The ATG Teams General arguing/discussing thread

[Daemon]

Only six batsmen averaged >50 during the two decades that Gavaskar played. As an opener to be on that list is pretty special.

He's comfortably better than Sehwag/Hayden.

 

[trundler]

Think it's fair to say Gavaskar wasn't streets ahead of Boycott, Greenidge or Morris. If you did this sort of stat gymnastics on the others, they'd look a lot less impressive too. Being India's first player who was #1 in the world for a period probably helps his reputation a lot. Even without getting into all of that and as a batsman alone Gavaskar is the best post war opener for me. If there had been a comparably great attacking opener I'd rate him above Sunny but as it is Hutton, Gavaskar and Sutcliffe were all pretty boring.

 

[stephen]

So I've been over every single one of Gavaskar's hundreds against the West Indies. Most of them were inconsequential tons on roads. Many of them barely got into the second innings for either side, or resulted in ludicrous declarations. But there was one that was meaningful and ironically it was his smallest hundred. And Holding was the only ATG bowler in the lineup.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series...ia-3rd-test-india-tour-of-west-indies-1975-76

If a guy can make 13 hundreds, I'd hope that more than one were consequential.

 

[stephen]

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series...es-3rd-test-west-indies-tour-of-india-1978-79

Was probably his second and third most important hundreds in that it almost resulted in a win. The attack, outside a very green Marshall was pretty ordinary though. In fact it was probably the weakest XI the West Indies fielded in that era.

 

[trundler]

Not his fault Indian bowling sucked. Being an opener you can only set up the game. His 100 Vs Marshall and Holding was pretty special. 120 off 128 against 2 of the very best fast bowlers ever is still insane.

 

[ataraxia]

No opinion on this matter overall, but I think judging hundreds based upon what happens after the hundred is generally a bad measure. Fine to evaluate the pitch that way, but other factors in judging an innings are better evaluated by the match situation at the time of the innings. Best to steer away from what happens after the innings in question IMO.

 

[vcs]

Sachin's knocks in our tour of SA in 2011 against Steyn, which were some of the toughest runs I've ever seen any batsmen make, were by the same token, pointless and inconsequential. The first one came when we had long since been consigned to a certain defeat and the Cape Town knock came in a game that neither team came close to winning. Clarke's knocks in 2012 against SA as well, pointless.

Stephen's scoreboard analysis 40 years after the event is utterly devoid of context and nuance.

 

[h_hurricane]

Roads or not, Gavaskar's highest score at least came against the likes of Holding, Roberts and Marshall. On the other hand, Hayden's 380 came against a bunch of nobodies from Zim.

If you take into consideration the general quality of bowling which Gavaskar faced through a decade and half,Trundler is certainly right that SMG was levels ahead of Hayden and Sehwag.

 

[trundler]

There are so many variables. Pitch could've flattened out later in the match. There could've been fiery spells without reward. We don't know the form the bowlers had coming into the match. Etc

 

[trundler]

You don't have to get into numbers and context for the comparison with Hayden and Sehwag. Gavaskar could play swing. The other 2 couldn't. Boycott and Greenidge are arguably on the same level but one of those got dropped after making his highest score for batting ridiculously slowly and the other averages a lot less.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Roads or not, Gavaskar's highest score at least came against the likes of Holding, Roberts and Marshall. On the other hand, Hayden's 380 came against a bunch of nobodies from Zim.

New winner for worst possible stat to judge someone by

 

[h_hurricane]

New winner for worst possible stat to judge someone by

I was merely responding to Stephen's comments that Gavaskar is the biggest flat track bully,a lot of hundreds came on roads and hence they should be devalued. He did not point out how one innings against a nothing opposition impacted Hayden's average in a big way. I never said that batsmen should be judged by one innings. I think you should stop reading between the lines.

 

[stephen]

If the West Indies had the fiercest bowling attack in the world, between 1974 and 1983 they should have been able to force more than 11 results out of 23 matches against minnow India. And if Gavaskar was as good as is claimed he would have averaged more than 23 in matches with a result. The fact is that their bowling was not up too what it was in the 80s.

