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The ATG Teams General arguing/discussing thread

peterhrt

U19 Vice-Captain
Blackham was undisputed best-ever from anywhere for nearly half a century.

Oldfield was rated higher than Tallon in England because more was seen of him, especially up to the stumps. In 1948 Tallon spent most of his time standing back as there wasn't much spin. Tallon's non-selection in 1938 was all the more puzzling given that Bradman later said he was the best keeper he ever saw. So did Fingleton.

O'Reilly rated Evans and Tallon equal in 1946-47.
 

trundler

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No. Legends always grow with time. When Cena was around, marks hated everything he did with a passion but now that he's semi-retired he's rightly regarded as a top 10 performer and perhaps the last star to cross over into the mainstream. On the other hand, people thought Flair was a spot monkey in the '80s.
 

peterhrt

U19 Vice-Captain
No. Legends always grow with time.
An interesting point. Bradman is a good example.

While he was playing he faced constant sniping and criticism, much of it from Australians. Most was unfair and may have been related to his personality.

Macartney referred to his batting as “crude hitting”. Gubby Allen said he was scared of fast bowling. Fingleton claimed he had a mental block on bad pitches and couldn't bat on them. Sutcliffe reckoned Hammond was a better player. Hobbs thought he was the best batsman in the world on good wickets only, adding the caveat that this was likely due to lack of experience on bad ones. Arlott did his research and was adamant that Hobbs was the greatest. Constantine, Ironmonger and Ebeling all said they found Ponsford a more formidable opponent.

A notable dissenting voice was Verity. Bradman was genuinely stung by the harsh criticism following a single failure against the Yorkshireman on a rain-damaged pitch in the second innings at Lord's in 1934. Four years later they met again on a similar surface at Bramall Lane in front of a crowd of 25,000. Now representing Yorkshire, Verity sensed that Bradman was determined to succeed and so he did, with scores of 59 and 42 and everything from Verity finding the middle of the bat. He made more runs in the match than noted wet-wicket masters Sutcliffe and Hutton combined, while his most persistent critic Fingleton managed 2 and 2.

Another on cool personal terms with Bradman, O'Reilly nevertheless rated him the greatest of all batsmen, despite his mate Grimmett disagreeing. Grimmett's assertion that Headley was the best on-side player he bowled to was a dig at The Don, who hit most of his boundaries on the leg side. Rhodes, a shrewd judge of few words, bowled to all the greats from Grace to Bradman and agreed with O'Reilly. Bodyline wasn't devised to combat Ponsford or Headley.

When Bradman retired, RC Robertson-Glasgow summed up in Wisden:

There were critics who found surfeit in watching him...It is but a short step from annoyance to envy, and Bradman has never been free from envy's attacks. So, when, first in 1930, he reeled off the centuries, single, double and treble, there were not wanting those who compared him unfavourably with other great ones – Trumper, Ranjitsinhji, Hobbs, Macartney. And Bradman's answer was more runs. Others perhaps could have made them, but they didn't.

However, as time passed, Bradman's reputation as a batsman comfortably surpassed all others. At the turn of the millennium, a year before his death, he was the only cricketer to receive a vote from all 100 judges invited by Wisden to choose their five cricketers of the twentieth century. Sobers received 90 as an all-rounder. Next was Hobbs with 30 votes. Of the others mentioned by Robertson-Glasgow in 1949, Trumper got four votes, Ranjitsinhji one and Macartney none.

Ranji might have been considered by some as belonging to the nineteenth century like Grace. But there is evidence that English writers began to pay him less attention following Indian independence. Where once he had ranked above Hammond, Hutton and Compton, now he received fewer plaudits than any of them. From a cricketing point of view this made little sense as Ranji never played a single first-class match in India, while Compton played ten games there, scoring over 1300 runs.

During the twenty-first century, doubts about Bradman's supremacy re-surfaced. This time most of the doubters were from India.
 
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ataraxia

International Coach
I think Bradman's overrated tbh in terms of sheer numbers. He's realistically more like a 75–80 average batter. The problem there is that that is still leagues above anyone else to an unbelievable degree. The distance in batting average (std.) between him and a Dravid is greater than the distance between Dravid and Crawley, or Dravid and Benaud. There's a reason he is so lauded.
 

Coronis

International Coach
Is cricket the only sport where performances in the past are greater than the present day?
Idk about general consensus but for me at least some of the best players in a lot of sports haven’t played at all in the 21st century.

Gretzky, Pele, Ruth, Brown, Laver, Kareem all come to mind.

Ken Irvine is still by a margin the greatest rugby league winger ever. (League has undergone a large change recently but when Johns retired 90% of the “ATGs” were probably from the 80’s or earlier.
 

trundler

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An interesting point. Bradman is a good example.

While he was playing he faced constant sniping and criticism, much of it from Australians. Most was unfair and may have been related to his personality.

