Watson's All-Time-Great Ashes Contest

[watson]

Even though this is an ATG Ashes contest, I do have a problem with the selection of players who aren't also great/extremely good ODI players. They just seem like half-baked players with some kind of flaw in their game to me so while the selections of Border, Chappelli, Lillee and Gilchrist are excellent from right, obtuse, acute, straight and every other angle the selections of Simpson, Bradman, Lindwall, O'Reilly make me feel like a 90s Brit Pop band.

The difference is that Simpson, Bradman, Lindwall, and O'Reilly would, in all probability, eat ODIs for breakfast. With you on the 90s Brit Pop though as none were a patch on Wham or Haysi Fantayzee who were really excellent.

 

[watson]

Australia's No.2: Bill Lawry

Here are the averages (overall, in England, and against England in Australia) of the twelve batsman short-listed to partner Bob Simpson. I have also included their averages against key bowlers;

Victor Trumper (1899-1912)
Tests = 48
Overall Average = 39.63
Tests in ENG = 20
Average in ENG = 27.84
Tests in AUS = 20
Average in AUS = 36.84
Average V Barnes (17 Tests, 13 dismissals) = 30.75
Average V Hirst (17 Tests, 5 dismissals) = 31.82

Warren Bardsley (1909-1926)
Tests = 41
Overall Average = 40.48
Tests in ENG = 17
Average in ENG = 41.70
Tests in AUS = 12
Average in AUS = 24.00
Average V Barnes (10 Tests, 6 dismissals) = 30.70
Average V Douglas (16 Tests, 5 dismissals) = 29.69

Bill Woodfull (1926-1934)
Tests = 35
Overall Average = 46.00
Tests in ENG = 15
Average in ENG = 43.95
Tests in AUS = 10
Average in AUS = 44.22
Average V Larwood (15 Tests, 7 dismissals) = 36.69
‘Bodyline’ Average (5 Tests) = 33.89 (HS = 73*)

Bill Ponsford (1924-1934)
Tests = 29
Overall Average = 48.23
Tests in ENG = 10
Average in ENG = 62.40
Tests in AUS = 10
Average in AUS = 34.56
Average V Larwood (8 Tests, 5 dismissals) = 24.61
‘Bodyline’ Average (3 Tests) = 23.50 (HS = 85)

Arthur Morris (1946-1955)
Tests = 46
Overall Average = 46.49
Tests in ENG = 10
Average in ENG = 57.39
Average in ENG (1949-54) = 33.70
Tests in AUS = 14
Average in AUS = 45.42
Average in AUS (1949-55) = 34.00
Average V Bedser (21 Tests, 18 dismissals) = 57.42
Average V Bedser (1949-55) = 40.55
Average v Tyson = ( 4 Tests, 3 dismissals) = 31.85

Bill Lawry (1961-1971)
Tests = 67
Overall Average = 47.15
Tests in ENG = 14
Average in ENG = 45.77
Tests in AUS = 15
Average in AUS = 51.08
Average V Snow (9 Tests, 6 dismissals) = 42.42
Average V Trueman (13 Tests, 7 dismissals) = 40.91

Ian Redpath (1964-1976)
Tests = 66
Overall Average = 43.46
Tests in ENG = 10
Average in ENG = 30.94
Tests in AUS = 13
Average in AUS = 44.82
Average V John Snow (11 Tests, 8 dismissals) = 40.35

David Boon (1984-1996)
Tests = 107
Average = 43.66
Tests in ENG = 16
Average in ENG = 48.74
Tests in AUS = 15
Average in AUS = 42.92
Average V Malcolm (11 Tests, 5 dismissals) = 46.16

Mark Taylor (1989-1999)
Tests = 104
Overall Average = 43.50
Tests in ENG = 18
Average in ENG = 52.80
Tests in AUS = 15
Average in AUS = 31.45
Average V Malcolm (15 Tests, 7 dismissals) = 43.62

Michael Slater (1993-2001)
Tests = 74
Overall Average = 42.84
Tests in ENG = 10
Average in ENG = 34.47
Tests in AUS = 10
Average in AUS = 54.15
Average V Gough (12 Tests, 8 dismissals) = 44.00

