How did they ever lose a Test?

[FaaipDeOiad]

He scores runs, but doesn't dominate anyone. Richards inspired fear in the opposing team, Dravid inspires merely respect. That's the difference.

Now, by 'all time great' I mean like the top 10-12 batsman of all time (i.e would be eligible for all time world 1st, or 2nd XI). If you open that criteria to say the top 25 batsmen of all time, then he might make it because then I would open it up a little bit.

An all-time great for mine is merely a player who stands out as clearly one of the best of his era, and would be a fantastic player in any era. From the 90s on, I'd say Warne, McGrath, S. Waugh, Gilchrist, Ponting, Murali, Ambrose, Lara, Dravid, Tendulkar, Wasim, Kallis and Donald all qualify. Or I should say in the case of those whose careers aren't particularly close to ending yet, will qualify, in my opinion. There's a few others like Walsh, Pollock, Hayden, Waqar etc that are borderline cases, but personally I think the above are fairly clear cut, though some of them have flaws as players they would be successful in any era, and had a huge impact in the time in which they played.

I think the potential problem with someone like Dravid (or Boycott, if you like) wouldn't be about scoring rate overall, but rather about whether or not that player is capable of dominating when the opportunity presents itself. If you look at someone like Steve Waugh, he wasn't an out and out aggressive batsman like say Ponting or Lara, but he was quite capable of punishing the bowling when it was poor or as his innings progressed, and also of scoring 5 runs in an hour when he was up against Ambrose and Walsh on a seamer. Quite often he'd grind out the early part of his innings and improve his scoring as he went on, and certainly he was quite an intimidating batsman to bowl too at the peak of his career because he was not only extremely difficult to get out but also capable of scoring at a handy rate.

Dravid may have a slow scoring rate by modern standards, but I think that he is quite capable of dominating the bowling when it's necessary, and he's shown that plenty of times. His tendancy towards negative play does cause him some problems when he's up against a relentlessly accurate pair like McGrath and Warne or whatever, and it is a minor blemish in his play that various other batsmen don't necessarily have, but his case isn't comparable to people like Boycott at all IMO, because he does get very much on top the bowling and dominate on occasion.

 

[Mister Wright]

Yea, but being imposing is always worse or the fielding captain and team, and ergo, makes you a better batsman.:

As a fielding captain I always prefer bowling to a batsman who is attacking an imposing as I feel I can get him out. When a batsman comes in and looks solid and puts the bad ones away and keeps the good ones out, that's when I start to get worried. Granted it doesn't happen often at my level, but I fail to see how being imposing makes a batsman better.

Where did that come from in the discussion about Dravid?

My bad. I meant Dravid.

 

[silentstriker]

An all-time great for mine is merely a player who stands out as clearly one of the best of his era, and would be a fantastic player in any era.

By that criteria - he would qualify. I guess its semantics then.

 

[silentstriker]

As a fielding captain I always prefer bowling to a batsman who is attacking an imposing as I feel I can get him out. When a batsman comes in and looks solid and puts the bad ones away and keeps the good ones out, that's when I start to get worried. Granted it doesn't happen often at my level, but I fail to see how being imposing makes a batsman better.

Well if you'd rather bowl to Viv Richards than Rahul Dravid...you might have a bowler mutiny on your hands.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

As a fielding captain I always prefer bowling to a batsman who is attacking an imposing as I feel I can get him out. When a batsman comes in and looks solid and puts the bad ones away and keeps the good ones out, that's when I start to get worried. Granted it doesn't happen often at my level, but I fail to see how being imposing makes a batsman better.

It goes both ways though. Watching the tour of India in 2004 for instance, I was always more concerned when Sehwag got on a roll against the Australian bowlers, simply because he can take the game away from you so quickly. Dravid survived 100+ deliveries a few times for low scores before Gillespie or someone eventually got him out, whereas if Sehwag batted for a session or two India were suddenly racking up a fairly imposing total.

Obviously you felt that he might get out at any moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean he did. Much like Gilchrist or someone, really.

 

[Mister Wright]

It goes both ways though. Watching the tour of India in 2004 for instance, I was always more concerned when Sehwag got on a roll against the Australian bowlers, simply because he can take the game away from you so quickly. Dravid survived 100+ deliveries a few times for low scores before Gillespie or someone eventually got him out, whereas if Sehwag batted for a session or two India were suddenly racking up a fairly imposing total.

Obviously you felt that he might get out at any moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean he did. Much like Gilchrist or someone, really.

Oh, yeah. It does work both ways. I was talking from a fielding captain's point of view. I'd rather bowl to a set Sehwag because I know he's likely to get out at anytime, although he might not, then a set Dravid who you know can pile on the big ones when he's set without much risk.

 

[Slow Love™]

Just to clarify, it wasnt the last 30 tests. Just that Lara, Chanderpaul, Ambrose, Walsh played in a total of 30 tests together in total from 94-00.

Yeah, sorry - I approached it with the assumption that we were essentially talking about the period where the Ambrose and Walsh pairing was finishing up. It occurred to me later that the intances were likely interrupted, but I couldn't be arsed going through them all to check. It doesn't change my comment anyway, though.

The problem (IMO) is that apart from Ambrose the others mentioned (Lara, Chanderpaul, Walsh) are held in a higher esteem than they deserve and the word great is overused. Something I intentionally added in my posts.

Lara is obviously a great due to the sheer weight of his statistical performance, but has there every been a player in recent times that had been a product of numbers and style over substance?

The thread was in response to what seems to be a fondness for WI cricket (no bad thing) that leads people to not truly evaluate their worth.

