Michael Vaughan v Michael Atherton

[iamdavid]

And the batting around him wasn't as good as Vaughan has - it was often a case of "get Atherton and Stewart and you've got England."

Atherton, Stewart and Thorpe

 

[garypleavin]

This is a very hard choice for me to make I admire Mike Atherton for his many fantastic knocks that he has played for England but the same can be said about Michael Vaughan.
Mike Atherton held that England team together for more than a decade and added to that was the most valued wicket to have. Michael Vaughan has been in a much stronger lineup and has played great knocks(like against India on Monday on a 4th Day pitch).

I'd go for Michae vaughan beause he travels better and Atherton at the same stage had played much less mach winning/saving knocks than Michael Vaughan.

 

[Richard]

I don't think his first innings 83 was anything special at all

Why not? He scored runs - that's all you can ask for. A chanceless 83, unless the pitch is obscenely flat (which that one wasn't - it didn't offer as much as Headingley, Lord's and Edgbaston did that series, but it still did something - at one point he played-and-missed 4 times in a row at Walsh) is always a good knock.

and of course Ambrose and Walsh were over the hill... They were comfortably better than the other West Indian bowlers coming up but that doesn't mean they were at their best.

I honestly can't see why not. They were as accurate if not more so than ever (Walsh especially) and were still capable of moving the ball both ways off the pitch. Ambrose's average did not go up in the final stages of his career, and Walsh's went down. For me, that says that if anything they got better as time went on.

I did watch the series with great interest since I would usually come home from school around the time the matches used to start. I haven't really seen Athers whole career and that is why I am not participating much in the debate but from what I have seen, although he has played some good knocks with his back to the wall, esp. that Jo'burg effort and another one against RSA in 98 (even though he was plain lucky in that inning, and so were England to actually win that series thanks to Javed Akhtar), from what I saw of him, he was a guy who was also not very good on a flat track when it comes to adding value to the team. That is why I think the scales should be tilted even when comparing him with Vaughan.


But as I said, I never really followed his whole career and hence, can't be the best judge of this one. Personally, I would rather vote for Vaughan because I think he is as that much off Athers on a difficult track as Athers is off Vaughan on a flat track....

Scoring fast on flat decks isn't essential, y'know. In any case, there were times, on the (not especially common) occasions he batted on flatter ones that he did score at reasonable speed.

 

[Richard]

However I dont agree with the notion that Vaughan's golden patch wasnt worth what its made out to be due to his offering of early chances. Dropped catches are a part of cricket and I think it's petty to hold them against the batsman being let-off, I'm sure you cant say with any certainty that Atherton didnt recieve a degree of good luck in some of his 16 hundreds, and the manner in which Vaughan made those runs was priceless.

Dropped catches are a (regrettable) part of cricket, but they're not a part of good batsmanship. Purely and simply, had Vaughan not been dropped such an inordinate number of times in very few innings, he'd not have scored anywhere near the number of runs he did.

Yes, Atherton will have had some good fortune in his career (never more so that the glove down the leg off Donald in the Trent Bridge second-innings in 1998 which was given not-out) but never such a crazy amount in so few innings. Anyone who benefits from that is in with a very good chance of scoring massively - look at Mohammad Yousuf between Dec 2005 and Oct 2006.

 

[Richard]

I do think Atherton is underrated because he had to face in his career: McGrath, Warne, Donald, Pollock, Ambrose, Walsh, Wasim, Waqar and Mushtaq. Not many freindly bowling attacks there. And the batting around him wasn't as good as Vaughan has - it was often a case of "get Atherton and Stewart and you've got England." I honestly think he'd average at least 45 against today's Test attacks. PS - I know I didn't mention Murali but he only played agaiunst SL four times in Tests and Vaas got him out most of the time anyway.

And he was brought in too early, and was troubled on at least 2 occasions in his career when his always-lingering back condition worsened, and when he should have stepped aside but felt he could not.

I reckon he could very easily average 50-plus against today's attacks had he not suffered from his akylosing spondylitis - if Mark Richardson could, he certainly could.

 

[Richard]

Michael Vaughan has been in a much stronger lineup

I honestly don't think he neccessarily has.

Atherton batted regularly with the like of... Gooch, Smith, Hick, Stewart, Thorpe, Ramprakash, Hussain, Butcher. Vaughan with Atherton himself, Butcher, Hussain, Stewart, Thorpe, Trescothick; and later on Strauss, Bell, Pietersen, Flintoff and Read\Jones\Prior.

I'd say Atherton generally had better team-mates - they just faced much stronger bowling-attacks and much tougher conditions.

 

[Scaly piscine]

I honestly don't think he neccessarily has.

Atherton batted regularly with the like of... Gooch, Smith, Hick, Stewart, Thorpe, Ramprakash, Hussain, Butcher. Vaughan with Atherton himself, Butcher, Hussain, Stewart, Thorpe, Trescothick; and later on Strauss, Bell, Pietersen, Flintoff and Read\Jones\Prior.

I'd say Atherton generally had better team-mates - they just faced much stronger bowling-attacks and much tougher conditions.

England's more recent batting lineups have better strength in depth, in Atherton's day there was usually 1-2 obvious liabilities/weaknesses, also a few times there was a bowler who bats a bit at 7. Whereas for a while now England have a competent top 6-7 and used to have Giles at 8 who would hang around a fair bit. I doubt Hick, Ramprakash, Hussain and Butcher in their younger days would make the team nowadays on merit.

As for the conditions, they couldn't have been that much tougher - if you look at the averages of Gough, Fraser and Caddick they aren't particularly low.

 

[Richard]

That's because Gough and Fraser suffered regularly from injuries, and Caddick from breakdown in various things. If you look at how conditions actually were rather than just simple overall career bowling-averages you'll probably get a better picture. On the fairly rare occasion there were three, sometimes even four, bowlers bowling well at the same time, batting in England was very tough indeed for tourists.

There have been weak-links in England's batting pretty well any time in history. The time when it was strongest recently was probably about 2002 and 2003, but since Stewart left the wicketkeeper's almost always been a liability; Strauss has been a liability for most of the last 2 years; Trescothick was almost always something of a liability; Vaughan was poor for most of the time when he was opening; Flintoff has been a liability on many occasions; the list goes on (and no, I'm not even going to bother mentioning Collingwood).

England's batsmen for most of the past 5 years have been types who can feast on average bowling and often disappear on the rare occasion the going gets tough.