England 30 man squad for icc championships

[Richard]

theres been one orthodox wrist spinner who has been successful all over the world in the last 30 years. but id like to see times when he was successful outside of turning wickets and poor batting.

So Mushtaq Ahmed, who averaged 27.76 at 2.79-an-over before 1998, and failed only in a single Test in West Indies, wasn't successful all over The World, then? For 7 years, I might add.
And Warne has been successful many times due to good spin-bowling rather than poor batting, all over The World.

that doesnt say much, quite frankly there have been several occasions where those wickets have offered turn, particularly during the last 2 days and quite frankly some of those wickets would probably have to do with poor batting anyways. how about specific examples now? and lets hope you dont come up with the same stupid example like you did last time......old trafford 93 was it? where peter such took 6/67 in the first innings

That's an obselete example, given that I'd correct it if the tool was there. For some reason it seems to disappear after a day or so after posting.
Of course some of the wickets will have had to do with poor batting but I've seen a whole series (The Ashes 2001) where there wasn't a single pitch that turned dangerously for a fingerspinner at any point where Warne caused havoc, without the need of a massive number of poor strokes, with regularity. That do you for some "non-stupid specific examples"?

oh he can, but not significantly i can assure you. you are a fool if you believe that spin bowling is all about turn, even warne has realised that towards the end of his career and doesnt actually turn it as ferociously as he used to.

Maybe I should say "Warne can turn it significantly on anything", because it's certainly true.
Of course it's not all about turn, but loop and drift can only be useful when allied to it. Warne, like any good spinner, knows that.

that is the point...the fact that he does something totally different, largely due to the deformed wrist makes him incomparable to everyone else and cant be put in the same category as some of the other wrist spinners. the fact that you need a bowler with a deformity to prove your point goes to show how desperate your claim really is.

And the fact that you say I do when I don't shows in fact how desperate yours is. Yet again resorting to stating things differently to how they are.
Warne, Mushtaq and Murali all show it very conclusively. Even MacGill shows it, though he's not a good bowler, whether you think he is or not.
The point is that wristspinners can turn the ball dangerously on anything, and plenty of bowlers show that, whether they're good or not.

its amazing how someone can continue with such rubbish. when i came up with gibbs and underwood ou said that they both played in the days of uncovered wickets so their records cant be considered. yet you do the same with grimmett,barnes and o'reilly. amazing that. personally i recommend that you cut the b/s and stop twisting your own points around.

Yet the points are different.
I'm talking about being successful when you try to use Underwood and Gibbs, you're talking about turning the ball dangerously.
Uncovered pitches are all about regularity of occurrance of turning pitches. However, they don't matter when debating whether certain bowlers can turn the ball on any surface. Even in those days, every pitch didn't turn, because it didn't rain every game. And everyone who played with and against O'Reilly, Grimmett, Barnes and Benaud said they turned it lots on any pitch, whether it had rained or not.
Personally I recommend you stop trying to manufacture contradictions where none exist. But given that it's fast becoming your only route to parity I doubt it.

and as i have shown earlier there have been several wrist spinners that have done well outside the sub continent as well. in fact more than the number of successful wrist spinners

Presuming that's supposed to read: "and as i have shown earlier there have been several finger spinners that have done well outside the sub continent as well. in fact more than the number of successful wrist spinners":
Go on then, show these examples. After 1970, remember. Because before that turning pitches weren't mostly restricted to the subcontinent.
And don't come-up with bowlers who took a few wickets at a poor average and were perceived to have played a crucial part in a few victories.

 

[Richard]

its interesting how your comment keeps changing. now you say that only players who were rip roaring successes in domestic-first-class-cricket can be successful at the international level?and players like hick and ramprakash definetly prove that statement too.

