*Official* Australia in India ODIs 2019/20

[artvandalay]

Im out at sea but your 'all odi stats suck' island is still a ways off

Batting wise in the 90s a guy averaging 35+ and Striking at 70+ was very good bordering on world class. For bowlers nowadays conceding 5 rpo is a good days work if you pick up 2 wickets but with a 250 par score conceding runs at that same rate would be very costly. That might give some idea how to weight stats for each era.

 

[sunilz]

I am not getting into a stats comparison but to me, as someone who has followed the game with a passion since the 90s, I don't see any reason to think the bowlers today are somehow inferior overall to the ones in the 90s and noughties. There may not be stand outs like the ones Sunilz mentioned but there are no Ian Harveys bowling 8 overs a game either.

Looks like you have forgotten TVS 2003 CUP final

 

[honestbharani]

I didn't. Hence why I am saying its the kind of bowling attacks teams can no longer get away with. Its part of the evolution of the game itself.

 

[stephen]

Bowling stats
Last 10 years:
Bowling records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

2000s:
Bowling records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

1990s:
Bowling records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

Batting stats
Last 10 years:
Batting records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

2000s:
Batting records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

1990s:
Batting records | One-Day Internationals | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

Other than Kohli, the batsmen of this era have played less ODIs than in the 00s and they're on a par with the 90s. This can be explained by most of the top batsmen of the era only playing for half of the decade. But the top bowlers have played far less despite most of them being around for the majority of the decade.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I am not getting into a stats comparison but to me, as someone who has followed the game with a passion since the 90s, I don't see any reason to think the bowlers today are somehow inferior overall to the ones in the 90s and noughties. There may not be stand outs like the ones Sunilz mentioned but there are no Ian Harveys bowling 8 overs a game either.

What's with the inexplicable digs at Ian Harvey? He was better than the majority of ODI bowlers of his time. If you want to take a dig at Australian bowlers of that time there are much better targets. Symonds, Lehmann, Clarke often bowled 10 overs between them.

Anyway I don't think there's much doubt that the best bowlers don't bowl much in random ODIs these days compared to the 90s. It's barely even a comparison.

 

[Daemon]

Don’t think hb is disagreeing with any of that. He’s just playing down the impact its had slightly and bringing up some other factors which have contributed to easier batting.

 

[honestbharani]

What's with the inexplicable digs at Ian Harvey? He was better than the majority of ODI bowlers of his time. If you want to take a dig at Australian bowlers of that time there are much better targets. Symonds, Lehmann, Clarke often bowled 10 overs between them.

Anyway I don't think there's much doubt that the best bowlers don't bowl much in random ODIs these days compared to the 90s. It's barely even a comparison.

I dunno why you take it personally. For Ian Harvey, you can put Chris Harris, Robin Singh or any other no-rounder of that period and my point is the same. And as Daemon said, I am not disagreeing that bowlers are rested but I don't think it is as big a factor as what T20 has done to the game and batting at large. And again, maybe the best bowlers rest more in ODIs since 2015 (although I think it was happening from the beginning of that decade itself) but the quality of the bowlers overall in the bowling attack, I think, has gone up. While the average runs per match and therefore all similar run related metrics may have gone up, I am willing to bet it is more due to the rise of T20 cricket and how it has redefined LO batting than saying something like "the average batsman today's plays much easier conditions and bowlers". I just don't think it is such a big deal.

 

[Daemon]

Yeah, I think you can’t underestimate the impact that a generation of kids growing up training for and playing limited overs cricket will have on the game. Unfortunately batting had more scope for improvement in that regard than bowling, and the rules have only served to facilitate that gap.

 

[honestbharani]

TBF though Daemon, apart from the two new balls neutering spinners to an extent, I think the rules today are better than the 90s and even the noughties with the silly power play rules and super-subs. I feel the rules are more straight forward at the very least today, and that does help the bowlers a fair bit.

 

[honestbharani]

https://www.cricket.com.au/news/mar...ia-india-third-odi-series-test-t20/2020-01-20


Virat has just been so so genuine and nice to opposition players for the last many years now.

 

[vcs]

Yeah, finger spinners being relegated purely to a containing role and a lack of reverse swing after 35-40 overs makes things less interesting. We used to have guys like Murali, Saqlain, Ajmal (if we consider him a bowler), and even Ashwin who was a very good ODI bowler upto 2017 or so, being wicket taking options through the middle overs.

T20 era has made bowlers better and more consistent at bowling yorkers at the death though.

