Coronis
International Coach
lol, then don’t bring it up
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Garry Sobers v Imran Khan,Test Cricket:Poll
- Thread starter Teja.
- Start date
kyear2
International Coach
My apologies, I wasn't clear. I'm not obligated to justify them to you.
Of late you've just been a **** without actually contributing anything of your own and I'm not compelled to continue to take the bait.
I'll happily respond to anyone else.
Cheers.
Slifer
International Captain
Coronis
International Coach
If calling you out on your constant contradictions based on personal bias towards certain players is being a ****, then I’ll happily be a ****
kyear2
International Coach
The reason I didn't answer you is
1. Your snippy as **** with your responses
2. And I answered below this post already. And previously for that matter.
You say you're calling out my biases, for whom, Hutton? I've explained countless times to you specifically why I admire and rate Hutton, we disagree. There's no reason to being it up in every ****ing thread or everyone I post a list.
Its a short list, someone has to be left out.
So why Hutton, he's unquestionably one of the 3 greatest openers of all time. IMHO he was the first great travelling batsman who faced varied and improved attacks home and away. He had to overcome his horrific war injury (training or not it was for the war effort and he had to adjust to one arm being ****ing shorter than the next). I also greatly respect him for braking Bradman"s record Infront oh the great man while facing possibly the 3rd greatest spinner of all time.
Gavaskar, not a huge fan, think his record is a bit misleading and he definitely preferred slower tracks. But he too is universally regarded as one of the big 3 openers of all time.
Border was the backbone of the Australian team and restrained himself as much out of circumstance as anything else in a era where he was the best bat in a team where he often came in to less than ideal circumstances facing some of the greatest bowlers of all time.
George Headley, like Hammond or Hobbs no longer features high on my lists, but what he did has to be respected. He was literally the only great, scratch that, test level batsman at times on a team who primarily faced the best two teams in the world, and often away from home. While, mind you, not getting the repetitions required at that highest level hone and perfect his skills, with test assignments being few and far in-between. He was the defacto opener, and often was the silent rock with everything collapsing around him, so yes I could understand his lower rate. He didn't have the luxury of taking risks. And even with all this, he was one vote away from replacing Viv on the cricinfo all time team.
Now for the three you mentioned, please reference the players I should unquestionably remove who were objectively worse than them.
Re Sutcliffe, I've told you I don't rate players who primarily played before the first war, it was a different game. Even by that standard, and often batting with Hobbs and in a good team, he was still slow as hell. I don't include Barnes, I don't include Sutcliffe. Am I allowed to have that opinion.
Dravid was the no 3 in good team with arguably the 2nd best batsman ever coming in after him and instead of setting the tome, he was pedestrian. He's he was a great batsman, but I'll take the ones listed above him. Yes Kallis is comparable, but as I said in another thread, I probably have him a bit too high as well.
Barrington, he was part of the problem with cricket that Sobers and Benaud had to set our to fix when the helped to save the game from irrelevancy. The game was dying because the game was slow, uninteresting and the scoring rates were paltry at best. He was not only part of the problem, but also was once dropped for scoring too slowly. So in my top 20 list, if I'm allowed of course, I'll prefer other options over him.
Now the problem is that you'll provide a snarky response or allegation that lends nothing to the discourse and that's why I stopped responding to you. We've done this before.
Coronis
International Coach
Was that so hard?
Sure you’re allowed to have that opinion. Except Sutcliffe didn’t play primarily before the first war, it was entirely during the interwar period - and you do include Hobbs, Hammond, Headley in your list, all of whom he has a favourable record compared to. Hammond and Headley also batted quite slowly, so yeah, your reasons don’t add up.
I have no issues with Dravid not quite making a top 20. I will say this, he wasn’t required to set the tone, with Sehwag as the aggressive opener and Tendulkar coming in behind him, that was perfect for him to be the lynchpin in that lineup, the rock holding them steady, which he did excellently.