Well I'll be amazed if a batsman with an average under 40 at the domestic-First-Class level makes himself a successful Test batsman. And yes, I do believe it's only a - short - matter of time before Vaughan's First-Class average rises up to 40.
So, yes, it's everyone else's problem if they've misinterpreted my comments to mean that anyone who has even approached being successful at the First-Class level can be a Test-match success - I'm always highly doubtful if someone with a First-Class average under 40 is picked as a Test-match specialist batsman.
Equally, to be a truly successful Test-match bowler you have to average under 27 for mine, and really go at less than 3-an-over, too. So the alarming shortage of players who are doing that season-after-season even at the domestic level is very alarming.

how many times do i have to say it....averaging 36 does not make it a good year, it was a decent year. regardless he had 3 bad years and 1 good year and 1 decent year in that period, so you cant have more bad years than good years and still be in the side.

No, he had 6 good series and 2 bad ones. I'm getting fed-up of you bringing this year stuff into it - it suits you because it makes it look like he's been poor half the time and good 1\4 of it. When in fact good has vastly outnumbered bad.

how good was that series against australia i ask you?it was not brilliant...it was not something to get you shouting about. all he accomplished in that series was 1 hundred,the rest were all 30s and 40s with a few failures. if he had been brilliant like what vaughan was in that last series against australia he would still have been in the side. if you look at the last 4 years,realistically he only played 1 great knock, the rest of the times he failed to go on with his starts or just failed period. 1 knock in 4 years is not good enough to keep you in the side i can assure you.

Ramprakash's only single-figure scores from 2001 onwards were in his last game.
I'll grant you that he didn't make enough half-centuries but if you're as remarkably consistent as that you can get away with a few less than you might with some single-figure scores.
Ramprakash was unlucky twice in The Ashes and once in New Zealand and but for those might well have scored more half-centuries.
He did, however, play 2 hugely impressive knocks, not just 1, in those 4 years. Allied to consistency personnified, as I say.

im sorry what? if you look at that test match in bangalore you would see that ramprakash had all the opportunity in the world to score. india only went in with one genuine pace bowler in the side on a seaming wicket so he was technically playing spin bowlers on wickets that didnt suit them. which certainly explains why he got that 58. how can you possibly say that the bowling he recived was great at bangalore?

Misprint - meant Christchurch.
Any dummy could have worked that out, given that I've said it about 3 or 4 times now. This would have been the 5th or so. Well, it is now, because I've corrected it.

he wasnt retained, he was dropped because he hadnt done enough to keep his place in the side....

Yes, and before that he was retained...

no while there werent many people who wanted him out of the side, there were several people who had question marks about whether he was good enough to succeed playing for england. the failure in NZ answered that question.

In spite of the fact that it contravened all but one of the previous 7 series (against the same opposition).

so what does that mean?that ramprakash can only score when flintoff can? the fact that he failed in that entire series while flintoff did is what counts.if he was good enough he would have scored with the other opportunities that he got.....

Not if he was dismissed by some difficult, while not unplayable, deliveries. The way he was.
He got 3 tricky deliveries, 2 that seamed back and 1 beatufully-bowled slower-ball, and played 1 shocking shot.
The point is, Flintoff's superior series-average means little.

 

[Richard]

so ramprakash got worse conditions then openers did is it?what rubbish.
and heres a newsflash for you, michael vaughan scored a 27 and a 36 in the third test which had arguably the most seamer friendly conditions in the series. butcher managed a 35 odd in that match too. surprisingly though ramprakash failed to get into double digits in that match. im sure he got the worse of the conditions in that match too,especially considering he didnt even get to fact the new ball as the openers did.
also in the first test where the ball magically stopped seaming after ramprakash got out, both trescothick and butcher got 30s.

