[Not so] Huge statistical analysis on greatest ODI batsman and bowlers ranked

[ankitj]

Abbas and co against Garner and co.

 

[Bolo.]

When you have two contemporary batsmen who bat in the same team, I look where they batted. The team itself knows who are the best batsmen in the team and they will bat in the top order.

Klusenar was RSAs best ever bat by a huge margin until a number of years after he retired, and he batted mostly around 7. Mediocre top order bat, best ever lower order bat.

Conversely, Amla was a great opener, but would have been absolute garbage in the lower-middle.

Roles count in odis.

 

[Migara]

Dean Jones, Martin Crowe, and Aravinda de Silva were special players of the time. They were the first to sort out how to play reverse swing in their own ways. Played very similar horizontal bat game too.

 

[ankitj]

I am inclined to say Abbas was proto-Kohli. Abbas's strike rate is mighty impressive no matter how you look at it. He retired in 1985 and has better strike rate than likes of Ponting, Hayden, Gibbs and even Ross Taylor. 5 out of 7 of his hundreds were scored at 100+ SR and another one at 98.xx.

I have lot of time for Abbas and Jones. They made my all time ODI XI before Kohli and de Villiers nudged them out.

Since we were talking about remarkable SR of Abbas, I quickly took ratio of batsmen SR and benchmark SR, and these are the top 20:

Rank	Player	SR	Benchmark SR	SR Ratio
1	GJ Maxwell	123.37	85.28	1.45
2	JC Buttler	119.51	85.28	1.40
3	IVA Richards	90.20	66.07	1.37
4	V Sehwag	103.56	76.56	1.35
5	Zaheer Abbas	85.04	64.99	1.31
6	AC Gilchrist	97.34	74.49	1.31
7	A Symonds	92.87	75.38	1.23
8	AB de Villiers	100.39	81.57	1.23
9	ST Jayasuriya	90.77	73.81	1.23
10	L Klusener	89.91	73.12	1.23
11	JJ Roy	107.28	87.41	1.23
12	JM Bairstow	102.92	84.69	1.22
13	DA Miller	100.60	84.29	1.19
14	A Flintoff	88.88	75.37	1.18
15	GS Chappell	75.70	64.22	1.18
16	SR Tendulkar	85.65	74.00	1.16
17	Ijaz Ahmed	80.34	69.58	1.15
18	PA de Silva	80.61	70.24	1.15
19	ME Trescothick	85.18	74.35	1.15
20	SK Raina	92.87	81.57	1.14

So Abbas was as destructive as Gilchrist. And quite amazing to note that Chappell is slightly higher than Tendulkar.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Longevity adjustment is too much for my liking.

Agree with this

 

[ankitj]

Agree with this

Interested in knowing which players got over or under adjusted. In current scheme if your career span is 9 years, you get a multiplier of 1.0 while if your career span is 24 years, you get 1.4

 

[ankitj]

And for completeness sake, only ER comparison:

Rank	Player	ER	Benchmark ER	ER Ratio
1	Rashid Khan	4.11	5.38	0.76
2	J Garner	3.10	4.05	0.76
3	SM Pollock	3.72	4.71	0.79
4	CEL Ambrose	3.51	4.43	0.79
5	SP Narine	4.13	5.17	0.80
6	Sir RJ Hadlee	3.34	4.11	0.81
7	PS de Villiers	3.56	4.37	0.81
8	MA Holding	3.33	4.05	0.82
9	Saeed Ajmal	4.19	5.09	0.82
10	Mohammad Nabi	4.32	5.22	0.83
11	Mohammad Hafeez	4.21	5.06	0.83
12	M Muralitharan	3.96	4.71	0.84
13	GD McGrath	3.91	4.64	0.84
14	JJ Bumrah	4.56	5.38	0.85
15	GR Larsen	3.77	4.44	0.85
16	MD Marshall	3.54	4.16	0.85
17	DL Vettori	4.15	4.86	0.85
18	EJ Chatfield	3.58	4.12	0.87
19	AME Roberts	3.40	3.90	0.87
20	CA Walsh	3.84	4.40	0.87

Bit annoying how Rashid Khan won't move from near the top. Haha

 

[Victor Ian]

Ive not a big fan of open ended longevity adjustments. I dont think it is a skill. It is muddied by things like the strength of your team when you begin or finish or your previous fame giving you long rope to hang yourself with. I think i have always been more in favour of something like, your best period.
Dhoni is a great example. People now think he deserves to be lower in lists now. No!