Justin Langer (1993-2007)
Tests = 105
Overall Average = 45.27
Tests in ENG = 6
Average in ENG = 55.11
Tests in AUS = 15
Average in AUS = 48.42
Average V Flintoff (10 Tests, 5 dismissals) = 43.56

Matthew Hayden (1994-2009)
Tests = 103
Overall Average = 50.74
Tests in ENG = 10
Average in ENG = 34.50
Tests in AUS = 10
Average in AUS = 56.81
Average V Flintoff (10 Tests, 6 dismissals) = 43.00

Out of the 12 ATG Australian opening batsman listed only 5 managed to average more than 40 runs both home and away against England - Bill Woodfull, Arthur Morris, Bill Lawry, David Boon, and Justin Langer.

I really wanted to select Victor Trumper as Australia’s premier opening batsman but in the end I could not gloss over some pretty ordinary averages. Obviously, Trumper scored his runs in an era when it was difficult to average 40 runs or more against good bowling attacks. However, his average of 27.84 over 20 Tests in England seems unacceptably low, even for pre-WWI batsman. In comparison, Jack Hobbs played 15 Tests against Australia between 1908 and 1912 and averaged 55.00. During his 9 Tests in England he averaged 39.55, and during his 6 Tests in Australia he averaged 64.26. The stat’s of both Victor Trumper and Warren Bardsley both pale in comparison despite being heavily praised as Australia’s greatest pre-WWI opening batsman. Ironically, Trumper’s lowest moment probably occurred in Australia despite four mediocre tours of England. In the pivotal Test of the 1904 series (4th Test, Sydney) when a match-winning innings was desperately required he scored only 7 and 12. England won the match by 157 runs, and the series 3-2.

There is little doubt that Trumper was one of cricket’s most attractive batsman because his artistry has reached legendary status. However, the purpose of an opening batsman is to protect the middle-order and give the team consistent starts, not just look good. If we combine Trumper’s Strike Rate with his Average then we can expect him to be dismissed during the 12th over on Day 1 of a Lords Test match. This means that the No.3 batsman would be coming to the wicket well before the first hour is up.

Bill Ponsford has an excellent average of 62.40 in England that makes him look tempting enough to select. However, this average was achieved by scoring heavily during 1934 after Larwood’s forced retirement in 1933. When Larwood opened the attack for England Ponsford averaged only 24.61 during 8 Tests. Admittedly, 3 of those Tests involved Bodyline. However, Bodyline didn’t stop Woodfull averaging 10 runs per innings more than Ponsford, even though Ponsford was shielded from the new ball by batting in the middle-order for that series.

Arthur Morris’ average against England is also misleading because he made the bulk of his good scores against an inferior post-War English attack and a novice Alec Bedser. However, once the English attack recovered its form after the War, and Alec Bedser reached his prime, we find that Morris was not able to push his Average above the mid-30s.

David Boon struggled against England during the 1980s and averaged only 17.71 in 1985, and 18.00 in 1986/87. It wasn’t till the English team fielded some truly ordinary bowling attacks in the 1990s did his average recover to something respectable.

Here is Gideon Haigh's summary of Bill Lawry for Cricinfo;

After catching the eye with elegant strokes on his first Ashes tour in 1961, long-nosed left-hander Bill Lawry steadily pared his batting back, until it was as skeletal as his appearance. By the time he inherited Australia's captaincy against India in 1967-68, he had become the most rigidly self-denying batsman of his generation, as hard to watch as he was to dismiss. Ian Wooldridge, the English journalist, called him "a corpse with pads on". Lawry's courage was a byword, and he withstood fearsome bombardments from Trueman and Statham in the infamous Ridge Test at Lord's in June 1961, and from Hall and Griffith on an underprepared Sydney surface in February 1969. Twice, too, he carried his bat through completed Test innings....