I can assure you that the conditions at Auckland were nowhere near as seam-friendly early on as those at Christchurch were. It became uneven, while Christchurch didn't, so it got worst while Christchurch got massively better. Ramprakash failed to reach double-figures, for the only time since 2001, because of one shocking shot and one beautifully bowled slower-ball (in an innings where he had a badly damaged calf-muscle and the match was long-since gone). Nothing to do with the wicket in either instance.
His dismissal in the second-innings at Christchurch, meanwhile, was due to a ball that seamed.
Trescothick only got 30 because Parore dropped a skier when he was on 2, and Butcher would have got more than 30 if he hadn't have trodden on his stumps.
Just because they got them, doesn't mean the ball wasn't seaming around. If you were to have the capacity to recall those second and third-day you'd remember that.

as i said earlier....india had only 1 genuine fast bowler in the side on a seamer friendly wicket. and if he had managed to score a century instead of once again not going on with his start,he might well have retained his place in the side after the tour of india.

He retained it anyway - but he might not have but for that innings.

it doesnt make a difference. at the end of the day they both average the same, one of them took 52 tests to average as much as the other who only took 8. and ramprakash didnt get much better, if he did then he would still be in the side, but the fact that he was averaging in the 20s for the last 4 years of his career says that he was still useless.

No, he wasn't - he was averaging in the high 30s. Unlike Chopra whose average has dropped from the 40s to the 20s.
There was a very clear change in Ramprakash's career, and because of that, like it or not, a period with an average of 16 and one with an average of 37 can be considered seperate. Just the way they can with Butcher.

what rubbish, im sure you conveniently changed that stat to favour your argument.

Wrong, I've thought it ever since I've thought about it. 35 is a reasonable (while not at all exceptional) average after a fair chance, and you should be expected to increase that to 40 over the next part of your career.

 

[Richard]

i think if you had watched devang gandhi bat you would have realised he wasnt good enough.....

I never said I thought he was - I just said that it's not fact that he wasn't.
For all you know, he could have done what Stephen Waugh and a few others have and whether you think he wouldn't have isn't of the slightest signficance.

not really...there was never a case of retianing gandhi at all. while despite harmisons poor performances most people wanted him in the side. its a classic case of one showing potential(albeit brief) while the other didnt.

No, it's a classic case of one being believed to have shown potential, by those who count, and one not.
I have no doubts that if Gandhi had been fortunate enough to have batted with Sehwag he would be being adjudged to have every bit as much potential as Chopra is being.
However, as I've mentioned rather a few times, showing potential is not fact! It's merely someone's take on things.

no hes part of the list of players who had an excellent technique and plenty of potential, and while half of that list succeeded and the other half didnt it shows that he deserves just about as many chances as the others on that list got.

In your opinion. In mine he doesn't because in my opinion he hasn't shown the potential to improve.
Stephen Waugh's technique has long been far from perfect, but seemingly the Australian selectors still believed in his potential and they were exonerated, spectacularly.

no the point is that if key had replaced butcher(rightly or wrongly) it would be because the selectors felt that one had more potential than the other.in the same way chopra will be replaced by yuvraj because the selectors feel that he has more potential.

Yes, exactly, and in both cases there would be those who agree and those who disagree.
In my view it would be an outrage to believe Key's potential is superior to Butcher's. But just because I think it doesn't make it fact.

yes but your opinion is in a minority....the fact is that most people felt that they didnt have potential and they were dropped. if you are good enough then you need to convince as many people as possible that you have potential and most of those players simply couldnt at the international level.

You cannot say with any certainty how many people believed certain English players had shown potential, and you cannot say that I am unquestionably in a minority. The important thing is, the selectors didn't believe they had shown sufficient potential and so they dropped them.
Plenty of people seem convinced of Chopra's potential on this board. The Indian selectors, however, don't seem to be.
If you ask me those convinced of Chopra's potential place far more emphasis on Sehwag's runs than anything else.

 

[Richard]

rubbish you have in the past said that bowlers like harmison that relied on bounce would not succeed at the international level. and he has already proved you wrong

So he's got good batsmen out consistently with deliveries that bounced more than they expected, then? On good, true-bounce wickets?
No, I think you'll find he hasn't.
In fact, I think you'll find he's picked-up wickets with a lot of poor strokes, far more often concerned with the line of the ball than the bounce, and those poor strokes have - for the time being, at least - evaporated.

what rubbish, you clearly have no clue what you are talking about. ive already proved earlier that chopra was dropped for reasons other than 'not having potential'.

