The ATG Teams General arguing/discussing thread

[jimmy101]

Ah yes, the rolling eyes emoji. An underrated emoji. I wonder how it performs statistically on CW compared to Planet Cricket?

 

[Logan]

Heaps of contenders...

AUS: Grimmett, O'Reilly, Lindwall, Gregory, Miller (there also good reason to believe Spofforth & Turnber were up to standard)
ENG: Barnes, Tate, Voce, Larwood, Verity, Bedser, Laker, Rhodes (again, you've also got guys like Lohmann, Richardson, Hirst, Peel
WI: Constantine
RSA: Faulkner
IND: Amar Singh, Mohammad Nissar, Mankad
NZ: Cowie

No doubt they are great cricketers. Most of them are forgotten by 99.9999% of cricket fans. Barnes is perhaps the only guy picked by anyone in an ATG team. Except for Barnes, I don’t think rest of those guys are hardly talked about by even hardcore fans.

This thread is about 1000 pages. How many times has there been a mention of Tate or Constantine compared to Barnes. 95% of times Larwood is brought up, it is due to Bodyline and Bradman.

It is just natural. A few get remembered. The rest will be forgotten.

Fifty years from now, McGrath would be remembered. Donald would rarely be talked about. Even though they were equals IMO. That’s just life.

 

[Logan]

. Stats are not everything, but neither are opinions of past players or other experts.

This

 

[jimmy101]

No doubt they are great cricketers. Most of them are forgotten by 99.9999% of cricket fans. Barnes is perhaps the only guy picked by anyone in an ATG team. Except for Barnes, I don’t think rest of those guys are hardly talked about by even hardcore fans.

This thread is about 1000 pages. How many times has there been a mention of Tate or Constantine compared to Barnes. 95% of times Larwood is brought up, it is due to Bodyline and Bradman.

It is just natural. A few get remembered. The rest will be forgotten.

Fifty years from now, McGrath would be remembered. Donald would rarely be talked about. Even though they were equals IMO. That’s just life.

Nah bro that's just straight up false. O'Reilly, Lindwall & Miller are often picked in Aus Xis. Ditto for Larwood & Verity for England. There's also a very strong case for Bedser & Rhodes. Constantine misses out due to the great post-war Windies pacers, but Faulkner is often considered a first choice for South Africa. One of either Singh & Nissar are occasionally chosen to open with Kapil for India whilst Cowie just about walks into the NZ side. By the way, we are the hardcore fans, & we talk about these players all the time.

I've hardly seen any Bodyline talk in this thread. That's more of a topic for casual fans.

And don't be foolish, Donald crushes McGrath.

 

[jimmy101]

This

...is a classic example of someone saying something & then doing the exact opposite. Literally knows nothing about Barrington as a player, has a vague, yet warped, statistic-centric perception of cricket history & failed to provide anything close to a valid reason for why Kenny a supposed lock in an England XI apart from 'dem stats'.

Nothing wrong with considering Barrington as a contender though, ftr.

 

[trundler]

Barrington doing better away rather than at home would certainly explain why he isn't as highly as his stats suggest. One thing I'd like to say is that overall SRs don't tell the full story. Sunny G and Greenidge both have similar ODI SRs. By all accounts, Kenny B was a team player and he filled in as a makeshift opener, even against WI's Hall and Griffith when the team needed him. Still, does anyone know if he was prone to doing a bit of Chanderpauling? Might explain some things. Also I don't think he dominated pace in the same way as Sobers did, for example.

 

[Logan]

Nah bro that's just straight up false. O'Reilly, Lindwall & Miller are often picked in Aus Xis. Ditto for Larwood & Verity for England. There's also a very strong case for Bedser & Rhodes. Constantine misses out due to the great post-war Windies pacers, but Faulkner is often considered a first choice for South Africa. One of either Singh & Nissar are occasionally chosen to open with Kapil for India whilst Cowie just about walks into the NZ side. By the way, we are the hardcore fans, & we talk about these players all the time.

I've hardly seen any Bodyline talk in this thread. That's more of a topic for casual fans.

And don't be foolish, Donald crushes McGrath.

I am talking about an overall ATG team and not each team’s ATG team.

 

[Logan]

...is a classic example of someone saying something & then doing the exact opposite. Literally knows nothing about Barrington as a player, has a vague, yet warped, statistic-centric perception of cricket history & failed to provide anything close to a valid reason for why Kenny a supposed lock in an England XI apart from 'dem stats'.

Nothing wrong with considering Barrington as a contender though, ftr.

Have you seen Barrington or Sobers or Hobbs play ? Everything you know about the yesteryear legends are just opinions of few ex-cricketers and writers. God knows how biased they must have been.

If you want to blindly believe what some ex-cricketers and historians wrote, you are free to do so.

 

[jimmy101]

Then that leaves you with a pool of only 11 or 12 players. Too small for an ATG player pool. Even then, several of those guys I named are in contention.

 

[jimmy101]

Have you seen Barrington or Sobers or Hobbs play ? Everything you know about the yesteryear legends are just opinions of few ex-cricketers and writers. God knows how biased they must have been.

If you want to blindly believe what some ex-cricketers and historians wrote, you are free to do so.

