham batting
Sobers batting >>>> Botham bowling

Sobers
Procter
Hadlee
Imran
Kapil
Botham
Miller
Kallis
Rice
Pollock

My top 10 in order
 

mr_mister

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Either way, it's silly he's criticised for lack of 100s and an average inflated by not outs. He was a number 8 and probably one of the highest averaging 8s ever. He succeeded in the role like few others have (though I haven't checked his individual averages for 7,8,9 so I'm just guessing)


Where did be bat in FC?
 

h_hurricane

International Vice-Captain
Revised formula is as follows

A- Batting average/bowling average

B- (No. of wickets per innings * No. of runs per innings)/100

C- no. of test matches played/200 (I am giving a bit more importance to longevity and changed the denominator from 500 to 200 as that is the maximum anyone has played).

1.Jacques Kallis - 3.04
2.Garry Sobers - 2.90
3.Imran Khan - 2.86
4.Keith Miller - 2.51
5.Shaun Pollock - 2.44
6.Ian Botham - 2.43
7.Aubrey Faulkner - 2.37
8.Shakib Al Hassan - 2.36
9.Richard Hadlee - 2.32
10.Kapil Dev - 2.25
11.Tony Grieg - 2.13
12.Chris Cairns - 2.12

Kallis ahead of Sobers and Pollock ahead of Botham might ruffle a few feathers here. Courtesy Bolo :)
I am redoing the calculations again with slight modifications in longevity. Wilfred Rhodes has had the longest career ever,30 years.Sachin Tendulkar played the most matches,200.
If I revise the formula for C as (no. of test matches played/200 * no. of years played/30), below is the ranking.

1.Garry Sobers -2.75
2.Imran Khan - 2.73
3.Jacques Kallis - 2.71
4.Keith Miller - 2.34
5.Aubrey Faulkner - 2.32
6.Shakib Al Hassan - 2.20
7.Ian Botham - 2.18
8.Richard Hadlee - 2.13
9.Shaun Pollock - 2.12
10.Ravindra Jadeja - 2.02
11.Chris Cairns - 1.97
12.Trevor Goddard - 1.95
13.Ravichandran Ashwin - 1.93
14.Kapil Dev - 1.92
15.Tony Grieg - 1.89

Sir Garry back at the top. So everyone can rest easy here.
Pollock goes below Botham and Hadlee here. PFK would be happy :). Bolo and MM not so :(
Whatever weightage one applies, Sobers, Imran, Kallis and Miller come up at the top. Not in the same planet as Botham and others.
 

Malcolm

U19 Vice-Captain
If you play only one match you score 100%- better by your calculations than the 166 kallis played
If a player played only one match, his career span is 5/365 assuming the test was played for 5 days.
So his effective longevity becomes (1/1)x(5/365) = 0.01, which is not even close to Kallis(17.07)
 
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Borges

International Regular
Ah! This is still going on, is it?

Let us get one thing straight: Sobers, Hadlee, Imran and Kallis are genuine all time greats of the game.

Botham and Kapil aren't. Though they were extremely valuable to the teams they played in.
 

Dendarii

International Debutant
Either way, it's silly he's criticised for lack of 100s and an average inflated by not outs. He was a number 8 and probably one of the highest averaging 8s ever. He succeeded in the role like few others have (though I haven't checked his individual averages for 7,8,9 so I'm just guessing)
Average at 7: 32.21, highest score 92
Average at 8: 30.96, highest score 99 n.o.
Average at 9: 41.07, highest score 111 - both his centuries were scored at 9.
 

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