The other fact is that Gavaskar's record against the West Indies is pumped up by facing weak West Indian sides in 71 and 78 in particular. He faced the trio of Roberts, Holding and Marshall 7 times and made 236 of his 496 runs against them in a single innings on a Chennai dust bowl. Most of the time he faced an ATG bowler it was one or two at most. Hardly what one thinks of when one thinks of the great West Indian attacks.

Now don't get me wrong, Gavaskar was very good, but his record against the West Indies is massively overrated if you look at who the West Indies fielded in the matches he played and the circumstances he played them.

 

[jimmy101]

Wow, people are going to ridiculous lengths here to try & talk down Gavaskar.

 

[h_hurricane]

2 of the 3 drawn matches in 1983 WI tour of India incidentally had less than 390 overs bowled. Both these matches were 6-8 wickets away from result.

The other drawn match had the entire first day washed out and less than 300 overs bowled.

I suppose the bowling over rates had a huge role to play in these matches. Blame the WI quicks for these.

In the 6th and final match of the series, WI made 313 batting first and India was down 0 for 2 against a red hot Marshall when Gavaskar came in to bat at no.4 for a change.(I think this is the match where Viv made the epic comment about Sunil. "Maan, no matter where you bat, the scoreboard is zero when you come to bat") They were soon 5/92. So WI were Gavaskar's wicket away from taking a big first innings lead. His 236* is all the more epic due to the circumstances, not some meaningless innings on a flat road.

 

[honestbharani]

I dunno if Gavaskar was the best post war opener or not and I have only really watched him bat once (technically but I was like 2 and a half then and so hardly remember a thing) but while Gavaskar's record has been over rated (and lets face it, that is a complaint you can make about any popular Indian player given how the Indian cricket fans act in the www) the way TJB and stephen are comparing his record, I wonder what will happen if the same were to be done to Hayden or Langer or God forbid, Border.

 

[trundler]

Literally no one fared any better versus WI at their best. Border had moments of brilliance like that game where he almost scored twin tons but outside of those he struggled too. Miandad was notoriously poor against West Indies. And at the crux of the argument we have 'if you ignored all those times he did well he did badly' reasoning. No reasonable cricket fan thinks Gavaskar was a literal slayer of fast bowling who scored 11 centuries versus the quartet. That's fine because literally no one did any better. And that's not the only reason why he's thought of as the best post War opener. What makes me take this even less seriously is the fact that we're supposed to ignore Hayden's 90s record and Ponting's 3 tours to India but cutting Gavaskar's career against one team in a brief period of time into thinner and thinner slices is somehow reasonable.

 

[stephen]

Tear them to bits if you like.

Out of the 27 tests he played against them, the West Indian bowler that Gavaskar faced the most was Holding. He faced him 15 times. He faced Marshall 14 times, Roberts 11 and Garner 4 times.

Border played the West Indies 31 times. He faced Marshall 19 times, Walsh 20, Ambrose 15, Holding 12, Croft 6, Roberts and Bishop 5 times each.

There's no question who faced the better attacks in the more pace friendly conditions. Border literally completed the set, facing every single one of them.

 

[h_hurricane]

Tear them to bits if you like.

Out of the 27 tests he played against them, the West Indian bowler that Gavaskar faced the most was Holding. He faced him 15 times. He faced Marshall 14 times, Roberts 11 and Garner 4 times.

Border played the West Indies 31 times. He faced Marshall 19 times, Walsh 20, Ambrose 15, Holding 12, Croft 6, Roberts and Bishop 5 times each.

There's no question who faced the better attacks in the more pace friendly conditions. Border literally completed the set, facing every single one of them.

Just facing someone doesn't give any real picture. As quoted in one of my earlier posts today, Gavaskar averaged 49 while facing Marshall, Holding, Garner or Roberts. Border averaged 41 with the same criteria.

You could argue that Border deviated less from the mean while facing these bowlers (he only averaged 39 against WI though). Gavaskar deviated more from the mean while facing lesser bowlers but his mean was so clearly better.

 

[stephen]

Anyway, I never said the best post war opener was Hayden, Greenidge, Sehwag or Smith. The best post- war opener is Bob Simpson. Averaged 55 opening, performed against everyone, everywhere (he literally averaged a minimum of 48 as opener in every country he played).

Gavaskar might be second.