Oh Logan, assuming that every single cricketer/cricket journo ever is biased is a completely baseless assertion.

I don't blindly believe everything I read, my lord and saviour Jesus Christ and the good book help me deal with this

 

[Logan]

It is just human nature to be biased.

Don Bradman himself was no exception. His ATG team was full of strange choices.

Bradman picked Arthur Morris over Hutton and Hobbs.

Bradman picked Barry Richards over Sunil Gavaskar.

Bradman picked Lindwall and Lillee over the likes of Marshall and Hadlee.

 

[jimmy101]

It is just human nature to be biased.

Don Bradman himself was no exception. His ATG team was full of strange choices.

Bradman picked Arthur Morris over Hutton and Hobbs.

Bradman picked Barry Richards over Sunil Gavaskar.

Bradman picked Lindwall and Lillee over the likes of Marshall and Hadlee.

None of those choices are biased, nor are any of them strange.

Arthur Morris is better than you might think & often held in high esteem by many people from that generation. Criminally overlooked. You go on about how players from the past become forgotten, well, you're doing a fine job of it yourself G-unit.

I'd take Barry over Sunil too. Not a strange choice imo.

And what's wrong with Lindwall/Lillee?

 

[Logan]

None of those choices are biased, nor are any of them strange.

Arthur Morris is better than you might think & often held in high esteem by many people from that generation. Criminally overlooked. You go on about how players from the past become forgotten, well, you're doing a fine job of it yourself G-unit.

I'd take Barry over Sunil too. Not a strange choice imo.

And what's wrong with Lindwall/Lillee?

Only moron or a biased person would pick a player who played 4 Tests over an ATG batsman who played 125 Tests.

Marshall being better than Lillee and Lindwall isn’t even a debate

 

[jimmy101]

Only moron or a biased person would pick a player who played 4 Tests over an ATG batsman who played 125 Tests.

Marshall being better than Lillee and Lindwall isn’t even a debate

Only a moron would consider Barry Richards' four Test matches to be something to hold against him. Do you think he was dropped or something?

 

[Logan]

It doesn’t matter. Regardless of the reason, he didn’t play at the highest level of cricket.

 

[jimmy101]

It doesn’t matter. Regardless of the reason, he didn’t play at the highest level of cricket.

Regardless of the reason?... So you mean to tell me you actually have no idea why he played only 4 Tests? Google is your friend here, bro.

The fact of the matter is he most certainly did play at the highest level. Apart from the aforementioned Tests he managed to squeeze in, he also hit a century against the touring Australian side of 1966 in a FC match. Went on then to represent the World XI against England in 1970 in matches that were retroactively stripped of Test status. Played in both the Sheffield Shield & County Championship, before being invited to play in World Series Cricket. Aside from Bradman, Bob Willis, Dickie Bird, Rod Marsh & Graham Gooch also named Richards in their ATG XI's.

 

[smash84]

Marshall being better than Lillee and Lindwall isn’t even a debate

At cricketweb perhaps, but plenty of fast bowlers in the 1970s and 80s would rate Lillee ahead of Marshall.

 

[ataraxia]

It doesn’t matter. Regardless of the reason, he didn’t play at the highest level of cricket.

Honestly, why does this matter? Tich Freeman is undoubtedly greater than Daniel Vettori if you're willing to exclude your conscious bias (not the right word) against pre-1960 cricketers.

On your pre-1960 point, I believe that Steve Smith would perform better than Sir Don in today's conditions, Kirsten ahead of Hobbs, Warner ahead of Gavaskar, etc.. To get around this I effectively rate players from the 1920s and 2000s (for two examples) separately and then slide their ratings together to obtain my rankings. This is the best way to form an XI without doing this:

Smith
Warner
Bradman
Smith
Kohli
Kallis
ABDV +
Warne
Steyn
Mura
McGrath

Standards have risen hugely since the 20s and 30s but it's only fair to judge people based on their performance in their era IMO. That does not mean I bar standards like Q Opposition, bowling stocks, pitch surfaces, etc.. It just means that I will not do some stupid judgements based on modern-day coaching, larger player pools, and so on.

 

[Coronis]

...is a classic example of someone saying something & then doing the exact opposite. Literally knows nothing about Barrington as a player, has a vague, yet warped, statistic-centric perception of cricket history & failed to provide anything close to a valid reason for why Kenny a supposed lock in an England XI apart from 'dem stats'.

Nothing wrong with considering Barrington as a contender though, ftr.

Please stop making these ignorant posts intended to bait me.

 

[mr_mister]

Barrington doing better away rather than at home would certainly explain why he isn't as highly as his stats suggest. One thing I'd like to say is that overall SRs don't tell the full story. Sunny G and Greenidge both have similar ODI SRs. By all accounts, Kenny B was a team player and he filled in as a makeshift opener, even against WI's Hall and Griffith when the team needed him. Still, does anyone know if he was prone to doing a bit of Chanderpauling? Might explain some things. Also I don't think he dominated pace in the same way as Sobers did, for example.

I checked myself the other day and he only got 15 not outs in 80 tests or so compared to Chanderpauls WR 49 in 160 tests

So I think no he wasn't a red inker