How good is Sanga?

[Jassy]

Shouldn't be ignoring anything, bringing up how long ago he played somewhere was more to the point that he hasn't had the chance to rectify his record rather than to ignore what he has done in those places.

And again, that works both ways. He's not played in NZ since 2006 and I would argue that the record hasn't had the chance to worsen. Samarweera played 3 tests in SA and got two centuries....don't think he would have maintained that. It is still double standards to give him a pass in WI/Ind because that happened ages ago but cling on to matches played even before that.

 

[Gowza]

Of course didn't have the chance to worsen either, I'm not clinging onto anything, some countries he performed well in happened awhile ago, same for the countries where he has an average record.

 

[simonlee48]

if i had the choice between sanga and kallis playing for me in australia who would i pick? sanga averages a lot more from less matches but kallis's very good record is from a good number of matches. do you gamble with sanga that he'll maintain his higher average or do you go with kallis who is more proven over more matches?

I will always feel more comfortable with Kallis against better bowling units and venue comes much later. That's the way I see it. Why I am saying it,

Sanga against SA, Aus, Eng and NZ in his first 5 years: http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/en...6;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting

Sanga against SA, Aus, Eng and NZ in his last 5 years: http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/en...9;spanval2=span;template=results;type=batting

So you have 10 year period( 5 year in chunks) with 52 tests against 4 better bowling units and he has been pretty ordinary against them in that periods.

Now in middle period which has only 11 test, he performed like badman against these team. But just for total 11 tests : http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/en...5;spanval2=span;template=results;type=batting

You won't notice the above point if you simply look at his average but I noticed the same thing while following his career. I am not saying that we should not take good with bad but when it comes to having confidence in batsmen against better bowling units then I will pick a guy who puts up consistent good performance. Sanga's record hardly gives me confidence that he is going to do better than Kallis against better bowling units. I didn't even include Indian spinners in India track. Indians are over all not a good bowling unit but they do very well in their home conditions.

Pretty much, I won't think twice before taking guys like Dravid or Kallis over Sanga. You guys are going on and on about small sample size in each country and if he had more chance he can take his average higher or lower. Forget about all that, I have doubt about his ability to consistently play well against better bowling units. I am not talking about great bowling units here. I simply gave you 50+ tests in two chunks for Sanga against better bowling units. Those tests are played at home and away. So you have bunch of conditions.

With small sample size in any venue, you can't extrapolate his good or bad record. Good or bad in small sample size in each venue can be coincidence. But if you are going to be ordinary in all conditions against better bowling units in two very big period of your career( 10 years total, 50+ tests) then it doesn't give me much confidence. On what basis you guys are comparing Kallis with Sanga here?. It's clear to me that they are in different class by just watching them bat but I had to put all this here to make my point.
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It's the same trend if you want to still look at venue but you need to stick to when he got to play plenty of tests against better bowling units. He has played enough tests only in Eng / SA and he hasn't done that well in those places. So forget about extrapolating what he would have done if he had played more tests in each venue. I rate him below Kallis simply due to not having much confidence in handling the better bowling units. Nothing to do with venues here. That's the reason I said, he falls short of the likes of Kallis and Dravid.

 

[simonlee48]

Thread title - How good is Sanga? I will say he is very good otherwise he couldn't have scored so many runs. But he simply falls short of guys like Dravid and Kallis for me due consistently not able to score against better bowling units. Without looking at any stats , I always rated Dravid and Kallis higher because I suspected the same when looking closely at stats.

Venue comes much later for me, you got to first consistently score runs against better bowling units. Not talking about some great attacks at all here. Simply the top 4 bowling units of his era. All of them had varying quality at times but over all, it still give you a decent idea. Except for a brief period of 11 tests in middle, he has been very ordinary against SA, NZ, Aus and Eng for 50+ tests ( two chunks of 5 years period). Sure, he can play some good knocks and he has few good ones against them but that's expected from any good batsman. These 50+ tests are home and away for him so it's not a fluke with some 4-5 tests here and there.

Still a very good player and one of the best batsman. He can still score runs against better bowlers but I will feel a lot more comfortable with guys like Dravid or Kallis in my team.

 

[Dawood Ahmad]

Sangakkara is a batsman with an understanding and knowledge of the principles of building an innings by clearing out your mind throughout the sessions. Such people are born with such convoluted capability, qualification and strength which is very useful in all fields in this entire world. The natural blessings to him have played more role in his career than his own hard work and passion. Such a batsman can be countered easily by great bowlers of the era which makes me find his weaknesses and put them into black and white:
1. A yorker swinging exactly from middle stump to leg stump.
2. A shot delivery swing 6-8 centimeters away from off stump.
3. A full length delivery in swinging and not hitting leg stump with a speed above 145kph.

