Richardson vs. Atherton (Tests)

[Ikki]

God, so many points there.

1) Ikki was clearly using an analogy to suggest that the end effect is the same regardless of intent, rather than comparing Richard to a murderer per se.

2) Richard doesn't back up his own opinions with arguments though; he forms his opinions and then holds fast to them regardless of any evidence presented to refute them. This is, at best, childish (the automatic gainsaying of anyone who disagrees is just contrariness rather than an argument, which to my way of understanding is an evolving discussion to establish a contention or hypothesis) but is made downright annoying by him presenting his ideas as facts with lashings of adverbs.

3) Richard isn't obliged to reply to every post individually, nor is it necessary when he's making the same point over and over ad ****ing nuseum. He does have some volition in this regard.

4) Richard has a healthy grasp of stats, if a somewhat distorted way of interpreting them, but this isn't the same as being knowledgeable on cricket. He's quite prepared to say such-and-such isn't and has never been a good bowler despite never having even seen them. Cricket is a sport played on grass strips not stats guru, to paraphrase Swervy.

5) When over 60% of posts on a page don't show up because I have him on ignore it makes it very difficult to follow the thread and when other posters quote him his wisdom shows up anyway, so one can't escape him.

6) Richard demonstrably is bordering on malicious. He posts, quite without irony, stuff like "I hope Hayden fails every time he goes to bat" & "Nothing is more upsetting than seeing a mediocre bowler succeed". This makes him come across as petty and small-minded and could even be considered malicious. If Richard just had some odd ideas about the sport there wouldn't be an issue, but he's an awfully long way from the cross between EW Swanton & Mother Teresa you seem to see to view him as.

A-****ing-men.

 

[Prince EWS]

While Atherton certainly did both these things, I'm not sure about your timing. Atherton was quite ready for Test cricket by 1990, and in fact that was one of his best years. Only late on in that year did the AS come to light - he was even playing pain-free for much of it. You could say that 1990 was the peak of his powers. Ideally, he'd have debuted that year, having gone on the A-tour in 1989/90 that he did. Sadly, he was pitched in for a couple of Tests in the previous summer due to the general chaos of 1989, when just out of uni, at a time when he was unsurprisingly not up to very much.

See, I have my doubts about this. While 1990 was one of his best years, he followed it up with two very poor years in 1991 and 1992 (admittedly he barely played in 1992, but still). While he was clearly identified as a talented batsman at a young age and whilst he showed this on the Test area in 1990, I really don't think he was truly at the peak of his powers until 1993. At the end of 1992 he averaged 34.5 which I guess is a decent enough start to his Test career particularly if you exclude his first two Tests when he pretty much unquestionably wasn't ready, so "wasn't Test standard" was probably a bit harsh. However, when comparing him to someone like Richardson who only played Test cricket for four years and was a converted bowler at a late age, I don't think anything before his peak is too relevant, and his peak as a Test cricketer was, for mine, between August 2003 and March 2007 when he played the exact same amount of Tests as the number Richardson played in his whole career and averaged more than 50 at a time batting conditions were much harder.

Essentially he achieved more in that little period than what Richardson did in his entire Test career and whilst I generally think Athers was wholly average after that point, the fact that he was able to maintain his place despite no longer being at his best is a credit to him rather than a detraction of what he achieved earlier in such a comparison. As I said before, if I was comparing him to someone who had a longer period of productivity it'd count against him, but Richardson entire career spanned a very similar amount of time to Atherton's peak.

Anyway, I think the only thing we really disagree on regarding Atherton is the exact timing of his peaks and troughs - it's not worth it when there are so many less finicky things to discuss.

 

[Prince EWS]

Secondly, batting conditions were easier during the era in which Richardson played his cricket. Without reading more than two or three posts in this thread, I'm still fairly confident that this issue has dominated discussions. Whilst I think some people take this fact a little too far, particularly when "guessing" that this phenomena would have a more pronounced effect on some players than others to suit whatever their argument is, it cannot be denied.

