Coronis
International Coach
Nah he sucked in New Zealand
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Marshall vs Hadlee (overall cricketers)
- Thread starter Bolo.
- Start date
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
I had to look it up but the following quote sort of applies here: Lao Tzu: "The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long."
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
Marshall was fantastic against top-quality batsmen but he had one serious weakness: he struggled against mediocre batsmen. That's why he did poorly against New Zealand in New Zealand:
And it's why he did badly against Sri Lanka in ODIs:
He was a nice person so he did not want to humiliate the New Zealanders in front of their own home crowd but you saw the real Marshall against them back in the West Indies:
Marshall knew that Sri Lanka were just starting out in international cricket and to give them encouragement, he let them have a few free runs against him, particularly since it was meaningless one-day cricket.
subshakerz
International Coach
As a sidenote, I always find it wierd that ATG performances against weakers sides, like Sobers against NZ, is somehow put against them.
ankitj
Hall of Fame Member
I have a simpler explanation. Some things are random and can't have a neat explanation.
smash84
The Tiger King
That's a bit circular though. Things that don't yet have an explanation are put as random.
Fuller Pilch
Hall of Fame Member
I'd hardly call Martin Crowe, John Wright, and Jeremy Coney mediocre.
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
It ... was ... a ... joke.
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
Yes, it can be a little strange when ATGs don't perform as well as you might expect against weaker teams but it shouldn't be held too much against them. It should be taken into account but not given as much importance as performances against the toughest opposition. There might be a logical reason why the greats sometimes struggle apart from the inherent statistical variation ankitj has mentioned (which can also have an impact).
In the case of Sobers vs. NZ, from what I've just read, he played four tests against them in NZ aged just 19 on unfamiliar wickets which were green and not surprisingly, he struggled.
For bowlers, the greatest weighting should be given to how they perform under the most difficult circumstances which would be against the strongest opponents and on the deadest wickets. This is possibly the main reason why Marshall might be the modal choice for greatest bowler ever.
There are analogies to this in other sports. Muhammad Ali (my first sporting hero) is often regarded as the greatest heavyweight ever because he fought three other ATGs (Liston, Frazier and Foreman) a total of six times and won five times. And even in his 1971 defeat to Frazier, he showed his greatness by getting up from a left hook from hell at the count of three in the 15th round and then fought better after the knockdown than before. Ali struggled with lesser opponents and had controversial wins over them but this is not really held against him historically because he performed so brilliantly when pitted against the very best.
Jordan (basketball), Nicklaus and Woods (golf) are held in such high esteem because of how well they performed in the biggest games or tournaments. The fact that Nicklaus never won the Canadian Open (even though he finished second seven times!) is not held against him.
Conversely, Greg Norman is not rated extremely highly historically because even though he was the world #1 for 331 weeks (behind just Woods since the rankings started on April 6, 1986), he won just two majors while finishing second eight times.
Closer to home, there are many Kiwis who regard Kane Williamson as being as good if not better than Hadlee. This is just ridiculous. He does not have a good enough record against the top teams and especially away from home:
Average against:
Australia: 36.95
England: 36.85
India: 37.87
Away averages:
Australia: 42.85
England and Wales: 30.53
India: 33.53
South Africa: 21.17
These numbers make it hard to justify Williamson as even an ATG on a world level whereas Hadlee is unquestionably one on the world stage and while he might not be the bowling GOAT, he is in that conversation.
If you take the minnows out of Williamson's record, the results are catastrophic. By minnows, I mean Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Zimbabwe and the recent visiting third-string South African team who might have had only three regulars in it and were missing their frontline bowlers.
With the minnows:
100 tests, 8743 runs at 54.99, 32 100s
Minus the minnows:
64 tests, 4826 runs at 44.69, 16 100s
His average goes down by 18.7% and his number of tons is HALVED!
Now Hadlee with the minnows (Sri Lanka):
86 tests, 431 wickets at 22.29, 36 5WI, 9 10WM
Minus the minnows:
80 tests, 394 wickets at 23.19, 34 5WI, 8 10WM
His average goes up by just 4.0%, his number of 5WI goes down by just 2, from 36 to 34 and his number of 10WM goes down by just 1, from 9 to 8.
A test batting average of 44.69 is not THAT impressive but a test bowling average of 23.19 at 4.93 wickets per test is still outstanding.
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Not sure what they're smoking, but it must be good.
Coronis
International Coach
I’d like to meet these particular kiwis.
Yeah I’ll pick him in an ATG XI but I’ll pick someone else with no mercy to play an actual test with the amount of mediocre batsmen who exist.
kyear2
International Coach
Pretty sure Marshall was hurt / injured in that NZ series.
kyear2
International Coach
He injured his back in the first match and it bothered him through the series. The main reason he played on was because Holding retired and Garner was also ill and had to miss the remainder of the series.
We did have our problems there though, and for varying and some unknown reasons.
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
I know one of the unknown reasons. His first name was Fred, the first syllable of his surname was very, very misleading, and he is now unalive.
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
No, I'm wrong. He was one of the "varying" reasons.
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
Just to repeat what I said, I was only joking! I'll use their nicknames. Hogan was a near-great while Shake averaging 37.82 as an opener and The Mantis averaging 37.57 back then meant that they were very good (even excellent?) test batsmen.
