I agree. What I'm saying though is that the very fact that it cannot be quantified but people acknowledge it did affect his stats adversely means the fielding support argument shouldn't be dismissed outright, especially when people compare Wasim with other ATGs on the basis of those adversely affected surface level stats.
Not quite. I think you overvalue it when selecting slip fielding batsmen in ATG XIs and stuff like that. My opinion is that there are diminishing returns for slip catchers/keepers where after a certain baseline level of quality it doesnt matter a great deal how much better they are, compared to primary skills like batting/bowling. So I just push back on the notion that its important enough for them to be considered allrounders.
Because you're missing my point. Why didn't they ever improve it over almost 20 years .
Doesnt need to be easily quantifiable to be a valid point does it? Again, the PFK method of subtracting arbitrary numbers from his average is not something I agree with.
No, not all rounders, but better all round players. For instance, Tendulkar or Smith / Lara for a place on my team, I'll take the latter. But I do accept your point and it's not like I'm trying to force Hooper or Waugh into the team, just think it is an overlooked factor in rating of players overall.
But why, McGrath was the better bowler. And again, have absolutely no way of quantifying how much of a difference it made
Never said that. What I did say, is that it doesn't matter enough to push him from where I have him just above or below the top 10, to undisputed no. 1 or even top 5.
My position has always been that there really isn't much difference between the top ~8. Like I said in the ATG selection thread, there's virtually no drop off in quality between the first 3 XIs. But Wasim especially gets underrated here in a reactionary way because people shut off their common sense and pretend the abject fielding had a negligible impact. Faulting Wasim for being 2 shy of 4 WPM over 18 years is incredibly daft for example. So no, I don't think McGrath or Marshall were especially better, they just happened to play in stronger teams which is no coincidence.
And on that we disagree, and that's cool. I do think there's somewhat of a top tier and for me that's my top 5, you can and do see it differently and that's what forums are for.
There's a video by Robelina on YouTube from the '84 Windies tour to Australia where they show all of the wickets, catches and drops from that series.Learn to do it right, FFS...
Where did that come from? I was just pointing out it works better as this meme.
He had Colin Cowdrey in the slips.
More than dropped catches I would say that Wasim had times where he went through motions and nothing happened, otherwise he came up with magic spells where he got late swing like in the UK under hot Indian sun and got Dravid/Laxman clean bowled. McGrath and Marshall also had times where they had to work hard to get wickets but they've always made sure that batsmen earned their runs even if wickets weren't coming.
That's the thing, I think sometimes persons conflate test and odi Wasim.
Or people knows Akram stats are more impressive than the likes of Ambrose.
If they combine ODI and tests of course Akram would come out better than pretty much any other bowl except McG.