Excluding games involving Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the ICC World XI altogether, these are the global batting averages of top-7 batsmen by year:

1988 - 31.93
1989 - 42.62
1990 - 35.02
1991 - 37.63
1992 - 34.47
1993 - 37.75
1994 - 36.15
1995 - 34.35
1996 - 36.40
1997 - 34.30
1998 - 35.75
1999 - 31.07
2000 - 37.97
2001 - 38.66
2002 - 43.36
2003 - 40.72
2004 - 38.74
2005 - 38.74
2006 - 38.39
2007 - 39.26
2008 - 39.66

Aside from exceptions in various years, it's slowly risen from the low 30s to almost 40. This is significant as it shows that Atherton's runs essentially meant more in the context of the matches he was playing than Richardson's, as well as being arguably "harder" to score. I'll actually set a base and use those figures to come up with weighted averages for them if soon if I have the time.

Richardson still comes out on top in terms of averages, which I found somewhat surprising.

Using a base of 35..

Atherton - 7,282 weighted runs @ 36.78
Richardson - 2,017 weighted runs @ 37.35
Atherton's peak - 3,178 weighted runs @ 49.66

Again, I'm not normally one to just look at a batsman's peak, but Atherton's scored more runs (and significantly more "weighted" runs) in his peak than Richardson did in his whole career.

 

[Richard]

Anyway, I think the only thing we really disagree on regarding Atherton is the exact timing of his peaks and troughs - it's not worth it when there are so many less finicky things to discuss.

Maybe, but any discussion is discussion IMO.

Provided it's civil, obv.

See, I have my doubts about this. While 1990 was one of his best years, he followed it up with two very poor years in 1991 and 1992 (admittedly he barely played in 1992, but still). While he was clearly identified as a talented batsman at a young age and whilst he showed this on the Test area in 1990, I really don't think he was truly at the peak of his powers until 1993. At the end of 1992 he averaged 34.5 which I guess is a decent enough start to his Test career particularly if you exclude his first two Tests when he pretty much unquestionably wasn't ready, so "wasn't Test standard" was probably a bit harsh.

The summer of 1990 was Atherton's coming. It should've been the time he debuted, but sadly thanks to the chaos of 1989, it wasn't. He did decently enough on the Ashes tour of 1990/91, though obviously you'd hope for better. 1991 against West Indies was where everything simply went badly wrong. He was in pain; the bowling was good; but even so, his average was shocking. And it's not like, as later (1996/97 and 1998/99), he was completely impaired. He himself says he "was sure there was some connection". That's it. Whereas later he has absolutely no doubt about it and knows that it was the sole cause.

He was far from the first good batsman to come unstuck in his first encounter with West Indies, of course, but that 1991 series is a considerable blot on his record. Possibly the biggest for my money, though on balance I think 1997 and 1998 is bigger as he was an established player and was pretty damn excellent either side of them. Both series' were among the biggest of his time, to boot.

1992 (and 1992/93) though, that's a bit different. For me, Atherton did about as well in those seasons as could really be expected. He'd had an operation to try to improve things, which took an age to recover from, the bowling (especially from Pakistan) was exceptional, he was unguaranteed of his place, and all these things just added-up to failure being almost inevitable.

Once he finally got a hand on a place again in 1993, it was quickly clear that 1990 had been no flash-in-the-pan, and that 1991 had merely been a temporary aberration.

 

[Richard]

Again, I'm not normally one to just look at a batsman's peak

I'm don't tend to comment extroardinarily often on players' peaks either, though they can sometimes be interesting. Plateaus, though, are rather more instructive. That is, peak being considered to be perhaps a year or two consisting of 15 or 20 Tests where a player performed well above his normal. And plateau being the vast majority of his career with the bits that afflict most players (or would if the stars aligned) being removed - ie, bad start, bad finish and any games where performance was reduced due to severe lack of fitness, removed.

As I've said, Atherton's it's fair to say was June 1990 to December 2000, with the series' in Zimbabwe 1996/97 and Australia 1998/99 knocked-out. Richardson's is basically his entire career against Test-standard teams (though in the end his average against Bangladesh isn't much to shout about, just in-keeping with those against other teams) from first game to last, though I suppose if you were being charitable you could knock off his last couple of games. This comes-out with 32 games (57 innings'), and an average of 45.53. Certainly far from disgraceful, but I'd still be inclined to rate it quite a bit below Atherton's 97 games (177 innings') and average of 41.54.