Swamp Witch Hattie
School Boy/Girl Cricketer
Just to correct myself, Wright actually averaged 38.11 as an opener. His overall average was 37.82.
kyear2
International Coach
I have and do believe the lower order batting can be a factor in test cricket. I also believed that it's come to a point where it's severely over rated on this forum. It's come to a point where outside of Bradman, it's superceded and every other skill and player.
As I've mentioned previously and frequently, I believe that Sobers, Hammond and Kallis possesses the most valuable combination of skill sets in the game. You have an ATG batsman, at worst a 3rd or 4th change quality bowlers and top tier slip fielder. Two of them are totally excluded from any mentions of the greatest cricketers despite the fact that either of their skill sets have proven to be just as valuable if not more so than lower order batting and they have multiple of each. We do hear Kallis didn't bowl enough and Hammond wasn't an all rounder, what ever that means, and with no mention of their catching.
@OverratedSanity believes cordons are important but once it's to a certain standard and not below par, it's not that important and nowhere near vital enough to influence selection criteria.
@subshakerz believes that neither Hammond nor Kallis is close enough to Sachin in their primary skills for their bowling or catching to be a factor for selection or ranking. You have to be very close for it to be a tie breaker, no argument there.
Lower order batting can be crucial and be the difference in winning or losing close games, the extra runs can be useful to build decent scores to good ones.
No one's disputing that, but it's not a cheat code and it's not reliably consistent. It doesn't happen every match and hardly by the same players. There's a reason they are lower order batsmen, they aren't great or even test standard batsmen for the most part, and can sometimes build up averages in high scoring contests, while impacting the closer ones way less than would be imagined.
The same premise that @OverratedSanity has for slip fielders I have for lower order batsmen, once they are viable lower order guys, the likes of Marshall and Warne, it's good enough.
Hadlee admittedly is a perfect medium, he's somewhere between a McGrath and Imran, undisputably a top tier pacer, likely behind only Marshall and said McGrath, but with the added batting to his repertoire. It can be argued that he is the closest to Bradman and Sobers and just a matter of preference or opinion. As bowlers, I do prefer Glenn and Malcolm as bowlers for reasons offered previously, but in the fewest words, they were consistent everywhere and were best able to take the pitch out of the equation, for me that's invaluable.
The reason I'm less willing to factor in secondary skills for bowlers are that there's only 4 of them and especially not for the opening bowlers, as it impacts more than the 6 batsmen. McGrath and Hadlee are close for me, but it's not a disservice for the latter, they're both in my top 6 and absolutely top tier ATG's. But yes, it's definely close and I wouldn't argue with anyone who believes he's more valuable than Marshall either, I would disagree, but wouldn't fight you.
The thing with secondary skills are they are depreciated, and the say way one wouldn't expect Kallis so win games with any regularity with the ball, it's equally unlikely for these guys to do so with the bat. The only secondary skills where these guys are legitimately great and at the higher end more reliable are in the slips. Now I'm not saying that any one secondary skill is more important than the next, but that's what everyone here does. The same way games have been saved by lower order batting, games have been won by 5th bowlers and just as many by great cordon play and lost by inconsistent ones. But that's largely ignored here, in fact I would place a wager that Kallis won more matches with his 5 wicket hauls than Imran did via his hundreds. Also doesn't require a deep YouTube dive to see how Smith, Kallis and deVilliers contributed to SA wins, or Lloyd, Richards and Richardson or Taylor, Waugh and Warne / Ponting did for theirs, and we can keep going...
But why do we only focus on the bowling guys, why do we say Hammond or Kallis isn't close enough to Sachin to be rated higher, but Imran close enough to McGrath? Kallis and Hammond brings two additional, and equally important and more reliable skills. As good as Imran was with the bat, Kallis and Hammond were better in the cordon and equally reliable as 5th bowlers. We just rated Hammond 10th, and Imran 8th, what's the difference? Hammond's true average is in the 60's as his post war exploits shouldn't factor into his legacy.
I'll say this, ideally a team should have a good 5th bowler, a great cordon and good no. 8 bat, but we've decided that only one is important and worthy of sacrificing the primary skill to fit it. Especially since you wouldn't chose a batsman averaging 30 to win or save you tests, but somehow believe a bowler averaging that will regularly. Yes it's a bonus, but not to the extent that we believe, and definely not worth giving up bowling prowess to achieve.
shortpitched713
International Captain
It only looks that way because Imran and Hadlee aren't much of a drop off in bowling quality than Marshall and McGrath, respectively.
For that reason it ends up looking like lower order batting is valued more than highest level bowling. But actually, I'd simply call it something of a quirk in history that it ended up being the case, as in years after the 80s (and even most of the decades prior to then) , all-time level bowlers ( Ambrose, McGrath, Steyn, Murali, Warne etc. ) simply weren't able to have any valuable batsmen amongst them. Heck, even promising looking ones like Cummins, ultimately found it too difficult to be real all-rounders in modern Test cricket, so just concentrated on the main skill.
You could argue that it means the 80s bowlers were of a less professional standard, and not even that good compared to more recent ones, but I don't like that argument. If you look at baseball, for example, a sport that really discourages "all-rounder" type output you still end up with generational 2 way talents like Ohtani once in a blue moon, so to me, a disproportionate amount of all-rounders in one era doesn't serve to minimize some of them having reached the peak of bowling heights at the same time.
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