Ben Stokes vs Ravindra Jadeja

[_00_deathscar]

Anyway don't get this better allrounder stuff for Stokes considering the AR list votes.

The voters must be outed publicly. And banned.

 

[Nikhil99.99]

Stokes is good but jadeja is better Imo.Stokes is a better batsman but the difference is way less than the difference between the two as a bowler.

 

[Bolo.]

I had to change Jadeja to a bowler in cricket 22 to get his bowling up to where it should be but keep his batting at a representative level of his test record, so with this highly scientific approach Stokes must be the guy.

Potential and team role based speculations aside (as there are no real facts there to compare), I think Stokes is a more rounded allrounder who can be a good 5th bowler and 6th batsman in a side. Jaddu is more likely to be a good 4th bowler and 7th batsman in a side. IMHO, the former is the more all-round role. So Stokes is the better allrounder, for me.

Looking at the subjective stuff too, I think Stokes is more likely to win a match with both bat and ball than Jaddu in tests.

This more rounded AR stuff is overstated. They are both rounded enough to be considered ARs, so the question is who the better player is.

But if you want to consider more rounded, both of them have been arguably good enough to make either of each others teams as a bat (with allowance for the braindeath of Indian selectors), and clearly good enough recently.

Jadeja would be good enough as a specialist bowler to make either team, at least sometimes. 4 and a bit WPM @24 warrants selection sometimes, even making allowance for the fact that he typically plays in helpful conditions. Stokes is 2 and a bit WPM @32. In what world would he warrant selection for a team with an attack that is anything but utterly useless as a bowler?

Jadejas figures flatter him, a lot, but he is clearly better balanced.

 

[CricAddict]

Looking at the subjective stuff too, I think Stokes is more likely to win a match with both bat and ball than Jaddu in tests.

Jadeja just did that with a 175 and 9 wickets in same test. I also remember him making useful knocks in other tests where he took 4 or 5 wicket hauls.

Genuine question. How do you subjectively say that Stokes is more likely to do well with both bat and ball in a match? I don't know if Stokes has had any all-round performance like that in any match. Is there any test that comes to your mind due to which you think so?

 

[honestbharani]

Jadeja would be good enough as a specialist bowler to make either team, at least sometimes. 4 and a bit WPM @24 warrants selection sometimes, even making allowance for the fact that he typically plays in helpful conditions. Stokes is 2 and a bit WPM @32. In what world would he warrant selection for a team with an attack that is anything but utterly useless as a bowler?

I dunno man... I feel like you are breaking cricket down to be about numbers but its never really like that. If I have a team with 3 decent fast bowlers and a decent spinner, Stokes is far more valuable than Jaddu except in the subcontinent. Even India played Hardik as that allrounder and then used Jaddu as the lone spinner while playing 4 seamers. I understand the wpm argument but that is also a function of their roles sometimes.

I just think Stokes can make a match swinging contribution in either discipline more often than Jaddu and that is what I am looking for, from my allrounder.

 

[honestbharani]

Jadeja just did that with a 175 and 9 wickets in same test. I also remember him making useful knocks in other tests where he took 4 or 5 wicket hauls.

Genuine question. How do you subjectively say that Stokes is more likely to do well with both bat and ball in a match? I don't know if Stokes has had any all-round performance like that in any match. Is there any test that comes to your mind due to which you think so?

It boils down to my earlier argument. Jaddu played as a #7 bat throughout the England tests and hardly had any innings of note. In a bowling dominated era that this has been since 2015, IMO, the contributions with the bat matter that bit more. Once again, they play different roles for their teams so this is not an easy comparison but if you look at my last post, you have the answer.

A 2 or 3 wicket burst can open the game up for the specialist bowlers to run through but you may need a 70 or 80 to breakthrough the game with the bat, which is something Stokes is more likely to provide.

Of course, in an ideal world, you would play both. Stokes as the batting allrounder and Jaddu as the bowling one, similar to how we discuss Sobers Vs Imran in that respect.

