The great 1980s all rounders

[vcs]

I would have loved to be around to watch Botham in his prime when he was bossing with bat and ball together. I was technically around for some part of it but not grown up enough. It's incredible what he did -- only player to score 10+ hundreds and take 10+ five fors, only player to achieve peak batting and bowling rating of 800+, only player to take a five-for and score a hundred in a test 5 times (no one ahs done it more than twice).

Is he the only player to have been at or very close to both the batting and bowling rankings simultaneously?

 

[vcs]

Ishant has been bowling at a consistently good level since around the 2015 series in SL. Not to say bumrah hasn't helped his average dropping sharply but it also has to do with it being an overseas leg with some bowler friendly decks and more importantly him just being good now.

A bit of competition helps as well. We have Bhuvaneshwar and Umesh who also have decent Test statistics and performances to keep the first-teamers on their toes. And the rotation probably helps keep them fresh and protects their statistics when conditions don't suit, or they need some rest.

Who gets dropped for Ashwin in India BTW?

 

[OverratedSanity]

Is he the only player to have been at or very close to both the batting and bowling rankings simultaneously?

Sobers was the number 1 batsman and number 4 bowler at one point. Obviously the ranking system didn't actually exist back then though.

 

[GoodAreasShane]

Ishant has been bowling at a consistently good level since around the 2015 series in SL. Not to say bumrah hasn't helped his average dropping sharply but it also has to do with it being an overseas leg with some bowler friendly decks and more importantly him just being good now.

Apart from that home series against Australia in 2016/17, where he was pretty terrible. Other than that you are on the money

 

[marc71178]

WPM is always correlated to the strength of the bowlers around you to some degree. Hence a lot of the great WI fast bowlers not faring too well on that metric.

Interesting point this - so Kapil should have one of the highest WPM ever seeing as we've been told consistently that his support attack were ****...

 

[rtramdas]

Ishant has been bowling at a consistently good level since around the 2015 series in SL. Not to say bumrah hasn't helped his average dropping sharply but it also has to do with it being an overseas leg with some bowler friendly decks and more importantly him just being good now.

what ever said and done from 28-8-2015 till Jan 2018(2 years & 4 months) Ishan't bowling average didn't show any progress( 36.51 to 36.55). Also agreed with the other points you said.
But to drop his avg: by a huge 3.14 with in a span of mere 13 tests, the role played by 'being in the company of a 20 averaging bowler(Bumran) has to get the maximum weightage among these factors.

 

[harsh.ag]

All the great Windies pacers have a high WPM. 4 or more. Garner, Holding, Marshall, Roberts, Walsh, Ambrose.

 

[h_hurricane]

Interesting point this - so Kapil should have one of the highest WPM ever seeing as we've been told consistently that his support attack were ****...

There could be multiple reasons for it.

1) Without quality support, you would be bowling at the top order most of the time, not getting breakthroughs and hence not enough chance to bowl at the tail enders.
2) Kapil wasn't as good as Hadlee, another lone warrior, to run through the top order consistently before picking up easier late order wickets.
3) On indian pitches, it is the spinners who pick the bulk of the wickets. During 1993-94, on those rank turners when Kumble, Raju and Chauhan were ruling the roost, Kapil was hardly bowling 7-10 overs an innings, picking up two wickets per match at a good average neverthless.

 

[harsh.ag]

The whole argument is off a mistaken premise

 

[rtramdas]

All the great Windies pacers have a high WPM. 4 or more. Garner, Holding, Marshall, Roberts, Walsh, Ambrose.

if any, a testimony of what I pointed out. That Windies team was so far ahead from other teams in general especially in bowling that in a single inns itself they would be scoring enough in general. Then more or less the 4 calibre bowlers in general in the team ensured the opposition got out to a far lesser score. Then it was all catching up for the opposition team to put up a decent score in the 2nd inns which again provided the oppertunity for the strong bowling unit to share another all 10 wickets including 4 lower order wickets for another low score. This more or less ensured that all the 4 bowlers( being more or less the same calibre) shared all the 20 opposition wickets(10 each per inns) a lot more than any other team in that period.

On the contrary Kapil being a single quality bowler of the team , the opposition would be putting up relatively huge score in general in the single inns. Then the opposition with far better bowling unit ensured that Indian team would get far lesser score. Then it was all catching up for the Indian team in the 2nd inns to set some thing for the opposition to chase. This meant Kapil got only a paltry score in the 2nd inns of the opposition to take lot of wkts which in turn affected WPM count.

 

[_00_deathscar]

All the great Windies pacers have a high WPM. 4 or more. Garner, Holding, Marshall, Roberts, Walsh, Ambrose.

Most of them didn't play all at same time though...

 

[harsh.ag]

Most of them didn't play all at same time though...

Holding, Garner, Croft, Roberts, Marshall, Walsh played together quite a lot in various combinations. They all have a WPM of >4. The premise is flawed.

 

[ankitj]

I didn't know it was possible to have so much discussion on 80s all rounders. Thought CW was unanimous on their pecking order.

 

[Coronis]

I didn't know it was possible to have so much discussion on 80s all rounders. Thought CW was unanimous on their pecking order.

Has CW ever been unanimous on anything?

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Has CW ever been unanimous on anything?

Bradman was once named the 8th best cricketer of all time.

 

[_00_deathscar]

Has CW ever been unanimous on anything?

That PFK is actually Kapil Dev?

 

[_00_deathscar]

Holding, Garner, Croft, Roberts, Marshall, Walsh played together quite a lot in various combinations. They all have a WPM of >4. The premise is flawed.

Would love to see stats on this. Maybe in pairs, at most threes? Whenever someone posts up a stat of something relating to a performance vs the Windies or whatever it always seems to only have a couple of the ATGs in it.

 

[rtramdas]

I didn't know it was possible to have so much discussion on 80s all rounders. Thought CW was unanimous on their pecking order.

how can such a pecking order be unanimous even in CW let alone 'out side world? With the advent of internet and with websites like espncricinfo available people analyse things based on lots of contexts . No wonder in a poll in another well known cricket site, out of the 12 members voted, 11 thought of Kapil as a better 'over all all rounder' to Botham & 10 thought of him better to Imran.

In video clippings too associated with this topic, several messages can be seen rating Kapil so highly based on the same contexts which I briefed.

 

[a massive zebra]

Would love to see stats on this. Maybe in pairs, at most threes? Whenever someone posts up a stat of something relating to a performance vs the Windies or whatever it always seems to only have a couple of the ATGs in it.

Averages in tests featuring Marshall, Holding and Garner.

Averages in Tests featuring Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft.

 

[Bijed]

Would love to see stats on this. Maybe in pairs, at most threes? Whenever someone posts up a stat of something relating to a performance vs the Windies or whatever it always seems to only have a couple of the ATGs in it.

Performing against an attack with two ATGs in it is still really quite impressive tbf