What you're saying there is fair enough mate, but I think LT's point is that IF we're going to remove performances against "minnows" (and whether we should or not is another question) then we should remove all of them, not just the ones that suit our argument.
But his point is myopic. Success against minnows does not matter as much (notice I didn't say "doesn't matter at all"), because the inherent argument is that they weren't good enough to challenge him. But failure against them - over 12 tests - is very relevant. It has nothing to do with suiting an argument IMO, it has to do with getting to the truth.
I agree with your stance, I just objected to LT's potshot at anyone who looks at stats.I think we're talking a crossed-purposes here Ikki because I don't disagree with a single thing you've said!
All I was getting at was the ben91/LT exchange - ben91 had gone down the exclude-minnows-to-make-a-player-look-worse route and taken out Sobers stats against India and Pakistan, but had conveniently left in his record against NZ. What I was saying - and what I think LT was getting at - is that you either include all three or exclude all three, rather than picking and choosing what stats to dismiss to suit the argument.
I wouldn't necessarily disregard failures against minnows, particularly with a decent size sample. I'd just ask for consistency of thinking with the number-crunching, which I don't think ben was providing.
According to your logic, only successes against minnows should not count...Then according to you it should be logical to remove all the innings of a player where he scored more than 40 (say) against a minnow...And all other innings should be considered...No?
I'm not sure I can say a definite yes to that because depending on the player and the context I may not agree.
You must have also seen what Ishant did to Ponting in Perth. I think isolated deliveries are not good enough to judge technique (and add to the fact the Dravid of today is almost a sitting duck against outswingers).
Couldn't put into words what I wanted to say...The Sean has expressed it better in post no. 623 in this thread...
Are you seriously going to use that as an example to downgrade Ricky Ponting? The fact that Ponting was able to hang in for so long to a spell of bowling like that is a greater testiment to Punter.
I was trying to address a couple of your points a) That Ponting doesn't look to struggle even when he is not in form. In that test, Ponting mas struggling even when in form. b) An isolated incident is not good enough to talk about techniques.
Warney's failure against Bangladesh means something now?
How does averaging 27 and striking at 47 count as failure?
I don't actually agree. Their record against the worst is a complete irrelevancy when it comes to Bangladesh in particular. How good a player is=how good they are at helping their team win cricket matches. It's always reasonable to assume that a real team will beat Bangladesh regardless of Warney or Ashwell Prince or Michael Clarke's performance, therefore how they do makes no difference. In the case of Warne, pretty much every first-class side he played in Australia would have been better than Bangladesh. Calling failure against Bangladesh a "blot on his career" is akin to saying "ah, but he never quite got the measure of New South Wales...Ben's method is wrong, if not opportunistic. If you're arguing why X is the best at something, his great record against the worst is hardly impressive. But his failure against the worst is certainly a blot.
EDIT, someone deleted their post?
But then, likewise, doing well against the best is all that's required. For if you do well against Australia for example, but fail badly against Sri Lanka and S.Africa, it shouldn't matter by that standard because you already did well against the team that is better than both of them. Then the player that did only well against Australia is just as good as the team that did well all 3 of them. I don't think it works like that.
No, that's not true. Noone would suggest that anyone was guaranteed a win regardless of an individual player's performance against Sri Lanka or South Africa. That's the case with Bangladesh, with very few exceptions.
We're not talking about whether a team would win or not if a player did/did not perform. Otherwise, by that standard it would make sense to rubbish lone-wolves like Murali and Hadlee because the sides that played them knew they didn't have to perform well against them for most of the times they played against them, they'd win regardless whether they were at their best.