 

[Coronis]

Best post of the thread. My opinion of Sanga has been completely revised.

 

[smash84]

Sangakkara is a batsman with an understanding and knowledge of the principles of building an innings by clearing out your mind throughout the sessions. Such people are born with such convoluted capability, qualification and strength which is very useful in all fields in this entire world. The natural blessings to him have played more role in his career than his own hard work and passion. Such a batsman can be countered easily by great bowlers of the era which makes me find his weaknesses and put them into black and white:
1. A yorker swinging exactly from middle stump to leg stump.
2. A shot delivery swing 6-8 centimeters away from off stump.
3. A full length delivery in swinging and not hitting leg stump with a speed above 145kph.

:

 

[Dawood Ahmad]

Best post of the thread. My opinion of Sanga has been completely revised.

My post?

 

[OverratedSanity]

My post?

Yes. It was truly magnificent. If only you'd made the post 50 pages ago we'd have saved ourselves so much time.

 

[Dawood Ahmad]

Yes. It was truly magnificent. If only you'd made the post 50 pages ago we'd have saved ourselves so much time.

If thats the case, I am sorry.

 

[grecian]

I have a very good rating for how pointless a thread has become. It's would a post by Richard make it any worse. If the answer is no then it should be locked, inthe end Richard would improve this thread now IMHO.

Pointless twisting of stats and narratives just to try to prove to intractable people on both sides you are right. is all tautology.

 

[ohnoitsyou]

Yes. It was truly magnificent. If only you'd made the post 50 pages ago we'd have saved ourselves so much time.

Its 2014 and people still don't know how to change posts per page?

 

[Maximas]

Its 2014 and people still don't know how to change posts per page?

Or don't care to?

 

[grecian]

I once got into an argument with Richard about posts per page, it was very dull, but still better than this thread.

I was in the wrong BTW because I didn't realise you could change it.

 

[Dan]

Of course Richard would complain about someone having a different PPP setting.

Dawood, what are your thoughts on Nick Knight and Adam Gilchrist as ODI batsmen? Or Gavin Larsen and Brett Lee as ODI bowlers?

 

[viriya]

Big scores:

I consider big score as 175+. Any team is pretty much as likely to win games with 175 runs as with 275 runs. It doesn't really add much for team after certain point. If some one batting at 4, makes 175+ then team is likely to get to 450-500 runs in vast majority of times.

SRT's 175+ score - Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo
Sanga's 175+ scores - Batting records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

Now, some will be quick to the point that SRT played more tests and still has the same number of 175+ as Sanga. True but let's look closely. Post 90s Pakistan has been a pretty ordinary bowling unit and gave most number of runs after BD in home games. Even early periods of Zim had better bowling unit which Sanga didn't have to face but we will keep Zim as one.

It's clear that Sanga has a higher frequency of getting that big high impact score. Even considering the opposition quality - if Sanga played the same % of matches vs different teams as Tendulkar (with vs India % replacing vs SL %) and the same # of innings as Tendulkar, he would have 16 big hundreds (175+ by your definition) with 9 vs "quality" opposition and 7 vs "weaker" opposition. This compares to 13 total for Tendulkar. So even when the opposition and # of innings factors are neutralized, Sanga has a higher propensity to get a big score.

Match winning performances:
I often find this very difficult to quantify when comparing players. Let me explain why, with one simple example using Sachin's career itself.

• Sachin in 90s: 4 tons in wins
• Sachin in 00s: 12 tons in wins

Can we say that Sachin of 00s should be give more weight because he was a bigger match winner than Sachin of 90s? Not by a little margin, only 3 times bigger match winner. I hope I made my point.

Those numbers are pretty meaningless considering how India won only 18 matches (of 73 - 25%) when Sachin played in the 90s and 54 matches (of 127 - 43%) in the 2000s . He actually had the same frequency of getting a hundred in wins in the 90s as the 2000s (22%). Both India and SL were better Test teams in the 2000s, and Sachin made 9 of his 13 175+ scores in the 2000s.

That Sanga was the better Test match-winner is easy to see:

• Sanga averaged 74 in wins compared to Tendulkar's 62
• Sanga got 18 hundreds in 50 wins (36%) compared to Tendulkars 20 hundreds in 72 wins (28%)
• Sanga's hundred average in wins is 257 compared to Tendulkar's 224 (this includes not outs)
• SL has won 40% of Sanga's matches compared to 36% Ind wins for Tendulkar (Murali's influence is neutralized by the presence of Kumble and Harbhajan, and India clearly had the better batting line-up)

 

[ohnoitsyou]

Or don't care to?

look, if you honestly prefer 15 ppp then i'm not trying to stop you.