This is purely based on the difficulty the bowling presented (and note: NOT exclusively the quality of the bowling, but the quality of the bowling AND the pitches).

 

[PhoenixFire]

Haha, what? You're comparing Richard to a murderer? Great comparison there.

Seriously, it's actually pretty simple.
Richard has his opinions, and he has his own reasons and arguments to back up his opinions. He also has conviction and confidence in his opinions and will defend them to the hilt. To some this may strike as being delusional, but if you look at it from another angle, something very simple happens: Richard argues his point and doesn't back down or concede that he's wrong in his opinion, which pisses off the other guy because he believes that he is right in his opinion, but Richard must be delusional and wrong because in his opinion Richard's opinion is absurd.

And as far as 'trolling' goes, Richard doesn't exactly start topics in great numbers on his opinions, and most of these arguments come about invariably when a topic crosses his pet subjects, e.g. Hayden, first chance average etc etc. Richard will gladly put his opinion forward on such subjects, which is the normal practice of a discussion forum such as this, to which people will reply at great length to debate his opinion. While it seems this happens a lot, you have to remember that it tends to happen for two reasons: 1) new members who are uninitiated to Richard and this forum will be new to such ideas as Atherton>Hayden and the like so they will reply with eagerness, and 2) it takes two to tango; Richard isn't exactly posting and replying to himself with duplicate accounts just for the sake of it.

Regardless of your opinion on him, Richard is simply human with his own ways of operating. In my mind, certainly, he isn't right on quite a few subjects and while I've argued sometimes at length with him on subjects where I think he is wrong, I don't begrudge him because in the reverse, he thinks I am wrong on a particular subject, and it simply all comes down to opinion. Though, at times, I have to say Richard's posting style isn't entirely great in terms to stating opinion in that at times he seems to state it as a cold hard fact when it isn't, but that's a reflection of his deep belief in his own opinion set.

In short it seems to come down to a few basic things: Richard is knowledgeable on cricket. Richard has his opinions. Richard will defend what he believes is the right opinion. Other people think Richard is wrong and criticise him for thinking such things and get frustrated when he doesn't back down, when in fact that's what they are also doing with their opinions. Can you see the irony there somewhere?

And, for all the talk that goes on in regards to Richard I think you should put up or shutup. If you don't like his posts then don't ****ing read them, it's not too hard. And if you put him on ignore, leave it at that and stop whinging on about him, as it's boring and annoying and it doesn't help matters.

I'd also like to point out that regardless of opinions and whatnot, Richard has to be one of the least malicious posters I've ever encountered on the internet. A strange man with strange methods for the most part, he's a genuinely nice bloke and I think some of the insults leveled at him are not only poor but quite petty as well, stemming for the most part from frustration in not being able to argue him down.

Grey old mare ain't what she used to be, TBH.

Just about sums it up perfectly for mine.

 

[grecian]

God, so many points there.

1) Ikki was clearly using an analogy to suggest that the end effect is the same regardless of intent, rather than comparing Richard to a murderer per se.

2) Richard doesn't back up his own opinions with arguments though; he forms his opinions and then holds fast to them regardless of any evidence presented to refute them. This is, at best, childish (the automatic gainsaying of anyone who disagrees is just contrariness rather than an argument, which to my way of understanding is an evolving discussion to establish a contention or hypothesis) but is made downright annoying by him presenting his ideas as facts with lashings of adverbs.

3) Richard isn't obliged to reply to every post individually, nor is it necessary when he's making the same point over and over ad ****ing nuseum. He does have some volition in this regard.

4) Richard has a healthy grasp of stats, if a somewhat distorted way of interpreting them, but this isn't the same as being knowledgeable on cricket. He's quite prepared to say such-and-such isn't and has never been a good bowler despite never having even seen them. Cricket is a sport played on grass strips not stats guru, to paraphrase Swervy.

5) When over 60% of posts on a page don't show up because I have him on ignore it makes it very difficult to follow the thread and when other posters quote him his wisdom shows up anyway, so one can't escape him.