Not sure what that has to do with rating him as a player? Do you bump up the current English players when you rate them for saving test cricket? (Also Benaud saved it? He was already passed his peak and I’ve honestly never heard that take before). That innings vs NZ which got him dropped aside - fwiw he had been out of form prior - may have contributed). I don’t think he should be marked down for his slow scoring - in fact all the quality English batsmen during his career were scoring slowly, it wasn’t an issue unique to him - apart from Dexter (a super aggressive 48) the others were all striking at 45 or below. Considering his excellent record compared to the rest of those teammates, I have absolutely 0 problems with that. (also its not like he couldn’t ratchet it up when required after that 137 (370) he came back in the third test and smashed a 163 (290) - I also don’t hold it against him because when he was initially selected for England, he was a more aggressive batsman and was then dropped for a lower output - I’d rework my technique and bat slower for more runs too.
As I’ve said I don’t mind Dravid not being in there either - he’s around that edge for me too. Miandad is definitely the one with an inferior record. I’d also likely take out either Pollock or Headley, just based on body of work really - both with less than half the amount of tests as any other considered player. Depends what you value more - Pollock was more aggressive, has a better record against multiple opponents. Headley played for longer and was part of a weaker team if that plays into it - he also had more sustained success in his FC career if we want to use that as an extrapolation.
Overall its a fine list. Of course its your list, and I generally don’t have problems with anyone making their own list. What I do have a problem with specifically using certain reasons to keep players out of the list, then making excuses for others already in there with the same “shortcomings” (if you consider them that), whilst not acknowledging similar arguments for the ones you don’t place in there.
Same length career, but Pollock has twice as many runs, so I guess you are basing this on batting average? Its 70 vs 55, which is a huge difference TBF.
But... Headley mostly played in a very weak FC environment (even the WI national team was losing a lot to FC teams from other countries). Pollock played in an extremely strong and extremely bowler friendly one.
Coronis
International Coach
Yeah its an if you want to use it to split them - they’re both harder to rate than others imo. iirc Headley was averaging closer to 70 than 60 pre-WWII but yeah I think i’ll probs rate them next to each other.
Patience and Accuracy+Gut
State Vice-Captain
Averaging 66.71 to be exact. His return in the 2 matches after war definitely made sense but the last return 6 year later imho should be excluded from the stats.
Not so easy to split them on FC or test. Test in particular looks superficially very similar, but they had very different careers.
Coronis
International Coach
Yes thats why I said its an if - I already explained earlier why there are different reasons to rate them higher or lower.
kyear2
International Coach
Good points all.
I'll try to answer sequentially
Hobbs is an automatic selection, as much as I don't rate the period in which he played, he can't be omitted and I already have him rated lower than most. He's an automatic top 3 to 5 batsman for most, especially on CW, so that's why he gets in.
Hammond and Headley batted just as slowly, but unless I read different literature from the time, both were rated higher than Sutcliffe. In summary of the era Hammond was seen as only behind Hobbs and Bradman all time, and Sutcliffe isn't mentioned in that tier. Even when Hutton came along, he too was referenced above and it was the 3Hs who were the best batsmen that England ever had.
With regards to Headley he didn't bat with Hobbs and co, he was not modern day solo, he was, if you fail, we don't score a competitive total. Grimmett said he was the best onside player he ever bowled to, he was also improving as the tour down under progressed and like most of the greats at the time, now hitting his stride when the war commenced. We were also the minnows and don't get to cash in vs the other minnows of the day as the others did. Not that it would matter to most, but Headley was one vote away from making the cricinfo all time time over Richards, speaking to the regard in which he was held as The Black Bradman. Also with regards to his first class record, note that firstly a fair bit of that was overseas tours, and playing overseas as well as the Caribbean. And also to note that while the batting in the WI was noticably weak, the fast bowling may have been the best in the world in the latter half of the 30's.
Hutton I've already explained at length, he faced more varied, and much better attacks than all of the pre WW2 batters and did it in more locales as well.
That's why they make it over Sutcliffe, even in his time he was seen as below the others. For other reasons I personally don't rate Hammond very highly either, and he was fairly low in my list as was Headley for that matter. I think most, you may be the exception probably have Sutcliffe rated below Hammond, Hobbs and Headley from the era.
Pollock's career was also cut short, but those who saw him rated him almost on par with Sobers. He was also assertive and still maintained his average while accelerating the score. So for me an easy selection over the three batsmen in question.
With regards to the comment with regards to Sobers and Benaud, I obviously wasn't around at the time, but I do recall reading literature where the tied test and the series in general were seen as a pivotal turning point for the game, which was being perceived as slow or lacking excitement.