 

[Xix2565]

Bowling will always be more important than batting in Test matches regardless of era. If Jadeja can't get the plaudits for his bowling efforts in a bowler friendly era (which only applies for pace bowling btw) then Stokes's bowling is the massive anchor that sinks him in this debate considering he's a pacer who by all rights shouldn't be averaging close to 30. And Jadeja's still managed to average more in this timeframe than Stokes so really I don't get this idea that Stokes can always be more reliable than Jadeja to pull a Headingley when England haven't been great with the bat and ball anyway for Stokes's efforts to matter much.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Jadeja noted for not going for his shots

He actually doesn't. It's one of the biggest criticisms people should have of his batting if they've watched him. Red inks it too often and fails to farm the strike with the tail.

 

[Flem274*]

Jaddu has definitely tried to become more batsman-like since I first saw him play tests around 2013, to his detriment. He's a very good striker of the ball and with the talent of a genuine allrounder but at 7 or 8, that is very scary stuff. He'll never be a proper #6 style allrounder like he seems to be trying for unless he stops putting hours into his bowling.

 

[_00_deathscar]

Jaddu has definitely tried to become more batsman-like since I first saw him play tests around 2013, to his detriment. He's a very good striker of the ball and with the talent of a genuine allrounder but at 7 or 8, that is very scary stuff. He'll never be a proper #6 style allrounder like he seems to be trying for unless he stops putting hours into his bowling.

To be fair to him though, that type of swashbuckling contribution was fine when we had Kohli scoring double hundreds every 3-4 tests and some other player would also put on a score.

He’s coming in at awful scores more often than not of late and needing to rescue the innings, usually with Pant.

 

[duffer]

Probably the two best all rounders of the modern era after Shakib. Who do you rate higher?

Make results public plz

 

[Teja.]

While i appreciate the point about Ben Stokes being capable of bursts of being world class with either discipline, his ability to do both at the same time is a bit of a myth. His best bowling performance for a game in the 11 times he scored a century in tests is 4-101 and that is for the entire game, not one innings. In no other such game, has he taken even 4 wickets. He has never taken a 4-fer in a game where he also scored a century, despite scoring 11 centuries.

He only has one truly great all round performance where he was firing on both cylinders and that was the Bangladesh game where he scored 85 and took 6 wickets for the game in a close low scoring game which England won by 22 runs.

His type of impact bowling performance is to bowl a great spell where he takes 2-15 in a game where he otherwise is 3-91.

He has several great solo batting and bowling performances though but that is different.

 

[h_hurricane]

Jadeja always scores his runs when the pitch is flat and picks up wickets when the same pitch turns into a minefield later. No other cricketer in history has mastered this con job to perfection.

I am giving him a sympathy vote here though, because there isn't any thread to which Jadeja isn't the answer.

 

[a massive zebra]

Jadeja's batting average is greatly enhanced by having 20 'not outs' in 87 innings (23%). This comes from batting lower in the order. By contrast, Stokes has just 5 'not outs' in 146 knocks (3.4%) which is indicative of a player who goes for his shots when he is running out of partners.
Both fine all-rounders, but Stokes is a more valuable batsman.

The widely expressed view that not outs boost averages is a fallacy. Not outs limit both output and averages. Here is an article on this topic from the eminent statistician Charles Davis:

The batting average, which is a measure of the runs scored by a batsman between dismissals, is a very useful measure, but it has been questioned from time to time on the grounds that unbeaten innings are not handled reasonably. How often has it been said that a batsman who finishes an innings not out has 'boosted' his batting average?

It is time this myth was put to bed. A not out innings can be looked at in two ways, either as an avoidance of an impending dismissal, or as a loss of a run-making opportunity. In the first scenario, the batting average has indeed been boosted, in the second, the potential batting average has been diminished. It can be shown that, over an entire career, the second case is more likely, reducing a batsman's potential to make easy runs when the going is good, and thus reducing rather than increasing the batting average.

Figure 7.3 shows the most likely number of runs a batsman will add as he reaches successively higher scores. The median score, probably a better indicator of the most likely outcomes, has been included on the graph.

The most likely number of runs added when a batsman is 0 is 33.68, which is equivalent to the 'average batting average' for all batsmen. As a batsman scores more runs, the most likely number of runs added becomes slightly higher than when the innings began. The implication is clear: a batsman who finishes not out has most likely been deprived of a number of runs similar or slightly higher than the batting average.

