DoG's Top 100 Test Batsmen Countdown Thread

[honestbharani]

If you're getting fast-tracked into international cricket - as Kaif and Kohli were - you're hardly proving the doubters wrong when you succeed.

Define fast tracked. Kohli was smashing the Aussie international attack for fun in 2008. Made his test debut in 2011. Go figure.

 

[honestbharani]

Hey Sunilz will do whatever mental gymnastics is necessary to discredit an Australian player.

You should know. You do the same mental gymnastics to try the opposite.

 

[honestbharani]

IMO Kohli was considered a prodigy, certainly for the shorter forms of the game. But there were question marks, or certainly doubts, about how he would do in tests (as late as England 2014 series) - which actually played out just that way in the sense that he had spurts or great occasional innings, but took a long time to get a 40/45+ average, never mind 50+z

Again, not how I define "prodigy".

 

[Bolo.]

That is something odd. Vaas almost always targeted best batsman of the touring side when playing at home. Ponting, Lara, Fleming, Atherton, Flower and Gayle are examples. The one's he struggled against was KP, Tendulkar and Kallis.

Nothing odd about this. A MF bowler did well against top order bats when the ball was moving and struggled against the middle order. Of the guys you are describing, only flower doesn't fit the pattern, but i dont think Vaas did that well against him.

Similarly, a top order bat is likely to get knocked over by Vaas more often, and is going to appear better against Murali by virtue of Murali not taking his wicket because Vaas didn't give him the chance.

 

[Burgey]

Look I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re getting consistently and cheaply KO’ed by Chaminda Vaas all through your career then you probably need to consider whether your name should be brought up in this thread. The bloke was a serviceable/ good (but hardly great) bowler.

Then again I suppose Hollies got Bradman out.

 

[Bolo.]

Look I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re getting consistently and cheaply KO’ed by Chaminda Vaas all through your career then you probably need to consider whether your name should be brought up in this thread. The bloke was a serviceable/ good (but hardly great) bowler.

Then again I suppose Hollies got Bradman out.

Vaas KOed a bunch of guys. He may not have been a great bowler, but at home, vs the top order (he has a higher percentage of top order wickets than pretty much anyone else), he kinda was. Which is what is being described. And it's especially understandable when all of the guys described are from outside the subcontinent, for whom Lankan conditions were the most alien.

 

[Flem274*]

That is something odd. Vaas almost always targeted best batsman of the touring side when playing at home. Ponting, Lara, Fleming, Atherton, Flower and Gayle are examples. The one's he struggled against was KP, Tendulkar and Kallis.

fleming loved playing sri lanka

 

[Slifer]

fleming loved playing sri lanka

So did Lara. Decimated SL in the one series he played there.

 

[stephen]

You should know. You do the same mental gymnastics to try the opposite.

Turn it up. It's only mental gymnastics when it comes from blindly cherry picking stats. Which is not something I tend to do. I just tall more about Australian players because I've seen more of them. I've waxed lyrical about other players who are not Australian but nobody seems to want to discredit them like they do Australian players. Tall poppy syndrome at its finest.

 

[ataraxia]

How tf has there been 50 posts since Weekes' position and absolutely none are remotely about him?

Edit: I missed a page; there are about 3 on that page; make it 3/80.

He must have been an absolute legend. He is at 4 (!) in the adjusted averages due to that incredible strike rate. He would have been a legend of an ODI player. His adjusted strike rate is better than Greenidge's ODI strike rate, and he averages 54. It's telling that only two of Smith, Sobers, Kallis, Sangakkara, Barrington, and Sutcliffe have better adjusted averages than Sir Everton. Edit: And Hammond, Hutton, and Hobbs. He may be a minnow-basher, but he was a legendary minnow-basher better than all but the Don. And that is needed for a consistent side. And his away adjusted average is 46 when that is often used against him. Incredible player, and very underrated.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

How tf has there been 50 posts since Weekes' position and absolutely none are remotely about him?

Edit: I missed a page; there are about 3 on that page; make it 3/80.

He must have been an absolute legend. He is at 4 (!) in the adjusted averages due to that incredible strike rate. He would have been a legend of an ODI player. His adjusted strike rate is better than Greenidge's ODI strike rate, and he averages 54. It's telling that only two of Smith, Sobers, Kallis, Sangakkara, Barrington, and Sutcliffe have better adjusted averages than Sir Everton. He may be a minnow-basher, but he was a legendary minnow-basher better than all but the Don. And that is needed for a consistent side. And his away adjusted average is 46 when that is often used against him. Incredible player, and very underrated.

i mean he probably gets forgotten for Barbados all time XIs at times.

The Windies in the 1950s are a really interesting party of cricket history which doesn't get touched on all that often (iirc they still carried a white captain for example)

 

[Coronis]

How tf has there been 50 posts since Weekes' position and absolutely none are remotely about him?

Edit: I missed a page; there are about 3 on that page; make it 3/80.

