CW's Ranking of Opening Batsmen (Tests)

[Teja.]

Greenidge

 

[Migara]

Usman K is much better than all of them

He has to score 1000 runs as opener to get into that list.

 

[Teja.]

Victor Trumper

Not just because I want him to be next in line, but because in the list of top 50 batsmen he actually was next in line, and I appear to be the only person who doesn't want to render that list pointless barely a week after it was finished.

Yeah, I was going to vote for Trumper but i) I looked up that he averaged lower as an opener and ii) his career overlapped with Hobbs for half a decade and Trumper's average as opener/player stayed roughly the same as his career average as an opener/player during that period but Hobbs averaged about 20 runs more as an opener over a decent sample of 25ish tests in the overlapping period.

This was true even if I only accounted for Ashes tests played by Hobbs.

 

[PlayerComparisons]

Actually I’ll change to Smith.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

I would put Gooch ahead of many on that totally stats driven list. He opened in over a hundred (or a hundred(ish)) Tests and though his average was in the lower 40's he played for a long time and in some very tough series.

 

[Nikhil99.99]

Ok, I'll push back on this a bit. Trumper is a different case to the others in this list. He averaged 39 overall but only 32 as an opener (averaged 49 batting 3 or lower). So there's actually a good argument to be made that he should be lower on a list of openers than on a list of batsmen.

Ashley mallett chose trumper in his test team of the century as a middle order batsman rather than a opener.

 

[The Sean]

Yeah, I was going to vote for Trumper but i) I looked up that he averaged lower as an opener and ii) his career overlapped with Hobbs for half a decade and Trumper's average as opener/player stayed roughly the same as his career average as an opener/player during that period but Hobbs averaged about 20 runs more as an opener over a decent sample of 25ish tests in the overlapping period.

This was true even if I only accounted for Ashes tests played by Hobbs.

Yeah, no question Hobbs was greater, nor that Trumper was statistically more successful in the middle order.

Leaving aside Trumper specifically though, I just wanted to try to maintain the integrity of a list that we completed and published a matter of eight days ago.

I appear to be in a minority with this, though that won't stop it annoying me!

 

[gftw]

Smith - 5
Grace - 1
Greenidge - 3
Trumper - 3
Simpson - 1
Hayden - 1

The List
1. Jack Hobbs
2. Len Hutton
3. Sunil Gavaskar
4. Herbert Sutcliffe
5. Geoffrey Boycott
6. Graeme Smith

The vote for the #7 test opener of all-time begins now.

 

[Teja.]

Greenidge

 

[ataraxia]

Simpson

 

[Line and Length]

Simpson

 

[trundler]

Lawry

 

[TheJediBrah]

Simpson

 

[OverratedSanity]

Greenidge

 

[Nikhil99.99]

A.R Morris

 

[Bitmap]

Greenidge

 

[ImpatientLime]

Sehwag

 

[_00_deathscar]

I think it's not a bad idea to run the list again for openers only.

The top 30/50 whatever batsman list was for batsman. While rare, someone could have done a good job of being a very good bat in middle/lower order and being a good opener and made it high up in the list, without actually being a GOAT/ATG level (or top 5 or whatever) level opener.

Separately, because the criteria for that one was so wide, the voting was a lot more spread out - here it's focused on openers only.

Hence, worth running again.

 

[Teja.]

Size difference:

 

[PlayerComparisons]

Simpson