 

[h_hurricane]

ODI stats are virtually meaningless right now for these reasons:

1) Two new balls has homogenized the skills in the one day game substantially. There is now little difference coming in to bat in the 20th over or the 40th from a conditions perspective. The ball is still hard.
2) Because of point 1, long innings' are favourable to shorter innings. If one or both of your openers don't fire, your side is probably going to lose. If one of your openers gets out after facing a decent number of balls but before going large it's going to hurt you more than if they got a duck.
3) Bowlers have been marginalised so much that you basically have to be an ATG bowler to be any kind of threat.
4) The main difference between grounds now is not the pitch (which are universally roads) but the size of the ground itself. The big 5 Australian grounds see much lower totals only because they're larger and see more 2s and 4s that would otherwise have been 4s or 6s on other grounds.
5) Sides are not bowling their best attacks regularly. The best bowlers of the last decade have played a third the one dayers that players of previous eras did. This means that these bowlers are less experienced than the batsmen they're facing and it means that the batsmen get big statistical boosts by facing second string attacks.

None of this in any way diminishes Kohli's accomplishments, but if this is the way the game is headed, there might be a permanent divide in ODI stats between pre-2015 players and post-2015 players, just as there is between pre WWI and post WWI batsmen in tests.

Agree mostly here but a couple of obvious misses.

1) Leading quick bowlers of any era (especially non sub continental ones) played less ODI cricket than leading batsmen from these countries.. For instance, Curtly Ambrose played only 176 ODIs in 12 years, Allan Donald 164 in almost 12 years. And their careers coincided with a period of massive increase in popularity of ODIs. Sub continental quicks of course played more ODIs (Akram, Younis, Srinath, Vaas etc) but still less than batsmen from these countries (Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, Jayawardene, Afridi for instance).

Modern batsmen are not at a particularly great advantage compared to earlier batsmen in this aspect.

2) Australian grounds being big does contribute to lesser sixes (I am not so sure about fours), but it is easier to run twos and threes there. Mishits often land in empty spaces due to the huge open grounds. I don't think there is a massive difference between scores in Australia and other countries like India in the recent years.

 

[vcs]

There were some massive scores in the 2015 WC over there. This one was relatively moderate in terms of very high scoring matches, which made it so much more fun.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Agree mostly here but a couple of obvious misses.

1) Leading quick bowlers of any era (especially non sub continental ones) played less ODI cricket than leading batsmen from these countries.. For instance, Curtly Ambrose played only 176 ODIs in 12 years, Allan Donald 164 in almost 12 years. And their careers coincided with a period of massive increase in popularity of ODIs. Sub continental quicks of course played more ODIs (Akram, Younis, Srinath, Vaas etc) but still less than batsmen from these countries (Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, Jayawardene, Afridi for instance).

Modern batsmen are not at a particularly great advantage compared to earlier batsmen in this aspect.

Mitchell starc has played 88 odis in 10 years.

 

[vcs]

It might not be correct to draw a general conclusion purely on the basis of Starc's example, though.

If I have to rate Starc as an ODI bowler, he's the greatest and most destructive WC bowler I've seen by a distance, but I would have to put him below some of the ATGs of previous generations, just because he's played so little ODI cricket overall.

 

[srbhkshk]

Mitchell starc has played 88 odis in 10 years.

Yeah but Starc is a glass cannon who used to break down every second series, if you look at other top bowlers of different sides - Bumrah , Boult , Rabada etc. don't miss anywhere near as much a limited overs cricket when they are fit. Starc is an outlier and using him to prove things is disingenuous.

 

[stephen]

TBF though Daemon, apart from the two new balls neutering spinners to an extent, I think the rules today are better than the 90s and even the noughties with the silly power play rules and super-subs. I feel the rules are more straight forward at the very least today, and that does help the bowlers a fair bit.

The rules are cleaner and more refined than before but I really do miss old ball ODI cricket.

 

[h_hurricane]

Mitchell starc has played 88 odis in 10 years.

Most frontline bowlers play less compared to the frontline batsmen (around 5-7 ODIs less per year). This was mostly the case 20 years back also. Ambrose vs Lara or Donald vs Kallis comes to mind. Another example is Inzy vs Waqar.

Starc has played a lot less ODIs since 2015 WC but there are the likes of Bumrah and Rabada who have played 15-17 ODIs per year since debut.

 

[stephen]

There were some massive scores in the 2015 WC over there. This one was relatively moderate in terms of very high scoring matches, which made it so much more fun.

The grounds where the big scores were made were not the premiere grounds, or were complete mismatches (Australia vs Afghanistan at the WACA where Australia scored over 400 while no other team scored more than 200 at the ground).

The only exception was one match at the SCG between Australia and Sri Lanka where both sides scored over 300 and Australia scored 370 odd.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I dunno why you take it personally.

Why would you think I would take it personally? It was just a bizarre choice to use an example because he was one of the better bowlers

Mitchell starc has played 88 odis in 10 years.

Aus have barely picked their frontline bowlers in ODIs in that time, unless it's a World Cup, doesn't surprise me at all. Cummins, Starc and Haze all playing this current series is a pretty freakish occurrence.

Compare this to the 90s/early-00s and McGrath, Lee, Bracken etc. played the vast majority of matches.