Yes I prefer more assertive, faster scoring batsmen. Doesn't mean that every single batsman in any list will fit that criteria. The one that I do like is Hutton, and that was because of that he overcame, the fact that he was the first great post war batsman, the new era of quicks that he had to face, the varied attacks he took on across the world. So while he didn't set the run rate on fire, he had enough other attributes that that part of his game can be over looked.
Coronis
International Coach
So again, you focus on Hutton’s (in particular) reasons to bat slowly and give him a pass and seem to brush over everyone elses - which is my problem.
I’ve never suggested Sutcliffe should be ranked over Hammond - I personally have him roughly equal with Hutton and ahead of Headley for longevity reasons I’ve outlined earlier.
And really I don’t give peer rating ****. It can be useful to a very small degree for players you haven’t seen - but according to peer rating Wasim is ahead of any fast bowler, and Trumper is in a different league to Clem Hill and Warne is well above Murali.
Even reports I’ve seen of old matches describe Sutcliffe as more attritional or dogged, whilst praising other players with more aesthetic strokeplay who scored less and even sometimes struck similarly. Similar to Barrington and other (particularly English) bats of his time.
ataraxia
International Coach
Hard disagree.
kyear2
International Coach
True, but we weren't there, have no idea how accurate the stats we have are and quite frankly have very little else to go on, but yes. I fully agree, especially with your prior statement
shortpitched713
International Captain
Strike rates aren't truly comparable across eras. Some of the most brutal attacking batsmen of years past had strike rates that look positively pedestrian in a modern light.
You can say it has to do with mentality, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong, but the overwhelming factor is the bats. They pop harder, and have far more forgiving sweet spots. It was unthinkable for all but the very most talented attacking batsmen in great knick to hit the way they do in T20 / ODI slog overs.
You can say it has to do with mentality, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong, but the overwhelming factor is the bats. They pop harder, and have far more forgiving sweet spots. It was unthinkable for all but the very most talented attacking batsmen in great knick to hit the way they do in T20 / ODI slog overs.
shortpitched713
International Captain
Some guy on Tumblr makes some cogent and well developed points:
www.tumblr.com
clwalcott
Follow
Slaying the Sobers Golden Calf
Bowlers are more important than batsmen.
Really, this entire article can be summed up in that premise. What I intend to achieve here, is to establish that fact, use it to examine the meaning of the term "all rounder" and finally use it to extinguish the myth - one of the most prevailing in the sport - that Garry Sobers was the greatest all rounder of all time.
But first thing's first - why is bowling more important than batting? Well, I should say that in the aggregate, it's not. Every single delivery in Test cricket has featured a batting and a bowling team. Both elements combine to produce cricket scores and necessarily contribute equally to cricket results. However, on a player level this isn't the case and never has been. It comes down to the fact that every player on a team, one through eleven, bats. Eleven players have bowled in a test just four times in Test history. Bowlers simply bowl more than batsmen bat. Accordingly, bowlers contribute more to the bowling "half" of their teams performance than batsmen contribute to the batting "half". Bowling is not more important than batting (at least, not necessarily, and that is not the focus of this article), but bowlers are more important than batsman. Let's look at an example.
Muttiah Muralitharan and Sachin Tendulkar are the most prolific run scorers and wicket takers in history. Not coincidentally, they also are the record holders for most balls bowled and most balls faced respectively. Tendulkar faced 28,930 deliveries. Muralitharan bowled 44,039. That's an enormous difference - Murali bowled more than 150% of the deliveries that Tendulkar faced. And remember - Tendulkar played 200 Tests. Muralitharan played 133 Tests. By deliveries per match, this becomes a blowout of the highest order. Per match, Murali's bowled for over 55 overs. Per match, Tendulkar batted for 24 overs. That's right, 55 vs 24. Let's take the slow bowling out of it, as some may argue (although surely in bad faith, seeing the 230% disparity) that Murali's gargantuan over totals skew the argument. Glenn McGrath, part of an efficient attack with many other options that frequently polished teams off with a single ball, bowled more than 39 overs a match, eclipsing 150% with plenty of room to spare.
