DoG's Top 100 Test Batsmen Countdown Thread

[Malcolm]

I am expecting Ponting to be next.

 

[Logan]

Mate dravid averaged 39 against Australia, not 19. You don't need to over exaggerate to make an ultimately valid point.

Two hundreds in 62 innings is disappointing.

 

[jaideep]

I am expecting Ponting to be next.

I am almost sure Gavaskar is next.

 

[sunilz]

Two hundreds in 62 innings is disappointing.

Ponting won't even show on first page of Cricinfo statsguru if you sort it by overseas average and set minimum overseas runs filter to 1000 runs. Only reason he is marginally ahead of Dravid/ Waugh because he was more attacking batsman.

 

[Logan]

Never said Ponting has no weakness. Just said Ponting is better than Dravid. Ponting is on the same level as Lara IMO

 

[Flem274*]

Two hundreds in 62 innings is disappointing.

this surprises me because on paper it's disappointing but feeds into the fact that i've always cared more about what people do than what they don't. if you offered me dravid for a tour of australia i'd take him every time.

 

[sunilz]

Never said Ponting has no weakness. Just said Ponting is better than Dravid. Ponting is on the same level as Lara IMO

What I had said earlier about Steve Waugh is also applicable to both Ponting and Dravid. None of these 3 players are in top 20 players of spin since 90s. So no matter how good they were against pace bowling, they simply can't be on same level as Tendulkar/ Lara .

 

[_00_deathscar]

Two hundreds in 62 innings is disappointing.

Maybe, but without checking or looking further into it, I'm guessing that, like Laxman, Dravid had a few absolutely crucial knocks of 40-80 that won't show in the 'stats' because they weren't hundreds.

Anyway, with this whole discussion, here is how I personally rate the players (I've left Andy Flower out of it - for now, but he's certainly someone who should be in the discussion):

OVERALL/CAREER
Sachin
Waugh
Lara
Ponting
Sangakkara
Kallis
Dravid

AT THEIR PEAKS - just FYI, this is not just a 'statistical' measure of best 50 innings/58 test peak, but more an intuitive/subjective measure of which player I would want at their respective team to bat out a series for me, and accounting for multiple factors (e.g. 00s being more batsmen friendly than the 90s, quality of bowling attacks etc)
Lara
Sachin
Ponting
Sangakkara
Waugh
Dravid
Kallis

90S
Sachin
Waugh
Lara
Dravid

00s
Ponting
Sangakkara
Dravid
Lara
Kallis
Sachin

I know players change in style, age/physical ability etc comes into, and of course, there are injuries - but I really do wonder what a 90s Sachin in the mid/late 00s and beyond would have looked like without the injuries/issues he faced in the early/mid 00s, especially as pitches opened up and became way more batsmen friendly. He absolutely ruled the 90s - the difference between him and Waugh back then, IMO of course (and you can see how highly I rate Waugh in general compared to others on here), with Sachin quite a bit far ahead, is that of the difference between Smith and Kohli currently in tests...exception being that he (Sachin) was the more aggressive batsman.

Regardless, if you were to pick a middle order for the 90s, those 3 would/should feature in them anyway.

There was a clear marked difference in Sachin's style and how he went about batting from around 2003/2004 onwards.

I consider Waugh to be better than both Lara and Ponting personally, although it's close, and then Sachin a fair bit ahead of both on various measures (obviously Lara for one offs, Ponting as a general peak player, best etc).
The thing is, essentially they are all still very different batsman - but I will say that I think Sachin covers all the bases the best, also because his career was so long and (as per above re his 90s vs 00s style), he changed his style of play out of necessity.

 

[honestbharani]

Lara easily over anyone not named Sachin for me.


Tests:

Lara
Sachin

Ponting

Waugh
Dravid etc.


Overall:

Sachin

Lara
Ponting

Others...

 

[ankitj]

That's Greame Pollock at 787 (what a legend). Kohli is 2nd best.

Now it's Weekes with 794 quality points. That is surprising because Weekes is often seen as someone who piled up runs against weaker teams and at home.

 

[pardus]

1. Dravid was successful against WI the only time he played ATG attack . There is nothing to suggest he wouldn't have been as successful as Waugh had he faced them more
2. You are absolutely free to rate Lara more than Sachin . Lara and Sobers are 2 batsman who have every right to be rated better than Sachin . And Smith , Kohli ( Less extent) are also on that path.

Some things are not as evident on paper. Yes, on paper, Dravid was successful against WI the only time he played ATG attack. But then ask yourself, if that West Indian attack was that great, then how did 4 of the 5 Tests end up as dull, boring draws?
That's because - pitches (other than the one in Barbados) were more lifeless than pitches in the subcontinent. Totally dead. There was nothing in them for the bowlers.
Ambrose & Walsh were couple of years away from their retirement. Though "statistically" good, Ambrose especially wasn't the Ogre in Test cricket that he was in the early 90s, when he practically gobbled up batting line-ups.
That "Lara-Tendulkar" series was one of the most boring Test series I watched. I remember having to watch that laborious double century by Sidhu in the first Test in Jamaica.