Bill Lawry | Cricket Players and Officials | ESPN Cricinfo

If Lawry is really ‘rigidly self-denying’ and ‘a corpse with pads on’ then we would expect his Strike Rate to be disproportionately low. However, the following figures indicate that while his Strike Rate cannot be described as overly impressive it is perfectly acceptable for any modern opening batsman;

01. Victor Trumper = 82.06 (calculated from 8 recorded innings over 30 runs, 1910-12)
02. Warren Bardsley = 61.54 (calculated from 14 recorded innings over 30 runs, 1910-26)
03. Matthew Hayden = 60.10
04. Justin Langer (as opener) = 57.91
05. Michael Slater = 53.29
06. Bob Simpson = 47.11 (calculated from 19 recorded innings over 30 runs, 1960-78)
07. Arthur Morris = 45.83 (calculated from 7 recorded innings over 30 runs, 1946-48)
08. David Boon (as opener) = 43.25
09. Bill Lawry = 42.93 (calculated from 25 recorded innings over 30 runs, 1961-71)
10. Bill Ponsford = 41.62 (calculated from 14 recorded innings over 30 runs, 1924-34)
11. Mark Taylor = 41.61
12. Ian Redpath = 41.17 (calculated from 36 innings over 30 runs, 1964-76)
13. Bill Woodfull = 32.51 (calculated from 17 recorded innings over 30 runs, 1928-34)

The Strike Rate of Victor Trumper is outrageously good, but I wonder whether this was a factor in his relative failure on English pitches. If we assume that they were more unpredictable than Australian pitches, and hence less forgiving of Trumper’s attacking shots, then we would expect him to fail more often and average less. Again, an Average of 27.84 over 4 tours of England seems, at first glance, to be unacceptably low.

The Strike Rates of Hayden, Langer, and Slater are all excellent., but I wonder whether this is partly due to the trend of the last 20 years to create smaller boundaries by shrinking the boundary rope. So all in all, the Strike Rate of Bill Lawry seems reasonable for any opening batsman of the modern era. He is about on a par with Boon, Ponsford, Taylor, and Redpath, and just behind Simpson and Morris. Woodfull runs a distant last.

To be honest I think that the tag ‘corpse with pads on’ has little justification. Only in his final series against England in 1970-71 did his Strike Rate really bottom out. Yet an innings such as his 84 off 317 balls (Brisbane, 1970) cannot really be criticised if the team total was only 214 and all the Australian batsman for that series struggled against the pace of John Snow.

Bill Lawry made 13 Test match centuries , 3 of which were made in England against Trueman-Statham-Lock and then Snow-Brown-Underwood;

130 – Lords, 1961 (Trueman-Statham- Lock-Illingworth-Dexter)
102 – Old Trafford, 1961 (Trueman-Statham-Flavell-Dexter-Allen-Close)
157 (SR = 61.56) – MCG, 1964 (Pollock-Partridge-Goddard-Seymour-Bland-Barlow-Pithey)
106 – Old Trafford, 1964 (Rumsey-Price-Cartwright-Titmus-Dexter-Mortimore-Boycott)
166 (SR = 40.88)- Brisbane, 1965 (Brown-Higgs-Titmus-Allen-Barber-Boycott)
210 – Bridgetwon, 1965 (Hall-Griffith-Sobers-Gibbs-Solomon-Hunte)
119 (SR = 54.83)-Adelaide, 1966 (Jones- Brown-Titmus-Allen- Boycott-Barber)
108 (SR = 42.18)-MCG, 1966 (Brown-Jones-Knight-Titmus-Barber)
100 (SR = 67.56) –MCG, 1967 (Desai-Surti-Abid Ali-Chandrasekhar-Prasanna-Subrameyer)
105 (SR=35.47)-Brisbane,1968 (Griffith-Sobers-Holford-Gibbs-Lloyd)
205 (SR = 49.27)– MCG, 1968 (Edwards-Davis-Sobers-Gibbs-Carew)
135 (SR = 33.66)-The Oval, 1968 (Snow-Brown-Illingworth-Underwood-D’Oliveira)
151 (SR = 41.14)-SCG, 1969 (Hall-Griffith-Sobers-Gibbs-Carew-Lloyd)

In making his centuries, I think that the quality of bowlers faced by Lawry is at least equivalent to those faced by any other Australian opening batsman. Trumper and Bardsley had to open against Barnes in his pomp of course, but they don’t have a fast bowling equivalent to Trueman or Snow in their CV, or even Dave Brown (Average 28.31) who was no slouch either. Hayden and Langer opened against their toughest English quartet in 2005 with mediocre results, but up until that point the same English bowlers had been relatively sporadic and inconsistent. And of course, as an opening partnership, they missed Darren Gough in his prime.

