Most underrated and overrated players in the world?

[marc71178]

Because I don't say someone has to have bowled well just because they've got good figures.

But you do say that over a career it's impossible to have good figures without bowling well.

 

[marc71178]

Not when it's directly contradicted by what actually happened, no.

How is it directly contradicted?

You do not know what is going on in the batsman's mind.

You do not know how much pressure there is.

But you claim you do.

 

[Richard]

you use the strokes you watch from less than 1/5 of his career! and then you read match reports(which id like to see that state that mcgrath got all his wickets from poor strokes), the same ones that you state are wrong almost all the time.

It's not at all unusual for match-reports to describe, even if not in so many words, that there was something that was clearly a nothing delivery.

 

[Richard]

err his ER before the WC in 99 was 5. so dont throw in your random numbers whereever you feel like.

I'm not - his economy-rate after WC99 was 4.38-an-over - check it if you don't believe me.

no it hasnt, because hes been hammered on every single occasion that he played on a non seamer friendly tracks. and this track was certainly too seamer friendly for any performance to be considered as a good one.

Good figures are good figures.
If he's been hammered every time he played on a non-seaming track it'll even tracks like those out.

its 20 odd(dont even try to include performances against b'desh and scotland), and its not exceptional because he got to play on seamer friendly tracks during the world cup. the fact that hes was rubbish before the wc and after it, suggests that he was a rubbish player who peaked when the conditions suited him. who does that remind me off?

God knows - you like to throw that one on several players.
If you're referring to Bichel - funny, did Bichel play more before and after WC2003 than Allott did before and after WC99? Yes, funnily enough. Did he suffer a debilitating injury that very clearly affected his bowling according to everyone who watched? No in Bichel's case, yes in Allott's.
He was pretty rubbish before the World Cup but he'd played so little that one single competition made-up a lot of his career and meant that overall his record was not bad. Then he got injured.

why not? if someone cant buy a wicket in tests and has an average of 20 odd in ODIs @4.6(which means that he clearly wasnt accurate either), its damn obvious that hes not a wicket taking bowler. its simply impossible for someone to be wicket taking in one form of the game and not in another form of the game despite not being accurate. unless of course you have the conditions to your favour(which he was fortunate enough to have had for the wc 99). had he been fit and played more ODIs, he would have been exposed as the mediocre bowler that he clearly was.

No, he might have been.
On the other hand, if he'd played more Tests and not suffered a debilitating injury, his Test-record might have improved.
And will you stop trying to attach any meaning to the post-1999 games when his career quite clearly fits into two phrases in which he could take wickets in ODIs and could also bowl not-too-expensively and in which he couldn't do either.

have you ever seen a reflection of yourself? everything on here that you say relies on your picking and choosing the statistics you want, the stupidest of which are the ones where you say " if you remove his good performances, and look at his poor performances, you can see that hes quite clearly a poor bowler"

Have you ever thought that looking at things as a whole is more often than not very misleading, and that breaking down careers and identifying patterns is the thing that any true analyst of the game needs to be able to do?

well the person who you spoke to is obviously another fool, katich has proved the both of you wrong.

No, everyone on here would tell you that David Hoitink knows quite a bit about cricket, especially in Australia.

which is more than enough to decide whether or not someone is good enough against spin, especially if hes played all those innings on spinner friendly wickets and against a quality spin bowler.

Maybe it is if you've never seen them bat before - if you have seen them bat before and they looked decidedly poor against spin, it isn't.

 

[Richard]

no you've only claimed that he wasnt a great bowler, based on 2001-05

I've claimed that he's not bowled anywhere near as well in 2001-05 as is assumed looking at the statistics.

 

[Richard]

yes they are, someone like you says that a bicknell inswinger, that a batsman completely misjudges, leaves the ball and gets lbw is a wicket taking delivery, even though it was the batsman who made the mistake, yet when mcgrath gets a wicket as by product of creating pressure, you claim that its not a wicket taking delivery

Do you understand the difference between what is commonly described as "pressure" and clear confusion?
Bowling outswinger-inswinger-outswinger-outswinger-outswinger-inswinger-outswinger or something like that is always going to give the batsman precisely zero chance of knowing what's coming next, and he can never cover all eventualities so he can't be expected to avoid dismissal and if he's dismissed he can't be said to have played a poor stroke.
Someone who's just landing the ball on the same spot, restricting the scoring etc. is not making life at all difficult, given that limitless-over cricket does not require a fast scoring-rate. And that's all McGrath does.

 

[Richard]

But you do say that over a career it's impossible to have good figures without bowling well.

Yes, I do.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
Why does it have to work equally both ways?

 

[Richard]

How is it directly contradicted?

You do not know what is going on in the batsman's mind.

You do not know how much pressure there is.

But you claim you do.

