Salamuddin's All Time Test Match X1

[silentstriker]

Did any of them acctualy play a lot of cricket with Lara?

And even if they did, what difference would it make? His stats don't change because they've played test cricket, and unless he's scored another 1000 runs that only previous test cricketers know about i don't really count their opinion as being any more valid than most people's on CW.

To add to that, there are a lot of members on here whose opinion I respect a lot more than most commentators. Also, some test players also put Tendulkar over Lara and its not as one dimensional as you make it out (Benauds all time XI has Tendulkar, as an example).

 

[Richard]

Yeah, who cares what test cricketers have to say about batting anyway

Err, where did I say that? I said being a former Test-cricketer doesn't automatically make you a better judge on the game than someone who's only watched it. There are countless examples of such a thing.

 

[Richard]

Sachin lacks finishing, he has left the team on the doorstep of victory so many times. On the other hand lara finshes what he starts...matchwinner

So many times... do you mean twice? That's all it is. And Tendulkar has set-up countless Indian Test victories at home and I don't even like to think about what their record away in the 1990s would be without him. They could quite possibly have come close to losing every Test.

And Lara has Ian Healy to thank for not being labelled "choker" too - had he taken that catch in that fourth-innings at Bridgetown WI would have lost that match by 7 runs and it'd be no different to that Tendulkar-vs-Pakistan game.

 

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

I would take Tendulkar for his consistency over Lara's big scores. Lara is very inconsistent (as can be witnessed from a lower average, despite numerous very high scores, as well as an article written by cricinfo which measured their consistency mathematically). Lara has the ability to be more dominating when on song, and can definitely score higher than Tendulkar, but Tendulkar can give you consistency which Lara cannot (and we are speaking of both of them in their primes, of course).

In any case, its one of those things that people will never agree on.

Regarding consistency, Lara was pretty sharp at that in his prime too. I don't know what Lara you've been watching.

Both Tendulkar and Lara have had prolonged periods when they struggled. The place that people get confused is that Lara's was before Tendulkar's, BUT Lara returned to be even more dominant than he was in his earlier years. Tendulkar's low point is currently in motion.

Lara and Tendulkar are about equal in my mind, and to say that Lara didn't offer consistency in his prime is rubbish of he highest order.

In 89 innings between 2000 and 2005, Brian Lara crossed 50 on 33 occasions - that's better than once every 3 innings. Of those 33 trips, he scored 17 hundreds. That's better than a 50% conversion rate. A total of 5371 runs, 17 hundreds, 16 fifties and an average over 60. In his next 18 innings since the end of 2005, Brian Lara has scored a further 3 hundreds and 2 fifties, meaning that he has 20 hundreds and 18 fifties in his last 107 innings, averaging over 58 and with more than 6100 runs in that time.

 

[rodzilla1010]

1) Hobbs
2) Hutton
3) Bradman
4) Hammond
5) Sobers
6) Miller
7) Flower
8) Marshall
9) Trueman
10) McGrath
11) Muralitharan

My 11 without using any players from that team

S Gavaskar
B Lara
V Richards
G Polluck
J Kallis
S Waugh
A Gilchrist
I Khan
S Warne
W Akram
C Ambrose

 

[silentstriker]

Regarding consistency, Lara was pretty sharp at that in his prime too. I don't know what Lara you've been watching.

Both Tendulkar and Lara have had prolonged periods when they struggled. The place that people get confused is that Lara's was before Tendulkar's, BUT Lara returned to be even more dominant than he was in his earlier years. Tendulkar's low point is currently in motion.

Lara and Tendulkar are about equal in my mind, and to say that Lara didn't offer consistency in his prime is rubbish of he highest order.

In 89 innings between 2000 and 2005, Brian Lara crossed 50 on 33 occasions - that's better than once every 3 innings. Of those 33 trips, he scored 17 hundreds. That's better than a 50% conversion rate. A total of 5371 runs, 17 hundreds, 16 fifties and an average over 60. In his next 18 innings since the end of 2005, Brian Lara has scored a further 3 hundreds and 2 fifties, meaning that he has 20 hundreds and 18 fifties in his last 107 innings, averaging over 58 and with more than 6100 runs in that time.

