The ATG Teams General arguing/discussing thread

[Red]

It's Gilchrist by a mile

Gilchrist would walk into any test team in history purely as a top six batsman. Add to this he was an excellent athletic keeper to quicks and he kept to Warne for ten years (the most difficult task for a keeper).

 

[Red]

On pure keepers, those I've seen, or heard others mention as the best are:

Healy
Knott
Taylor
Engineer
Kirmani
Evans
Oldfield
Tallon

 

[Flem274*]

I'll ha e this too except Hammond in for Smith.

hammond was who dropped out. was an exercise in seeing how smiths name looked in there.

 

[TheJediBrah]

obviously not... this comes from commentators of the 90s being confused about such a phenomenon from Zimbabwe and finding their own reason to downplay his supreme all round ability

he averaged 1.57 dismissals as a keeper (151 dismissals in 55 matches as keeper). everyone's favorite keeper Alan Knott averaged 1.55 dismissals per innings (269 dismissals in 95 matches). now that stat can be scoffed at. but imagine the bowling attack Zimbabwe had and England had during their careers. Andy must have caught everything that came his way, and some that weren't meant to be caught by him, to have such a fantastic record. aesthetically if there is an issue with his style, diss him for that. calling him a bad keeper is plain ignorance. saying he was terrible as a gloveman is beyond baffling.

This entire post is garbage. It's pure guesswork on your part, and as you alluded to dismissals per innings is a rubbish statistic for judging a keeper. I've seen Flower keep quite a bit. He is bad. He does look bad, which is about the only part of this post that has some value, but it is not the sole reason for judging him a poor keeper. And trying to insert a baffling anti-Zimbabwe agenda on people for saying so is dire.

You can't judge him as a keeper/batsman in the same discussion as Dhoni or Gilchrist

 

[Starfighter]

now that stat can be scoffed at

Yeah it can. The number of catches a keeper gets coming their way is much more dependent on the style of wickets that the bowlers produce. Some bowlers get more fine nicks, some get catches in front of the wicket, some get more bowled or lbw than others. The keeper has no control at all over this.

 

[TheJediBrah]

he averaged 1.57 dismissals as a keeper (151 dismissals in 55 matches as keeper). everyone's favorite keeper Alan Knott averaged 1.55 dismissals per innings (269 dismissals in 95 matches).

For comparison, Matthew Wade, Australian keeper with a famous propensity for wicket keeping errors (perhaps to an unfair extent) averaged 1.76 dismissals per innings.

By your logic this indicates that both Knott and Flower were atrociously bad keepers even worse than Wade (which tbf Flower actually was)

Absolutely garbage statistic

 

[mr_mister]

You're not giving his logic the full fair treatment there

He's saying that while he knows it's generally a bogus stat dependant on luck, since there's no stat showing how many chances were offered/not taken, he thinks it's fair to spectulate that the bowlers in Flower's Zim sides werent drawing as many edges and giving those chances as the ones Knott were giving him. I think that isn't going out too far on a limb. Same logic applies with Wade and even Akmal.

Coz when Zim were at a decent calibre for that 5-6 year period, it was their batting more than their bowling that was close to world class.

Brandes was decent but his career was pretty short. Then there's Streak of course. Then there's not much else

 

[TheJediBrah]

he thinks it's fair to spectulate that the bowlers in Flower's Zim sides werent drawing as many edges and giving those chances as the ones Knott were giving him. I think that isn't going out too far on a limb. Same logic applies with Wade and even Akmal.

Coz when Zim were at a decent calibre for that 5-6 year period, it was their batting more than their bowling that was close to world class.

Brandes was decent but his career was pretty short. Then there's Streak of course. Then there's not much else

No it's not fair to speculate at all. It's complete guesswork.

Not to mention how obvious it was to people who actually saw much of him keeping that he wasn't up to standard. You don't need to go around speculating about what irrelevant stats might mean. Just so dumb.

 

[mr_mister]

I assume you're around my age. Let's not pretend we have a photographic memory of seeing him play. My analysis of cricket from that time was very limited. And with keeping since there's no good stats you probably needed to be an adult during his career to make a fair assessment one way or the other

 

[TheJediBrah]

I assume you're around my age. Let's not pretend we have a photographic memory of seeing him play. My analysis of cricket from that time was very limited. And with keeping since there's no good stats you probably needed to be an adult during his career to make a fair assessment one way or the other

I saw him a lot as a kid, and I've seen replays and highlights recently. He's easily the worst I've seen in international cricket. Taibu coming through was a big relief.

It's fine if you choose not to believe me, or disagree, but you should know better than to think you can just use the logic of "bowling attack probably wasn't stronger so if the dismissals per innings was similar he must have been as good". It's absurd.

and ftr that wasn't the worst part of that post. It was the suggestion that people are pretending he was a bad keeper because they have a vendetta against Zimbabwe (lmao wut)

 

[Bolo]

I saw him a lot as a kid, and I've seen replays and highlights recently. He's easily the worst I've seen in international cricket. Taibu coming through was a big relief.

