Yes great post from Maximas. Look, ATG and all that are subjective anyway. Someone would say an average of 40 plus in most countries is needed to go with tons everywhere and a stellar record, someone else might give weight to performances in/outside the subcontinent, others might ask why it is inherently more important for Sanga or Sehwag to do well vs England in a England as opposed to Pak in Pak etc etc. Personally I would have batsmen in tiers. For me away performances carry most weight, particularly inside/outside the SC depending on where the player is from, how and when the player got those runs(for example a 17 year old Tendulkar scoring a ton on his first tour to England is definitely more impressive than someone else who takes multiple tours to do the same(not a dig at Sanga I promise), completeness of record which I give a lot of value to etc etc.
Of course it is also subjective and there is no hard and fast rule as such. As I've mentioned before, Ponting's average in the SC would be below 40; but the reason I don't hold it against him is he gunned it in 2/3 countries and his only real issue was Harbhajan Singh. He did well vs Murali in SL and the Pakistani fast bowlers in UAE and Pak, so India is his only blemish. His record is magnificent everywhere else and he has multiple tons in most place. As a rule of the thumb, if you have 3 or 4 tons(preferably a couple of them at least being great ones) in a place then even a lowish average is fine. From memory I think Lara averages low 40s in Aus but he got four magnificent hundreds there vs some of the best attacks ever assembled on a cricket field and it is over such a large sample size that is easy to pass off even a lowish average(not that 40 whatever is bad by any stretch of the imagination mind)....especially if there are other countries where they have gunned it.
With Sanga, for me the issue statistically is that even in the places he has done well he hasn't played too much...which basically reiterates OS' point. Ignoring the stats side of it, I genuinely think Sanga is vulnerable in adverse conditions...(of every batsman is but Sanga is more vulnerable than a batsman with 10k runs should be IMO). He is too loose outside his off stump and he has never been a truly great player of pace IMO and funnily enough, I don't think he is very good on rank turners either...despite his outstanding record against Pak(Ajmal). I think someone a little earlier said what is massively telling that if you had a discussion about the best players vs pace and the best players vs spin, Sanga wouldn't be among the first names you think of in either category even considering just recent players. Aside from that he's got a disproportionate amount of tons and runs vs the attacks that have been the easiest to score off post 2000 and he has managed a solitary ton against a team like Australia!
I posted this earlier but posting it again :
Tier 1 : Tendulkar, Ponting, Lara
Tier 2 : Kallis, Dravid
Tier 3 : Sanga(close to tier 2 now), Inzamam, Sehwag, Younis Khan, Jayawardene etc.
In fact if you take a look at say, Younis Khan's record, you would be surprised at how similar that record is to Sanga's...even Inzy's for that matter if you remove minnows. Now if we want to call everyone with a great average 50 plus ATG that is fine by mine...everyone's criterion is different. You could say some are lower tier ATGs and others are the gold tier etc....for me only a select few are genuine ATGs. I think the term is thrown around far too loosely these days....but anyway to each his own. Fervently hope he tonks a couple of tons vs Pak. It is a travesty that Pak are number 3 in the rankings after dropping a test to Zimbabwe and despite not having won a series anywhere since Jan 2012!
