The best 50 cricketers Salamuddin has seen

[Salamuddin]

Ok here's my chance to stir the pot ala Shane Warne

For test matches people:

1. Curtly Ambrose - the best bowler I have seen.
2. Glenn Mcgrath - IMO the biggest contributor to Aussie dominance from 95 onwards....
3. Brian Lara - best batsman that I have seen
4. Wasim Akram - Most skillful fast bowler I've ever seen
5. Muttiah Muralitharan - Best spin bowler I've seen and just marginally ahead of Warnie.
6. Shane Warne
7. Steve Waugh - briiliant batsman...man for a crisis.
8. Waqar Younis - most devastating bowler seen by yours truly
9. Rahul Dravid - best subcontinental batsman IMO. Highly dependable and what a fantastic record away from home !!
10. Courtney Walsh
11. Rikki Ponting - can't argue with the volume of runs that he's made but he hasn't faced top quality attacks and I don't think he's as good a player as Lara.
12. Tendulkar - as with Punter can't argue with his figures up till 2002 but he hasn't really turned it on when India needed him the most
13. Kallis - Fine allround cricketer. A tad underappreciated on these forums.
14. Inzamamul Haq - Pakistan's best batsman for a long time
15. Andrew Flower - extremely underrated player.
16. Adam Gilchrist - revolutionized the role of the wicketkeeper.
17. Matthew Hayden - gotta respect the way he's turned his career on post 2001. And possibly the best Aussie bat against spin bowling.
18. Shaun Pollock
19. Damien Martyn - very, very underrated middle order batsman.
20. Allan Donald - could have been higher; I always thought that Donald's inability to produce the goods against Australia counted against him
21. Shoaib Akhtar - despite all the antics, he's capable of putting the fear of life into any batting lineup and his numbers stack up well.
22. Anil Kumble - Great competitor and to his credit, has improved his away record over the last 3-4 years.
23. VVS Laxman - Fantastic player and like Martyn, very underrated.
24. Graham Thorpe - at last sighs Sean Bennett, he finally picks an Englishman nah...always had a lot of respect for THorpie...best English batsman that I saw.
25. Kumar Sangakkara

Stay tuned , Ladies and Gents for part 2 which will arrive shortly :-)

 

[GIMH]

 

[Xuhaib]

Gold

 

[howardj]

Mate, you should have drawn it out like Warney - instalments of ten, and kept us in suspense.

Just joking- good on you for having a go.

 

[biased indian]

Ok here's my chance to stir the pot ala Shane Warne

For test matches people:

1. Curtly Ambrose - the best bowler I have seen.
2. Glenn Mcgrath - IMO the biggest contributor to Aussie dominance from 95 onwards....
3. Brian Lara - best batsman that I have seen
4. Wasim Akram - Most skillful fast bowler I've ever seen
5. Muttiah Muralitharan - Best spin bowler I've seen and just marginally ahead of Warnie.
6. Shane Warne
7. Steve Waugh - briiliant batsman...man for a crisis.
8. Waqar Younis - most devastating bowler seen by yours truly
9. Rahul Dravid - best subcontinental batsman IMO. Highly dependable and what a fantastic record away from home !!
10. Courtney Walsh
11. Rikki Ponting - can't argue with the volume of runs that he's made but he hasn't faced top quality attacks and I don't think he's as good a player as Lara.
12. Tendulkar - as with Punter can't argue with his figures up till 2002 but he hasn't really turned it on when India needed him the most
13. Kallis - Fine allround cricketer. A tad underappreciated on these forums.
14. Inzamamul Haq - Pakistan's best batsman for a long time
15. Andrew Flower - extremely underrated player.
16. Adam Gilchrist - revolutionized the role of the wicketkeeper.
17. Matthew Hayden - gotta respect the way he's turned his career on post 2001. And possibly the best Aussie bat against spin bowling.
18. Shaun Pollock
19. Damien Martyn - very, very underrated middle order batsman.
20. Allan Donald - could have been higher; I always thought that Donald's inability to produce the goods against Australia counted against him
21. Shoaib Akhtar - despite all the antics, he's capable of putting the fear of life into any batting lineup and his numbers stack up well.
22. Anil Kumble - Great competitor and to his credit, has improved his away record over the last 3-4 years.
23. VVS Laxman - Fantastic player and like Martyn, very underrated.
24. Graham Thorpe - at last sighs Sean Bennett, he finally picks an Englishman nah...always had a lot of respect for THorpie...best English batsman that I saw.
25. Kumar Sangakkara

Stay tuned , Ladies and Gents for part 2 which will arrive shortly :-)

How long we have to wait

 

[Richard]

20. Allan Donald - could have been higher; I always thought that Donald's inability to produce the goods against Australia counted against him

 

[Perm]

He has a point. Australia were the best team in the world when Donald was playing and for one reason or another, he couldn't replicate his sucess against other nations for Australia.