I totally get what you are saying when it's applied to the current lineup (and I completely agree that a lot of people don rose-colored glasses when it comes to aspects of West Indian cricket in the past), but I'd still rate Walsh, Ambrose and Lara as greats. Part of the problem is that "great" can mean various things - in Walsh's case it probably deals with longevity and wickets taken, but I don't really hesitate granting the description to all three players, although certainly I do think the description is overused in general.

I do believe though that you can have three greats in a team and still lose tests and perform averagely though, and I do think your example shows this, regardless of your intentions.

 

[Goughy]

I do believe though that you can have three greats in a team and still lose tests and perform averagely though, and I do think your example shows this, regardless of your intentions.

So out of interest, as its pretty unrelated to the core topic of the thread, how would you answer the question I posed earlier?

How good would Bangladesh be with Ponting, Gilchrist, McGrath and Warne added to the team?

 

[PY]

I'm not sure how people don't see Walsh as a nailed-down great?

519 wickets @ 24 over 17 years and 5,000 overs with economy of 2.5 to boot.

 

[silentstriker]

So out of interest, as its pretty unrelated to the core topic of the thread, how would you answer the question I posed earlier?

How good would Bangladesh be with Ponting, Gilchrist, McGrath and Warne added to the team?

Best wicketkeeper-batsman of all time, arguably the best paceer of all time, arguably the best spinner of all time, and the best batsman in the world at the moment?

Any answer other than above average would be wrong .

 

[Slow Love™]

So out of interest, as its pretty unrelated to the core topic of the thread, how would you answer the question I posed earlier?

How good would Bangladesh be with Ponting, Gilchrist, McGrath and Warne added to the team?

I think they'd be a lot, lot better. Mind you, the starting point is pretty low. But I could certainly see them losing tests, and having an average statistical record. The rest of the Bangladesh team is substantially weaker than the rest of the Australian team. They'd certainly be winning more often than they do now, although that's not hard.

One problem is the incredible pressure on Warne and McGrath to take all the wickets, but a perhaps bigger one would be the pressure on Ponting and Gilchrist to score big, all the time. Now take away one of those players, and things are even harder.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

So out of interest, as its pretty unrelated to the core topic of the thread, how would you answer the question I posed earlier?

How good would Bangladesh be with Ponting, Gilchrist, McGrath and Warne added to the team?

That's the real problem with your argument, I think. Obviously your main point is fine, being that these four players didn't make the West Indies a consistently competitive team, but I think you're unfairly questioning the worth of these players by expecting a bit too much of them.

Imagine taking Bangladesh as they currently are and adding Bradman, Sobers, Hobbs and Gilchrist. Arguably the four best players ever in their respective positions, and you can substitute any of them as needed. I still don't think Bangladesh would be a great team under such circumstances, nor do I think they would win the vast majority of their matches. If you matched up that team against Australia currently (switch Gilchrist for someone else, obviously), Australia would still end up winning most of the matches because of the consistency of their lineup, and the same would be true if you replaced Bangladesh's bowlers with the 4 best bowlers ever, or their top order with the 4 best batsmen.

While great players can manufacture results on their own, and being able to do so is one of the most important tests of the greatness of a player, it's impossible for any individual player or even a small group of players to consistently win games without half-decent support. If you put McGrath, Warne, Ambrose and Donald or whoever in with 6 average international batsmen who could consistently manage a decent total they'd win a lot of matches even without any stars, but if you gave them a team who couldn't average more than 20 each they'd still struggle over a lengthy period, no matter how well they bowled. I don't think it would be a major indictment on the abilities of these unquestionable greats that they couldn't always win matches from nowhere with such mediocre support, and the same goes for the likes of Lara and Ambrose.

 

[marc71178]

Just to clarify, it wasnt the last 30 tests. Just that Lara, Chanderpaul, Ambrose, Walsh played in a total of 30 tests together in total from 94-00.

The way I see it is that taking those 30 games you have the problems of Chanderpaul being not yet established, whilst Walsh and Ambrose were beginning to wane - so there was no time when all 4 were at the peak of their powers.

 

[honestbharani]

The title of the thread was very tongue in cheek.

I know why they lost games and it is because the WI team was not very good.

It was interesting to see how people justified them losing (or not winning as much as could be expected)

I absolutely do NOT buy into the fact of having 4 great players does not make a team. Unless the rest of the side is made up of mushrooms they should still be a good team.

The problem (IMO) is that apart from Ambrose the others mentioned (Lara, Chanderpaul, Walsh) are held in a higher esteem than they deserve and the word great is overused. Something I intentionally added in my posts.

Lara is obviously a great due to the sheer weight of his statistical performance, but has there every been a player in recent times that had been a product of numbers and style over substance?

The thread was in response to what seems to be a fondness for WI cricket (no bad thing) that leads people to not truly evaluate their worth.

WI cricket is on the down and down and it is just as simple as a numbers game (small populations) and poor development (players are no longer able to use English cricket as a finishing school).

It is interesting to read people saying that, apart from the 4 guys I mentioned, all the players were terrible and yet people are still talking of players with promise and ability that will obviously not mature into top class players.

To conclude, I dont dislike WI cricket. It just seems that it is subject of so many delusions and daydreams by cricket supporters around the world.

Lara is one of the greatest batsmen EVER. He has the numbers, the style, substance everything to prove it. Even those who believe that Sachin is better than him will not deny the fact that he is one of the GOATs. So I am not sure what you meant there about him being rated high only because of his style etc.

 

[PY]

he is one of the GOATs.

Best acronym ever.

 

[honestbharani]

Best acronym ever.

its been around for a no. of years now. Just the first time I used it.