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/245575.html

 

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/245575.html

Doesn't exactly tell the whole truth about either player, as it doesn't detail them in their prime. Look at the stats that I gave and tell me that they're either wrong or that they don't portray Lara as pretty damned consistent in his prime.

The man scored a half century on average more than once every 3 innings. And 50% of the time he tended toward a century. And if I broke that down further into 150 and 200 conversion rate, it just gets even more impressive.

 

[rodzilla1010]

Doesn't exactly tell the whole truth about either player, as it doesn't detail them in their prime. Look at the stats that I gave and tell me that they're either wrong or that they don't portray Lara as pretty damned consistent in his prime.

The man scored a half century on average more than once every 3 innings. And 50% of the time he tended toward a century. And if I broke that down further into 150 and 200 conversion rate, it just gets even more impressive.

MXY your stat was much better than what is on cricinfo.

Nice effort dude.

 

[Richard]

Regarding consistency, Lara was pretty sharp at that in his prime too. I don't know what Lara you've been watching.

Both Tendulkar and Lara have had prolonged periods when they struggled. The place that people get confused is that Lara's was before Tendulkar's, BUT Lara returned to be even more dominant than he was in his earlier years. Tendulkar's low point is currently in motion.

Lara and Tendulkar are about equal in my mind, and to say that Lara didn't offer consistency in his prime is rubbish of he highest order.

In 89 innings between 2000 and 2005, Brian Lara crossed 50 on 33 occasions - that's better than once every 3 innings. Of those 33 trips, he scored 17 hundreds. That's better than a 50% conversion rate. A total of 5371 runs, 17 hundreds, 16 fifties and an average over 60. In his next 18 innings since the end of 2005, Brian Lara has scored a further 3 hundreds and 2 fifties, meaning that he has 20 hundreds and 18 fifties in his last 107 innings, averaging over 58 and with more than 6100 runs in that time.

I don't know about everyone but personally I'd count Lara's prime as being 1992-1995. From then on he's never been too far from a period of struggling. Though he did have a pretty sensational period from late 2001 to late 2003.

 

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

I don't know about everyone but personally I'd count Lara's prime as being 1992-1995. From then on he's never been too far from a period of struggling. Though he did have a pretty sensational period from late 2001 to late 2003.

If you saw Lara bat for the most part from 2001 to 2005, he was clearly in his prime, or at least as good as he ever was. I used to be scared when Lara came to the crease before then, almost expecting him to fail, but he batted so beautifully for the majority of that period that it was so clearly his prime. The results speak for themselves. Surely...

 

[Richard]

Oh, most of the time, undoubtedly, but I'll not long forget 6 out of the 7 Tests against us in early 2004 (we all know what happened in the other 1) when he looked as out-of-sorts as he ever has. Some people will just say "that was an exceptional England attack". Well... no, I don't think so myself. IMO it was just a lot of West Indians (and a few Kiwis) making it look rather better than it was. Aside from that, obviously, Lara was in sublime touch between that Lanka tour and the home Pakistan series, but there was pretty much no time between the breakthrough 277 at Adelaide and the NZ series at home in 1996 where he ever had anything more than 1 or 2 low scores on the trot. So IMO he was better - if only slightly - in that period than the 2001-2005 one.

And obviously, between that horror trot in Austalia in 1996\97 and the home SA series in 2001, he was never the force he had and would again be, though an average of 39.71 in that time is still hardly shoddy. And he now seems once again to have emerged from his latest slump of the 2005\06 and 2006 season.

 

[Anil]

Sachin lacks finishing, he has left the team on the doorstep of victory so many times. On the other hand lara finshes what he starts...matchwinner

in tests, how many times has he "finished" other than his 153 n.o? if healy hadn't put down that chance, that wouldn't have been a "finish" as well...

