Hayden or Anwar?

[R_D]

Kazaholic lol at Australian doemstic sides being better than Test teams. Maybe better than Zimbabwe... even that is debatable imo because they were a good team in 90's.
Every State team in Aus may have had their token good players but they had their fair share of **** players as well so you might be going overboard with Aus doemstic sides were good
as any test match sides. There weren't many quality bowlers around in domestic either tbh.

 

[aussie]

Hmm interesting. Technically neither had classical techniques, Anwar hand pretty much no real footwork but had a great eye and relied alot on some superb hand-eye co-ordination since the way he used to time it through the covers, past point like a bullet & his signature flick shot that many times would fly into the crowd over mid-wickets still brings back some good memories i.e Australia's two series vs Pakistan in the late 90's. You could say he is almost like a left-handed Sehwag in terms of style.

Hayden as we all know prior to the 2005 Ashes when he just bullied oppostion attacks on a lot of flat pitches around the globe didn't have much footwork either & at times (as i'm sure is been well mentioned by Richard without me even have to go through this thread) with the way he would stick his front foot out very early would get himself into problems againts bowlers who could swing it back into him.

But since the Ashes one could see he has worked on that little flaw in that he doesn't stick his front out down the pitch as that early he waits a bit more & has improved his off-side game so bowlers who try to adapt the plan of trying to tie him up with a tight middle & off-stump line with swing then sending the wide one thus bringing the slips & gully into play hasn't really worked.

I can't back it up statiscally for Anwar but i would think he scored more runs againts better bowling attacks than Hayden (if not necessarily in an entire series but various knocks since i can account for three classic hundreds againts Australia home & away), but he was very flashy & was the kind of batsman that i don't think had a plan B like Hayden if bowlers tended to get on top of him.

Overall i was to pick i would definately have Hayden to bat againts top-attacks under pressure, while i wanted to enjoy some stylish batting Anwar no doubt.

 

[Perm]

Hayden is grace personified.

Anwar was crap extraordinare.

Absolute bollocks.

 

[Perm]

what about this bowling line up... i don't think it was as good as u have mention above but fairly good considering that mcgrath and warne was there..

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/63854.html

The argument was against top class seam bowling, which McGrath and to a lesser extent Damien Fleming provided. There was no discussion about spin bowling, but that attack was quite good. However, it lacked a 3rd seamer of note, therefore wasn't really relevant to what we were discussing.

 

[Matt79]

Lol at people missing Beleg's irrate sarcasm...

 

[SJS]

Buck up Jumanji !!

 

[Burgey]

Anwar FTW

 

[Goughy]

My final thoughts on the Hayden subject, as quite frankly the world would end before Richard changed his mind or let the subject lie.

- Hayden had a poor record and was dropped at the start of his career. That is a fact. However, the reasons are as simple as there was deemed a better option available for Australia at the time. Given Australias depth during this period it is more a statement of Aus depth that Haydens lack of ability.

- No credit is given to how hard he worked to improve himself as a cricketer during his time in the wilderness. Even if he was already a good player, the above mentioned depth meant he had to work very hard to get back and knew opportunities would be limited in the future if he failed again.

- No interest is being shown in looking at how a player evolves. Gooch scored his 1st ever hundred in his 22nd game, didnt take his average to 40 until his 79th Test (at the beginning of the 90s) and during the 1990s (when supposedly it was at its hardest) he averaged 51.55.

- Test cricket is hard, always has been hard and still is hard. Gooch found it easier to score runs in the 90s than the 70s and 80s because he was a better player then. Hayden does so now as he is a better player than at the start of his career and has a defined team role to relax into.

- Track, bats, aggressive attitudes etc may have pushed the game slightly in favour of the batsmen (though far less than the move to covered wickets and other changes have) but that doesnt mean scoring runs at Test level is easy.

- To discount a player averageing 53 in Test cricket is pure folly. Are there any other players that average over 50 that are bad players or is it just Hayden? If all the factors that apply to Hayden and are not relevant to anyone else averaging over 50 then it moves into the realms of personal criticism than logical.

 

[The Sean]

Superb post Goughy. Made it worth reading to the end of this thread.

 

[pasag]

Superb post Goughy. Made it worth reading to the end of this thread.

awta.

 

[Mister Wright]

awta , and awtapq, and also awtapqp.

 

[Ikki]

Kazaholic lol at Australian doemstic sides being better than Test teams. Maybe better than Zimbabwe... even that is debatable imo because they were a good team in 90's.
Every State team in Aus may have had their token good players but they had their fair share of **** players as well so you might be going overboard with Aus doemstic sides were good
as any test match sides. There weren't many quality bowlers around in domestic either tbh.

No one is saying they were good because simply they had good players. They were good because they regularly beat or drew against touring Test sides.

 

[iamdavid]

Kazaholic lol at Australian doemstic sides being better than Test teams. Maybe better than Zimbabwe... even that is debatable imo because they were a good team in 90's.
Every State team in Aus may have had their token good players but they had their fair share of **** players as well so you might be going overboard with Aus doemstic sides were good
as any test match sides. There weren't many quality bowlers around in domestic either tbh.

I know this wasnt the norm...
But a full-strength New South Wales side in about 2000would have looked something like -

1.Michael Slater
2.Corey Richards
3.Michael Bevan
4.Mark Waugh
5.Steve Waugh
6.Shane Lee
7.Brad Haddin
8.Brett Lee
9.Nathan Bracken
10.Glenn McGrath
11.Stuart MacGill

Reserves - Stuart Clark, Michael Clarke, Don Nash, Mark Higgs

Certainly capable of wiping the floor with any test side bar Australia at the time.