 

[Salamuddin]

well I knew it would stir someone up if no-one else

 

[Richard]

He has a point. Australia were the best team in the world when Donald was playing and for one reason or another, he couldn't replicate his sucess against other nations for Australia.

They weren't even that, and they certainly weren't the best batting-line-up ATT. Nor did he fail to succeed against them.

Donald basically played 2 series against Australia, in 1993\94 and 1996\97\98. In the first they were 2nd-best, in the 2nd they were the best. In 1993\94 you could probably say they had the best batting-line-up going around, but in 1996\97\98 India's was better, easily.

What's more, Donald took 7-117 at The SCG in 1993\94 (a game won by the SAfricans), 6-137 at Kingsmead in the same season (a draw), 8-96 at Centurion in 1996\97 (a game won by the SAfricans) and 9-133 at The MCG in 1997\98 (a draw).

He then played again in 2001\02, when he was no longer anything like the force he once was. This series is meaningless to the real Donald career.

 

[Xuhaib]

Just thought of an idea that maybe we should come up with CW top 50 cricketers list. Each member should post their top 50 list, after we have got around say 50 lists we count the number of players that have made those lists and then we should rank the players according to the points they had scored.

Now the question is, how the scoring be conducted?

In each list the points will be given from 1-50, the top ranked player getting 50 points while the last ranked getting a single point which means that if Alan Donald is ranked 50th in one list and then ranked first in the next list then his combined score will be 51 after two lists.

Hope all of this made sense

 

[howardj]

Just thought of an idea that maybe we should come up with CW top 50 cricketers list. Each member should post their top 50 list, after we have got around say 50 lists we count the number of players that have made those lists and then we should rank the players according to the points they had scored.

Now the question is, how the scoring be conducted?

In each list the points will be given from 1-50, the top ranked player getting 50 points while the last ranked getting a single point which means that if Alan Donald is ranked 50th in one list and then ranked first in the next list then his combined score will be 51 after two lists.

Hope all of this made sense

Mate, make it 25

50 is too unweildy.

 

[Richard]

Even 25 would be one hell of an effort.

What's more, so would avoiding "WTF are you on about?!"s!

And how do you qualify it? Each poster with 1000 posts can make a list?

 

[The Sean]

In that case can we wait a few weeks? I'll finally rack up my 1000 sometime this month!

It's only taken me the better part of a year...

FWIW, the way the ESPN panel did their top 50 was as follows:

"Panelists were asked to list in order, their top 50 players. The votes were then collated in the following way. The player voted as No. 1 on a list scored 26 points, No. 2 scored 25 points No. 3 24 points right through to position 25 who scored 2 points. A vote for a player in the 26 - 50 positions scored a single point. In addition a point was scored for each vote secured, for example if all 15 panelists voted for a player regardless of position he would score an additional 15 points. The final list was compiled in the resulting points order."

Maybe more complex than we'd need it to be, but something perhaps to start with.

EDIT - wow, just realised I'd actually passed 1000 sometime today.

 

[pasag]

Not a bad list Salamuddin and nice idea Xuhaib.

 

[Richard]

Allan Donald > Dennis Lillee, and I refuse to put my name at all to something which is so likely to result in the order being reversed.

 

[Richard]

In that case can we wait a few weeks? I'll finally rack up my 1000 sometime this month!

For those of obvious high-calibre, BTW, "exceptions" could be made.

But TBH there are some on CW - naming no names - who we might say aren't neccessarily the most reliable types for such an exercise as this.

 

[The Sean]

For those of obvious high-calibre, BTW, "exceptions" could be made.

Well that's all well and good for them, but I was asking about me...

 

[pasag]

EDIT - wow, just realised I'd actually passed 1000 sometime today.

Yeah was about to say, anyways I don't see why we'd need to limit it with such things as post counts. The more the merrier.

 

[Xuhaib]

Yeah was about to say, anyways I don't see why we'd need to limit it with such things as post counts. The more the merrier.

I think we have to limit the number of lists to a reasonable number or it might become quite a tough task.

 

[Richard]

Yeah was about to say, anyways I don't see why we'd need to limit it with such things as post counts. The more the merrier.

Seriously - you'd be happy to have, um, certain people voting for it?

I wasn't 100% serious about postcount limitations when I first mentioned it TBH, but having said it I actually thought there might be some merit in it if anything is front-page-worthy is to come of this.

Be it vox pup or whatever.