Now 9 years prior to Dravid's tour, India toured the West Indies and faced practically the same attack (Marshall in 88 got replaced by Franklyn Rose in 97 that was the only change). Now the attack that India faced in 88 (even
though - on paper- was almost exactly the same as what Dravid faced in 97) was much much tougher. None of the Indian batsmen averaged above 40 in the series. Only 1 Test then ended as a draw and that too because 3 days
got rained out. Bishop was very very very quick in that 88 series. He broke the hand of Indian opener Kris Srikkanth right at the beginning of the tour. There was no comparison between Bishop that played in 88 and Bishop that
played in 97. Indian batsmen were really beaten black & blue by the West Indian fast bowlers (sadly YouTube videos showing Indian batsmen taking the beating in that series have been deleted).
In any case, many Indian batsmen batted bravely. But there is only so much beating one can take. Ravi Shastri's 107 in Barbados was one of the gutsiest centuries from an Indian batsman.

"Only one bouncer per over allowed" rule was introduced in the early 90s (mainly to end West Indian fast bowling domination of the game). Again cricket changed forever after that.

BTW, I am not arguing about Dravid being above Waugh in this list. Both are ATG batsmen we are talking about, and beyond a point it becomes subjective. Having best of their performances live, I'd pick Waugh over Dravid without even thinking.
To me, Dravid was technically better, but Waugh was mentally far tougher as a batsman, and ruthless as a captain. My main point was that I simply don't think Dravid had a series performance that can be put in the same bracket as Waugh's series
performance in the West Indies in 1995. Again that's just me.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Dravid and Waugh are two batsmen who've had several innings on really awful pitches or extremely difficult overhead conditions the likes of which not many batsmen (even those i rate higher than them) were capable of playing. Waugh's 63 in the 95 series, Dravid's twin fifties at Jamaica, and the 76 in nz in 02 some of the best bad-pitch innings I've seen. When I think about modern batsmen who would have been capable of playing the kind of innings that hobbs/Sutcliffe played on the old sticky wickets, Waugh and dravid are the names that come to mind for me.

 

[Burgey]

I am almost sure Gavaskar is next.

He should have been 18 ago tbh

 

[Dan]

So was Mohammed Kaif. Was he a prodigy?

Yes.

Didn't turn out so well, but he was definitely considered a prodigious talent at the time. I mean, he debuted in Tests aged 20 with less than 20 FC games to his name.

 

[Dan]

1. Philander was injured and did not bowl for the most part of Perera's innings. And even otherwise McGrath, 99 Gillespie, Warne, MacGill >>>>> 2019 Steyn, Maharaj and Olivier. I mean, it is an absolute no contest, even with a fit Philander. To say otherwise only shows bias and lack of knowledge, honestly.

2. The 99 Barbados wicket was tougher to bat in the fourth innings while it is a well known fact that Durban wickets usually get better for batting progressively. The 98 test in Barbados ended with India shot out for 81 chasing 120 and the 2018 Durban test saw RSA score almost 300 chasing 400 odd. And again, just seeing the game, it was obvious the wicket was so much worse for batting at Barbados. Also, Australia with an ATG batting line up were just rolled for 146 on the same track. Again, pretty basic.


3. And yes easily way more pressure. As I said, Perera had zero expectations and nothing to lose. Lara was up against it all day and even the simplest of mistakes would have cost them the game.

You can go by numbers without context all you want, I am just pointing out the facts why Lara's knock was easily better.

This does not mean what you think it means.

Someone having a different opinion to you is not evidence of bias ffs. It's literally only evidence of that person having a different opinion.

 

[sunilz]

I agree with everything you said except Steve Waugh being mentally far tougher
1. His 4 th innings average being 25 . Graeme Smith is the most mentally tough player since 90s imo.
2. He got so annoyed when Ganguly came late for toss in 2001 . How can you can be annoyed by such a trivial thing
@ Pardus

 

[Migara]

Dravid was very very good but there's no way I can rate him ahead of Waugh. Waugh just impacted world cricket more. And I don't need cherry picked stats to prove it. I saw both careers and the impact they had and Waugh's was way more than Dravid's.

People tend to equate any impact on Australian cricket as impact on world cricket. No it is not the same thing. Warne revived leg spin bowling in Australia, not in the world. Because it was kept in place by a string of bowlers like Chandra, Sivaramakrishnan, Qadir and Kumble. Aussies try to paint their sparsely populated corner as the "world".

 

[Migara]

1. Philander was injured and did not bowl for the most part of Perera's innings. And even otherwise McGrath, 99 Gillespie, Warne, MacGill >>>>> 2019 Steyn, Maharaj and Olivier. I mean, it is an absolute no contest, even with a fit Philander. To say otherwise only shows bias and lack of knowledge, honestly.

Two things.

1. When Perera is in that mood, bowlers don't matter. Philander was lucky not to get annihilated. If we get another half good innings as such would take with both hands, but even that may hot happen.
2. MacGill is trash against good players of spin. Maharaj >>> MacGill against better players of spin.

 

[harsh.ag]

Bring back

 

[honestbharani]

Yes.

Didn't turn out so well, but he was definitely considered a prodigious talent at the time. I mean, he debuted in Tests aged 20 with less than 20 FC games to his name.

You and I have very different definitions of prodigy then. Kaif was always considered someone who can play international cricket and so was Kohli. But that alone does not make them prodigies to me. Sachin was expected to dominate even when he debuted in 16. Closest I can think of since, was when DK made those twin 100s in Ranji in the semis and finals and looked every bit an international quality batsman as well as keeper. I don't think either Kaif or Kohli were expected to dominate the way a Sachin or Yuvraj or even Laxman were expected to, when they debuted. Prithivi Shaw is the more recent example.