Where does longevity kick in for you? Rank these bowlers

[mr_mister]

Nah that’s just not right and you know it - ODIs are a different game altogether.

Starc is gun in ODIs. Not as hot in tests. Lee the same.

It’s ok to think Bond was an ODI great but had far more to prove in tests.

But from what we do have to go by in tests, he averaged the same, low 20s. It's "what if" sure but the evidence we do have points to Bond= low average

Like, Bevan is another ODI gun who failed in tests, but we have to really stretch the prediction to say he'd have turned it around and averaged 50 if he played 100 tests. With Bond it's more mental legwork to say his average blows out to 30 rather than stays under 25

He was damn good btw.

 

[Flem274*]

The difference between Bumrah and Harris is in the second part of my post. Same for Tyson vs Harris although it's much closer - Tyson's stats are ridic good. Bond is the lowest of the less tests guys because frankly I don't think he did anything special in tests. Gul vs Martin is pretty easy - Gul has 2/3rds the wickets and I saw him bowl in tests.

I think overall you pick your players on the basis of who will be first name on the sheet if they were all available. The longevity guys do it on the basis of how would Bond/Harris/Tyson do if they absolutely had to play 100-120 tests - they would have to massively cut down on their pace and play through huge periods of terrible form - they wouldn't average 20.

I don't particularly think of either pov as unreasonable but I prefer the second one, at the end of the day the 6th choice bowlers most teams have are going to be worse compared to both Bond and Martin - but you don't actually need to replace Martin.

Why would you pick an ATG side to play 120 tests? No one plays 120 tests outside England and a few Australians and Indians. That's so arbitrary and not based in real life.

And I don't think your own logic matches your list. Cowie is a case in point - he played every test offered, and starred in the "we don't want to give you tests so here is an Australian or English XI with most of the best players in it" games, taking 200 odd for **** all. What has Bumrah done that Harris didn't? Are you valuing India in Aus as much higher than Aus in SA or the Ashes? Because you have to at this stage.

What we do know IRL is no selector would pick Chris Martin over Shane Bond, ever. I probably sound way more aggressive on this than I am because it's quite late here but that just isn't a justifiable ranking at all imo. You don't get points for existing.

 

[honestbharani]

This is more of an issue with the concept of selecting ATG sides (as we currently do it) than the players or selectors though. Johnson is a good example, but guys who change their roles (sometimes drastically) like McCullum are hard to rate because you can't combine the late career batting with mid career keeping to create a player who never existed. This "lessens" McCullum in an ATG exercise but it is irrelevant because his ability to reinvent himself was extremely valuable to his side IRL and they definitely benefited from it. Likewise Vettori and even true greats like Imran iirc.

Real life selectors pick their best teams and kick the can down the road for injuries almost every time. Gap fillers like Siddle, Gul and Martin serve a role when the side has a stable of injury prone quicks, but those guys are also very disposable and get binned any time the selectors feel safe to do so. Australia threw Harris in whenever they could because he was their best bowler.

Selectors play to win, and if we could dig up the ATGs in real life you'd quickly see some very different teams selected to the ones selected on here. No one is diddling about picking Chris Martin ahead of Shane Bond. The coach would be fired.

The simple difference between real life cricket team selections and what we do in comparing players is.....

The rating is based on a player's career. The selection is based on a player's utility to the team.

To think these two need to follow the same logic is the only illogical bit here.

 

[honestbharani]

but we have to really stretch the prediction

nah... just need to get TJB to post.

 

[Flem274*]

We aren’t talking Martin over Shane Bond though, that of course would be silly - we’re talking about a player like Kapil or Anderson or Southee.
And you’re judging those last 3 by their entire careers; the good and the bad, but the player you’re supposedly picking never had the chance to prove the bad (or maybe even the real good - maybe they were even better than what they showed?)

Why is it silly to take Martin over Bond but not Southee? Southee has never been close to Shane Bond as a bowler and that isn't a slight on Southee, they're just in different talent tiers.

Anderson is understandable - same talent tier, same role as big dog. IRL if a selector needed to choose between Bond and Southee for the final NZ XI spot they're picking Bond and Southee comes in if/when he goes down.

