Is Moeen Ali the best ever test no-rounder?

[The Sean]

Jeez Jeff Wilson was an annoyingly talented bloke.

 

[Bahnz]

Yeah he had back injuries if memory serves.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Yeah he was a bit of a freak - good at basketball and athletics too and scored 66 points in a school 1st XV rugby match. He's married to a former Silver Fern netballer (Adine Wilson) and they have 2 sons so I hope there isn't too much pressure on their kids but they've got some excellent sporting genes.

 

[Bahnz]

Jeez Jeff Wilson was an annoyingly talented bloke.

Everyone in NZ cricket in the early 90's rated him incredibly highly. All the players from that era mention him in their biographies as a what coulda been type player. I do wonder whether he was all that or whether his subsequent success as an All Black affected people's perceptions of him. Tbh, his talents seemed somewhat limited at first glance - medium fast right arm over and lower order slogging - NZ cricket in the 90's was crawling with players of his ilk, very worthy of the no-rounder discussion. But he was only 19, and was already turning his mind to professional rugby at the time. Hard to know how good he might've been. He was bog-standard domestic journeyman when he came back to cricket a decade later, but you can't really take a decade off a sport like cricket and expect to make much headway.

There is that great story from when there was a Young Guns training camp in 93 and Dion Nash was talking himself up big time ahead of the 100m sprints the players were doing, only for the quiet spoken Wilson to beat him to the finish line by about 10 yards.

 

[Flem274*]

Rugby, league and cricket are poaching from each other all the time here, with some input from soccer (Oram) and hockey (Taylor, Seifert).

Fast bowling and back three/lock/flanker are all pulling from the same pool of tall ***** (Southee, Dagg, Jordie Barrett, Kaylum Boshier) and even the odd batsman too (Kieran Read).

If NZ, Australia and SA focused 90% of their talent into cricket like some nations already do there's no question who the best three sides in the world would be.

 

[Dendarii]

Every now and then there have been T20s between South African rugby and cricket players, and on one occasion it was the Spirngboks who triumphed.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series...th-africa-vs-springboks-806329/full-scorecard

They do make some allowances for the rugby players - I think they sometimes give them extra fielders and draft in a proper keeper (although in that match Butch James was keeping), but even so some of them are good cricketers who quite possibly could have made it if they'd gone for that rather than rugby.

 

[Bahnz]

I definitely remember at least 1 bloke from back in the 90's who was playing both Super 12 and SA domestic cricket concurrently. Can't remember his name, though a quick google leads me to suspect it was probably Dan van Zyl.

 

[Dendarii]

It was Dan van Zyl, although judging from his career span on Cricinfo, it looks as though he gave up cricket to focus on rugby. It probably became too difficult for him to play both, and rugby won out.

 

[Jayro]

Rugby, league and cricket are poaching from each other all the time here, with some input from soccer (Oram) and hockey (Taylor, Seifert).

Fast bowling and back three/lock/flanker are all pulling from the same pool of tall ****s (Southee, Dagg, Jordie Barrett, Kaylum Boshier) and even the odd batsman too (Kieran Read).

If NZ, Australia and SA focused 90% of their talent into cricket like some nations already do there's no question who the best three sides in the world would be.

You are reaching too far out based on surmise and presumptions --- what is to say given the supreme athletic past Windies would not topple the rankings and much more than what you would like to believe? In the same breath one would start to argue about Germany,US Or even China being the top cricketing nations.

 

[TheJediBrah]

You are reaching too far out based on surmise and presumptions --- what is to say given the supreme athletic past Windies would not topple the rankings and much more than what you would like to believe? In the same breath one would start to argue about Germany,US Or even China being the top cricketing nations.

What would be wrong with that?

Don't know you're triggered by this, nothing wrong about what Flem said.

