Beefy wants pitch doctored!

[Notts Exile]

Originally Posted by Cricket Girl

There was a feature in Observer Sport Monthly recently about how many current batsmen are in the top 20 of players with the highest average. There are eight in total. Viv Richards isn't in the top 20. Now, there is no way at all that Matthew Hayden and Graeme Smith are better batsmen than Viv Richards. Smith has an average that is FIVE runs better than Richards's

I didn't see that article. It makes a very good point, though. Viv Richards was definitely a better batsman than Hayden and Smith, and Sehwag for that matter. It would really be interesting to see what they would all have done against the attacks of the fifties and sixties!!

[Cricket Girl]

Originally Posted by Notts Exile

I didn't see that article. It makes a very good point, though. Viv Richards was definitely a better batsman than Hayden and Smith, and Sehwag for that matter. It would really be interesting to see what they would all have done against the attacks of the fifties and sixties!!

DG Bradman 52 80 10 6996 334 99.94 29 13 32 - AUS
RG Pollock 23 41 4 2256 274 60.97 7 11 17 - RSA
GA Headley 22 40 4 2190 270* 60.83 10 5 14 - WI
H Sutcliffe 54 84 9 4555 194 60.73 16 23 23 - ENG
E Paynter 20 31 5 1540 243 59.23 4 7 7 - ENG
KF Barrington 82 131 15 6806 256 58.67 20 35 58 - ENG
ED Weekes 48 81 5 4455 207 58.61 15 19 49 - WI
WR Hammond 85 140 16 7249 336* 58.45 22 24 110 - ENG
R Dravid 89 151 18 7696 270 57.86 20 36 123 - IND
GS Sobers 93 160 21 8032 365* 57.78 26 30 109 - WI
SR Tendulkar 123 198 21 10134 248* 57.25 34 41 77 - IND
JB Hobbs 61 102 7 5410 211 56.94 15 28 17 - ENG
JH Kallis 93 155 26 7337 189* 56.87 22 37 89 - RSA
CL Walcott 44 74 7 3798 220 56.68 15 14 53 11 WI
L Hutton 79 138 15 6971 364 56.67 19 33 57 - ENG
V Sehwag 34 56 1 3079 309 55.98 10 9 31 - IND
RT Ponting 90 147 20 7062 257 55.60 22 28 105 - AUS
GC Smith 39 67 5 3441 277 55.50 11 12 48 - RSA
GE Tyldesley 14 20 2 990 122 55.00 3 6 2 - ENG
AC Gilchrist 70 101 18 4538 204* 54.67 15 20 270 27 AUS

These are the top 20 batsmen by average. Of the eight current batsmen there, I would say that Dravid and Tendulkar deserve to be on that list, that Sehwag and Smith's average would flatten out as they play more cricket and that Gilchrist, Ponting, Kallis and Hayden, good as they are, shouldn't really feature in a list of the best 20 batsmen ever. Still, neither should George Tyldesley, so i guess it's all relative. Mind you, when I saw this list in the Observer, before the Edgbaston Test, Strauss was in that top 20 too.

[Lemming]

I think the standard of attacks may be the answer here. I know most batsmen have not played much against Bangladesh but some have scored several hundreds of runs against them - contributing to their average. Against Bangladesh these seven batsmens' amount of runs and averages are

Rahul Dravid: 229 @ 76.33
SachinTendulkar: 302 @ 151.00
Jaques Kallis: NEVER PLAYED
Virender Sehwag: 23 @ 11.50
Ricky Ponting: 69 @ 69.00
Graeme Smith: 255 @ 63.75
Adam Gilchrist: 43 @ 43.00

Selected other current high-flyers:

Matthew Hayden: 61 @ 30.50
Inzamam ul-Haq: 404 @ 80.80
Andrew Strauss: 77 @ 38.50
Marcus Trescothick: 551 @ 110.20
Yousef Youhana: 503 @ 501.50
Jacques Rudolph: 293 @ 293.00
Marvin Atapattu: 221 @ 110.50
Brian Lara: 173 @ 86.50

Against the Zimbabwe attacks of recent years (I think it's safe to say that such attacks have been relatively weak by test standards),

Rahul Dravid: 804 @ 100.50
Sachin Tendulkar: 918 @ 76.50
Jacques Kallis: 679 @ 169.75
Virender Sehwag: 74 @ 74.00
Ricky Ponting: 290 @ 96.97
Graeme Smith: 162 @ 81.00
Adam Gilchrist: 133 @ 133.00

Selected other current high-flyers:

Hamish Marshall: 69 @ 69.00
AB de Villiers: 145 @ 72.50
Matthew Hayden: 501 @ 250.50
Inzamam ul-Haq: 772 @ 42.89
Damian Martyn: 85 @ 42.50
Marvin Atapattu: 1,145 @ 95.42
Kumar Sangakkara: 536 @ 89.33
Brian Lara: 222 @ 55.50

We can see that there are only a few cases of failures by high-average world's batsmen against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Most have played little cricket against these teams and run tallies and averages are boosted marginally. Some have played a good number of innings against such attacks and boast a high number of runs and high averages, substantially contributing to their career runs tally and average.

