What is your ALL TIME WORLD XI TEAM for tests?

[grecian]

1 Wasim
2 Davidson
3 Bill Johnston
4 Reid
5 Wagner
6 Mitchell Johnson
7 Voce

Boult and Starc might've surpassed Vaas too.

Put any of them on Sri Lankan pitches for most of their careers and I'm just putting Wasim and Davidson definitely ahead of him.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Put any of them on Sri Lankan pitches for most of their careers and I'm just putting Wasim and Davidson definitely ahead of him.

Put them on Sri Lankan pitches and Starc is better than all of them

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Boult has great numbers in Sri Lanka too.

 

[grecian]

I don't care that much, just saying Vaas was a skilled performer, put him top 10 still makes my point, object a bit to Reid though, can't be calling someone whose body was so fragile he only played 27 tests into any ATG discussion, as much as he was great when he played.

 

[akilana]

Its very close when/if you disregard the minnows. Ofcourse you don't have to and you can argue Murali was performing against what was put in front of him

If you’re going to exclude minnows because Murali played more against them, you have to also exclude his record vs Australia to be fair to him in a comparison vs Warne. Warne never had to bowl at the best side of his time. Murali and Warne have similar records vs all other teams.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Warne against Australian batsmen in Australia...

Shane Warne for Victoria in the Sheffield Shield:

46 matches, 161 wickets @ 34.72

 

[honestbharani]

If you’re going to exclude minnows because Murali played more against them, you have to also exclude his record vs Australia to be fair to him in a comparison vs Warne. Warne never had to bowl at the best side of his time. Murali and Warne have similar records vs all other teams.

Also England in the 90s were minnows wen it comes to playing spin, far worse than Bangladesh for instance. BD smashed Warne around for fun the only time he played them. And I think even Zim thrashed Warne around a fair bit, but maybe more in ODIs where Goodwin, Johnson and Andy Flower got after him.

 

[Victor Ian]

What I like about the Warne Murali debate is the contrast between them. One make the ball spin left, the other right. One starts with M, the other W. They both have and r, but the a is on the left of it for Warne, the way he spins it, and on the right for Murali.
And for the letter that replaces the a position in each of their names, one is an n and the other is a u. That is my take on things.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

Not by that much. Miller had games where he led the attack and bowled more and he did very well. Pretty sure he averaged better the more he bowled in an innings so in his case more workload didn't hurt his bowling at all. You're pulling all this out of your a**.
Wpm matters, a little bit, but it's no where near as relevatn as average, or strike rate.

In other words Brett Lee and Kallis are in the same league as bowlers. Lol.

 

[h_hurricane]

Warne against Australian batsmen in Australia...

Shane Warne for Victoria in the Sheffield Shield:

46 matches, 161 wickets @ 34.72

Should be excluded as he was arguably injured every time.

 

[rtramdas]

Many who haven't watched Kapil bowl under-rate him. Laughable bowling support, extreme bowling workload, tiring bowling conditions and insane longevity are never considered. Ever since his knee injury in 1984, he wasn't the same bowler. He continued playing for india in every test match(probably stupidly) instead of taking frequent injury breaks, rejuvenating completely before joining back. Wrap him in cotton wool like Bumrah these days, one could argue that he would have given similar results.

That is not to say that he was in the same class as Imran or Hadlee as bowler. Some one like Hadlee didn't need as much support as Kapil because he was one of the greatest ever, and when you are at that level, you don't need much support anyways.

this factor 'extreme work load' is emphatically highlighted in the fact that 'Ever since his knee injury in 1984, he wasn't the same bowler. He continued playing for india in every test match(probably stupidly) instead of taking frequent injury breaks, rejuvenating completely before joining back' . You are absolutely spot on here. Kapil had 4wkts/test in first 62 matches & averaged 27.7 . Then the injury occured. After that he picked only 2.6wkts/test in next 26 tests and averaged only around 36..

Had Kapil took adequate rest & injury break here and returned to serious bowling only after getting himself fully fit his stats wouldn't have suffered like this. Another thing is as to whether Kapil was authoritative enough to take such breaks on his own during those days.What ever, the fact is that he played non stop cricket(enormous work load) along with mediocre fellow bowlers for soo long that got reflected in his stats .

