How to think about longevity

[ankitj]

I can live with that top 4 of Imran, Hadlee, Marshall and Murali as my four man bowling attack in my ATG team. Will also bat till 10 which is a huge bonus. Wasim Akram will be my 12th man.

Wrong thread? Not that this thread has stayed on track.

 

[Bolo.]

I can live with that top 4 of Imran, Hadlee, Marshall and Murali as my four man bowling attack in my ATG team. Will also bat till 10 which is a huge bonus. Wasim Akram will be my 12th man.

The best 4 averages gives you an attack with 3/4 of the highest wickettakers, 3/4 of the best bats, and a group of bowlers who complement each other perfectly.

That is a bizzarely neat way for things to work out.

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

I do not believe this board appropriately values longevity and I think that’s partly because the statistical tools do not really exist in cricket to assess career value.

In baseball which ha smart similarities to cricket in terms of career length, statistical analysts have developed WAR (wins over replacement player) as an overarching value metric that takes into account a host of statistical factors, contextualises them and creates a single estimate to win contribution over a “replacement player”(ie the average player who could be picked up any time from the minor leagues). Over time this has become the gold standard for measuring baseball players. Generally a player with career WAR of 60+ stands a good chance of making the hall of fame, someone with 85-90+ is seen as an inner circle hall of famer, 100+ is truly elite

List of Major League Baseball career WAR leaders - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Jay Jaffa a well known analyst created JAWS which combines career and peak WAR and this is starting to take hold

The JAWS 75 for 75: Ranking the Hall of Fame's top players

In honor of the Hall of Fame's 75th anniversary, here are the 75 best Hall of Famers of all-time.

www.google.com

It would be great to see this for cricket

now the idea of a replacement player is not valid because that’s different in every team but I would compare to average

I've thought about this and it's a cool concept but WAR would be pretty difficult to determine in cricket. It helps that baseball has 150+ games per team a year.

 

[honestbharani]

The big issue is that cricket is far more conditions dependent than baseball.

 

[Shady Slim]

The big issue is that cricket is far more conditions dependent than baseball.

i think that a WAR model would have to account for conditions, but, conversely, the upshot of this is that it'd have to be so sophisticated, so complex, logistically it would be a nightmare.

and not to mention a cricket game would have so many more discrete inputs, every ball in fact, to go through such a model that making the model i reckon'd be quite the nightmare tbqh

 

[cnerd123]

Baseball also has more clear cut definitions of what a player contributes to a game in a certain role. Allrounders don't exist*, they don't have a billion fielding positions, and players don't have as many different styles (spinners vs seamers, openers vs middle order vs finishers, etc). Makes it much easier to compare a player with their next best alternative. Cricket team building is more fluid.

*yes I know about Shohei Ohtani, but he's a freak

 

[Lillian Thomson]

A bit surprised by the post suggesting that this forum doesn't value longevity or have the tools available to properly appraise players. Many of the greats have had their careers reduced to rubble by stats guru and their failure to maintain their peak until they died.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

Pleasantly surprised to see Wasim so relatively high on that list.

Majority considered Akram as the best bowler in the world during 90s.