A good example is Atapattu's record against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. His career record includes 5,083 runs @ 39.10, an astonishing 22.53% of his runs have been scored against Zimbabwe. He has an average of 110.50 against Bangladesh. If we remove the innings he has played against both of these teams we see he has played 128 innings and scored 3,717 runs @ 31.50. Therefore playing against these two (let's face it relatively weak) attacks has added 7.60 to his average.

I think the way to judge the great players is to separate them from the others in their generation where everyone has had a sort-of-similar opportunity to play all attacks. Doing this means players like Dravid, Tendulkar, Kallis, Ponting and Lara (among a few others) currently stand out from the rest. These sorts of players - you could argue - have a case to be compared with the historical greats.

[Lemming]

I hope I'm not going to much off topic here. But I've done a little more research into the effect of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe on batting averages. I'll list each test team (except Bangladesh and Zimbabwe) before listing that team's overall historical batting average, followed by their overall batting average v Bangladesh and then overall batting average v Zimbabwe.

Australia: 33.5; 87.5; 64.3.
England: 31.7; 60.3; 35.2.
India: 32.4; 50.2; 43.5.
New Zealand: 28.0; 53.3; 42.5.
Pakistan: 32.2; 46.2; 31.2.
South Africa: 30.7; 86.2; 62.0.
Sri Lanka: 31.2; 66.6; 46.0.
West Indies: 32.9; 53.1; 33.7.

Only when Pakistan have played Zimbabwe have any of the listed nations failed to increase their all-time batting average. South Africa pretty much score twice as many runs per wicket against the two teams as they have per wicket throughout history.

Draw from this what you will!

[Cricket Girl]

Originally Posted by Rachael

There's too much ******** talked about that ball: wherever it pitched.. and however much it turned.. it should not have bowled Staruss: he's got two pads and a bat and one job - to get that lot between ball and stumps. he just didn't know where his stumps were relative to the pitch of the ball and stood in the wrong place: not impressive.

The problem is though he can't get his pads in between it - because he's a leftie if he pads up to any deliveries outside off he's susceptible to lbw. He was obviously trying not to pad up to Warne at Edgbaston after the tactic failed for him and Tres at Lords, but you're right, in general both him and Trescothick seem a bit clueless against Warne - they've thrown out the padding-up idea but don't seem to have replaced it with anything else. Perhaps they should take tips from Simon Jones, the other left-handed batsman in the England side who saw off a few Warne overs very well when batting with Flintoff.

[Cricket Girl]

Originally Posted by Lemming

Only when Pakistan have played Zimbabwe have any of the listed nations failed to increase their all-time batting average. South Africa pretty much score twice as many runs per wicket against the two teams as they have per wicket throughout history.

Draw from this what you will!

Of Graeme Smith's 11 Test centuries FIVE have come against West Indies, one against Bangladesh and one against Zimbabwe. Other than that he's got two against England, one against Pakistan and one against NZ.

Compare that with Trescothick, another left-handed opener who averages about ten runs less - of his Test centuries three have been against Bangladesh and two against West Indies - he also has three against South Africa, two against Sri Lanka and one apiece against NZ and Pakistan. Given that the early part of his career was spent playing against Ambrose and Walsh and Waqar and Wasim, I would say that he has been just as valuable to England as Smith has to SA, despite the apparently massive gulf in stats. The LG cricket ratings, which are pretty good at this sort of thing, (or where when PWc ran them and you could get more info about stuff) agree - Tres and Smith are in 10th and 11th and Tres has a higher career high.

[Leafy Seadragon]

Two thoughts:
1. Wasn't Tresco touted as being a really good player of spin prior to this series? I have memories of someone stating that they hoped he got the opportunity to take the game to Warnie
2. If the ball pitches half a metre outside the off stump and a batsmen gets forward and across most of the way to it and then pads it away, it would be a very brave umpire that would give them out LBW, particularly if they can see all three stumps. This is pretty much Strauss's only option when padding up outside off. Either that or actually use the bat (ah, so that's what this great plank of wood is for?)

[Irish Left Armer]

On a side note, isn't Vaughan related (possibly distantly) to those Tyldesley's?