Best in the world title belt history

[Coronis]

Clem Hill underrated or Victor Trumper overrated?

 

[AndrewB]

There's probably a degree of style over substance regarding the plaudits Trumper gets compared to Hill. To be fair to Trumper, he and Hill are a pretty close top 2 (by average ranking) in every year from 1904 to 1909.

 

[jimmy101]

I believe Hill is fairly underrated.

 

[Victor Ian]

As with the bowlers, you get slightly different results if you take the best average rating for each year.

1902-1904: Clem Hill
1905: Victor Trumper
1906-1909: Clem Hill
1910: Jack Hobbs
1911: Aubrey Faulkner
1912-1928: Jack Hobbs
1929-1931: Herbert Sutcliffe
1932-1947: Don Bradman
1948: George Headley
1949: Denis Compton
1950: Dudley Nourse
1951-1954: Len Hutton
1955: Clyde Walcott
1956-1959: Peter May
1960-1964: Gary Sobers
1965: Ken Barrington
1966-1968: Gary Sobers
1969: Bill Lawry
1970: Doug Walter
1971-1973: Gary Sobers
1974: Glenn Turner
1975: Gundappa Viswanath
1976: Greg Chappell
1977-1978: Viv Richards
1979-1980: Sunil Gavaskar
1981-1983: Viv Richards
1984-1986: Allan Border
1987: Viv Richards
1988: Dilip Vengsarkar
1989-1990: Javed Miandad
1991-1994: Graham Gooch
1995: Brian Lara
1996-1997: Steve Waugh
1998: Sachin Tendulkar
1999: Brian Lara
2000-2002: Sachin Tendulkar
2003: Matthew Hayden
2004: Rahul Dravid
2005: Jacques Kallis
2006-2007: Ricky Ponting
2008-2010: Kumar Sangakkara
2011: Jacques Kallis
2012: Kumar Sangakkara
2013: Hashim Amla
2014-2015: AB de Villiers
2016-2017: Steve Smith

Headley going top in 1948 is a bit of a statistical oddity, since he was never actually rated #1 that year (or indeed ever!).

Where do you get this data from? I find the icc rankings website rather difficult to navigate and find anything useful like you seem to have.

 

[stephen]

It's pretty absurd that nobody overtook Bradman, even for a short while, during his entire 17 year reign.

The 80s fast bowlers were interesting. Marshall not as far ahead of the pack ratings-wise as popular opinion would have him. Having said that he had more fierce competition than anyone else. The late 70s - 1999 were the golden age of the fast bowler.

 

[Bolo]

It's pretty absurd that nobody overtook Bradman, even for a short while, during his entire 17 year reign.

The 80s fast bowlers were interesting. Marshall not as far ahead of the pack ratings-wise as popular opinion would have him. Having said that he had more fierce competition than anyone else. The late 70s - 1999 were the golden age of the fast bowler.

Peak Marshall was definitely behind peak Imran and pretty similar to peak hadlee. He was a lot more consistent than Imran and arguably more consistent than hadlee, but I think it's how he bowled that mainly cause people to rank him so highly. Pace and variation in combination result in overrating bowlers (not that I particularly think he's overated, even if putting him at number 1).

 

[AndrewB]

Where do you get this data from? I find the icc rankings website rather difficult to navigate and find anything useful like you seem to have.

I just wrote a script to scrape the data from the relevant web pages.

 

[AndrewB]

It's pretty absurd that nobody overtook Bradman, even for a short while, during his entire 17 year reign.

In fact Herbert Sutcliffe went to #1 on 6 Dec 1932 after the 1st Test in the bodyline series, and stayed there until 17 Jan 1933 (the 3rd Test). Bradman then stayed top until November 1948*, although he was only 2 points ahead of Hammond after the 2nd Test in 1936-7.

*You apparently stay on the list after your last Test until another Test is played.

 

[AndrewB]

To complete the set, here's the player with most days ranked #1 all-rounder for each year:

1877-1879: George Ulyett
1880-1882: Fred Spofforth
1883: George Ulyett
1884-1887: Billy Bates
1888-1892: Billy Barnes
1893-1895: Johnny Briggs
1896-1898: George Giffen
1899-1900: Johnny Briggs
1901-1904: Hugh Trumble
1905-1910: Monty Noble
1911-1922: Aubrey Faulkner
1923-1929: Jack Gregory
1930-1932: Maurice Tate
1933-1934: Wally Hammond
1935-1936: Hedley Verity
1937-1947: Wally Hammond
1948: Bill Edrich
1949-1957: Keith Miller
1958: Trevor Bailey
1959-1961: Richie Benaud
1962: Alan Davidson
1963-1974: Garry Sobers
1975-1978: Tony Greig
1979-1983: Ian Botham
1984: Imran Khan
1985-1989: Richard Hadlee
1990-1992: Imran Khan
1993-1994: Kapil Dev
1995: Steve Waugh
1996-1998: Brian McMillan
1999-2000: Shaun Pollock
2001: Chris Cairns
2002: Shaun Pollock
2003-2012: Jacques Kallis
2013: Shakib Al Hasan
2014: Jacques Kallis
2015: Vernon Philander
2016: Shakib Al Hasan
2017: Ravichandran Ashwin

 

[Starfighter]

Not too many big surprises. Steve Waugh topping in 1995 is maybe one, I thought he was bowling less in tests by then? Bill Edrich in 1948 as well. Philander and Davidson rather stand out as having low averages and no hundreds, I assume their bowling would have put them on top. Oh, and Verity too. Seems the thirties was not a good time for all rounders.

Miller and Sobers unsurprisingly extremely dominant.