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*Official* West Indies Tour of England, JULY 9th to 25th, 2024-- 3 TEST MATCHES

Nintendo

Nintendo

Cricketer Of The Year
Howe_zat said:
The 'average' player doesn't hold on to their spot for a decade, or have much in the way of series-winning career highlights. I think people who do manage that are a fair chunk above.

Also I would argue that 2012-16 in England is more like the current era even though it was still very batting friendly elsewhere, especially in Australia, and we didn't really notice it at the time.
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Start of 2012 to start of 2017 is 33.3. Below the world mark for the era but still a fair way off where batting has been since 2016 (30.3).
 
Bijed

Bijed

International Regular
Nintendo said:
Bell's career (2004 to 2015) coincides with one of the best batting era's in test cricket history (2000 to 2016) and ended up averaging 42. I can't find the batting average by position for that era, but the overall mark is 34. That obviously includes tail enders. The sum of bell's career really isn't much better than the average player in that period. Feels a bit overrated, IDK.
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I think he gets publically overrated by former teammates etc but I don't know if that's genuine or just not not wanting to say anything bad against a former mate/player. Lots of casual fans in my experience just remember him as soft/minnow-bashing Bell which was not unreasonable for a decent chunk of his career but at best over-simplistic overall.

He probably could have achieved more but I don't think he was an egregious waste of talent or anything. I see arguments sometimes like "he'd have averaged high 30s in a tougher era" which is very plausible, but then with actual players who did average high 30s in a tough era, people (not necessarily the same ones tbf) say "they'd have averaged 40+ today" so I dunno.

I guess one other issue with looking at overall averaged for an era is there can be loads of people who were worse than that (and than Bell, for the purposes of this) but only play a few tests each, so someone like Bell has still been better that most batsmen, just not the ones who played lots because they were also good.

Mainly I feel he gets more over-discussed than overrated for someone of his essentially reasonably normal (imo) career. And yes, I contribute to that by jumping in to most Bell discussions that I find haha, so I get it

Edit: Some of these points got made by others in the time it took for me to type haha
 
Nintendo

Nintendo

Cricketer Of The Year
mackembhoy said:
I mean it's only harder to bat now as batsman are generally worse after a diet of white ball instead of red ball.

This England side a perfect example of this they've had to adapt into an ultra aggressive side as they don't have the technique to play like sides would in "one of the best batting eras".

So diminishing Bell is daft as he'd be like a god amongst men in this current side.
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Overall batting averages dropped ~4 runs between bell's career and the post 2016 guys. Bairstow's career mark is 36.5 (~6 runs under bell's). Obviously bairstow debuted in 2012, so some of his early career was in that more batting friendly period, but is he really that much worse than bell if you era adjust? Bairstow is the worst long term pre bazball middle order bat I could pick for this, FYI. Post mccullum he's keeping brook out, who's averaging 60 in test cricket so far. Bell's not a "god amongst men" compared to the current lot.
 
K

kevinw

State Captain
Nintendo said:
Overall batting averages dropped ~4 runs between bell's career and the post 2016 guys. Bairstow's career mark is 36.5 (~6 runs under bell's). Obviously bairstow debuted in 2012, so some of his early career was in that more batting friendly period, but is he really that much worse than bell if you era adjust? Bairstow is the worst long term pre bazball middle order bat I could pick for this, FYI. Post mccullum he's keeping brook out, who's averaging 60 in test cricket so far. Bell's not a "god amongst men" compared to the current lot.
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I'd have to look at a serious breakdown of their careers but YJB just seemed to have two series purple patches - NZ 2022 and South Africa 2015-16. Bell must have had a bit more consistency.
 
CartyDurham

CartyDurham

International Captain
kevinw said:
I'd have to look at a serious breakdown of their careers but YJB just seemed to have two series purple patches - NZ 2022 and South Africa 2015-16. Bell must have had a bit more consistency.
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Just had a look and YJB made 12 tons to bells 22

YJB is about 6 runs behind on average than bell
 
Nintendo

Nintendo

Cricketer Of The Year
kevinw said:
I'd have to look at a serious breakdown of their careers but YJB just seemed to have two series purple patches - NZ 2022 and South Africa 2015-16. Bell must have had a bit more consistency.
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Obviously bell>Bairstow. Can't get around that no matter how much mental gymnastics I apply. Issue was more the bell being way better than the current lot sentiment.
 
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