He must have been an absolute legend. He is at 4 (!) in the adjusted averages due to that incredible strike rate. He would have been a legend of an ODI player. His adjusted strike rate is better than Greenidge's ODI strike rate, and he averages 54. It's telling that only two of Smith, Sobers, Kallis, Sangakkara, Barrington, and Sutcliffe have better adjusted averages than Sir Everton. He may be a minnow-basher, but he was a legendary minnow-basher better than all but the Don. And that is needed for a consistent side. And his away adjusted average is 46 when that is often used against him. Incredible player, and very underrated.

Since its partially based on SR’s, I’d guess it’ll be Smith and Sobers, with Sobers getting a larger adjustment than say, Sangakkara due to the slower scoring in his era.

 

[ataraxia]

i mean he probably gets forgotten for Barbados all time XIs at times.

The Windies in the 1950s are a really interesting party of cricket history which doesn't get touched on all that often (iirc they still carried a white captain for example)

Yeah and they were pretty good theoretically too. At one stage in 1958 they could have a top 6 of:

Hunte
Worrell
Walcott
Weekes
Kanhai
Sobers

And they also had all of the Windies' top-class spinners too. It's also really interesting that in 1954 both Headley and Sobers played for them, with a combined career of 1930-1974! Theoretically a really great team that is often overlooked.

 

[ataraxia]

Since its partially based on SR’s, I’d guess it’ll be Smith and Sobers, with Sobers getting a larger adjustment than say, Sangakkara due to the slower scoring in his era.

Yeah, it's really interesting that the likes of Hobbs will probably end up worse than Weekes in that category despite for example Hobbs' ridiculous pre-war average. Weekes is arguably statistically greater than Lara and Richards, so it's really interesting that he often isn't ranked the greatest batter of the Three W's.

 

[kyear2]

Weeks was tremendous and somewhat under rated. The great tragedy of his career was when he was in form headed to Australia and suffered that crippling injury that totally derailed that tour.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

Yeah and they were pretty good theoretically too. At one stage in 1958 they could have a top 6 of:

Hunte
Worrell
Walcott
Weekes
Kanhai
Sobers

And they also had all of the Windies' top-class spinners too. It's also really interesting that in 1954 both Headley and Sobers played for them, with a combined career of 1930-1974! Theoretically a really great team that is often overlooked.

Not quite all the top class spinners, Lance Gibbs was good and he's a 60s guy. and you touch on the problem, the bowling (and possibly fielding?) wasn't quite there. as burgey might say, you dont win anything with spin

 

[ataraxia]

Weeks was tremendous and somewhat under rated. The great tragedy of his career was when he was in form headed to Australia and suffered that crippling injury that totally derailed that tour.

Yea that kind of makes the Q opposition stat in this scenario less important in my opinion. He may have upped that to around 44 and upped his career average to nigh on 60, which would have been incredible especially with that strike rate. What I can hold against him is the short career which doesn't include his inevitable downfall that makes his FC average only 55 (including being a very occasional keeper there BTW). Still an incredible player who played in a very hard era to go overseas and succeed against quality opposition.

 

[ataraxia]

Not quite all the top class spinners, Lance Gibbs was good and he's a 60s guy. and you touch on the problem, the bowling (and possibly fielding?) wasn't quite there. as burgey might say, you dont win anything with spin

Theoretically. Yeah it is kind of un-Windies to have a good side without a top pacer. Just a nice niche of cricket overall that side.

 

[honestbharani]

Turn it up. It's only mental gymnastics when it comes from blindly cherry picking stats. Which is not something I tend to do. I just tall more about Australian players because I've seen more of them. I've waxed lyrical about other players who are not Australian but nobody seems to want to discredit them like they do Australian players. Tall poppy syndrome at its finest.

Mental gymnastics need not always be about stats though. As for the rest of your post, I wish it were true. You can have the last word though, I don't wanna continue this argument. Others can read your posts and see for themselves.

On topic, I have always rated Walcott as the best of the Ws, but its interesting to see how much higher Weekes has turned up in this exercise. There must be some context I have missed about his career. We all like to talk so much about how great the Windies of the 70s and 80s were but were it not for folks like the Ws, Headley, Sobers etc. that may well have never happened. Legend.

 

[Migara]

Nothing odd about this. A MF bowler did well against top order bats when the ball was moving and struggled against the middle order. Of the guys you are describing, only flower doesn't fit the pattern, but i dont think Vaas did that well against him.

Similarly, a top order bat is likely to get knocked over by Vaas more often, and is going to appear better against Murali by virtue of Murali not taking his wicket because Vaas didn't give him the chance.

Don't think you got the message correctly. Whether Murali was good or not, Vaas targeted the best batsman of the side. He never went about bragging it before the series like McGrath, because he ws obviously not good as McGrath and as well as was a very modest man and gave the opposition the utmost respect. I have seen inferior bowlers to Vaas bragging about whom they are going to dismiss, or mediocre batsmen calling "I will play him using my appendage"