 

[Matt79]

My final thoughts on the Hayden subject, as quite frankly the world would end before Richard changed his mind or let the subject lie.

- Hayden had a poor record and was dropped at the start of his career. That is a fact. However, the reasons are as simple as there was deemed a better option available for Australia at the time. Given Australias depth during this period it is more a statement of Aus depth that Haydens lack of ability.

- No credit is given to how hard he worked to improve himself as a cricketer during his time in the wilderness. Even if he was already a good player, the above mentioned depth meant he had to work very hard to get back and knew opportunities would be limited in the future if he failed again.

- No interest is being shown in looking at how a player evolves. Gooch scored his 1st ever hundred in his 22nd game, didnt take his average to 40 until his 79th Test (at the beginning of the 90s) and during the 1990s (when supposedly it was at its hardest) he averaged 51.55.

- Test cricket is hard, always has been hard and still is hard. Gooch found it easier to score runs in the 90s than the 70s and 80s because he was a better player then. Hayden does so now as he is a better player than at the start of his career and has a defined team role to relax into.

- Track, bats, aggressive attitudes etc may have pushed the game slightly in favour of the batsmen (though far less than the move to covered wickets and other changes have) but that doesnt mean scoring runs at Test level is easy.

- To discount a player averageing 53 in Test cricket is pure folly. Are there any other players that average over 50 that are bad players or is it just Hayden? If all the factors that apply to Hayden and are not relevant to anyone else averaging over 50 then it moves into the realms of personal criticism than logical.

I don't give a stuff if the awards aren't being given out at the moment, that gets the Afridi for the best post this week hands down. Lovely work Goughy.

 

[The Sean]

I don't give a stuff if the awards aren't being given out at the moment, that gets the Afridi for the best post this week hands down. Lovely work Goughy.

Meh, the sentiment's already been expressed. By me. As always.

 

[Matt79]

What happened to you Sean - you used to be cool.

 

[The Sean]

No I didn't.

Why must you turn this cricket forum into a house of lies?

 

[Richard]

- No credit is given to how hard he worked to improve himself as a cricketer during his time in the wilderness. Even if he was already a good player, the above mentioned depth meant he had to work very hard to get back and knew opportunities would be limited in the future if he failed again.

I've never for a second discredited any amount of hard work he's done, I just don't feel he's much better a player now than he was in 1999, or 1996 even. I've given fulsome reasons as to why, too.

- To discount a player averageing 53 in Test cricket is pure folly. Are there any other players that average over 50 that are bad players or is it just Hayden? If all the factors that apply to Hayden and are not relevant to anyone else averaging over 50 then it moves into the realms of personal criticism than logical.

No, there aren't any others who I discount completely as "would never have been Test-class in another era" who've averaged over 50 in this. And no, I don't think it is completely devoid of logic; I do feel batsmen can be brilliant at bashing rubbish but pretty poor at repelling class. If anyone else doesn't, that's their problem. Some people are too quick to assume things like "if he was successful at one time, he couldn't have been completely unsuccessful at another".

 

[Richard]

So now we go to "they weren't good enough" to shifting an argument as to why they weren't picked?

That is an argument in itself, but it's widely acknowledge how hard it is to break into the Test side, and how little of a chance you get once you're there. It hardly reflects the quality between the Test side and the domestic side as you often see in Australia A' V Australia exhibition matches. And you also see their quality against touring sides.

And one I really CBA with.

Just give us a 5-6 then.

There are that many to Matthew Hoggard alone.

You must be off your flipping horse. You want to argue THIS too? Batsmen get how many dropped catches or close shaves in a game? The bowlers will have more wides and no-balls, let alone poorly bowled balls.

Dropped catches and let-offs are fortune beyond that any bowler ever enjoys. Bowlers will probably get away with more bad deliveries than batsmen will get away with erroneous strokes.

Yes, 'crazy' isn't a single-entity either, it's a group. It just doesn't answer the question. Ask yourself again: if there is almost always so many people against your very opinion, it must say something about the very things you judge cricket on. At the very least you should question it.

Not really, I wouldn't think things the way I do if I thought it was stupid. There are times when people have questioned me and I've seen the errors of my ways; there are also many when I haven't.

No, but let's see...out of all the threads I HAVE read in the two years with you debating something I've seen you concede 0 point(s). It doesn't fill me with much confidence if I go searching for ones where you do.

Suit yourself.

That is rubbish Richard. Good bowlers get hit because they face better batsmen. That's one very likely and easy reason to grasp.

Bad bowling gets hit around. Good bowling doesn't.

Of course, what constitutes good bowling changes from batsman to batsman. There are some things, though, that are good bowling to pretty much anyone.

The fact is that every batsman, even Bradman, is fallible so by that account everyone is crap? The fact that Hayden, even if he has the fallibility you prescribe has hindered him very little so it makes him a great test batsman. If you think such a weakness is so easy to exploit maybe you should share your rich insight with TEST CLASS BOWLERS who seem to have trouble with it, maybe YOU would like to teach them something .

I'd love it if I had been able to, but it's a bit late now really. In any case, I highly doubt they were so stupid they didn't realise what they needed to do; they simply did not have the ability, nor the assistance from pitch and ball, to do it.

In short, few of these seamers were really Test-class, especially in the conditions they faced Hayden in.

 

[Sanz]

Completely agree with Goughy there. If Hayden is such a crap player then why are the super geniuses like Kallis, Dravid, Tendulkar, Lara etc aren't averaging more than him in this era ?