DoG's Top 100 Test Batsmen Countdown Thread

[Days of Grace]

Perhaps a penalty applied to the full rating if a batsmen/bowler has not played the minimum amount of years, i.e. 10?

EDIT: I tried it but it doesn't work so well with career length already factored in with runs scored.

Another method could be to have minimum requirements for full points based on era, e.g. 50 innings pre-1945, 100 innings post-1945.

 

[RogerP]

Although I rarely post I have been following this forum keenly for years.
Regarding the peak, the problem I see is that some player's peaks will be mostly against weak opposition which unfairly gives them an advantage over those who played mostly against quality teams.
What about leaving the qualification at 50 innings with a condition that at least 50% must be against quality opposition. Then you either move or extend the 50 innings backwards or forwards until the 50% is met and if it's never met then their career must be the peak.
Does my explanation make sense?
Extending the peak above 50 would clearly penalise the older players as has been pointed out.

 

[Bolo.]

Here are the 100 innings peaks of the top 25 (ranked how they would be if the 100 innings peak is put into place)

1 DG Bradman 91.96 80.47 65.73
2 SPD Smith 69.82 59.34 52.40
3 JB Hobbs 60.28 56.06 53.28
4 GS Sobers 65.90 57.33 63.00
5 SR Tendulkar 60.34 53.10 55.28
6 KF Barrington 61.00 53.07 48.60
7 KC Sangakkara 61.61 54.84 48.62
8 BC Lara 57.15 55.44 56.20
9 L Hutton 59.57 51.82 44.41
10 RT Ponting 67.91 57.05 54.67
11 JH Kallis 64.41 53.46 44.17
12 WR Hammond 57.29 50.42 47.04
13 IVA Richards 57.09 53.66 67.23
14 S Chanderpaul 68.31 49.87 40.81
15 H Sutcliffe 56.51 50.46 39.99
16 R Dravid 61.85 51.34 40.83
17 SM Gavaskar 55.42 51.54 47.88
18 GS Chappell 55.17 48.00 53.61
19 V Kohli 55.71 52.37 54.82
20 AB de Villiers 59.92 52.13 50.66
21 AR Border 58.84 48.25 41.64
22 SR Waugh 62.95 49.10 47.58
23 Younis Khan 56.28 48.97 47.88
24 V Sehwag 53.32 50.65 76.77
25 ED Weekes 54.17 50.82 66.30

Steve Smith is insane. Barrington will not go away. Chanderpaul's 100 innings peak was also unexpected. Ponting gains ground whilst Richards and Waugh drop a few places.

I'm not sure that 100 innings is a fair reflection of a player's "peak". For most batsmen, that's more than 50% and sometimes more than 75% of their entire career.

What is wrong with 50-75%? It is enough to eliminate the played too early or too late due to circumstances beyond their control argument, which the only one with merit I can recall.

 

[honestbharani]

I will say it again. 100 innings is too many for a "peak" rating. Try 75 and see how the rankings change, DoG?

 

[Migara]

How about a percentage peak value, depending on the number of innings played? We can have a floor and a ceiling and it would be more reflective on players who played less tests due to no fault of theirs.

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

DoG please do every single permutation you can think of until I get the rankings I personally think are correct, thanks.

 

[TheJediBrah]

DoG please do every single permutation you can think of until I get the rankings I personally think are correct, thanks.

ikr this is getting a bit silly

 

[Coronis]

Just rank them by quality opposition rank

 

[OverratedSanity]

Although I rarely post I have been following this forum keenly for years.
Regarding the peak, the problem I see is that some player's peaks will be mostly against weak opposition which unfairly gives them an advantage over those who played mostly against quality teams.

I don't think this is an issue since he standardizes by opposition strength.

 

[RogerP]

I don't think this is an issue since he standardizes by opposition strength.

I'm not sure he does.
Take #99 Vengsarkar, whose peak average of 61.84 is way above his career or quality averages. In his peak he played several weak sides, even Australia who only had one decent bowler, Reid, and a weak England (Pringle and Dilley).

Another batsman with very high peak relative to career is Samaraweera, but in his case although there were some series with weak opposition, most of his peak innings were played on the sub-continent with extremely high team scores.

So I guess there is no foolproof way!

DoG's research is fantastic anyway and we can play around with the details and develop our own adjustments.

 

[Red_Ink_Squid]

Is there a case for including a score for both 100 innings (~10 years) and 50 innings (~5 years) peaks within the system? They are measuring somewhat different things: one is designed to capture most of a player's prime years, hopefully excluding unrepresentative lows in early/late years. The other is a measure of how dominant the player was at their very best.

'Overcomplication' may be a case against it I suppose.

 

[Midwinter]

Once again I would like to thank Days of Grace for posting this.

It has been a great source of interest

 

[OverratedSanity]

When this is done, I'll attempt to post the high water mark for each of the top 25 test batsmen.

Still interested in this DoG, if it's not too much work.

 

[Days of Grace]

It’s the end of the university term so I’ll be fairly busy over the next two weeks. It will get done at some point though.

 

[bagapath]

It’s the end of the university term so I’ll be fairly busy over the next two weeks. It will get done at some point though.

best of luck... life is boring after academics, imo.

 

[Days of Grace]

I’m a teacher though, so the fun will never stop.

 

[honestbharani]

If you couldn't tell by the love of his to rate stuff...

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

I’m a teacher though, so the fun will never stop.

Much respect.

 

[Days of Grace]

So of the top 50 batsmen, these played under 100 innings. Bradman, Sutcliffe, Weekes, Pollock, Headley, Walcott, Nourse and Hill. Of these, all bar Pollock had careers lasting at least 10 years. I think some sort of system (not sure of specifics) should be put in place so these players involving a lower innings threshold with a years played qualifier so they don’t lose out again for not having played in a more modern era where they would surely have played 100+ innings in their career length.

I also think the career rating should have some basis in years played as well as matches/runs scored. For example (poor example but I cbf thinking of another right now) Headley should have more career points than Pollock (poor because post war Headley missed a lot of tests before his last). But basically if a 2 batsmen play the same amount of matches/innings and one does it over 15 years rather than 10 (assuming both aren’t missing matches), he should have a higher rating.

I just want to clarify that the career weighting is based on runs scored and years played, which are given equal measure.

 

[Days of Grace]

I'm not sure he does.
Take #99 Vengsarkar, whose peak average of 61.84 is way above his career or quality averages. In his peak he played several weak sides, even Australia who only had one decent bowler, Reid, and a weak England (Pringle and Dilley).

Another batsman with very high peak relative to career is Samaraweera, but in his case although there were some series with weak opposition, most of his peak innings were played on the sub-continent with extremely high team scores.

So I guess there is no foolproof way!

DoG's research is fantastic anyway and we can play around with the details and develop our own adjustments.

I adjust every innings by era, quality of opposition, and pitch conditions.

For Vengsarkar's peak, 1983-1987, he played West Indies in 10 matches, Pakistan in 11 matches, England in 14 matches, Sri Lanka in 9 matches, and Australia in 6 matches. Which is a nice balance between strong and weak sides. In 50 innings, he scored 2530 runs at 64.87. This has been adjusted down to 2412 runs at 61.84.

I think Vengsarkar deserves respect for becoming the no.1 batsmen in the world in the late 1980s amongst some great competition (Richards, Border, Miandad et al).

Samaraweera meanwhile scored 2731 runs at 70.02 during his peak period (2008-2011). This has been adjusted down to 2460 runs at 63.07.