There's a pretty obvious reason for this - teams decide who bowls. If Australia went out today and opened the bowling with Chris Rogers and Brad Haddin, it would be violently against the norms of 140 years of cricket history, and an outrageous waste of bowling resources. If Mitchell Johnson has a 0/20 (4.0) spell, he's not sent to the dressing room and Steve Smith has to sheepishly take his place. He comes back for second, third, fourth spells - he even gets another new ball! Thus the debate around the fifth bowler vs fifth option. It seems pretty clear that four bowlers is sufficient to dismiss Test teams (or at least, if four isn't, a fifth is unlikely to help). The two greatest teams ever (acknowledged by pretty much everyone at this point) are the 1984 West Indian team and 2000 Australians. Both relied on four man attacks. A fifth bowler is sometimes added, and has many backers in the media, for variety or "resting" reasons, but it's reasonably obvious to me this spot is better used on batting resources. It's not that a fifth bowler doesn't have a role for these purposes, it's just that they can be easily served by a batsman, and are only needed for 10-15 overs a match for minimal damage.
And now we are winding our way closer to the all rounder question. That word - damage - is key here. Bowling Chris Rogers not only does not add to bowling production, it actively damages it. Rogers will not only bowl poorly, but there is also the opportunity cost of not bowling Johnson, or Siddle, or Harris. The over just bowled is one you cannot bowl again, and a good bowler will never be able to bowl it. This is fundamentally different from batting. Nine wickets down, you won't expect Monty Panesar to do you much good, but he certainly is better than nothing. Than simply closing your innings. Any value (runs) he can provide are good, albeit a small good. Bowling Rogers is not the same. And this can be extended in less obvious cases - is bowling Robin Petersen THAT different than bowling JP Duminy? At what point is it better for a player not to bowl at all?
One quick and dirty way to look at it is to simply see what the bowling average is in cricket history. The answer to that is 32.10 (65,047/2,088,553 if you were interested). Going from the end of the First World War (getting rid of the Lohmanns, Briggs and Ferris' of the world) brings that number up to 32.68. A garden variety over in the history of cricket had a little less than 9% chance of taking a wicket and went for 2.84 runs.
Very few batsmen (almost none, in fact), could reasonably be held to this standard. And if the standard for an all rounder is the oft repeated but rarely contemplated "can earn his place in the team as a batsman or bowler", basically no one qualifies. Even a bowler such as Kallis (more on him in a moment) who averaged 32.65, just on the cusp of that number, would have been a fringey Test player. Sure, he'd have earned a few caps, but would not be a fixture in any good cricket team for any length of time.
The reason that the average for all wickets bears a resemblance to bowling averages more than batting averages is again that that average weighs Chris Martin's wicket the same as Don Bradman's. We don't have to weigh Muralitharan's deliveres the same as Stephen Fleming's for the simple reason that he never bowled.
All this is a long way of saying that if the term "all rounder" is to have any meaning, it's to be a bowler that contributes disproportionately with the bat. That's a much slimmer, less awe inspiring meaning than the "both roles" definition that has become common place, but it also bears much more resemblance to reality.
This makes the line difficult to draw. Maybe Richard Hadlee really was an all rounder, with his 27.16 batting average (better than most think, it should be said). We're not comparing him with batsman here, because replacing the deliveries Hadlee faced with batsman quality deliveries would mean playing a batsman at #8. A more reasonable line might be to take the average of players batting at eight in Tests. That number is about 18, perhaps 18.5, although firm data is difficult to obtain (it's not available through statsguru). For number sevens that number touches 25. So let's call it 25 and say that anyone batting consistently over 25 and can bowl significant overs at Test level is an all rounder.
Such players remain vanishingly rare - although existent. Keith Miller's spot was never in doubt, nor the place of one of the most underrated players ever, Trevor Goddard. All the "big four" of the 80's make it. Shaun Pollock does. Chris Cairns does. Guys like Broad, Wasim, Benaud and the aforementioned Johnson just miss out - which sounds about right. And that's about it in Test history.