They didn't believe he had the potential of someone else so they dropped him.
If he'd averaged 35 instead of 28, I'm fairly sure of myself in saying that they'd probably have been satisfied with the amount of potential he'd shown.

then you'd like to change the statement earlier and say that" only players who have major success at the domestic level will succeed at the international level"
its also interesting that players like vaughan and trescothick had similar averages to those above and both of them succeeded at the international level, while hick,knight and ramprakash all failed.

No, Ramprakash didn't fail in his second-coming as a Test-match player and only a total idiot would claim Knight and Hick failed at the one-day-international level.
So what you actually mean is, they both failed at the Test level.
And yes, not every successful domestic-First-Class batsman will translate his form to the Test arena (for another example see Michael Bevan). But far more than not will, and very, very few batsmen who do poorly at the domestic level will make good international batsmen.

id like to see examples of wrist spinners bowling well on non turners without poor batting...i stick to the statement that wrist spinners are just about as effective as left arm spinners in any conditions

So despite the fact that the only two decent wristspinners of our generation (and two of only a handful in history) IMO completely disprove this you still believe it. Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but most people base their opinion on fact.

rubbish you have in the past said that bowlers like harmison that relied on bounce would not succeed at the international level. and he has already proved you wrong

So he's got good batsmen out consistently with deliveries that bounced more than they expected, then? On good, true-bounce wickets?
No, I think you'll find he hasn't.
In fact, I think you'll find he's picked-up wickets with a lot of poor strokes, far more often concerned with the line of the ball than the bounce, and those poor strokes have - for the time being, at least - evaporated.

what rubbish, you clearly have no clue what you are talking about. ive already proved earlier that chopra was dropped for reasons other than 'not having potential'.

They didn't believe he had the potential of someone else so they dropped him.
If he'd averaged 35 instead of 28, I'm fairly sure of myself in saying that they'd probably have been satisfied with the amount of potential he'd shown.

then you'd like to change the statement earlier and say that" only players who have major success at the domestic level will succeed at the international level"
its also interesting that players like vaughan and trescothick had similar averages to those above and both of them succeeded at the international level, while hick,knight and ramprakash all failed.

No, Ramprakash didn't fail in his second-coming as a Test-match player and only a total idiot would claim Knight and Hick failed at the one-day-international level.
So what you actually mean is, they both failed at the Test level.
And yes, not every successful domestic-First-Class batsman will translate his form to the Test arena (for another example see Michael Bevan). But far more than not will, and very, very few batsmen who do poorly at the domestic level will make good international batsmen.

id like to see examples of wrist spinners bowling well on non turners without poor batting...i stick to the statement that wrist spinners are just about as effective as left arm spinners in any conditions

So despite the fact that the only two decent wristspinners of our generation (and two of only a handful in history) IMO completely disprove this you still believe it. Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but most people base their opinion on fact.

 

[Richard]

this is total tripe...there was barely any turn at all on the first 2 days. its quite ridiculous how you can try to make up things that didnt happen. if it was turning so much then england wouldnt have got 400 i can assure you.

And if it wasn't, Kumble wouldn't have got 7 wickets and England would probably have got 500. As it was, they might well have got more than they did but for poor decisions against Hussain and Vaughan. But equally they'd almost certainly have got far less but for a shocking drop by Dasgupta off White.
Good batsmen can still score runs when the ball's turning, because believe it or not good bowlers don't bowl well every ball. If they did no-one would ever score a single half-century on wickets that offered something to a single bowler.

no the bowling was the same in both innings dont try to distort facts, the pitch just didnt deteriorate and the indian batsman applied themselves a lot more in the 2nd innings than they did in the first

