Style!!

[iamdavid]

There has been a bit of debate about this (mainly started by Richard) & I just thought Id start a poll , this is not neccesarily the best player you have seen , more the one who made you want to watch him the most , the most elegant batsman of all time??

 

[Mr. P]

Mark Waugh was the king of elegance and style.

 

[JohnnyA]

Carl Hooper ... no question of doubt in my mind.

I never saw a lot of those guys for an extended period. If I had to rank a top 3 it would be:

1. Hooper (by a long way in my book ... divine batting)
2. Waugh (classy and beautiful)
3. Gower (see Waugh)

 

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

They say...
"Hooper bats like a virtuoso... and then he gets out."

 

[JohnnyA]

They say...
"Hooper bats like a virtuoso... and then he gets out."

10 minutes of Beethoven is better than a lifetime of Rap and R&B drivel (OK pompous and unrepresentative example ... but what the hey ... the point is made )

I still rank the innings he played at Lords about 10 years ago as the most beautiful innings I've ever seen. 111 runs of sheer class. He's easilly top of my list.

 

[luckyeddie]

Try re-phrasing the question to 'most stylish in the last 30 years' or 'in your lifetime' - but not 'of all time'.

There's a school of thought amongst cricket writers that KS Ranjitsinhji was pretty stylish. Unfortunately, he's been dead 70 years and no film of him playing survives.

Where's Graeme Pollock?

After all you have heard about him on these boards (from me) you even leave him off the poll.

Others from the last 30 years off the top of my head...

Asif Iqbal
Gundappa Viswanath
Sir Garfield Sobers
Barry Richards
Ken Barrington
Viv Richards - had more 'cool' in his little finger than most have in their entire body.
Majid Jehangir Khan
Hanif Mohammed
Arjuna Ranatunga

etc etc etc.

... and then you include Boycott. Face it, you haven't got a clue and cannot see beyond the modern era. not only that, Mark Waugh has 60% of the vote at the moment.

I give up. You people have no soul.

 

[Tim]

Martin Crowe was stylish also.

But I must say Mark Waugh played some teriffic cover drives.

 

[luckyeddie]

Martin Crowe was stylish also.

But I must say Mark Waugh played some teriffic cover drives.

I agree on both counts - Mark Waugh was wonderful to watch, but in naming this poll 'of all time' and then just about the only player from pre-1980 to be included is Geoff Boycott strikes me as a total wind-up.

Well, it worked. It's a bit like Sky TV with their 'and blah blah have never lost at blah blah in the whole history of the Premiership' (when the premiership is but a decade old).

Sorry, but 'of all time' means just that and not 'The most stylish of the last 10 years with a couple of token names thrown in'.

 

[Tim]

What about Bradman, he was supposedly textbook material..but I guess unless you've gone through the archives nobody can really tell.

I think this list should have read: Most Stylish batsmen over the last 10 years. Presumably not many on this forum would have seen the likes of Gower, Gavaskar etc bat too often.

 

[JohnnyA]

What about Bradman, he was supposedly textbook material..but I guess unless you've gone through the archives nobody can really tell.

I think this list should have read: Most Stylish batsmen over the last 10 years. Presumably not many on this forum would have seen the likes of Gower, Gavaskar etc bat too often.

Text book is not necessarily beautiful though. But he must have been a joy to behold

Some other names from the modern era:

Stewie
Azzaruhdin (wrong spelling for sure )

I aggree with LuckyEd that Boycott was a bit strange.

 

[Tim]

Azza, yes he was another very stylish batsman, but he pressed the self destruct button.

 

[iamdavid]

Azza, yes he was another very stylish batsman, but he pressed the self destruct button.

YEs Azza was great , cant beleive I forgot him & Hooper , but he's a cheating bastard so it kind of erases all the positive memories of him , as for Boycott on the rare occasions he actually played a shot he was quite elegant

 

[luckyeddie]

YEs Azza was great , cant beleive I forgot him & Hooper , but he's a cheating bastard so it kind of erases all the positive memories of him , as for Boycott on the rare occasions he actually played a shot he was quite elegant

Ahem....

Boycott - Dour, obdurate, never-say-die, brave, courageous, stickable, selfish, as good a runner between the wickets as inzy, tough, gritty, correct.

Not stylish.

Incidentally, Boycott played 108 times for England - and they lost just 20 of those.

Career Average 47.72
Average when England won 54.62 (35 games)
Average when England drew 52.83 (53 games)
Average when England lost 28.10 (20 games)

Boycott never scored a ton in games England lost. If he failed, the team did.

 

[royGilchrist]

I liked Azharuddin, and I would say he was stylish because he was daring and relished taking risks. Two innings come to mind always....once he came into bat, I think it was Sharjah, and Waqar was in full flow, just was a one man wrecking crew. The first ball Azhar faced was a very fast attempted in-swinging yorker, and Azhar literally (no kidding) late cut the ball for four!! Waqar looked as perplexed as everyone who saw that shot. In a couple of overs the same thing happened, but with different results and Azhar got bowled, but still the first shot on an in-swinging yorker a lete cut, no one else could do that but azhar. As a general rule I think one attribute that is common between all stylish batsmen is daring, who would take a risk atleast sometimes to play something extraordinary. Thus Boycott was not stylish

The second innings, Sachin and Azhar made centuries aganst england in India a long time ago, Chris Lewis was one fo the england bowlers. I got to see that innings fully, and atleast in that innings Sachin was the schoolboy and Azhar was the legend. Sachin was playing with a straight bat, with few risks, and Azhar was just poetry in motion.

Laxman anyone? Stylish is a very subjective thing and there can be so many more candidates, Heck to me all left handers look stylish

 

[JohnnyA]

Heck to me all left handers look stylish

Even Chanderpaul

 

[PY]

As much as I understand your rant Eddie, people can only go on what they have said and as the average age of the people who have replied so far is about 18-20, I wouldn't expect people to say anything other than a modern era player.

My vote goes with Barry Richards but then again I have only seen his best innings complements of Channel 4 and he seemed so fluid when he played shots, Graeme Pollock seemed the same kind of player but I like Barry Richards more

I haven't seen any archive footage of the others (except Gower and only a couple of his) because there is no way for me to get to it. Believe me if the BBC put a 24 hour show on of footage from 1930-1990, I wouldn't miss a minute but they don't.

So I can't rightfully put a random name down.

:saint:

 

[JohnnyA]

Here's another name form the recent past:

Daryl Cullinan (excluding the innings verse Warney ... ahem). A very stylish player of both seam and finger spin. I always liked watching him bat.

 

[luckyeddie]

As much as I understand your rant Eddie, people can only go on what they have said and as the average age of the people who have replied so far is about 18-20, I wouldn't expect people to say anything other than a modern era player.

Fair comment, but if my objection to the basic perception that all cricketers before 1980 were not stylish owing to their exclusion from the list is a 'rant' as opposed to a 'justifiable comment', then I will continue labouring the point that an 18-20 year-old should recognise the difference between 'all-time' and 'whom I have seen'.

That is all (rant II over) )

 

[gibbsnsmith]

David Gower in that list...

 

[luckyeddie]

David Gower in that list...

True (if it didn't have 'other' I would have done so too) - doesn't change a thing (because I voted for Graeme Pollock) IMO. No thought or no knowledge gone into it if it was an all-time list (and remember Gower was playing test cricket until 1992 first-class cricket as recently as 1993.

Mark Waugh v David Gower or Graeme Pollock - not even close.

I guess I ought to feel privileged insrtead of moping.