England Have The Batting!,Have They Got The Bowling?.>

[Occasional Fan]

LOL, MAranello! Are you a philosopher by any chance?

[Alison]

I wasn't thinking of that, I meant that deciding which of the England batsmen would get into each side might be subjective depending on personal opinion as to whether they were better than their counterparts in each side.

[Maranello]

Originally Posted by Alison

I wasn't thinking of that, I meant that deciding which of the England batsmen would get into each side might be subjective depending on personal opinion as to whether they were better than their counterparts in each side.

Sorry I think we are talking about different things here

My suggestion to answer the question "Is the English batting line-up better or worse than other countries" is as follows:

1. Find out who were the six batsmen who played in the last Test for Eng, SL, SA, Pak, WI and NZL.
2. Find out individual PwC ratings points for each of these guys as at now.
3. ADD all the ratings for each country, so for England, we will add the ratings for Vaughan, Tresco, Strauss, Key, Flintoff and Thorpe (if they were the six guys in the last Test)
4. Divide the answer for each country by six - you will get an average rating per batsman for that country.
5. Compare across countries.
6. Smile
7. Read a book on political philosophy for some light diversion

PS: An alternative to steps 3 and 4, would be to get the median of the six ratings we have obtained. The average calculated by step 4 is skewed by the highest ranked player in that team, a median is not.

[Maranello]

Originally Posted by Occasional Fan

LOL, MAranello! Are you a philosopher by any chance?

In my lighter moments The lady in my life often accuses me of being one sometimes, but maybe that is just a good excuse to ignore my splendid insights.........

[Alison]

Originally Posted by Maranello

Sorry I think we are talking about different things here

Possibly, I was suggesting a different method of doing so, but I wasn't sure how objective/subjective my method would be.

[Maranello]

Maybe less objective, but could well give the better answer!

PS: In any case, if we only talked using objective measures, there will nothing to disagree on or debate over, and this message board would not need to exist anymore

[Occasional Fan]

Originally Posted by Maranello

In my lighter moments The lady in my life often accuses me of being one sometimes, but maybe that is just a good excuse to ignore my splendid insights.........

Lucky you! The lady in mine doesn't even try to make any excuses.

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Maranello

Interesting question Rachael, but not what the discussion is about

Reasonable riposte.. but I'm actually saying that as you can only just manage to get together a decent Test top and middle order from the collective resources of NZ, Pak, SA, WI, Ban, Ken and Zim... the comparison is pretty daft: having a better top 6 than any of those countries is not, really, a very significant claim.

Richardson, Smith, Lara, Inzi, Kallis and Chanderpaul / Sarwan would, to my mind, be a genuinely good Test side. That's the sort of level that the great batting sides do actualy achieve. It's not THAT much preferable to the current Aussie or Indian top 6: Hayden and Sehwag both top Smith... Langer's not far off Richardson... Ponting and Dravid can hold their own with Lara.. Tendulkar outclasses Inzi, and Martyn's getting close... Laxman is up there with Kallis... and any of Lehman, Clarke, Katich.. and even Ganguly.. could be considered in place of Chanderpaul / Sarwan.

There's not much point, to my mind, In england aiming to be better than also-rans: they should be aiming to compete with India and Australia on the batting front.. or at least to top Sri Lanka on that front.. and seeing that as being the case takes a lot of optimism!

ps. I wouldn't get toooo carried away with te PWC ratings as a measure: it's objective but does have limitations!

[Alison]

This is true, and I've no objection to subjective opinions, providing the distinction is made and no-one tries to claim that their subjective opinion is objective. (I'm not claiming anyone has been doing that mind you, it's just I tend to prefer to state whether something is intended to eb subjective or objective first)

[Maranello]

hmmm...but England are ranked as a better Test team than India, even though the latter have a better lining up with a much bigger reputation.

Maybe this is because bowlers do win matches, and batsmen only lose them.....

And maybe, the fact that England are doing so well, despite having a comparatively weak batting line-up as you point out, points to this: England do have a better bowling attack than a batting line-up!

I know this contradicts your thread starter Ern, apologies! But it fits in with Goatman's thread last week; English bowling is comparatively speaking, the second best in the world, and that is why, in my subjective opinion, they are the second best team. Their strength lies in the Northern sinews of Harmison, Flintoff and Hoggard, not the Southern wristiness of Thorpe and Strauss!