Giles bowled far more dangerously in the first-innings than the second, there's no distortion needed there.
I'll grant you Dasgupta got himself out in the first-innings with a totally unneccessary sweep to a ball of the wrong length (very risky on a turning pitch) and Dravid played down the wrong line, but plenty of the Indian batsmen were dismissed to deliveries they couldn't really have hoped to do much better with. Certainly Das and Ganguly were genuinely beaten by leg-cutters and Tendulkar by one that stopped. Kumble we all know about; Harbhajan and Laxman were both at fault for their dismissals but again I'd be surprised if it wasn't different with no turn on the deliveries, and Srinath was caught off another good delivery.
As with almost every innings, there were a few gimme wickets. But there was enough good bowling to hope it might be repeated second-time-around. Sadly not. India played as well as England did in their first dig and the bowling wasn't inspirational, which it needed to be, with just 3 sessions to play with.

not exactly the ones that giles and kumble for that matter conquered were either on wickets that offered bounce and turn or due to poor batting(and perhaps excellent captaincy from hussain). on slow turners when the batsman played well they generally ended up with figures of 4/100 etc after longish spells

Which are still more than acceptible. An average of 25 is a good performance. And it can still be a big contribution towards victory.

yes but it happened in 2 series for ramprakash and well he deserved to be dropped.

No, it didn't happen in 2 (consecutive) series.
He eventually cashed-in in India with 58, having promised to all series.

 

[Richard]

no it didnt, if there was as much help in that wicket then india wouldnt have lost only 3 wickets in 97 overs. i watched every ball of that match and i certainly remember the commentators(ravi shastri in particular) saying that the pitch was dead flat. if you had watched indias first innings in that test you would have seen clearly that most of the wickets that fell had to do with poor batting and good captaincy.

Yes, of course - Dasgupta, Dravid, Laxman and Harbhajan were all at fault for their dismissals, and the rest couldn't really be blamed too badly, because the pitch combined with the bowlers produced some good deliveries.

31 is not ok especially considering that the attack he played in the first test wasnt very good and the bowling attack in seaming conditions in the third test only consisted of one frontline seamer!

Not, of course, that it made any difference to his first-innings dismissal at Mohali - brilliant catches like that just happen occasionally, no real fault to the batsman. And, basically, he was dismissed cheaply-ish to crap shots three times in the series - once in totally mitigating circumstances of the neccessity for quick runs, and twice in partially mitigating circumstances of the game being all but gone and the innings collapsing around him. And he made-up for these two partial errors in his final innings of the series.

he got enough chances in india, 2 innings i the first test in flat conditions. again 2 innings in the 2nd test in flat conditions and then 2 innings in seaming conditions against only 1 fast bowler. enough opportunities there IMO. regardless failing in seaming conditions isnt an excuse either.

Well, it is if you get deliveries that you could not have realistically avoided dismissal off. Ramprakash didn't, but his first two proper dismissals in New Zealand did have something to do with seaming wickets.
Basically, Ramprakash cannot be faulted at all for 3 of his 9 sub-50 dismissals all winter, he can be just about totally faulted for 3 more, and he can be partially faulted for the remaining 3.
This sums the whole thing up, in a nutshell. Can't you just recognise that he didn't play anywhere near as badly as his average of 23.60 suggests?

averaging 36 is not 'pretty well', its decent.

More than decent, considering an average of 41.33 going into it.

perhaps not but it was a chance to succeed, which he didnt take up

No, it wasn't a chance to succeed - to do so, he would have had to completely sacrifice the team's best interests. That wouldn't have made him too popular, either.

 

[Richard]

okay then i'll consider your point then.if you look at his performances in the summer you will see that he failed to convert starts in every innings except his 133. so he really had 13 failures(4 in NZ,7 in the ashes and 2 in india) 1 100, 1 50, and 3 innings that could have gone either way. once again there was no reason to retain him at all.

