Big Daddy Kane or TPC - Who Will Dominate The Upcoming Series?

[TheJediBrah]

Watson opened the batting ahead of Smith during the RSA series in question, the more I see you post, the more I'm sure this is your debut test series as a cricket watcher. Smith batted 6/7, Hussey batted 5, Ponting 4.

trolling isn't worth it when you're wasting just as much of your own time and the people you are supposedly trolling

it's just sad

 

[Gob]

Well i think i made Jord

Disappear

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Trolling or not, really does demonstrate one of the most frustrating habits of cricket analysis, which is this idea that the quality of the bowling, the nature of the wicket, the relative quality of the players etc are determined by outcomes. So if Steyn, Philander and Morkel bowl and all average 20 and dominate a series, they are great seamers in conditions conducive to their succeeding, and if they don't return great figures, the opposite is true therefore runs scored are devalued. If a team makes 500, batting conditions are good so achievements are less important, but if a team makes 200 all out and someone makes 100 in that innings, it's automatically a better performance in more difficult conditions. It's just more complicated than that, and the only way to properly understand the conditions of a game is to watch it. The nature of a sport so influenced by weather, pitch, fatigue etc.

 

[Gob]

Trolling or not, really does demonstrate one of the most frustrating habits of cricket analysis, which is this idea that the quality of the bowling, the nature of the wicket, the relative quality of the players etc are determined by outcomes. So if Steyn, Philander and Morkel bowl and all average 20 and dominate a series, they are great seamers in conditions conducive to their succeeding, and if they don't return great figures, the opposite is true therefore runs scored are devalued. If a team makes 500, batting conditions are good so achievements are less important, but if a team makes 200 all out and someone makes 100 in that innings, it's automatically a better performance in more difficult conditions. It's just more complicated than that, and the only way to properly understand the conditions of a game is to watch it. The nature of a sport so influenced by weather, pitch, fatigue etc.

Its all about what is floating your boat really.

 

[Jono]

Trolling or not, really does demonstrate one of the most frustrating habits of cricket analysis, which is this idea that the quality of the bowling, the nature of the wicket, the relative quality of the players etc are determined by outcomes. So if Steyn, Philander and Morkel bowl and all average 20 and dominate a series, they are great seamers in conditions conducive to their succeeding, and if they don't return great figures, the opposite is true therefore runs scored are devalued. If a team makes 500, batting conditions are good so achievements are less important, but if a team makes 200 all out and someone makes 100 in that innings, it's automatically a better performance in more difficult conditions. It's just more complicated than that, and the only way to properly understand the conditions of a game is to watch it. The nature of a sport so influenced by weather, pitch, fatigue etc.

Yes totally agree. Further from this, it annoys me when people automatically look at the bowlers and assume they played to their level. Steyn and Philander could bowl poor in an innings, and sometimes less talented bowlers can bowl incredibly well on a certain day or in a test. By default people will think runs against Steyn and Philander are better than say Chameera (for e.g.), but if you watched and saw Steyn and Philander both bowl legside half volleys all day, compared to say Chameera (for e.g.) who isn't as good overall but bowled fantastically in that specific test, you'd know that the runs against Chameera may have been tougher to get and potentially worth more, name value notwithstanding.

Judging stuff based on scorecards in general sucks. I think the only time you can potentially judge on a scorecard alone is seeing the score/situation when a batsman came in. Generally if a batsman comes in at 4 for **** all and gets runs, regardless of the bowling or the pitch you can assume it was a reasonably good knock. But even then, watching and knowing the exact scenario is of course better.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Yeah. The reality is that if someone wants to think that, say, Smith can't handle good swing bowling, they will never be convinced. If he plays swing bowling well, it's because the swing bowling wasn't good enough to truly show up his weakness, and if he gets out to swing bowling, it confirms that weakness is significant. And if they never saw it personally it obviously doesn't count either.

Scorecard based success indicates long term trends reasonably well of course. Frankly as far as I'm concerned, if a player has a weakness and they still make tons of runs, that weakness doesn't really matter anyway. I mean Ponting played spin with hard hands and Sehwag often played away from his body with minimal foot movemnt but they were still highly successful cricketers who did better than most people with more traditional techniques would have. Just a really overblown discussion on the whole.

But if you want to have a discussion with a tighter focus you really can't do it just based off results for the reasons you say.

 

[dfrinku]

AWTA. And it's another reason why Jord's insistence that Australia haven't fielded weak teams in the past 5 years because they had Ponting, Hussey, Clarke, etc in their lineup is completely false. Not every batsman performs at their peak or according to their legacy during every period of their career. All three of them had massive form slumps where they could have easily been dropped. You can't just look at a scorecard with those guys on it and assume it was a great batting line-up.

 

[Gob]

Yeah spot on. Take a look at this Aust team

4th Test: Australia v England at Melbourne, Dec 26-29, 2010 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo

Someone who has just started following cricket like jord would simply look in to that scorecard and say wow what a team but it was anything but

 

[Spark]

Smith has definitely gone up in my estimations throughout the test series.

