How good a bowler was Dennis Lillee?

[Richard]

'Tis as good as anything.

 

[Richard]

Might be because regardless of that fact that his performances outside those 4 tests puts him in a place where a lot of people, fans/commentators/colleagues alike, still view him as the greatest ever? At the very least, mixing it with the 2-3 best.

I don't think they do, though. Mixing it with the very 4-5 best, maybe yes. I can't see that there's any case for him being better than Marshall, Hadlee, Imran Khan, Ambrose or McGrath, and I'd tend to rate Donald as an equal at least too.

There are still those who outperformed him even if the subcontinental success question is completely ignored.

 

[archie mac]

The most uproar in favour of appointing neutral umpires was made by none other than Imran Khan.And Lillee is expected to make lame excuses as he failed in Pakistan.In those,every country used to have biased umpires to favour the home team but on wickets on which Lillee failed,its not possible for umpires to be much biased.And regarding LBW appeals,almost every good bowler when he gets frustrated after going for runs without taking a wicket,he makes unncessary LBW & caught
behind,same is the thing Lillee would've most probably done after getting smashed all around the ground in that series.And,I don't understand how umpires would only benefit Imran Khan as it is said that they were most biased towards Sarfaraz & weren't fondy fond of Imran Khan.

You seem to keep missing the point that no one gives a rats, about those three Tests, it makes no difference to anyone when deciding if Lillee was a great bowler, give it away this argument is silly

 

[archie mac]

I don't think they do, though. Mixing it with the very 4-5 best, maybe yes. I can't see that there's any case for him being better than Marshall, Hadlee, Imran Khan, Ambrose or McGrath, and I'd tend to rate Donald as an equal at least too.

There are still those who outperformed him even if the subcontinental success question is completely ignored.

So what are you basing it on stats? Very poor form if that is all

 

[archie mac]

A stretegic insertion of a "some" would indeed be more grammatically correct, and leave less room for mistaken interpretation. Hope you're happier with the amended version?

Yes

 

[archie mac]

Why the 'bridge' Archie_Mac

Did I not use it right?

 

[archie mac]

Torn between wanting this thread locked on the grounds of general direness, and wanting to keep it open to see how many more pages the anti-Lillee camp can generate from 4 tests where conditions weren't just "not green-tops", they were horrendous for any quick, and where Lillee was screwed by the umpires.

Matt79 that is a very simplistic view of the anti-Lillee argument, although a major factor, they have other supporting evidence such as:

The Lillee persona; apparently Lillee hoodwinked a number of judges including Benaud, Richards, Marshall, Hadlee etc. it seems his attitude and moustache somehow hypnotized these great players and commentators. Following this theory we should also discount all of Lillee’s LBWs and caught behind wickets as he obviously would have conned the umpires as they were much closer and therefore more susceptible to the Lillee powers.

His failure in the West Indies; stress fractures I hear you cry? Not a bit of it the facts are he failed in the West Indies, no excuses.

WSC; he played in the Packer Circus so therefore he is a traitor. A ridiculous simplistic view I hear you say? Not a bit of it, not sanctioned by the ICC so it don’t count, despite all of the players involved saying it was the toughest cricket of their lives.

 

[Dasa]

Ffs archie, it's pretty damn poor of you to continue painting people in that light. People (perhaps with the exception of BhupinderSingh) aren't saying Lillee wasn't great. People are saying that he isn't the indisputable greatest. Why do you continue to misrepresent the argument? It has no intellectual merit, and frankly, it reflects poorly on you that you aren't able to argue the points actually made and have to come up with a straw man to bring down.

 

[Matt79]

The most uproar in favour of appointing neutral umpires was made by none other than Imran Khan.And Lillee is expected to make lame excuses as he failed in Pakistan.In those,every country used to have biased umpires to favour the home team but on wickets on which Lillee failed,its not possible for umpires to be much biased.And regarding LBW appeals,almost every good bowler when he gets frustrated after going for runs without taking a wicket,he makes unncessary LBW & caught
behind,same is the thing Lillee would've most probably done after getting smashed all around the ground in that series.And,I don't understand how umpires would only benefit Imran Khan as it is said that they were most biased towards Sarfaraz & weren't fondy fond of Imran Khan.

I wasn't talking about appeals - I was talking about decisions. And a ratio of 10-1 LBW decisions favouring one side over the other suggests a couple of things might be occurring: a) A gross mismatch between the relative strengths of the teams batting and bowling or b) there's a bias in the decision making. Now history, and the record, shows that whatever the strengths of the Pakistani and Australian teams, you wouldn't categorise the match-up as a gross mismatch. Lillee never had problems obtaining LBWs anywhere else in the manner he did in Pakistan.