To be honest, in terms of talent I don’t think that Bill Lawry can be compared to most of his ATG colleagues from the Australian middle-order. However, by the same token there are very good reasons why Lawry is one of the 20th century’s most consistent and successful opening batsman. Indeed, if you look closely at his specific innings, and the runs he made against world-class bowlers, then it wouldn’t be stretching things too much to begrudgingly admit that over the last 100 years he is probably Australia’s greatest opening batsman. Unfortunately, the dire circumstances surrounding the Australian tour of South Africa, and then the Ashes series during the early 70s means that he is rarely going to be trendy in cricketing circles.

 

[watson]

The other selections to make are........

CAPTAINS

Len Hutton (1952-55)
Tests = 23
Wins = 11
Losses = 4
Draws= 8

Len Hutton V Australia (1953-55)
Tests = 10
Wins = 4
Losses = 1
Draws = 5

Richie Benaud (1958-1964)
Tests = 28
Wins = 12
Losses = 4
Draws = 12

Richie Benaud V England (1958-1963)
Tests = 14
Wins = 6
Losses = 2
Draws = 6


12th MAN

Douglas Jardine (1928-1934)
Tests = 22
Runs = 1296
Average = 48.00
HS = 127
100s = 1
50s = 10

Douglas Jardine V Australia (1928-1933)
Tests = 10
Runs = 540
Average = 31.76
HS = 98
100s = 0
50s = 4

Victor Trumper (1899-1912)
Tests = 48
Runs = 3163
Average = 39.05
HS = 214
100s = 8
50s = 13

Victor Trumper V England (1899-1912)
Tests = 40
Runs = 2263
Average = 32.80
HS = 185
100s = 6
50s = 9

 

[watson]

Final Teams to fight out my ATG Ashes Contest are;

ENGLAND
01. Jack Hobbs
02. Len Hutton*
03. Ted Dexter
04. Ken Barrington
05. Walter Hammond
06. Ian Botham
07. Alan Knott+
08. Hedley Verity
09. John Snow
10. Alec Bedser
11. Fred Trueman
12th. Douglas Jardine

AUSTRALIA
01. Bob Simpson
02. Bill Lawry
03. Don Bradman
04. Greg Chappell
05. Allan Border
06. Keith Miller
07. Adam Gilchrist+
08. Richie Benaud*
09. Ray Lindwall
10. Dennis Lillee
11. Bill O'Reilly
12th. Victor Trumper

 

[The Battlers Prince]

Lot's of numbers to crunch there. Very well done, a magnificent amount of effort went into your sides. It would be a great series to behold.
Plenty of stats that are hard to do between eras but I think, though I don't agree with every choice, numbers weren't the only deciding factor in most circumstances. It makes the whole sides an exciting prospect to behold.
Well done sir

 

[watson]

Lot's of numbers to crunch there. Very well done, a magnificent amount of effort went into your sides. It would be a great series to behold.
Plenty of stats that are hard to do between eras but I think, though I don't agree with every choice, numbers weren't the only deciding factor in most circumstances. It makes the whole sides an exciting prospect to behold.
Well done sir

Thanks schearzie. Enjoyed doing the stat's as they're a good way to unwind at the end of the day.

I think that the Australian team is more balanced than the English team and therefore able to cope with more Test match scenarios. What the ATG England team really needs is someone like Imran Khan/Richard Hadlee at No.8 to add more batting depth and take the pressure off Ian Botham at No.6.

In a general ATG England team I think that Maurice Tate would probably fill the role of bowling allrounder the best, and therefore should be included more often than he is. However, in this current side, Alec Bedser was needed to help curb Bradman as there is no evidence that Bradman had the slightest problem batting against Tate.

 

[kyear2]

Great effort Watson, as usual impressed by the amount of effort you put into the selections and presentations.

Well Done Sir.