Best and worse pressure players?

[pasag]

I think the thing with BhupinderSingh is I feel he goes out of his way to tarnish and mock any players he feels threaten his favourite players (Imran), be it Sobers or Lilliee etc. So he'll invariably throw in stuff like Dennis "Green Top Bully" Lilliee (although he has revised his stance there) and Gary "I can bowl every style crap" Sobers in to many of his posts and that'll end up rubbing people the wrong way.

That said I agree his last reincarnation has not bad at all and the troll comments are uncalled for and agree with both SP's most improved poster and SJS's a little reading will go a long way calls.

 

[SJS]

I think the thing with BhupinderSingh is I feel he goes out of his way to tarnish and mock any players he feels threaten his favourite players (Imran), be it Sobers or Lilliee etc.

Thats very true.

Are you listening BS ?

Just a minor change is needed really. Its not Sobers or Lillee's fault that some people like them so much

 

[Richard]

I think the thing with BhupinderSingh is I feel he goes out of his way to tarnish and mock any players he feels threaten his favourite players (Imran), be it Sobers or Lilliee etc. So he'll invariably throw in stuff like Dennis "Green Top Bully" Lilliee (although he has revised his stance there) and Gary "I can bowl every style crap" Sobers in to many of his posts and that'll end up rubbing people the wrong way.

Agree completely, it's something I myself have had similar problems with - I'll say something which is a pretty off-the-cuff remark, but actually not wholly accurate - and it'll be wrongly interpreted literally by certain people (Swervy more than anyone) and taken as hyperbole.

That said I agree his last reincarnation has not bad at all and the troll comments are uncalled for and agree with both SP's most improved poster and SJS's a little reading will go a long way calls.

You scared me then, thought you were referring to Sp rather than sp713.

 

[Dissector]

Haha, this fourth innings record stuff as a gauge of innings under pressure is such rubbish. What about watching a game. For every chase that is really close in the fourth innings, there are about 2 or 3 where the game is already won, or the game is well beyond reach.

I think those that watched enough Steve Waugh would be able to tell you that he made runs when the side was at 3/30, or 5/100 enough to be able to perform under pressure. Specific examples are much more relevant than a very ambivalent stat over a whole career where you've made a massive assumption about what that stat represents.

Look I am not saying that the fourth innings figures is the only important criterion for playing under pressure; however it is very important for three reasons.

In the fourth innings the quality of the pitch is generally at its worst making batting technically difficult. Secondly players are mentally and physically fatigued which is especially hard for batsmen since a singe mistake can end your innnings. Thirdly the game is closer to a result which means that the entire game is on the line in a way which it isn't in the first innings.

Not all fourth innings are equally tough and I agree that the fourth innings average per se isn't that important but it isn't as if Waugh played a number of great fourth innings knocks when it mattered and failed only when it didn't. He just has a bad fourth innings record.

Note that I am not saying that Waugh was a bad player under pressure but when people call him the mentally toughest batsman ever I have to say he is seriously overrated.

 

[Richard]

Well here's your list (just 23 innings mind - and don't start telling me nonsense like the stuff before 1993 matters, 'cos it doesn't, as Waugh was a poor batsman first, second or third innings before then too). So go on - tell me how this has any reflection on how poor Waugh was in fourth-innings'?

 

[Dissector]

Well for starters there are only 2 fifties and no hundreds. How many players of Waugh's quality have gone through a long test career without making a fourth innings hundred?

 

[Richard]

I'll answer the ones I can remember clearly:
80 vs India at SCG - helped save the game, his last game
6 vs England at SCG - dead game, no chance of chasing the target, game long over by the time he was out.
14 vs England at MCG - dead game, foregone-conclusion of a run-chase already in motion, but an awful innings anyway.
14 vs SA at Newlands - could be construed as a failure, as it was a live game and a chase which was still open when he was out.
67 vs NZ at WACA - helped save the game.
1* vs England at Trent Bridge - retired hurt.
24 vs Ind at Eden Gardens - lost game, damning failure.
38 vs WI at SCG - dead game, but nonetheless contributed to a chase.
And I don't accurately remember 11 of the 15 before that, here are those I do:
6 vs England at The Oval - dead game, but it was a chaseable target.
0 vs England at Adelaide Oval - Ashes no longer at stake, but still a live game, and failed to chase the target.
0 vs England at SCG - match was drawn, but only thanks to the loss of time, and a potentially damning failure as The Ashes were only secured with this draw.
26 vs England at The Oval - dead game, and implausible target.