If Lillee was the only player to allege a biased umpiring agenda in Pakistan in those days, your suggestion that he was just making excuses might carry some weight, but pretty much every tourist who went to Pakistan in that period came away disturbed, if not disgusted, by some of the umpiring that went on. Pakistan certainly wasn't unique in that respect, but it was one of the worst offenders. To show that I'm not being biased against Pakistan, I'm quite happy to acknowledge that for a long time visitors to Australia often had a very tough time of it as well - the record reflects this.

And in terms of excuses, if he wanted to offer one up, Lillee could site the fact that he suffered from severe dyssentry throughtout the tour that should have confined him to bed, if not hospital.

Imran might have been one of the vocal supporters of the idea of independent umpires, but so far as I'm aware, the credit can't be given solely to him. And just because he was in favour of the idea doesn't mean that he hadn't benefitted from it, or his opponents suffered. Maybe Imran was actually being a bit selfless in wanting to do the right thing by the game? Maybe, as you alluded to, he knew that some umpires in Pakistan disliked him and was sick of putting up with it. Maybe he was aware that at least two Aussie tours nearly ended prematurely when players almost voted to abandon the tour in protest of the biased umpiring, and that other tours had experienced similar problems and he was concerned about the reputation Pakistan was accumulating.

And as for why this would only benefit Imran and not Sarfraz, I never said it would. Imran probably did better out of the two of them because as a bowler, Sarfraz wasn't fit to lace up Imran's boots.

 

[SJS]

Did I not use it right?

I thought you were playing with words as is your wont

The word is umbrage.

 

[SJS]

Matt79 that is a very simplistic view of the anti-Lillee argument, although a major factor, they have other supporting evidence such as:

The Lillee persona; apparently Lillee hoodwinked a number of judges including Benaud, Richards, Marshall, Hadlee etc. it seems his attitude and moustache somehow hypnotized these great players and commentators. Following this theory we should also discount all of Lillee’s LBWs and caught behind wickets as he obviously would have conned the umpires as they were much closer and therefore more susceptible to the Lillee powers.

His failure in the West Indies; stress fractures I hear you cry? Not a bit of it the facts are he failed in the West Indies, no excuses.

WSC; he played in the Packer Circus so therefore he is a traitor. A ridiculous simplistic view I hear you say? Not a bit of it, not sanctioned by the ICC so it don’t count, despite all of the players involved saying it was the toughest cricket of their lives.

In the Imran versus Laillee debate that has been cropping up again and again, I was always amused at the vehemence of those supporting Imran. The vehemence with which they talked of Lillee's one Pakistan series to pull him down.

Imran has featured a lot in cricket debates involving sub-continental supporters over time but mainly in the all-rounder debate. Indians have tried in vain to shore up Kapil and given up due to the claims of Botham but Pakistani fans have refused to yield to Botham However much one may have disagreed with that, one understood that Botham's decline as a bowler in the latter part of his career made for a very convenient stick to beat him with.

Then started a debate that has, it would seem, even lesser merit. Between Lillee and Imran as a bowler. Most cricket writers and great former players have rated Lillee amongst the very greatest to grace the game and few of them have talked similarly of Imran - a great bowler at his peak nevertheless. One need not go into those names again. And yet Imran came into it (or his supporters rather) with the same fervour and the argument of the 'failure in the sub-continent' has been the major weapon. Its funny the straws we clutch to in order to give the impression that we are swimming strongly. And you can always find straws in such debates but different straws for different arguments mind you. Something akin to shifting goal posts did you say ? Well not exactly but you get the picture.

I was so amused by this debate that I decided to test the nationalistic/regional bias in this debate and hence I started a Wasim versus Imran thread. The purpose was simple. To test the loyalties

I wanted to see what would happen. Wasim being closer to most (by time) and a youth icon for the current generation and being from the same country as Imran would surely test the greatness as it were of the incomparable Khan. And boy was I right.

Frankly I was not expecting the result we got. I had thought I would just loosen the loyalties to Imran a little bit. I never ever thought that Wasim would actually win that poll. But he did - 24-18 at the point of writing and that might as well be the final score.

I have absolutely no doubt that Wasim would be embarassed if some one said to him that he is a greater bowler than Lillee for that is one we could extrapolate some of the opinions to mean.

I am convinced that if there were another twenty years between the careers of Akhtars and Wasim's we could have had a debate between them with the fiesty Shoaib turning up ahead.

