Based on how you picked the teams, they are fairly evenly matched. Positives and negatives for each. The only call I would be comfortable making is that WI is slightly better than England, because like for like is a bit easier than for the others.
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The ATG Teams General arguing/discussing thread
- Thread starter Red
- Start date
h_hurricane
International Vice-Captain
Knott was a better keeper than Gilchrist and upgrades on keeping skills also matter. Not sure what is the thought process here. Are you saying one cricketing skill matters, the other one does not matter as much ? Bowling is about creating opportunities, keeping about grabbing them. One of them cannot exist in isolation without help from the other.
Pollock averaged 25 runs more than Mcgrath with the bat. If 15 runs difference is massive, this one is colossal.
TheJediBrah
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This is a good point, I guess the obvious response is that you generally expect to need more runs from your keeper than your opening bowler, and history suggests this.
But others are in the side even though they only played under 30 tests in total.
The 24 tests Abdv kept he batted better and kept well so if you take his 50 average and Gillies 47 average you have to say Abdv would be the better choice at 7.
TheJediBrah
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Gilchrist was a better keeper. Wouldn't want AB as keeper if he had to keep to a quality spinner or 2 either.
ABdV works as keeper in SA's ATG XI because they're best attack is mostly quicks, not so much in an ATG XI. Though he wouldn't be far off IMO
kyear2
International Coach
I would tend to disagree to the point that if they do have an advantage, it's probably Gilchrist at 7.
Slifer
International Captain
With all due respect to your aussie team, no.
Trumper
Morris
Ponting
Smith
Chappell
Border*
Gilchrist +
Davidson
Warne
Lillee
Mcgrath
Slifer
International Captain
I also don't see the need to leave out the Don. The fact of the matter is, in his time Australian teams with the Don were tough to beat but not unbeatable. Even a minnowesque wi team took a test off Australia in 1930. Yes the Don would be part of an atg but so would the other teams.
marc71178
Eyes not spreadsheets
Not even sure why he's being selected - it's one thing having an inferior player when you rely on the Bradman effect to cover up for his batting deficiencies but when you're taking Bradman out?
stephen
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
But that's my point. It's possible to quantify how much a dropped catch costs - it's around the average of the batsman dropped. Let's say that against an ATG team a dropped catch is worth 45 runs. This is pretty generous - 44% of batsmen who make a hundred will have a chance spilled by then (see article linked below).
Now Gilchrist averages 40.6 runs per innings or 58 runs per test with the bat. Knott averages 29.5 runs per innings or 46.2 runs per test. That's a gap of 11 runs per innings or 12 runs per test. Note that the second comparison is extremely unfair on Gilchrist because he batting in less innings than Knott. So let's go by the difference per innings since in a theoretical all time side Gilly and Knott are going to bat in roughly the same number of innings. So in 4 innings Gilly scores 48 more runs than Knott. If Knott takes one catch that Gilly would have dropped every two tests then they come out even. But the difference between the keepers probably isn't that great. How many catches does a keeper drop in a test on average?
According to Tracking the misses | The Cricket Monthly | ESPN Cricinfo Gilchrist missed 12% of chances during the 2003-2009 period. Let's pretend that's the entirety of his career. Now let's also pretend that Knott was so good as to miss a mere 5% of chances (half that of Boucher, the best in the period at 10%).
Gilchrist in his career took 4.3 dismissals per match. With a 12% drop rate he dropped one batsman roughly every second match or 50 chances.
Knott took 3.0 dismissals per match over virtually the same number of tests. With a 5% drop rate, Knott dropped 13 chances in his career.
So Gilchrist dropped one chance every other match while Knott dropped one chance every six or seven matches (14% of the time). Now that's fantastic. Surely that proves that Gilchrist is worse for the team? Not necessarily. Gilchrist took nearly 50% more dismissals than Knott. If we extrapolate and suggest that in an all time side, Knott gets the same number of opportunities as Gilchrist (466 chances total if Gilchrist spilled 12% of chances in 96 tests), Knott then missed 23 chances in his career. So Knott take 27 more chances over the course of his career. 27 chances multiplied by 45 runs tells us that Gilchrist cost his side 1215 more runs over the course of his career than Knott would have.
As we established earlier, Gilchrist was worth 11 more runs per innings than Knott. If they batted the same number of innings (let's take Gilchrist's figure of 137 as the example), that means that Gilchrist would have scored 1507 runs more than Knott over the course of his career. That means that by playing Gilchrist over Knott you get a bonus of 1507-1215=292 runs during the course of his career.
Now I've been quite generous to Knott here on a number of counts. I'm assuming that Knott took nearly 60% of the chances that Gilly spilled. He would have had to be extraordinarily better than Gilchrist for that to be the case and the stats suggest he wasn't. The gap between their WPM figures suggests that Knott wasn't substantially better than Gilchrist as a keeper. Secondly, I've used the runs per innings rather than the gap between averages to measure the difference between the two with the bat. Thirdly I've assumed a ridiculously high figure of 45 runs per innings scored on average after a batsman has been dropped. The lower this number actually is, the less wicket keeping perfection matters. Finally, the linked article actually mentions that Gilchrist was below 10% for a substantial portion of his career. Keepers get worse towards the end of their careers. It's likely that GIlchrist spilled substantially less than 50 chances over the course of his career.