 

[Nintendo]

I can't think of many. Botham as you mentioned.
Keith Miller maybe.
Shakib probably.
Possibly Vettori but mostly because NZ had terrible batting back then and no better spinner.
Imran Khan but from what I've heard he was alternatively a great bowler or a gun batsman but not at the same time.
Sobers much like Kallis might not have played much as a specialist bowler.

There was point's where sobers would have made the windies team as a bowler, he was initially picked as fairly lower order spinner, best case bowling allrounder AFAIK.

 

[Jayro]

What would be wrong with that?

Don't know you're triggered by this, nothing wrong about what Flem said.

Very WRONG - he is alluding to base the dominance on cricket field purely on height and athleticism and then somehow leaves the 'WINDIES' (who are arguably much more faster cohort than any other on planet) out of the equation which would be a crime by his own set up standards,so the post was full of casuistry ,also biased.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

There was point's where sobers would have made the windies team as a bowler, he was initially picked as fairly lower order spinner, best case bowling allrounder AFAIK.

That's sounds more like Steve Smith. The criteria for allrounders that we were talking about at the time was making the team purely as a bowler or purely as a batsman at the same time. It's certainly possible that Sobers might have made it purely as a seamer for a time in the 60's if he'd never been able to bat, but he was not a bowling allrounder.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Very WRONG - he is alluding to base the dominance on cricket field purely on height and athleticism and then somehow leaves the 'WINDIES' (who are arguably much more faster cohort than any other on planet) out of the equation which would be a crime by his own set up standards,so the post was full of casuistry ,also biased.

dude you are reading way too much into it. He just made a funny little hypothetical statement, and it was entirely correct. Sure he could have said it about the West Indies. Or China. Or USA. But he didn't, why does it matter?

He didn't say "these countries are the most athletic of all in the world". You made a massive leap and inferred it.

 

[Jayro]

dude you are reading way too much into it. He just made a funny little hypothetical statement, and it was entirely correct. Sure he could have said it about the West Indies. Or China. Or USA. But he didn't, why does it matter?

He didn't say "these countries are the most athletic of all in the world". You made a massive leap and inferred it.

No but he did say these three would be top three nations in cricket-- you are right he must be joking

 

[TheJediBrah]

No but he did say these three would be top three nations in cricket-- you are right he must be joking

No he's right, it would be pretty hard to argue otherwise. If even 50% more of the best athletes from those countries went to cricket (but all other countries stayed the same) they would almsot certainly be dominant.

You could probably say the same about West Indies though, and maybe England.

 

[Jayro]

No he's right, it would be pretty hard to argue otherwise. If even 50% more of the best athletes from those countries went to cricket (but all other countries stayed the same) they would almsot certainly be dominant.

You could probably say the same about West Indies though, and maybe England.

You are making huge claims yourself which will be too argumentative for nothing. Now you have stretched the number of countries to 5 from three - off course you are joking - next thing you would say all the countries of the world will dominate cricket except the subcontinents.

 

[Starfighter]

Can you two knock it off please?

 

[TheJediBrah]

You are making huge claims yourself which will be too argumentative for nothing. Now you have stretched the number of countries to 5 from three - off course you are joking - next thing you would say all the countries of the world will dominate cricket except the subcontinents.

what is your problem? It was a meaningless thing to say but there was nothing wrong with it. They're just facts. Cricket is more popular in the subcontinent, and already most of the best athletes would gravitate toward it, which is the only reason I didn't say those countries as well.

and btw, you're the only one that made it "argumentative". It was just a pointless statement until you took a massive offence to it for some reason.

 

[Starfighter]

Anyway when it comes no-rounderdom I think Brian Close makes a remarkable case to be considered top billing. He played in fewer tests than years of his career span (22 against 27), had a top score of seventy and took fewer wickets than tests played, with 23% of them coming in one innings.

His first class career was solid at best, scoring only fifty two hundreds in 786 matches and while he did manage more wickets (1171) an average of 26 was hardly exceptional at the time.