6) Richard demonstrably is bordering on malicious. He posts, quite without irony, stuff like "I hope Hayden fails every time he goes to bat" & "Nothing is more upsetting than seeing a mediocre bowler succeed". This makes him come across as petty and small-minded and could even be considered malicious. If Richard just had some odd ideas about the sport there wouldn't be an issue, but he's an awfully long way from the cross between EW Swanton & Mother Teresa you seem to see to view him as.

Agree totally. If you happen to be one of the ones he deems to "have a grudge", he's one of the most malicious and cantankerous posters around for me, who tries and succeeds to drive people of the forum, IMHO.

 

[Richard]

And the malice amongst those who quite obviously (to me and a good number of others) do have a "grudge" (agenda is probably a more accurate term - people bear grudges all the time) is quite blatant as well.

If I show malice towards such gutteral types, then yes, I make no apology for it, nor will I ever do so. Treat me poorly and I'll treat you poorly, simple as. Nothing wrong with that either. You turn the other cheek repeatedly all that happens is you get hit repeatedly. Only be nice to people who deserve it is my philosophy.

As for trying to drive people off the forum, well there's a tiny number I'd prefer the place without. If I've gotten rid of 1 or 2 posters who used to be such things, well, again, I'm pretty glad. It's pretty debateable whether I have though, much as I'd love to take credit for doing so.

 

[Uppercut]

I reckon this thread should be renamed, "Richard Dickinson- Malicious bastard or misunderstood?"

 

[Richard]

Perhaps more accurately, a new thread for that should be created and most of the posts from about halfway through be moved there.

Because there are some on-topic posts, not only in the majority early on, but in the minority later.

 

[PhoenixFire]

Would be much easier and practical if we just drew a line under all this and carried on on topic.

__________________________________________________________________________

 

[Richard]

I think you know, though, that a) a line being drawn is pretty unlikely and b) even if it is here, the matter will come-up again sometime, maybe soon, maybe not for a while. There've been threads about this before - all closed now, of course, for obvious reasons. Maybe these posts would be best shifted to one of them. With the closure remaining full in force, mind.

That would allow any discussions on the topic that may remain to be had without fear of the off-topics intruding once again.

 

[PhoenixFire]

Well I don't think it is too much to ask for people to stay on topic, I might be wrong, obviously. It would just be a lot easier for everyone involved if we were to keep this thread and to try and encourage everyoone to stay on toic.

Obviously if there is a reccurence (sp?) then I'll we'll see what needs to be done about it.

 

[Richard]

I'm fully in favour of CC threads staying on topic of cricket, not disputing that for a second. Just think that posts so violenty off-topic and so considerable in number might be best shifted to a more appropriate forum.

The discussion of such issues in CC pollutes in the extreme.

Moving the posts would essentially guarantee against any recurrance in this case.

 

[Prince EWS]

The posts about Richard > the posts about the posts about Richard.

 

[Richard]

 

[fredfertang]

Have been watching this thread with increasing amazement over the last couple of days – I learnt pretty quickly that Richard can be a tad caustic at times but that he can arouse such strength of feeling is remarkable and should be something in which he takes considerable pride – if posters want to have a sterile discussion with likeminded souls then I dare say they might be put off by his approach but the absence of that sort of rather tedious posting activity is what appeals to me here and, I would think, most regular contributors.

Anyway it’s no surprise to me that the ludicrous suggestion that Mark Richardson is fit to even be mentioned in the same breath as the mighty Athers has resulted in this thread going way off topic

 

[Lillian Thomson]

I reckon this thread should be renamed, "Richard Dickinson- Malicious bastard or misunderstood?"

It's possible to be both, otherwise how do you explain Margaret Thatcher?
If I was forced to vote on this poll it would be for Richardson due to his greater facial resemblance to Bob Hoskins.

 

[DingDong]

Well I think Richard's a fool.

 

[NZTailender]

but that he can arouse such strength of feeling is remarkable and should be something in which he takes considerable pride – if posters want to have a sterile discussion with likeminded souls then I dare say they might be put off by his approach but the absence of that sort of rather tedious posting activity is what appeals to me here and, I would think, most regular contributors.

AWTA. Argument with Richard often involve a great deal of mental work, and research. Quite stimulating, tbh.

Well I think Richard's a fool.

\_/