The point is that the better a keeper gets, the less their keeping ability matters compared to their ability to score runs. If Gilchrist spilled 12% of chances (including difficult ones), a theoretically perfect keeper would still need to average 25 runs per innings to be worth more to the team than him over the course of his career (assuming the average batsman makes 45 runs per innings after being dropped).
The ability for bowlers to create chances is far more important than the keeper's ability to take chances once the keeper is good enough.
Phew, this has been really stats heavy, but I was interested in discovering just how important keeping ability is. As I suspected, it's not quite as important as it seems for the top glovesmen.
So just remember kids, a wicket keeper who never drops a single catch in their career still has to score 24 RPI (average at least around 30) to be as valuable to the team as Gilchrist.
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Chrish
International Debutant
Yeah don’t see Aussie team dominating WI or SA Xi with Don, Warne or Gilchrist playing. It’s not like other teams are planning to play monopoly and have no class players of their own.
It’s one thing to say which team is better but another to say one team would comfortably beat the others.
Other teams have ATG bowling attacks. I would imagine these hypothetical series completely dominated by bowling.
h_hurricane
International Vice-Captain
Pollock would be batting at no.8 right ? Assuming Gilly at no.7, Pollock's batting will only be required to a moderately lesser extent than Gilchrist.
One could also make a case of Gilchrist's batting not required at all since Bradman(who is worth 2 batsmen anyway) is in the team. Gilchrist batted only 1.43 times per test match in ATG team which he was part of. In an even stronger batting lineup, it could be way less than that.
kyear2
International Coach
Totally agree with this. As I said in an earlier post, I see these series being bowler dominated. With 1 key spell or innings here and there making the difference in the series.
Also a bit surprised that there is still the sentiment that Bradman is twice as good as every other batsman who Has ever played. Now before I go any further, I do want to unequivocally state that Bradman was the best batsman ever. Period. But I can't make the leap to twice as good. I don't even believe he was twice as good as the other players of his era, he was obviously though twice as good as every other batsman on his teams.
At the time that the great man played, there were 2 good teams, period and the Aussie attack, with O'Reilly etc were clearly the better attack at the time. Bradman, as he should have, slaughtered the minnow atacks of his time. If I recall correctly he averaged 178 vs India and 200 vs SA. Obviously he also did very well vs England, but their best bowlers (Voce, Allen and for that brief period of time Larwood) could hardly be compared to anything he would be facing from the WI or SA. Even the attacks England had to face from Australia led by O'Reilly, Grimmett etc were much better. The closest Bradman came to a modern hostile attack was bodyline and while still a champion he was well below his domination standard in that series.
For me as I said earlier, the threat if a Gilchrist at 7 would really be a determining factor as much a separator as any in my mind.
Chrish
International Debutant
And it’s not as if other teams have no advantage over Australia. For example they don’t have the opener with the class of Barry. They also don’t have Sobers.
Playing Sobers basically as a spinning all rounder would afford WI to play with their fearsome quartet.
Also, Warne wasn’t successful against WI, primarily because of Lara. Then shouldn’t we question how would he go against combination of Lara, Sobers, Viv etc.?
So you get the point. It’s not black and white.
Playing Sobers basically as a spinning all rounder would afford WI to play with their fearsome quartet.
Also, Warne wasn’t successful against WI, primarily because of Lara. Then shouldn’t we question how would he go against combination of Lara, Sobers, Viv etc.?
So you get the point. It’s not black and white.
_00_deathscar
International Regular
The logic doesn't follow - Australia were clearly the best team during his period and Australia's period of dominance, often a level or two better than the next best 2-3 sides, and several levels better than the rest.
In an ATG team, he'd be playing another ATG team, who presumably are relatively much more evenly matched - certainly an ATG West Indian XI or South African XI is not a 'level or two' below Australia. Chances are, he'd actually bat as much, if not more frequently.
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Red
The normal awards that everyone else has
He preferred 5 and had a really good record there. My views are known on his ability as a batsman, and I think he's the equal of most top 6 bats we've ever had. In reality it doesn't really matter, but Harvey was also one of the truly great players of spin we've had, so I think 6 works ok for him.
Red
The normal awards that everyone else has
"No" is a bit excessive. Lol.
Imo, you haven't changed much and I'd be equally happy with your team also.
Border and Harvey are about on par in my eyes, you won't lose much having one or the other.
I view Lindwall as a slightly better quick than Davidson (not worth debating though) and I view both of their abilities as number 8 bats about the same. Which is why I went for them over Lillee, who I think is about on par with them as quicks.
I can understand Chappell over Miller, but I will never not have Miller, and the flow on effect from Miller is being able to have OReilly and Warne together and still have three legit quicks. Of late I'd probably prefer McCabe to Chappell for that spot anyhow.
Red
The normal awards that everyone else has
That'd all be fine if cricket games and series were played in statistical vacuums where everyone just scored their average or bowled to their average exactly.