 

[srbhkshk]

Why would you pick an ATG side to play 120 tests? No one plays 120 tests outside England and a few Australians and Indians. That's so arbitrary and not based in real life.

And I don't think your own logic matches your list. Cowie is a case in point - he played every test offered, and starred in the "we don't want to give you tests so here is an Australian or English XI with most of the best players in it" games, taking 200 odd for **** all. What has Bumrah done that Harris didn't? Are you valuing India in Aus as much higher than Aus in SA or the Ashes? Because you have to at this stage.

What we do know IRL is no selector would pick Chris Martin over Shane Bond, ever. I probably sound way more aggressive on this than I am because it's quite late here but that just isn't a justifiable ranking at all imo. You don't get points for existing.

okay that post just tell me you haven't bothered to try and understand anything I have said. ciao.

 

[Flem274*]

The simple difference between real life cricket team selections and what we do in comparing players is.....

The rating is based on a player's career. The selection is based on a player's utility to the team.

To think these two need to follow the same logic is the only illogical bit here.

You're picking a team to win surely. It's the same exercise. Of course they should follow the same logic.

You better believe that if some obscure jammy bastard from 1924 is sending down absolute weirdo grenades in the ATG trials nets that the post WWII players can't deal with, he's in the team to throw a curve ball at everyone else.

 

[honestbharani]

You're picking a team to win surely. It's the same exercise. Of course they should follow the same logic.

You better believe that if some obscure jammy bastard from 1924 is sending down absolute weirdo grenades in the ATG trials nets that the post WWII players can't deal with, he's in the team to throw a curve ball at everyone else.

No... picking a team is in expectation of performance.. Rating careers is based on performance. You can select based on performances but it never needs to be the only criteria. But rating completed careers basically has to be on performance alone, not some unfulfilled subjective potential.

 

[Flem274*]

okay that post just tell me you haven't bothered to try and understand anything I have said. ciao.

I understand you, I just completely disagree. Good chatting with ya.

 

[Flem274*]

No... picking a team is in expectation of performance.. Rating careers is based on performance. You can select based on performances but it never needs to be the only criteria. But rating completed careers basically has to be on performance alone, not some unfulfilled subjective potential.

You don't pick a team based on performance or rate the chances of your ATG side based on expected performance? Careers are rated on how good someone was. Anything else is just noise.

You have no idea how the Indian ATG side you'd pick would fare when it came to it. No one does, though we have educated guesses. What you're not going to do is plug in a bowler because he played a billion tests, you're going to pick them based on who you instinctively think will send down the most hand grenades.

Bumrah's longevity does not stack up well against Kapil, Zaheer, Ishant and the many spinners. He's playing every game though unless he bombs, let's not kid ourselves. Anyone who tried to justify not picking him initially would be laughed out of the room.

 

[honestbharani]

You don't pick a team based on performance or rate the chances of your ATG side based on expected performance? Careers are rated on how good someone was. Anything else is just noise.

You have no idea how the Indian ATG side you'd pick would fare when it came to it. No one does, though we have educated guesses. What you're not going to do is plug in a bowler because he played a billion tests, you're going to pick them based on who you instinctively think will send down the most hand grenades.

Bumrah's longevity does not stack up well against Kapil, Zaheer, Ishant and the many spinners. He's playing every game though unless he bombs, let's not kid ourselves. Anyone who tried to justify not picking him initially would be laughed out of the room.

Let me put it this way. If you saw Harris and think he is one of the top 5 bowlers ever you have seen, that is fine. It does not make his career a better one than someone who played far longer and was far more tested. Its what I mean by rating careers. Harris hardly had 1/3rd of a regular test player's career. It does not matter how good he looked in that period given he was not good enough to even play FC for so much longer.

 

[trundler]

I think longevity serves to prove 2 things:

A) that someone isn't a flash in the pan and just a beneficiary of circumstance. Plenty of guys suffer the yips, lose their mojo, can't cope with different challenges or just lose their novelty. Guys like Brett Lee, Jimmy Adams, and Ajantha Mendis all spring to mind. Would they be rated more highly if they'd retired before reverting to mediocrity? To me, a player must disprove these doubts. In my mind, Tyson is a what-if but Adcock isn't. I can't tell you exactly where the line is.