It's fine if you choose not to believe me, or disagree, but you should know better than to think you can just use the logic of "bowling attack probably wasn't stronger so if the dismissals per innings was similar he must have been as good". It's absurd.

and ftr that wasn't the worst part of that post. It was the suggestion that people are pretending he was a bad keeper because they have a vendetta against Zimbabwe (lmao wut)

You saw a lot of his keeping in tests? Did aus broadcast no interest neutral series in those days?

 

[TheJediBrah]

You saw a lot of his keeping in tests? Did aus broadcast no interest neutral series in those days?

ODIs mostly tbh

And don't get me wrong, I have no issue with someone disagreeing with me, but let it be because they saw him and thought he was a good keeper. Not because they ran some meaningless numbers, made a dozen huge assumptions and came to the conclusion that way.

 

[Bolo]

ODIs mostly tbh

And don't get me wrong, I have no issue with someone disagreeing with me, but let it be because they saw him and thought he was a good keeper. Not because they ran some meaningless numbers, made a dozen huge assumptions and came to the conclusion that way.

Dhoni is an atg level odi keeper, but a mediocre test one.

I watched flower in a few tests, and only remember his batting. This might be a good sign- it is only bad keeping that typically gets noticed. But it's too long ago for me to say this. His keeping might have been utter garbage, but I've just forgotten.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Just out of curiosity I googled around some old discussions on the topic and the general consensus seems to be pretty much that he was not much of a keeper, and just did the job to allow Zimbabwe to play an extra batsman

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...batsman-ever&usg=AOvVaw2A9DJyglxmUZDs5gFrmlYn

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...-keeper.html&usg=AOvVaw2MyGaHw0UjHxiCNKTaetYJ

It's funny how many discussions about Andy Flower being a great WK/batsman completely ignore the wicket-keeping side of things. Though to his credit, regardless of how well you do the job, wicket keeping is not an easy task. I can only begin to imagine how draining it would be to do it in Tests as well as bat in the top 5 like Flower did for so long. I feel a bit bad talking him down like I have been but I'm not going to pretend he was a really good keeper when he wasn't.

 

[Prince EWS]

His keeping gets absolutely rubbished by Zimbabwe fans over on the Zimbabwe cricket forums. Those people certainly don't have some sort of anti-Zimbabwe agenda.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Flower should absolutely be rated an ATG batsman though. While he only played 1 match against Aus, he averaged 70 against SA who would have been one of the strongest team at the time. He also averaged 94 against India. Definitely can't claim that he was a minnow basher. And he did all that while probably being exhausted from keeping 100+ overs an innings most of the time.

 

[trundler]

Flower is a bonafide ATG batsman, every bit as good as the likes of Miandad and Crowe.

 

[mr_mister]

I saw him a lot as a kid, and I've seen replays and highlights recently. He's easily the worst I've seen in international cricket. Taibu coming through was a big relief.

It's fine if you choose not to believe me, or disagree, but you should know better than to think you can just use the logic of "bowling attack probably wasn't stronger so if the dismissals per innings was similar he must have been as good". It's absurd.

and ftr that wasn't the worst part of that post. It was the suggestion that people are pretending he was a bad keeper because they have a vendetta against Zimbabwe (lmao wut)

Im going into bat hard for bagapath here, but I don't think he thought Flower must have been as good as Knott due to that dismissal stat and the crappy bowler theory surrounding it, just that it gave Flower a tiny point in his favour most people don't afford him. Implying he was maybe just a mediocre keeper rather than a terrible one

Edit - after actually re reading his post he seems to think it afforded him a status above mediocre, by saying that it was rubbish to call him a bad keeper. I won't go that far, but I'll agree he maybe wasn't terrible

 

[Bolo]

And he did all that while probably being exhausted from keeping 100+ overs an innings most of the time.

Tbf though, he was only keeping this long in 1 innings per match much of the time.

P.s. you are a brave man for using pakpassion on CW as a reference

His keeping gets absolutely rubbished by Zimbabwe fans over on the Zimbabwe cricket forums. Those people certainly don't have some sort of anti-Zimbabwe agenda.

I doubt anyone other than a Zimbo gives enough thought to Zim cricket to bother having a bias.

But it's still a good point - not many people besides Zimbabweans would have seen enough of him keep in tests to have clear memories that far back.

Anyone kicking around this thread who saw enough of him in tests to clearly remember?

 

[TheJediBrah]

Im going into bat hard for bagapath here, but I don't think he thought Flower must have been as good as Knott due to that dismissal stat and the crappy bowler theory surrounding it, just that it gave Flower a tiny point in his favour most people don't afford him. Implying he was maybe just a mediocre keeper rather than a terrible one

Edit - after actually re reading his post he seems to think it afforded him a status above mediocre, by saying that it was rubbish to call him a bad keeper. I won't go that far, but I'll agree he maybe wasn't terrible

Maybe he was a moderate downgrade.

I may have reacted a bit strongly to that post. It was just so bad, for multiple reasons.