I don't know for certain, no, no-one does.
But what I've seen does tend to suggest there's nowhere near as much as plenty - including those commenting with the benefit of hindsight - suggest.

 

[twctopcat]

Someone who's just landing the ball on the same spot, restricting the scoring etc. is not making life at all difficult, given that limitless-over cricket does not require a fast scoring-rate. And that's all McGrath does.

You can't be serious that mcgrath simply bowls straight, he moves the ball off the seam which is how he gets his wickets, and also extracts bounce which brings the unpredictable to the batsmen.

 

[Richard]

Of course he does - and on a seaming or uneven pitch there is no better bowler than McGrath.
But when the pitch offers neither, he only takes wickets because the batsmen play poor strokes.

 

[twctopcat]

The thing is Mcgrath nearly always finds seam and bounce however flat the track may be.

 

[Richard]

You can't move the ball off the seam (dangerously often) if the pitch isn't giving you the chance.
And you certainly can't extract uneven bounce unless the pitch is offering it to you.
And just because McGrath bounces higher than most bowlers doesn't make him more dangerous - do you see him getting loads of top-edged Hooks and Cuts?

 

[twctopcat]

You can't move the ball off the seam (dangerously often) if the pitch isn't giving you the chance.
And you certainly can't extract uneven bounce unless the pitch is offering it to you.
And just because McGrath bounces higher than most bowlers doesn't make him more dangerous - do you see him getting loads of top-edged Hooks and Cuts?

No but he gets lots of gloves and desperate jabs at getting bounce of a length that wouldn't usually surprise the batsmen. Of course the pitch has to be accomodating for a batsmen but whereas a track would appear flat and useless to 99.9% of bowlers in the world, invariably it wouldn't if Mcgrath was bowling on it, that's what makes him stand out.

 

[Richard]

No, McGrath cannot bowl good deliveries where others can't.
He just gets poor strokes where others don't.
His typical dismissal on a flat wicket is an innocous delivery outside off-stump that is played at when it should have been left and either edged of hit to an infielder. Or an innocous straight ball that has been blocked a million times and is missed this time.

 

[twctopcat]

If you say so.

 

[Richard]

Look at some footage, read some reports - you'll see it's true.

 

[SpeedKing]

No, McGrath cannot bowl good deliveries where others can't.
He just gets poor strokes where others don't.
His typical dismissal on a flat wicket is an innocous delivery outside off-stump that is played at when it should have been left and either edged of hit to an infielder. Or an innocous straight ball that has been blocked a million times and is missed this time.

McGrath is a smart and cunning bowler and deserves all the credit that he gets for those kind of wickets. McGrath time and time again out-thinks the batsmen with clever use of seam even on the flattest of wickets. Because he doesn't give the batsmen much to attack with his unerring line and exxagerated bounce, batsmen get frustrated and end up gloving having been worked over by McGrath.

You ave got to give the man credit because he has great stamina and is able to bowl long spells were batsmen are constantly under pressure. If you had not realised that pressure gets you wickets, then you haven't learned anything from the way Ashley Giles got is wickets last summer. He just kept wheeling away at a distinct line for long spells, like McGraths does.

You cannot just keep calling a player very lucky because yo do not like them.

 

[social]

No, McGrath cannot bowl good deliveries where others can't.
He just gets poor strokes where others don't.
His typical dismissal on a flat wicket is an innocous delivery outside off-stump that is played at when it should have been left and either edged of hit to an infielder. Or an innocous straight ball that has been blocked a million times and is missed this time.

These sort of statements indicate that you know next to nothing about the game.

If you had ever seen McGrath bowl live, you would realise that he is quicker than he looks, gets steep bounce and hones in relentlessly on a batsman's weakness.

Richard, you should stop this line of argument whilst you still have some credibility.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Like I say - the strokes are not purely opinion, they're totally factual.
The reason is the opinion, yes, and I've not claimed it's gospel that McGrath's career must have gone the same way 1993-2000, you'll never find that anywhere.

Oh no Richard, they are totally a matter of opinion. You seem to be focused on the shot itself whilst ignoring what's gone on before it. A bowler can set a batsman up to play a shot that appears to be absolutely awful, it's part of the art of bowling. You keep saying that a batsman with the right mental attitude shouldn't fall to a bowler like McGrath, but I doubt there's a batsman going around that hasn't at some stage or another......and some of the supposed best of this era have done so repeatedly.

What's a bad shot to you, is a well thought out set up to someone else. I'm not sure you're aware enough to pick up on what's being planned....and I'm not saying batsman never play bad shots to get out - but you have to look at what's happened beforehand to make that judgement. Declaring your opinion on something as 'fact' doesn't make it so.

 

[Son Of Coco]

McGrath bowls enough overs so that no batsman can score heavily without facing him.

Yet a batsman rarely ever scores heavily off him.....go figure.