Thinking of the failed all rounder projects of recent times (and God, there's so many to choose from) we see, again and again, the harder part of the deal to keep up is the bowling side. Abdur Razzaq - 28.61 with the bat but 36.94 with the ball. Daniel Vettori (an odd story of a burgeoning #6 in treacherous batting conditions miscast as a bowler for much of his career) - 30.10 with the bat, 34.42 with the ball (although, superb economy - 2.59 - could make this a tighter call, it must be said). Azhar Mahmood - 30.00 with the bat, 35.94 with the ball. Jacob Oram (another oddity that might well have been better off leaving the bowling and focusing on the bat) 36.32 with the bat and 33.05 with the ball. Flintoff - 31.77 with the bat and 32.78 with the ball. Irfan Pathan, surprisingly, might seem to be the closest to a true all rounder of the bunch, with a 31.57 batting average and 32.26 bowling average, which seems quite solid when you consider how much he bowled in Asia. However, the surprise simply melts away when you realise he averages 45.49 against teams with names that don't start with a "B" or "Z". Shane Watson, the daddy of all problematic all rounders of the last decade, has the best numbers of this bunch, and probably sufficient to claim genuine all rounder status - 36.33 with the bat and 31.83 with the ball. If only injuries and Australia's insistence to claim he is a top three bat have dulled that reputation.
In every case, it was the bowling that was problematic. The batting was the cherry on top, but if the cake was rubbish, it simply didn't matter - most of these players were in and out of their teams, went through some atrocious years, disrupted the balance of their teams and were frequently injured. Bowling always comes first for so called "all rounders".
The implication for Sobers is obvious - he simply does not qualify by any reasonable understanding of "all rounder" in the context of Test cricket as it's actually played. He has a bowling average five runs worse than that of Doug Walters and only three runs superior to Michael Clarke. In fact, correcting Clarke's average for era leaves the Australian ahead. The batting average through the era of Clarke's career (Oct 2004 to time of writing) is 34.39 - Clarke is 108% of this average. The batting average in Sobers era (March 1954 to April 1974) was 31.44 - Sobers is just a fraction worse at 108.2%. Worse than Clarke on average! Certainly Sobers enormous haul of 235 wickets is in his favour - he bowled a LOT at Test level - but it's impossible to make the case that he was good at it. Simply bowling Michael Clarke 38.4 overs a game (it IS amazing how much Sobers bowled certainly) wouldn't change the fact it's not a good idea. Sobers was a better fifth option than Clarke - it's harder to maintain an average over a large number of overs - but in the context of our current discussion, it's clear "all rounder" is a world away from his skills.
The notion of Kallis too, being the greatest all rounder of all time should also sit uncomfortably. However Kallis against Sobers is really a no-contest. Even leaving the averages where they are finds Kallis ahead by a run and a half, and when correcting for era (Kallis played in an even rougher time to bowl than Clarke) the difference becomes enormous. Scaling Kallis' bowling average to Sobers' era finds Kallis with an average of 30.67 - nearly three and a half runs below Sobers. 3.36 to be exact. That's the difference between Richard Hadlee (who has a very solid though arguable case for greatest pace bowler of all time) and Shoaib Akhtar (nice piece with exceptional pace but with many holes in econ, stamina and with line issues) for clarification.
Sobers bowled over FORTY in six years of his career, and bowled less than 100 overs in another four. In ten years - half of his career, Sobers was a mediocre fifth option, let alone all rounder. Of the remaining ten years he was sub 30 in just six and even with 38 overs a match took five wickets in an innings just six times in his career.
Imran is the rightful bearer of the all rounder flame. In his career (Jun 1971-Jan 1992) the batting average was 32.59 and Imran batted more than five runs better. His 37.69 average hurdles over the #7 standard with comical ease and in fact is the equal of Test number fives throughout history. While this includes a lot of turnover of bats that ultimately just could not hack it, it nevertheless could support an argument that at any given time, in any given batting card, you could accomodate Imran Khan as purely a batsman and there was a chance he could have a lengthy career. Michael Atherton had an identical average to Imran and played 115 Test matches. Can anyone seriously suggest a bowler could average 34.03, in even the most forgiving era, and play 115 Test matches? (quiet, Ishant)
I have spoken in reverant tones about Imran's outrageously good bowling career before. Like Hadlee, he has an excellent argument for the greatest pace bowler ever, particularly considering he played 51 of his 88 matches in Asia. He bowled under 25 against every opponent except New Zealand (28.19) with an average of 21.18 against the West Indies, who were the greatest team in the world throughout his career against them (1977-1990). Between 1981 and 1986 inclusive he went on the most destructive rampage of pace bowling since WWI, taking 154 wickets (he missed all of 1984 save a single match where he did not bowl), 5.7wpm(5.9 excluding the 1984 match)@14.85...yes, read that again - FOURTEEN POINT EIGHT FIVE. Imran Khan, in modern day Test cricket, bowled at under FIFTEEN for half a decade. On either side of this he bowled 3.8wpm@21.46 in 1980. He bowled 7.7wpm@18.08 in 1988 at the age of THIRTY SIX. For a decade - from Jan 1 1979 until Dec 31 1988 - Imran Khan took 4.7wpm@18.74 with five 10WM in just 55 Tests.