 

[ankitj]

Ive not a big fan of open ended longevity adjustments. I dont think it is a skill. It is muddied by things like the strength of your team when you begin or finish or your previous fame giving you long rope to hang yourself with. I think i have always been more in favour of something like, your best period.
Dhoni is a great example. People now think he deserves to be lower in lists now. No!

I think longevity adjustments correct for those factors. You stick around for longer for those factors you mention, your stats deteriorate and longevity adjustment corrects for that. If you stats don't deteriorate despite those factors, you deserve all the bump in rating. Ponting jumps from #29 to #12 with longevity adjustment which seems fair ranking to me.

Also, adjustment is non-linear, it is sub-linear so not exactly open ended.

 

[Victor Ian]

I think longevity adjustments correct for those factors. You stick around for longer for those factors you mention, your stats deteriorate and longevity adjustment corrects for that. If you stats don't deteriorate despite those factors, you deserve all the bump in rating. Ponting jumps from #29 to #12 with longevity adjustment which seems fair ranking to me.

Also, adjustment is non-linear, it is sub-linear so not exactly open ended.

Just to clarify, I wasn't poo pooing on your list. I'm in the peak values tribe versus whole career tribe is my real point.

 

[ankitj]

Ok, that's a reasonable point.

 

[Migara]

Interested in knowing which players got over or under adjusted. In current scheme if your career span is 9 years, you get a multiplier of 1.0 while if your career span is 24 years, you get 1.4

That is way too small. Players who could play for 9 years is way more numerous than 1.4 times than ones that can do for 24 years.

 

[Migara]

Ive not a big fan of open ended longevity adjustments. I dont think it is a skill. It is muddied by things like the strength of your team when you begin or finish or your previous fame giving you long rope to hang yourself with. I think i have always been more in favour of something like, your best period.
Dhoni is a great example. People now think he deserves to be lower in lists now. No!

I think it is a skill, because that shows the skill of keeping their fitness going and keeping their interest going, and not getting distracted by the fame. Definitely a skill.

 

[ankitj]

And re-inventing the game several times.

 

[honestbharani]

Yeah the 2000-2016 period saw more messing with the ODI game than ever before. And you do have to hold the 90s players to the no ball over shoulder height gift they had as batsmen. That + the 15 over rules (2 catchers and only 2 in the deep) meant the game was STACKED against the bowlers for openers.

 

[Flem274*]

i miss the circa 2015 era of odis. if you had good bowlers you were always in the game, if you had bad bowlers you conceded 350. it was extreme cricket. no surprises the wc semi finalists had most of the world class bowlers.

it's what probably makes mitchell starc the goat odi bowler, and many others in that era will also be looked upon favourably in 20 years.

 

[stephen]

Yeah the 2000-2016 period saw more messing with the ODI game than ever before. And you do have to hold the 90s players to the no ball over shoulder height gift they had as batsmen. That + the 15 over rules (2 catchers and only 2 in the deep) meant the game was STACKED against the bowlers for openers.

But at the same time scoring was a lot harder in ODIs in the 90s. As the ball got older it got softer and particularly under lights it got very hard to see after about 35 overs. Chasing in some places was very difficult. Pitches also had more life in them in the 90s.

 

[honestbharani]

yeah, hence I said openers right at the end there, not all batsmen. Agree MO batsmen had it harder than openers then for sure.