And that is because of all these reasons I rate Kapil's bowling average at around 26.25- 26.5 when pitted against some one like Imran.
It seems some people think that had Imran bowled 27740 balls in just 15.5 years in the company of Madanlal/Binny/Sandhu/Sastri calibre bowlers as Kapil did he would have averaged the same 22.81 . I can only but pity with that sort of 'game understanding'

Having said that, the matters of fairplay & ball tampering are different matters altogether.Even with out above said factors , I don't rate Imran much as a bowler in the same way I used to once.

 

[Victor Ian]

If you count the balls Imran bowled after the match because he won it earlier and did not get to bowl them... Well, then Imran did bowl the same amount.

 

[h_hurricane]

Kapil undoubtedly started much better. At the end of the 1979-80 series in India which both Kapil and Imran played, and India won, they were averaging like this.

Kapil Dev : Batting Average : 33.00 Bowling Average : 26.73
Imran Khan : Batting Average : 23.43 Bowling Average : 30.25

Imran then went back to the drawing board. The rest is history.

 

[Bolo.]

Not by that much. Miller had games where he led the attack and bowled more and he did very well. Pretty sure he averaged better the more he bowled in an innings so in his case more workload didn't hurt his bowling at all. You're pulling all this out of your a**.
Wpm matters, a little bit, but it's no where near as relevatn as average, or strike rate.

Mark Boucher approves of this comment

 

[Gob]

If you’re going to exclude minnows because Murali played more against them, you have to also exclude his record vs Australia to be fair to him in a comparison vs Warne. Warne never had to bowl at the best side of his time. Murali and Warne have similar records vs all other teams.

Ok

 

[Gob]

Put them on Sri Lankan pitches and Starc is better than all of them

He was brilliant there wasn't he. I thought he would surge after this to become the best in the world but has been a disappointment despite a very good record. Needs to go back to his older action ASAP

 

[_00_deathscar]

Warne against Australian batsmen in Australia...

Shane Warne for Victoria in the Sheffield Shield:

46 matches, 161 wickets @ 34.72

Yea but what was his finger nail condition at the time?

 

[_00_deathscar]

I don't see why not. His bowling isn't that good anyway and his batting was elite. If he never bowled he'd still be in the discussion.

Eh I don’t know - that’s literally what I said. He’s in contention because, well he was class etc, just surprised someone picked him in a first XI that’s all, for batting alone. Feels like there are far better picks who bring so much more when it comes to simply batting, despite Kallis’s class/average

 

[stephen]

So much drivel in this thread.

Warne vs Murali can early descend into removing stats in many different ways. If you remove Murali's stats against minnows, Murali fans will say to remove stats against Australia. Australian fans will then say if we do that, we should look at away records only because Murali played in a home county that favoured spin. If we do that Murali fans will say Warne got most of those wickets feasting on hapless English batsmen. By the time we're done removing stats, both of them took a dozen wickets at an advocate of 25 in a simulated game against ATG players.

Fact is that they were both fine bowlers who had similar weaknesses (record against India in India, periods of relative mediocrity (start of Murali's career, middle of Warne's)). They're both the top two wicket takers in history. Which one you pick is probably based more on how they did against/ for your team than anything else.

Also, wpm either means little or Lillee should be rated more highly by those on this site. It only seems to be used when denigrating an obvious ATG. Fact is it has more to do with bowling workload and support than much else.

Miller was a top 30 quick bowler when I did my fast bowler survival last year and that's probably fair. Extremely valuable player and only overshadowed by 25 other guys from half a dozen nations in a hundred years of cricket. Sounds like an ATG to me, especially when you factor in his batting and his war injury which meant he bowled with back pain for most of his career. Kapil was not as good with bat or ball, despite being a very fine bowler and clearly amongst the top two Indian pace bowlers ever.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Don't know about the rest of that but trying to put Kapil in the same tier as Miller is easily the worst offence committed in this thread.