Bowlers are more important than batsman - Imran Khan is the greatest all rounder of all time, probably easily, and if it's close, it's close with Keith Miller not Garry Sobers.
#garry sobers#imran khan#trevor goddard#michael clarke#jacques kallis#Test Cricket
001
www.tumblr.com
Slaying the Sobers Golden Calf
Bowlers are more important than batsmen. Really, this entire article can be summed up in that premise. What I intend to achieve here, is to establish that fact, use it to examine the meaning of the…
www.tumblr.com
clwalcott
Follow
Slaying the Sobers Golden Calf
Bowlers are more important than batsmen.
Really, this entire article can be summed up in that premise. What I intend to achieve here, is to establish that fact, use it to examine the meaning of the term "all rounder" and finally use it to extinguish the myth - one of the most prevailing in the sport - that Garry Sobers was the greatest all rounder of all time.
But first thing's first - why is bowling more important than batting? Well, I should say that in the aggregate, it's not. Every single delivery in Test cricket has featured a batting and a bowling team. Both elements combine to produce cricket scores and necessarily contribute equally to cricket results. However, on a player level this isn't the case and never has been. It comes down to the fact that every player on a team, one through eleven, bats. Eleven players have bowled in a test just four times in Test history. Bowlers simply bowl more than batsmen bat. Accordingly, bowlers contribute more to the bowling "half" of their teams performance than batsmen contribute to the batting "half". Bowling is not more important than batting (at least, not necessarily, and that is not the focus of this article), but bowlers are more important than batsman. Let's look at an example.
Muttiah Muralitharan and Sachin Tendulkar are the most prolific run scorers and wicket takers in history. Not coincidentally, they also are the record holders for most balls bowled and most balls faced respectively. Tendulkar faced 28,930 deliveries. Muralitharan bowled 44,039. That's an enormous difference - Murali bowled more than 150% of the deliveries that Tendulkar faced. And remember - Tendulkar played 200 Tests. Muralitharan played 133 Tests. By deliveries per match, this becomes a blowout of the highest order. Per match, Murali's bowled for over 55 overs. Per match, Tendulkar batted for 24 overs. That's right, 55 vs 24. Let's take the slow bowling out of it, as some may argue (although surely in bad faith, seeing the 230% disparity) that Murali's gargantuan over totals skew the argument. Glenn McGrath, part of an efficient attack with many other options that frequently polished teams off with a single ball, bowled more than 39 overs a match, eclipsing 150% with plenty of room to spare.
There's a pretty obvious reason for this - teams decide who bowls. If Australia went out today and opened the bowling with Chris Rogers and Brad Haddin, it would be violently against the norms of 140 years of cricket history, and an outrageous waste of bowling resources. If Mitchell Johnson has a 0/20 (4.0) spell, he's not sent to the dressing room and Steve Smith has to sheepishly take his place. He comes back for second, third, fourth spells - he even gets another new ball! Thus the debate around the fifth bowler vs fifth option. It seems pretty clear that four bowlers is sufficient to dismiss Test teams (or at least, if four isn't, a fifth is unlikely to help). The two greatest teams ever (acknowledged by pretty much everyone at this point) are the 1984 West Indian team and 2000 Australians. Both relied on four man attacks. A fifth bowler is sometimes added, and has many backers in the media, for variety or "resting" reasons, but it's reasonably obvious to me this spot is better used on batting resources. It's not that a fifth bowler doesn't have a role for these purposes, it's just that they can be easily served by a batsman, and are only needed for 10-15 overs a match for minimal damage.
