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Rank Mahela Jayawardene, Inzy, Chanderpaul and Mo-Yo

Migara

International Coach
Had a change of mind since last post in this thread.

Chanders is way ahead here. Inzy, Jaya and MoYo next.

Chanders is way underrated by WI fans as well as CW fans. He is a dead set choice for WI ATG XI over many famed names. I could only think of Sobers, Lara, Viv and Headly above him as batsmen.

Inzy and Mahela were inconsistent, but when set, single handedly controlled the games. These guys are a lesser version of Lara, while Chanders was a lesser version of Tendulkar. Mahela is one of those rare batsmen to completely and utterly master Indian spin juggernaut. Inzy would have been if he played more in India.

MoYo was one of those odd players who were better against pace than spin. But other than for that couple of years in God mode, he was underwhelming.
 

Migara

International Coach
Mine would be Chanderpaul > Inzamam > Jayawardene > Yousuf - although for Inzamam and to an extent Yousuf relying quite a bit on hearsay and stats.

Afterwards thought it would be interesting to see how these players stats change if you exclude runs against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe and then exclude runs against each others teams (so SL, Pakistan, WI). Chanderpaul and Jayawardene had probably missed out a bit at times not playing against their own bowling attacks especially Jayawardene not facing his bowling attack away from home.


Averages against all teams minus Zimbabwe and Bangladesh

Shivnarine Chanderpaul (49.42)
Inzamam-ul-Haq (49.38)
Mohammad Yousuf (48.20)
Mahela Jayawardene (47.66)


Averages against all teams minus Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and West Indies

Mahela Jayawardene (53.51) (home 69.05) (away 36.17)
Shivnarine Chanderpaul (50.62) (home 55.56) (away (45.89)
Mohammad Yousuf (46.58) (home 63.92) (away 40.47) - worth saying 74 of his 100 innings against such teams were away
Inzamam-ul-Haq (46.02) (home 53.32) (away 42.22) - likewise Inzamam had a significant imbalance with far more of these innings away from home.

Whilst I have myself thought of Jayawardene not as strongly as a flat track bully but someone who has struggled compared to his reputation in SENA nations he averages 69 at home to Aus, Eng, Ind, NZ and SA. Outside of Vaas there haven't been many consistently great Sri Lankan seamers and so potentially there is a case to say on the whole his away average against these 5 teams as a collective but really the SENA nations isn't necessarily all that relevant. I'm not saying I fully agree with this argument but introducing another perspective if Jayawardene averaged 45 away v these sides would SL's results improve much. Especially if you are defining players ability partially on how much of 'matchwinner' they were, racking up runs at home against some of the better sides is probably more likely to contribute to consistent wins then racking them up away when you are relying on Murali to pull of some magic where conditions don't necessarily favour him as the pace attack are unlikely to win too many Test matches.
If we had two more batsmen who could tear up Indian attacks in india, we would have won few more matches out there.
 

Migara

International Coach
I’d put Dravid in the same file as Sanga:

Batsmen who can keep a bit
Sanga is a top class keeper. Kept a shitload of ODIs in addition. WI would kill for a keeper with Sanga's keeping abilities alone at the moment. It was unlucky for him that PJ, an ATG gloveman was around during his playing days.
 
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OverratedSanity

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Sanga was a way way better keeper than Dravid. Dravid barely qualified as a part time keeper, Sanga was actually underrated as keeper because of how good his batting was.
 

TheJediBrah

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Sanga was a way way better keeper than Dravid. Dravid barely qualified as a part time keeper, Sanga was actually underrated as keeper because of how good his batting was.
This is true. Sanga was a way better keeper than Dravid or Flower. Kept well to Murali which can't have been easy
 

Xuhaib

International Coach
Inzi and then the other 3 in any order. As a Pakistani fan inzi made me feel a certain calmness which even Mo Yo and YK didn't provide even though YK is a better batsman I feel hard to explain why but Inzi presence gave you feeling of hope no matter how bad the situation was.
 

Migara

International Coach
Shocking to say the least.

However, I do remember him stumping Lara in the 2007 WC. One of the most impressive stumpings I've ever seen.
He missed Andrew Symonds, and then ran Aravinda out.

2007 WC, the dismissal was due to uber-accuracy of Vaas. Vaas was the one who totally had Lara's number as a bowler.
 
He missed Andrew Symonds, and then ran Aravinda out.

2007 WC, the dismissal was due to uber-accuracy of Vaas. Vaas was the one who totally had Lara's number as a bowler.
Vaas had Lara's wicket only once in tests (5 matches) & 3 times in 13 ODIs.

McGrath was his bane
 

TheJediBrah

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McGrath might have got him out the most, not sure, but Lara also had some big innings against McGrath
 

Migara

International Coach
Vaas had Lara's wicket only once in tests (5 matches) & 3 times in 13 ODIs.

McGrath was his bane
Lara scored close to nothing off Vaas, and that allowed other bowlers to pick him. Tha 688 series woould have got reduced to 288 if DRS was around. Vaas was beating Lara for fun with reverse swing, and hitting the pads, and umpires kept giving him not out. Finally Zoysa had to bowl him with a yorker in one innings to send him to the hut. McGrath got him out yes, but Vaas tormented Lara's ego like no one else.
 

Migara

International Coach
Watch "Brian Lara Talks About The Best Batsman & The Best Bowler He Saw"


Just like Warne talked about Tendulkar, but not Sidhu. Sidhu was the one who hurt Warne's ego, not Tendulkar.

It is OK to get out to a brilliant ball from an alpha cricketer. But when a very quite, friendly mannered one, works you out, destroy your technique one step at a time, those ones will hurt the ego much more of alpha cricketers.
 

CharlesLara

U19 12th Man
Had a change of mind since last post in this thread.

Chanders is way ahead here. Inzy, Jaya and MoYo next.

Chanders is way underrated by WI fans as well as CW fans. He is a dead set choice for WI ATG XI over many famed names. I could only think of Sobers, Lara, Viv and Headly above him as batsmen.

Inzy and Mahela were inconsistent, but when set, single handedly controlled the games. These guys are a lesser version of Lara, while Chanders was a lesser version of Tendulkar. Mahela is one of those rare batsmen to completely and utterly master Indian spin juggernaut. Inzy would have been if he played more in India.

MoYo was one of those odd players who were better against pace than spin. But other than for that couple of years in God mode, he was underwhelming.
He's not even better than the likes of Kanhai IMO. Shiv was my other WI guy for a long time (thin frame, other end when Lara got his 375, left handed), but I remember Shivs entire career. Maybe I'm too caught up in the Lara aura (which I clearly am aha), I dunno something about Shiv seemed purely internal, I mean in a way so was Lara, but I dunno, Chanderpaul hand was forced due to his teams decline as well so he became the anchor for the side, but I also think that narrative helps mask how selfish he really could be, I always felt him staying at 5/6 in his later years was an average protector move, as he would come in get 60-80* at 5 and move on.

Im obviously being cynical here, as end of the day he's a guy whose played 164 Tests with an average of 50+, but ONLY Sobers, Lara, Viv and Headley being ahead of him seems a bit steep.

Underrated at times because of Lara's achievements? Yes. Overrated at times because he was the only resistance post Lara? Yes. I kinda think he falls somewhere in between. There are greater players IMO with lesser stats, but also that longevity cannot cannot be overlooked, plain and simple.
 

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