B) as a tiebreaker between two players of a similar calibre. Eg Barrington averaged 60 odd for 9 years, Sobers did it for 15 ergo Sobers is better. Don't quote me on the exact numbers, I'm just making a point.

If Cummins retires today, he'll go down as a greater bowler than Southee because he's demonstrably capable of elite output and definitely not a guy who was in the right place at the right time but he's not in the same tier as McGrath because McGrath was as good but for longer. There's a high level of subjectivity involved in determining what the minimum threshold is or whether someone was in a different class as someone else or not obviously.

 

[_00_deathscar]

You're going to pick them based on who you instinctively think will send down the most hand grenades.

So wouldn't you just pick Mitch Johnson every time for Australia and hope he figures out a way to do what he did for that ~15 test period or whatever he had? It was better than anything McGrath, Cummins or any Australian bowler I've ever seen achieve.

 

[_00_deathscar]

But from what we do have to go by in tests, he averaged the same, low 20s. It's "what if" sure but the evidence we do have points to Bond= low average

Like, Bevan is another ODI gun who failed in tests, but we have to really stretch the prediction to say he'd have turned it around and averaged 50 if he played 100 tests. With Bond it's more mental legwork to say his average blows out to 30 rather than stays under 25

He was damn good btw.

Is it though? Brett Lee started like a house on fire and took 50 wickets in like 10 tests, 65 in 15 or something, averaging in the late 10s in the first 10 tests, up to 22 after ~15 or so tests - and took them against England, India, NZ and Windies, before reverting to mediocrity. That's just a few tests less than Bond, and against better opposition.
Bond beat up on Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe (who account for nearly 45% of his total wicket tally).

This is of course exaggerated but it's for a point. Clearly he was very good, I agree, and in all likelihood, he'd probably have had that same ODI trajectory or the one we hope he would have had in tests.

But we don't know for sure - and there just isn't enough evidence to suggest it's a near certainty - again, I compare to young Ronaldo. That dude gets the "what ifs" because we saw what he was ACTUALLY capable of until that knee injury (he had more goals before turning 23 than Haaland does right now - and Haaland is an absolute monster of a goalscorer).
With Bond, the volume of work just isn't there for it to be a near certainty.

The other point is that there is a legitimate question mark over his ability to actually last through tests/series - sure he could do the business in ODIs needing to bowl 10 overs, but could he do it in 5-day tests, and test series over prolonged periods?

 

[Coronis]

I think there’s a difference in eras/tests played/opportunities/war etc vs Ryan “simply not good enough for 10 years” Harris though.

Ftr Barnes doesn’t have any excuses. He played less than half the available tests in his career and we all know why. (not that I completely disagree with his reasons)

 

[Adorable Asshole]

SA were minnows yes but the batsmen were of a higher quality than the bowlers

Barnes bowled to Herbie Taylor, Faulkner and Nourse snr. So wickets against them have more value then runs against them

I feel the same way about 90s Zim and 90s SL before Murali hit his stride

Yeah but SA were all poor players of spin.

Plus the disparity between his record against Aus and SA is too much. Even though some SA batsmen were good, the batting unit as a whole wasn't really great tbh.

 

[mr_mister]

Yeah but SA were all poor players of spin.

Plus the disparity between his record against Aus and SA is too much. Even though some SA batsmen were good, the batting unit as a whole wasn't really great tbh.

So I want to be clear I just called him ATG, not the Bradman of bowling

He averaged 21 against Australia with the ball from 20 tests, hardly useless. Yeah there's a big disparity between that and 9 against SA, but like... Well of course he's not going to average 9 against Australia

Herbie Taylor at least was I think, by definition a good player of spin, based on the fact he got 500+ runs in the series Barnes took his 49 wickets

49 wickets in a series is nuts, we can bring in all these reasons why but like, we can do that for most ATG series performances