No, and that's why he wasn't retained.
All I've ever said is that he wasn't as bad as most assume.

stewart got worse period, and how did walsh not get worse?
1998 54.00 5.40
1999 21.72 3.06(which had largely to do with cheap wickets against bangladesh,scotland and seaming wickets)
2000 75.00 5.77

or even curtly ambrose
1997 30.79 4.03
1998 32.67 4.26
1999 34.53 3.56 (the lower economy rate once again has largely to do with seaming conditions in the first few games in SA, and then again against scotland,NZ and australia in the wc)
career 24.13 2.48

Any bowler is likely to do better in seaming conditions - I can't conceive that there weren't plenty in 1997 and 1998, too.
Ambrose and Walsh got no worse in their latter ODI years. They did, however, hardly play after WC99, and Walsh's poor 2000 was in fact one bad series, in New Zealand.
Crikey, I'd love to get worse to 4.26-an-over.

rubbish hes an opener because he batted there for most of his career....everyone bats in different positions throughout their career....does that mean that nobody can be labelled according to position then?

Most people bat almost all their career in one position (always bear in mind nightwatchmen, and the fact that four, five and six are not much different). Tendulkar in ODIs is an unusual case, in that he specialises in 2 positions.

 

[Richard]

funny how you say that you've won everything, yet later on in the thread admit that you were wrong......

I might have done, can't find it though.
I've certainly won almost everything AFAIAC.

once again you choose to ignore the fact that richardson averged 7 runs higher at that position that ealham

No, I was just mentioning that the half-century doesn't prove much.

no but he had enough opportunities, and wasnt successful at the intl level

No, he wasn't successful - he slightly underperformed, but it didn't matter because his bowling was more than good enough to hold down a place.

no but you asked for a list of bowlers that were better than him at the time and fraser was better irrespective of whether he was playing county cricket at that time or not. he was available for selection and was in his early 30s when ealham made his debut

The fact that Fraser played most of his games well before Ealham means his economy-rate is likely to be a notch lower, because of things such as absence of field-restrictions and less ambitious batting.

no you asked me to show you which bowlers were better than ealham then and caddick was better because he had a similar economy rate but could also take wickets.

Yes, I know Caddick was (is) better.

okay then i'll admit that my comment was partly faulty.....i meant that there were bowlers with good economy rates who could also take wickets.

Yes, I know that, and Caddick, Mullally, Fraser and Gough were all better wicket-takers than Ealham. Ealham, however, is more than worthy of a place alongside them (instead of Fraser, given that most of his career was after Fraser's.

in the same way that ealham wasnt anywhere as good as his ER may seem?

No, not at all - you just think his ER would be considerably higher if he bowled the last few overs every game.
I am pretty sure that if he never bowled after over 40 his economy-rate would be considerably better. I don't think you should look at someone's economy-rate and say they should have bowled at the death because I say they should.

 

[Richard]

gough was by far the better bowler and you know it. whites record is fairly similar to gough, his ER is higher by .08 and his average is the same. IMO white was better than ealham because he was capable of doing everything with the ball,including reverse swinging it

Yes but in ODIs White wasn't accurate enough, however brilliant he was in Test-matches.
White played nowhere near the number of games Gough has, either.

err no i said the one of banks was an absolute sitter, the one of gayle's was difficult,ive already admitted that.

And you described the one at gully off Sarwan as a sitter, when it most certainly wasn't.

err you really havent been watching much cricket this year have you? ive shown you 3 catchest that hes dropped. the one of papps at headingly which you didnt take into account was also a regulation slip catch and he dropped plenty of catches in the carribean and the rest of the NZ series too. thorpe is by no means a good fielder.

So let's see some sitters he dropped in the Caribbean and the rest of the New Zealand series, then.
Two regulation chances in two series, while disappointing, does not denote an extraordinarily poor fielder.

no he wasnt a good fielder, how many time do i have to say it. im certain that he was slow in the outfield and very rarely if ever dived to save a boundary or take a catch. so where you come up with this rubbish i really dont know

I didn't need to come-up with it, I watched it. And you can't do much about the fact that it happened.

i like the way you say that they lost only those 4 players, like as though good players are a dime a dozen in zimbabwe.