I think Lillee may, in another fifty years, find half a dozen sub-continental fast bowlers who are better than him.

 

[funnygirl]

am convinced that if there were another twenty years between the careers of Akhtars and Wasim's we could have had a debate between them with the fiesty Shoaib turning up ahead.

U mean generation gap ? .Imran has easily beaten Waqar another great from Wasim's era in another poll.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Ffs archie, it's pretty damn poor of you to continue painting people in that light. People (perhaps with the exception of BhupinderSingh) aren't saying Lillee wasn't great. People are saying that he isn't the indisputable greatest. Why do you continue to misrepresent the argument? It has no intellectual merit, and frankly, it reflects poorly on you that you aren't able to argue the points actually made and have to come up with a straw man to bring down.

I never said Lillee wasn't a great bowler.

 

[Dasa]

I never said Lillee wasn't a great bowler.

Well there you go, no-one is saying Lillee wasn't a great bowler. However, it seems any criticism of Lillee is automatically dismissed by some here, even when it's valid criticism and the criticism isn't made in order to call Lillee a poor bowler. Saying Lillee wasn't the greatest is no ****ing crime, it's akin to saying Viv Richards wasn't the greatest batsman since Bradman - some will disagree, but ffs this constant misrepresentation of any argument that doesn't fit the accepted view is tiresome and juvenile.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

You seem to keep missing the point that no one gives a rats, about those three Tests, it makes no difference to anyone when deciding if Lillee was a great bowler, give it away this argument is silly

When on earth did I say that Lillee wasn't a great bowler?

 

[Ikki]

I don't think they do, though. Mixing it with the very 4-5 best, maybe yes. I can't see that there's any case for him being better than Marshall, Hadlee, Imran Khan, Ambrose or McGrath, and I'd tend to rate Donald as an equal at least too.

There are still those who outperformed him even if the subcontinental success question is completely ignored.

Whoosh, it doesn't matter whether you think THEY do. THEY do see him as the best. THEY say he is the greatest, how can you possibly twist their words to which they'd give you doubt?

 

[Ikki]

Ffs archie, it's pretty damn poor of you to continue painting people in that light. People (perhaps with the exception of BhupinderSingh) aren't saying Lillee wasn't great. People are saying that he isn't the indisputable greatest. Why do you continue to misrepresent the argument? It has no intellectual merit, and frankly, it reflects poorly on you that you aren't able to argue the points actually made and have to come up with a straw man to bring down.

It's not so much that they're disputing he is the greatest, but they're disputing whether anyone else can really make that claim. Even disputing the very opinion of the very players that played with Lillee .

 

[Ikki]

I was so amused by this debate that I decided to test the nationalistic/regional bias in this debate and hence I started a Wasim versus Imran thread. The purpose was simple. To test the loyalties

I wanted to see what would happen. Wasim being closer to most (by time) and a youth icon for the current generation and being from the same country as Imran would surely test the greatness as it were of the incomparable Khan. And boy was I right.

Frankly I was not expecting the result we got. I had thought I would just loosen the loyalties to Imran a little bit. I never ever thought that Wasim would actually win that poll. But he did - 24-18 at the point of writing and that might as well be the final score.

I have absolutely no doubt that Wasim would be embarassed if some one said to him that he is a greater bowler than Lillee for that is one we could extrapolate some of the opinions to mean.

I am convinced that if there were another twenty years between the careers of Akhtars and Wasim's we could have had a debate between them with the fiesty Shoaib turning up ahead.

I think Lillee may, in another fifty years, find half a dozen sub-continental fast bowlers who are better than him.

That's, really, genius SJS. I agree with your thesis and agree that it was proved right.

 

[Richard]

Whoosh, it doesn't matter whether you think THEY do. THEY do see him as the best. THEY say he is the greatest, how can you possibly twist their words to which they'd give you doubt?

Eh?

I can't make sense of all of that I'm afraid.

 

[Richard]

Well there you go, no-one is saying Lillee wasn't a great bowler. However, it seems any criticism of Lillee is automatically dismissed by some here, even when it's valid criticism and the criticism isn't made in order to call Lillee a poor bowler. Saying Lillee wasn't the greatest is no ****ing crime, it's akin to saying Viv Richards wasn't the greatest batsman since Bradman - some will disagree, but ffs this constant misrepresentation of any argument that doesn't fit the accepted view is tiresome and juvenile.

My thoughts pretty much word-for-word, and I know ss thinks the exact same too.