BTW - on the centuries note - how common are fourth-innings centuries? Especially with such limited opportunity?

 

[Dissector]

According to Cricinfo there are 10 games from 1993 onwards where Australia lost and Waugh batted. His best in those ten games is a 30 not out. So it's not as if he was only failing in fourth innings where it didn't matter.

 

[vic_orthdox]

But Brian Lara didn't make runs under pressure on Thursdays.

 

[Pratters]

Haha, this fourth innings record stuff as a gauge of innings under pressure is such rubbish. What about watching a game. For every chase that is really close in the fourth innings, there are about 2 or 3 where the game is already won, or the game is well beyond reach.

Yeah, I belong to the same school of thought.

 

[Richard]

According to Cricinfo there are 10 games from 1993 onwards where Australia lost and Waugh batted. His best in those ten games is a 30 not out. So it's not as if he was only failing in fourth innings where it didn't matter.

9, from the one at The Oval onwards.

OK, and let's take a look through those - there are 6 there that I've already mentioned, so let's look at the other 3...

There was the one in Chennai; India won that one by 179 runs with nearly 2 sessions to spare, so it's hardly likely that he could have changed the course of that game.

Then there was the one against Pakistan at The SCG - another dead game, but it's just about possible to argue that Waugh might have changed the course with some runs, as he was 5th out with 100 needed.

Finally, there was the one at The Wanderers - South Africa won this one by 197 runs and it could quite easily have been 50-odd more. Again, I hardly think he could have altered the course of this-'un.

 

[Dissector]

So we all agree that fourth innings knocks aren't always under pressure: for example when you have a small total to chase. Let's also omit the knocks before 93.

I haven't looked at the stats in detail but my guess is that Waugh played around 15-20 fourth innings where the match was alive in one way or another (this can also mean fighting for a draw). Of those he had perhaps 3 or 4 decent efforts and around a dozen failures. I would say that is a pretty poor record for someone considered to be fantastic under pressure.

Waugh has never played a single truly great innings in a pressure situation in the fourth innings. His best was probably his last where he faced a very ordinary bowling line-up and IIRC a still decent pitch.

 

[Richard]

Has it occurred to you that very few people play such innings, and that most people who have have had more than 23 opportunities to do so?

 

[Dissector]

BTW the relevant criteria isn't the state of the match at the end but when Waugh came into bat. If the match was alive when Waugh came into bat, and he got out cheaply I would say that was a failure in a pressure situation even if the match ended up lost by a big margin.

 

[Richard]

But a game that's lost by a big margin is always likely to have been a forgone conclusion virtually from the start of the fourth-innings.

I mean, say you're set 380 to win, your chances of success are slim to zero.

 

[Dissector]

Has it occurred to you that very few people play such innings, and that most people who have have had more than 23 opportunities to do so?

Yes and those are the few who deserve to be called great players under pressure. 23 is actually quite a lot of opportunities especially if we are excluding years when the player isn't playing well.

 

[Richard]

The only reason I'm excluding the years before Waugh became a great (or even good) batsman is because you can't say someone's reputation was misleading at a time they didn't have that reputation.

Waugh only became Test-class on the New Zealand tour in 1992\93, so it's only fair to start judging anything concerning him as a Test batsman from that point IMO. You can't say "he was poor in the fourth-innings" when the reality is that he was poor in first, second, third and fourth innings.

23 might be a lot of innings, and if this was innings of an entire Test career I'd say someone had failed pretty conclusively in such a career. But when you're asking something, really, very special (ie, a masterful fourth-innings innings) I think you need way more than 23 innings before you can say conclusively that someone couldn't do it.

 

[Dissector]

But a game that's lost by a big margin is always likely to have been a forgone conclusion virtually from the start of the fourth-innings.

I mean, say you're set 380 to win, your chances of success are slim to zero.

Actually I suspect that whenever Australia is set 380 they go in there believing they can win. If there is ample time in fact I would say most teams would give themselves a chance.

Anyway even if a win is out of reach a draw is frequently possible.

 

[Richard]

Depends. Batting out a day or less is sometimes possible on a still-decent pitch; much more than a day or on a crumbling surface - forget it. Chasing 380 in 4 sessions on anything but a still-pristine surface is virtually impossible.

And just because Australia believe they can win, doesn't mean they neccessarily can.

 

[Dissector]

See it's not just a matter of a truly special fourth innings knock. If Waugh had 7 or 8 decent efforts out of his 23 innings that would be a significant achievement. His fourth innings record is poor no matter how you slice and dice it.