So much so, I'd now have a slightly ahead of Root & KW as test bats for now. The latter two have been great obviously, but the way Smith just keeps tonning up anywhere and everywhere has been fairly remarkable.

I can actually see a very strong argument for having Root first tbh. His raw numbers are excellent, but some of the hundreds he's scored in the last year have been a class above. It's the same argument for Clarke being the best in the world in 2012.

Yeah spot on. Take a look at this Aust team

4th Test: Australia v England at Melbourne, Dec 26-29, 2010 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo

Someone who has just started following cricket like jord would simply look in to that scorecard and say wow what a team but it was anything but

And that after getting shot out for 80 at Headingley, somehow contriving to collapse to about 120 against WI at home (????), losing the 09 Ashes...

 

[Gob]

I can actually see a very strong argument for having Root first tbh. His raw numbers are excellent, but some of the hundreds he's scored in the last year have been a class above. It's the same argument for Clarke being the best in the world in 2012.



And that after getting shot out for 80 at Headingley, somehow contriving to collapse to about 120 against WI at home (????), losing the 09 Ashes...

Yeah at the WACA on an absolute road to Dwayne ****en Bravo

 

[Jord]

Yup ran away. Prob crying hiding under a desk

It's 12:14am when you posted this garbage, do you think I'd still be online? I confused Smith's first series for the 47 all out series, but it really doesn't change, Smith's golden run came off the back of very strong top order performances that he capitalised on, and Australia have a history of their 4s and 5s going god mode throughout the last decade.

 

[TheJediBrah]

It's 12:14am when you posted this garbage, do you think I'd still be online? I confused Smith's first series for the 47 all out series, but it really doesn't change, Smith's golden run came off the back of very strong top order performances that he capitalised on, and Australia have a history of their 4s and 5s going god mode throughout the last decade.

putting a laughing face at the start of every post doesn't convey what you think it dose ftr

 

[NZTailender]

It's 12:14am when you posted this garbage, do you think I'd still be online? I confused Smith's first series for the 47 all out series, but it really doesn't change, Smith's golden run came off the back of very strong top order performances that he capitalised on, and Australia have a history of their 4s and 5s going god mode throughout the last decade.

A lot of Smith's centuries have been when he's come in with the score <100 and <120. But no don't let facts get in the way of your warped narrative.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Specifically, Smith has scored hundreds after coming in at:

3/144 (138* vs England)
3/106 (111 vs England)
3/78 (115 vs England)
4/98 (100 vs South Africa)
3/258 (162* vs India)
2/98 (133 vs India)
2/115 (192 vs India)
2/204 (117 vs India)
1/0 (199 vs West Indies)
1/78 (215 vs England)
1/110 (143 vs England)
1/8 (138 vs New Zealand)
2/287 (134* vs West Indies)
2/67 (138 vs New Zealand)

Mixed bag as you'd expect, but not that many where he came in at strong positions really. Certainly not a consistent trend with his big scores.

 

[NZTailender]

There's maybe 3 innings there you'd call 'downhill skiing'. IIRC that first one vs England was in a total of about 300 odd so was very important.

 

[cnerd123]

Man I feel bad now for defending Jord when people were laying into him for not rating Clarke's captaincy.

 

[Red]

It's 12:14am when you posted this garbage, do you think I'd still be online? I confused Smith's first series for the 47 all out series, but it really doesn't change, Smith's golden run came off the back of very strong top order performances that he capitalised on, and Australia have a history of their 4s and 5s going god mode throughout the last decade.

What point are you actually trying to make?

 

[Spark]

There's maybe 3 innings there you'd call 'downhill skiing'. IIRC that first one vs England was in a total of about 300 odd so was very important.

Nah that was a pretty big total, 500-odd IIRC. It was central to that total, but it was a big score.

 

[NZTailender]

Nah that was a pretty big total, 500-odd IIRC. It was central to that total, but it was a big score.

Might've been one of his other innings? This is going back to the fallacy of just looking at scorecards but I remember one innings he came in after openers laid a good platform but everyone else around him didn't really contribute so he scored nearly half the team runs.

Edit: Actually I think I may have been thinking of this one: 5th Test: Australia v England at Sydney, Jan 3-5, 2014 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo

 

[Spark]

Might've been one of his other innings? This is going back to the fallacy of just looking at scorecards but I remember one innings he came in after openers laid a good platform but everyone else around him didn't really contribute so he scored nearly half the team runs.

Edit: Actually I think I may have been thinking of this one: 5th Test: Australia v England at Sydney, Jan 3-5, 2014 | Cricket Scorecard | ESPN Cricinfo

That Test is a little odd though. England were so obviously shot that, although 300 was a very middling score on that pitch (which was doing a bit), I think it was basically universally assumed that England wouldn't get remotely close.