That is to say, if cricket allowed all the batsmen to play all of their unbeaten innings to completion, they would actually finish with slightly higher career batting averages. So in the long term, finishing not out is bad for your average.

An example may clarify this. Say Sachin Tendulkar plays an unbeaten innings of 50, has he boosted his batting average? The obvious answer might be yes; however if we look at all of Tendulkar's scores of 50 or more, we find that they average around 113, that is, he typically scores 63 additional runs. So if the 50* had been allowed to continue to completion, its most likely outcome would have been 113. A quick calculation will show that a dismissal for 113 would lift Tendulkar's career average more than a score of 50*. So it is likely that by stopping his innings at 50, his average was adversely affected, even though it does not count as a dismissal.

A batsman finishing not out has 'artificially boosted' his average only if it is assumed that his dismissal was imminent and inevitable. When you think about it, this is obviously a fallacy in most situations.

 

[OverratedSanity]

The widely expressed view that not outs boost averages is a fallacy. Not outs limit both output and averages. Here is an article on this topic from the eminent statistician Charles Davis:



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I don't really wish to argue this in detail but it completely misses the point of the criticism of red inkers being for the most part about avoiding the strike specifically when there's a poor batsman at the other end. Situations where you know the innings is going to end call for risky shot making by the set batsman to maximise run output before the team is bowled out. This makes it very likely the batsman may get out soon. Case 1 described by Davis is thus what people are generally talking about here, not just looking at the total not outs.

Further, since he's talking about run output there's the point that over an entire career, if two players have the same average but one has significantly more runs and fewer not outs, his run output (literally his actual contribution to his team) has been higher. Perfectly fair to consider him to have had a better career as a batsman.

 

[srbhkshk]

I don't really wish to argue this in detail but it completely misses the point of the criticism of red inkers being for the most part about avoiding the strike specifically when there's a poor batsman at the other end. Situations where you know the innings is going to end call for risky shot making by the set batsman to maximise run output before the team is bowled out. This makes it very likely the batsman may get out soon. Case 1 described by Davis is thus what people are generally talking about here, not just looking at the total not outs.

The batsman batting higher up don't actually have to face this situation anywhere near as much as a #7 for whom it might be a regular occurrence, so they anyway have an artificially inflated average if we are going to consider this.

 

[Prince EWS]

The batsman batting higher up don't actually have to face this situation anywhere near as much as a #7 for whom it might be a regular occurrence, so they anyway have an artificially inflated average if we are going to consider this.

Yeah this is actually totally true if you ignore all the other differences between 3 and 7, which you obviously shouldn't.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

A good time to point out you can't artificially inflate a batting average. It's just the number of runs divided by number of dismissals and is indisputable.

 

[Xix2565]

Also weird that people seem to dismiss the bowling difference like it's nothing. Especially considering how important taking wickets actually is. More than makes up the batting difference.

 

[Prince EWS]

Also weird that people seem to dismiss the bowling difference like it's nothing. Especially considering how important taking wickets actually is. More than makes up the batting difference.

Yeah instead of talking about batting difference and bowling difference, if you think of it as:

Difference in primary skill (Jadeja bowling v Stokes batting)
Difference in secondary skill (Stokes bowling v Jadeja batting)

Secondary skills are pretty similar but Jadeja is comfortably better in primary skill, right? So the answer is obvious.

Anything else is justifying your own weird preconceptions as to what the question should mean when you hear the question, IMO.

Stokes is a good batsman on batting alone (despite @thierry henry's hyperbole, although the more I read his replies the more I agreed with him as he just compared him to "other gun allrounders") but Jadeja is one of the best bowlers in the world. Their secondary skills both lie in the "very talented but mostly unpolished bonuses" categories - they probably could've been specialists in them if they wanted to be, but they didn't, so they ended up awesome Plan C players who can dig their teams out of holes.

Gun bowler who can double as a decent bat > good batsman who can double as a decent bowler (especially noting the deliberate difference between 'gun' and 'good')