Macartney referred to his batting as “crude hitting”. Gubby Allen said he was scared of fast bowling. Fingleton claimed he had a mental block on bad pitches and couldn't bat on them. Sutcliffe reckoned Hammond was a better player. Hobbs thought he was the best batsman in the world on good wickets only, adding the caveat that this was likely due to lack of experience on bad ones. Arlott did his research and was adamant that Hobbs was the greatest. Constantine, Ironmonger and Ebeling all said they found Ponsford a more formidable opponent.

A notable dissenting voice was Verity. Bradman was genuinely stung by the harsh criticism following a single failure against the Yorkshireman on a rain-damaged pitch in the second innings at Lord's in 1934. Four years later they met again on a similar surface at Bramall Lane in front of a crowd of 25,000. Now representing Yorkshire, Verity sensed that Bradman was determined to succeed and so he did, with scores of 59 and 42 and everything from Verity finding the middle of the bat. He made more runs in the match than noted wet-wicket masters Sutcliffe and Hutton combined, while his most persistent critic Fingleton managed 2 and 2.

Another on cool personal terms with Bradman, O'Reilly nevertheless rated him the greatest of all batsmen, despite his mate Grimmett disagreeing. Grimmett's assertion that Headley was the best on-side player he bowled to was a dig at The Don, who hit most of his boundaries on the leg side. Rhodes, a shrewd judge of few words, bowled to all the greats from Grace to Bradman and agreed with O'Reilly. Bodyline wasn't devised to combat Ponsford or Headley.

When Bradman retired, RC Robertson-Glasgow summed up in Wisden:

There were critics who found surfeit in watching him...It is but a short step from annoyance to envy, and Bradman has never been free from envy's attacks. So, when, first in 1930, he reeled off the centuries, single, double and treble, there were not wanting those who compared him unfavourably with other great ones – Trumper, Ranjitsinhji, Hobbs, Macartney. And Bradman's answer was more runs. Others perhaps could have made them, but they didn't.

However, as time passed, Bradman's reputation as a batsman comfortably surpassed all others. At the turn of the millennium, a year before his death, he was the only cricketer to receive a vote from all 100 judges invited by Wisden to choose their five cricketers of the twentieth century. Sobers received 90 as an all-rounder. Next was Hobbs with 30 votes. Of the others mentioned by Robertson-Glasgow in 1949, Trumper got four votes, Ranjitsinhji one and Macartney none.

Ranji might have been considered by some as belonging to the nineteenth century like Grace. But there is evidence that English writers began to pay him less attention following Indian independence. Where once he had ranked above Hammond, Hutton and Compton, now he received fewer plaudits than any of them. From a cricketing point of view this made little sense as Ranji never played a single first-class match in India, while Compton played ten games there, scoring over 1300 runs.

During the twenty-first century, doubts about Bradman's supremacy re-surfaced. This time most of the doubters were from India.
When McGrath retired, some bloke on here suggested nobody really noticed him taking all those wickets and he was never as good as Ambrose/Wasim because batsmen's techniques had gotten worse. He's rated appropriately now, of course, and if anything exaggeratedly as ever few years I see people add 2kph to his average speed. Border was seen as worse than Harvey until the end of the previous century and I think S Waugh was held in higher esteem than Ponting until the latter retired too.
 

Spark

Global Moderator
When McGrath retired, some bloke on here suggested nobody really noticed him taking all those wickets and he was never as good as Ambrose/Wasim because batsmen's techniques had gotten worse
"These bowlers aren't that good because these batsmen aren't that good because these bowlers aren't that good because these batsman aren't that good" has been a staple of cricketing discussions for as long as I can remember tbh, and no surprise too because the beauty of circular logic is that it doesn't actually need to be tied to anything concrete.

I think a lot of it is that the mediocre and forgettable gets, well, forgotten and fades into the annals of history, whilst the highest pressure performances against the very best become more and more proportionately important in how we remember, and conceive, of a player - so players don't really get remembered by everything they did, warts and all, but by only the best things they did. Meanwhile for current day players, all the shitty and average performances are still remembered along with the great ones, so it's very easy to get out the rose tinted glasses.
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
I think a lot of it is that the mediocre and forgettable gets, well, forgotten and fades into the annals of history, whilst the highest pressure performances against the very best become more and more proportionately important in how we remember, and conceive, of a player - so players don't really get remembered by everything they did, warts and all, but by only the best things they did.
Yeah this is why you've always over-rated Michael Clarke and Stuart Broad.
 

Starfighter

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I think Bradman's overrated tbh in terms of sheer numbers. He's realistically more like a 75–80 average batter. The problem there is that that is still leagues above anyone else to an unbelievable degree. The distance in batting average (std.) between him and a Dravid is greater than the distance between Dravid and Crawley, or Dravid and Benaud. There's a reason he is so lauded.
Why is he 'realistically more like a 75–80 average batter'?
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
Why is shakib's standardized batting average lower than his actual average?
Plays two thirds of his games at home, and for a little while they were proper Kayes-friendly roads.

Would guess he probably plays a disproportionate amount of his games against lesser teams too.
 
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