And now we are winding our way closer to the all rounder question. That word - damage - is key here. Bowling Chris Rogers not only does not add to bowling production, it actively damages it. Rogers will not only bowl poorly, but there is also the opportunity cost of not bowling Johnson, or Siddle, or Harris. The over just bowled is one you cannot bowl again, and a good bowler will never be able to bowl it. This is fundamentally different from batting. Nine wickets down, you won't expect Monty Panesar to do you much good, but he certainly is better than nothing. Than simply closing your innings. Any value (runs) he can provide are good, albeit a small good. Bowling Rogers is not the same. And this can be extended in less obvious cases - is bowling Robin Petersen THAT different than bowling JP Duminy? At what point is it better for a player not to bowl at all?
One quick and dirty way to look at it is to simply see what the bowling average is in cricket history. The answer to that is 32.10 (65,047/2,088,553 if you were interested). Going from the end of the First World War (getting rid of the Lohmanns, Briggs and Ferris' of the world) brings that number up to 32.68. A garden variety over in the history of cricket had a little less than 9% chance of taking a wicket and went for 2.84 runs.
Very few batsmen (almost none, in fact), could reasonably be held to this standard. And if the standard for an all rounder is the oft repeated but rarely contemplated "can earn his place in the team as a batsman or bowler", basically no one qualifies. Even a bowler such as Kallis (more on him in a moment) who averaged 32.65, just on the cusp of that number, would have been a fringey Test player. Sure, he'd have earned a few caps, but would not be a fixture in any good cricket team for any length of time.
The reason that the average for all wickets bears a resemblance to bowling averages more than batting averages is again that that average weighs Chris Martin's wicket the same as Don Bradman's. We don't have to weigh Muralitharan's deliveres the same as Stephen Fleming's for the simple reason that he never bowled.
All this is a long way of saying that if the term "all rounder" is to have any meaning, it's to be a bowler that contributes disproportionately with the bat. That's a much slimmer, less awe inspiring meaning than the "both roles" definition that has become common place, but it also bears much more resemblance to reality.
This makes the line difficult to draw. Maybe Richard Hadlee really was an all rounder, with his 27.16 batting average (better than most think, it should be said). We're not comparing him with batsman here, because replacing the deliveries Hadlee faced with batsman quality deliveries would mean playing a batsman at #8. A more reasonable line might be to take the average of players batting at eight in Tests. That number is about 18, perhaps 18.5, although firm data is difficult to obtain (it's not available through statsguru). For number sevens that number touches 25. So let's call it 25 and say that anyone batting consistently over 25 and can bowl significant overs at Test level is an all rounder.
Such players remain vanishingly rare - although existent. Keith Miller's spot was never in doubt, nor the place of one of the most underrated players ever, Trevor Goddard. All the "big four" of the 80's make it. Shaun Pollock does. Chris Cairns does. Guys like Broad, Wasim, Benaud and the aforementioned Johnson just miss out - which sounds about right. And that's about it in Test history.
Thinking of the failed all rounder projects of recent times (and God, there's so many to choose from) we see, again and again, the harder part of the deal to keep up is the bowling side. Abdur Razzaq - 28.61 with the bat but 36.94 with the ball. Daniel Vettori (an odd story of a burgeoning #6 in treacherous batting conditions miscast as a bowler for much of his career) - 30.10 with the bat, 34.42 with the ball (although, superb economy - 2.59 - could make this a tighter call, it must be said). Azhar Mahmood - 30.00 with the bat, 35.94 with the ball. Jacob Oram (another oddity that might well have been better off leaving the bowling and focusing on the bat) 36.32 with the bat and 33.05 with the ball. Flintoff - 31.77 with the bat and 32.78 with the ball. Irfan Pathan, surprisingly, might seem to be the closest to a true all rounder of the bunch, with a 31.57 batting average and 32.26 bowling average, which seems quite solid when you consider how much he bowled in Asia. However, the surprise simply melts away when you realise he averages 45.49 against teams with names that don't start with a "B" or "Z". Shane Watson, the daddy of all problematic all rounders of the last decade, has the best numbers of this bunch, and probably sufficient to claim genuine all rounder status - 36.33 with the bat and 31.83 with the ball. If only injuries and Australia's insistence to claim he is a top three bat have dulled that reputation.