 

[oz_fan]

1. Jack Hobbs
2. Len Hutton
3. Don Bradman
4. Brian Lara
5. Sachin Tendulkar
6. Gary Sobers
7. Adam Gilchrist
8. Imran Khan
9. Malcolm Marshall
10. Shane Warne
11. Glenn McGrath

I'd swap Murali for McGrath on a spinners pitch.

 

[archie mac]

Not one bowler from the first 70 years of Test cricket?

 

[FRAZ]

Not one bowler from the first 70 years of Test cricket?

Well honestly speaking ! As far as the old video clips are concerned , Sir Viv was a total beast . And Marshall was a real beauty too other than that most of us can only say little itsi bitsi's about the cricketers of the past . Sir Don is a classic but I never had a chance to see a full fledge clip of his batting (highlights of a full match) . Now every thing is quite clear (technology wise) so youngsters usualy have these current people in the mind !!!!

 

[archie mac]

True, but maybe they could call it the best side of the last 30 years?

 

[honestbharani]

Well you wouldn't be in an all-inclusive club, there.

Many will tell you that there are plenty out there who don't have a clue (Ravi Shastri is first-rate, undoubtedly, the other two are more middle-ground) and that CW posters are much more astute observers.

I rate Ian Chappell very very highly as both an analyst and commentator and also as a judge of players.

 

[honestbharani]

Did any of them acctualy play a lot of cricket with Lara?

And even if they did, what difference would it make? His stats don't change because they've played test cricket, and unless he's scored another 1000 runs that only previous test cricketers know about i don't really count their opinion as being any more valid than most people's on CW.

People who have been in the same job definitely would know something about it than others do.



That said, I dont always think these guys give unbiased opinions and that is the main reason why I dont rate their opinions too much a lot of times. But there are blokes like Ian Chappell, Geoff Boycott, Sanjay Manjrekar and some others who do give balanced opinions. These guys are lot different from the biased crowd out there like Bill Lawry, Ian Healy, Sunil Gavaskar (everything Tendulkar does is at least "good" in his book), Rameez Raja etc.

 

[adharcric]

Well, it's one of the following ...

Team A
Hobbs, Gavaskar, Bradman, Tendulkar, Richards, Sobers, Gilchrist, Marshall, Warne, Muralitharan, McGrath

Team B
Hobbs, Gavaskar, Bradman, Tendulkar, Sobers, Gilchrist, Imran, Hadlee, Warne, Marshall, Muralitharan

Perhaps the latter is slightly stronger.

 

[honestbharani]

Oh, most of the time, undoubtedly, but I'll not long forget 6 out of the 7 Tests against us in early 2004 (we all know what happened in the other 1) when he looked as out-of-sorts as he ever has. Some people will just say "that was an exceptional England attack". Well... no, I don't think so myself. IMO it was just a lot of West Indians (and a few Kiwis) making it look rather better than it was. Aside from that, obviously, Lara was in sublime touch between that Lanka tour and the home Pakistan series, but there was pretty much no time between the breakthrough 277 at Adelaide and the NZ series at home in 1996 where he ever had anything more than 1 or 2 low scores on the trot. So IMO he was better - if only slightly - in that period than the 2001-2005 one.

And obviously, between that horror trot in Austalia in 1996\97 and the home SA series in 2001, he was never the force he had and would again be, though an average of 39.71 in that time is still hardly shoddy. And he now seems once again to have emerged from his latest slump of the 2005\06 and 2006 season.

He looked pretty darn impressive at Bridgetown, Richard. And had he had more support in the second dig, I really did see him make a big score there. And he got a pretty good delivery in the first dig, which would have consumed most left handers, IMHO. He did struggle for 3 innings (the 2nd in the first test and the whole 2nd test) but he really looked as sharp as he ever did at both Bridgetown and at St. Johns. But he did look out of sorts in the 4 tests against England. And I have seen plenty of batters go through 4 tests looking out of sorts. And he did manage a 70 with THAT form too there, didn't he? And if I am not wrong, he got a couple of lousy decisions as well. Not sure about that, but gotta check.