They still had most of the good players left.

nope considering that these best spells only happen to come against useless teams like these zimbabwe just goes to show you that he wasnt as potent against the rest of the teams.

And the fact that Zimbabwe weren't useless until after WC2003, they were just not quite as good as some others just goes to show that his performances were much better than to be expected.

yes so how exactly does that not help his record look better than it actually is then?

It does - I was wondering why on Earth you hadn't excluded it.

 

[marc71178]

Anyone who managed to get out to much of the bowling which followed his dismissal would have achieved an extraordinary feat!

With Ramprakash, any amount of inept batting was possible.

 

[marc71178]

Maybe I should say "Warne can turn it significantly on anything", because it's certainly true.

Pity he's not as good as Vic Marks really.

 

[marc71178]

Say "failure is Ramprakash's middle-name" enough times, you might make it true one day! Doubt it, though.

No, as his middle name is Ravin.

Failure is just how he's come to be known the world over owing to the nature of his International career.

 

[marc71178]

Tendulkar in ODIs is an unusual case, in that he specialises in 2 positions.

No, he specialises in one position - the position he has batted for more than 2 thirds of his games.

 

[marc71178]

He did, however, play 2 hugely impressive knocks, not just 1, in those 4 years. Allied to consistency personnified, as I say.

2 big knocks in 4 years (59 innings) - that's like one every 30 knocks!

Consistency personnified:
Ducks - 6
1-10 - 6
11-25 - 19
26-50 - 16
51-100 - 10
101+ - 2

So more than half of the innings in that period were terminated before he got to 25 (and 20% of them didn't even make it to double figures)

Unless by consistent you mean his run of 14s (7 in this spell including 3 innings in a row) - who wouldn't want a specialist bat who can so consistently score 14 in an innings?

 

[Richard]

With Ramprakash, any amount of inept batting was possible.

With anyone it's possible, but the fact that Flintoff scored runs at that time, when excluding that innings his average in his first 5 years was 13, suggests that runs were almost impossible not to score.
And like it or not, Flintoff was far, far worse at that time than Ramprakash has ever been.

 

[Richard]

Pity he's not as good as Vic Marks really.

And whatever you might try to invent, I've never even looked like saying he was.

 

[Richard]

No, as his middle name is Ravin.

Failure is just how he's come to be known the world over owing to the nature of his International career.

Or rather mistaken interpretation of his Test-career.

 

[Richard]

No, he specialises in one position - the position he has batted for more than 2 thirds of his games.

He specialises in two positions, as evidenced by the fact that he's averaged all-but 50 in one and 38 in another.
And the fact that he's batted 55 times (probably more, given that he's also batted at five 36 times and promotion of pinch-hitters isn't unheard of) in one position suggests also that he's quite a specialist there. Indeed, if someone's batted even 20 times in a position and had success there, regardless of how many times he's batted somewhere else, in my book he's a specialist in that position.

 

[Richard]

2 big knocks in 4 years (59 innings) - that's like one every 30 knocks!

Consistency personnified:
Ducks - 6
1-10 - 6
11-25 - 19
26-50 - 16
51-100 - 10
101+ - 2

So more than half of the innings in that period were terminated before he got to 25 (and 20% of them didn't even make it to double figures)

Unless by consistent you mean his run of 14s (7 in this spell including 3 innings in a row) - who wouldn't want a specialist bat who can so consistently score 14 in an innings?

I don't quite know where you get the 59 innings figure from - in the relevant period there were actually 50 innings (45 dismissals).
And the correct figures are:
Single-figures: 7 (4 ducks)
10-29: 20
30-49: 12 (1 n\o)
50-99: 9 (4 n\o)
100+: 2
Yes, there are too many sub-30 innings in there, but most batsmen will take making double-figures 86% of the time.