In every case, it was the bowling that was problematic. The batting was the cherry on top, but if the cake was rubbish, it simply didn't matter - most of these players were in and out of their teams, went through some atrocious years, disrupted the balance of their teams and were frequently injured. Bowling always comes first for so called "all rounders".
The implication for Sobers is obvious - he simply does not qualify by any reasonable understanding of "all rounder" in the context of Test cricket as it's actually played. He has a bowling average five runs worse than that of Doug Walters and only three runs superior to Michael Clarke. In fact, correcting Clarke's average for era leaves the Australian ahead. The batting average through the era of Clarke's career (Oct 2004 to time of writing) is 34.39 - Clarke is 108% of this average. The batting average in Sobers era (March 1954 to April 1974) was 31.44 - Sobers is just a fraction worse at 108.2%. Worse than Clarke on average! Certainly Sobers enormous haul of 235 wickets is in his favour - he bowled a LOT at Test level - but it's impossible to make the case that he was good at it. Simply bowling Michael Clarke 38.4 overs a game (it IS amazing how much Sobers bowled certainly) wouldn't change the fact it's not a good idea. Sobers was a better fifth option than Clarke - it's harder to maintain an average over a large number of overs - but in the context of our current discussion, it's clear "all rounder" is a world away from his skills.
The notion of Kallis too, being the greatest all rounder of all time should also sit uncomfortably. However Kallis against Sobers is really a no-contest. Even leaving the averages where they are finds Kallis ahead by a run and a half, and when correcting for era (Kallis played in an even rougher time to bowl than Clarke) the difference becomes enormous. Scaling Kallis' bowling average to Sobers' era finds Kallis with an average of 30.67 - nearly three and a half runs below Sobers. 3.36 to be exact. That's the difference between Richard Hadlee (who has a very solid though arguable case for greatest pace bowler of all time) and Shoaib Akhtar (nice piece with exceptional pace but with many holes in econ, stamina and with line issues) for clarification.
Sobers bowled over FORTY in six years of his career, and bowled less than 100 overs in another four. In ten years - half of his career, Sobers was a mediocre fifth option, let alone all rounder. Of the remaining ten years he was sub 30 in just six and even with 38 overs a match took five wickets in an innings just six times in his career.
Imran is the rightful bearer of the all rounder flame. In his career (Jun 1971-Jan 1992) the batting average was 32.59 and Imran batted more than five runs better. His 37.69 average hurdles over the #7 standard with comical ease and in fact is the equal of Test number fives throughout history. While this includes a lot of turnover of bats that ultimately just could not hack it, it nevertheless could support an argument that at any given time, in any given batting card, you could accomodate Imran Khan as purely a batsman and there was a chance he could have a lengthy career. Michael Atherton had an identical average to Imran and played 115 Test matches. Can anyone seriously suggest a bowler could average 34.03, in even the most forgiving era, and play 115 Test matches? (quiet, Ishant)
I have spoken in reverant tones about Imran's outrageously good bowling career before. Like Hadlee, he has an excellent argument for the greatest pace bowler ever, particularly considering he played 51 of his 88 matches in Asia. He bowled under 25 against every opponent except New Zealand (28.19) with an average of 21.18 against the West Indies, who were the greatest team in the world throughout his career against them (1977-1990). Between 1981 and 1986 inclusive he went on the most destructive rampage of pace bowling since WWI, taking 154 wickets (he missed all of 1984 save a single match where he did not bowl), 5.7wpm(5.9 excluding the 1984 match)@14.85...yes, read that again - FOURTEEN POINT EIGHT FIVE. Imran Khan, in modern day Test cricket, bowled at under FIFTEEN for half a decade. On either side of this he bowled 3.8wpm@21.46 in 1980. He bowled 7.7wpm@18.08 in 1988 at the age of THIRTY SIX. For a decade - from Jan 1 1979 until Dec 31 1988 - Imran Khan took 4.7wpm@18.74 with five 10WM in just 55 Tests.
Bowlers are more important than batsman - Imran Khan is the greatest all rounder of all time, probably easily, and if it's close, it's close with Keith Miller not Garry Sobers.
#garry sobers#imran khan#trevor goddard#michael clarke#jacques kallis#Test Cricket
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ataraxia
International Coach
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kyear2
International Coach
The weird thing is that most people may agree on that, but when we name top 10 lists is all batsmen and all rounders.