 

[OverratedSanity]

It's clear that Sanga has a higher frequency of getting that big high impact score. Even considering the opposition quality - if Sanga played the same % of matches vs different teams as Tendulkar (with vs India % replacing vs SL %) and the same # of innings as Tendulkar, he would have 16 big hundreds (175+ by your definition) with 9 vs "quality" opposition and 7 vs "weaker" opposition. This compares to 13 total for Tendulkar. So even when the opposition and # of innings factors are neutralized, Sanga has a higher propensity to get a big score.



Those numbers are pretty meaningless considering how India won only 18 matches (of 73 - 25%) when Sachin played in the 90s and 54 matches (of 127 - 43%) in the 2000s . He actually had the same frequency of getting a hundred in wins in the 90s as the 2000s (22%). Both India and SL were better Test teams in the 2000s, and Sachin made 9 of his 13 175+ scores in the 2000s.

That Sanga was the better Test match-winner is easy to see:

• Sanga averaged 74 in wins compared to Tendulkar's 62
• Sanga got 18 hundreds in 50 wins (36%) compared to Tendulkars 20 hundreds in 72 wins (28%)
• Sanga's hundred average in wins is 257 compared to Tendulkar's 224 (this includes not outs)
• SL has won 40% of Sanga's matches compared to 36% Ind wins for Tendulkar (Murali's influence is neutralized by the presence of Kumble and Harbhajan, and India clearly had the better batting line-up)

I think this has a case for bring the worst post in the thread yet. Utterly clueless use of stats. And I swear if anyone uses these useless average in wins/ hundreds in wins stats to prove that said player is a better match winner, I'll break the forum. Even more dumb is using player wins/no of team wins.

Got a bit of a headache trying to make sense of all the stats you vomited out. None of them make any sense whatsoever.

 

[simonlee48]

Those numbers are pretty meaningless considering how India won only 18 matches (of 73 - 25%) when Sachin played in the 90s and 54 matches (of 127 - 43%) in the 2000s . He actually had the same frequency of getting a hundred in wins in the 90s as the 2000s (22%). Both India and SL were better Test teams in the 2000s, and Sachin made 9 of his 13 175+ scores in the 2000s.

You ignored my data which showed Sachin as 3 times better match winner in 2000s when compared to 90 due to above explained reasons. And, yet you are taking the entire career 90s + 2000s for Sachin and only 2000s of Sanga for producing match winner stats? Do you see irony here.

That Sanga was the better Test match-winner is easy to see:

• Sanga averaged 74 in wins compared to Tendulkar's 62
• Sanga got 18 hundreds in 50 wins (36%) compared to Tendulkars 20 hundreds in 72 wins (28%)
• Sanga's hundred average in wins is 257 compared to Tendulkar's 224 (this includes not outs)
• SL has won 40% of Sanga's matches compared to 36% Ind wins for Tendulkar (Murali's influence is neutralized by the presence of Kumble and Harbhajan, and India clearly had the better batting line-up)

Anyway, Sanga has been pretty ordinary against better bowling units for majority of his career to really get into serious comparison with the likes of Dravid or Kallis so I won't really compare him with guys who are above. It doesn't make much sense. Even if you want to compare two players, you are doing it wrong way. Avg/tons in wins are meaningless because you are mixing team result with individual performance. That's what I was trying to convey by using Sachin's 90s and 2000s but you missed the point. Lara has probably only 6-8 tons in wins in his entire career but I will take Lara any day over Sanga for winning matches.

 

[viriya]

Sachin has 3 times the tons in wins in the 2000s because India won 3 times as many matches (being a clearly better Test side in the 2000s than in the 90s). To correct my previous post, he did hit tons more frequently in the 2000s (30% ton rate vs 22% in the 90s).

Obviously wins are not down to one individual, and especially Test wins are heavily influenced by having quality bowlers, but the Indian bowling unit was at least as good as SL's during Sachin's career and the batting unit was mostly better so the two are more comparable. Actually if you compare Dravid to Tendulkar you will most likely see that he was more of a Test matchwinner than Tendulkar.

Lara is a different story since the WI team of the late 90s and 2000s was decidedly weaker than India and SL so it would be an unfair comparison. This is not the case when comparing India and SL.