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runsgetter
973 Posts |
 Posted - 08/08/2005
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Umair,
Wait on what, who and why? Who's people? What do you call NCCAites who are sharing and finds this subject one of interest?
OG@blackman.com |
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gseethar
142 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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Agree with Rohan on two things...
Ganguly on that list or any list that has 'batsmen' or 'batsman' in the same sentence...great shotmaking alone does not make someone a great batsmen...Ganguly played some incredible shots but has too many weaknesses for him to be included in any elite list of batters...
Tendulkar or Lara....The tendulkar of 98-99 and a few years(3-4) preceding it is just a notch lower than Viv circa (76-80)...He was a better batsmen than Lara during that period...The tendulkar of 95-99 is still a modern benchmark of batting in the post Viv era.
That said , Lara is simply a greater batsman when inspired. No feat , no score , no opponent and no condition is beyond him. I don't think I can say the same about any batsmen in the last 20 years. He also happens to be the only batsmen to have dominated Murali in Sri Lanka! Not even tendulkar has done that. Tendulkar's average in Sri Lanka is mighty high but he has also lost a few personal battles with murali.
Ganesh (Stanford A) |
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runsgetter
973 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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Ganu,
We should be careful of our usuage of the word 'great' when chatting about cricket....
A great player is one whom single handingly win games/series for his country repeatedly. Whenever great batsmen bat for extended periods, they always take the game away from the opposition as most times they scores quickly. Great bowlers like Warney, Kapil, Imran and Marshall to name a few just simply bowls their country to victory over and over again. Now there are lots of players with great stats but referring to them as great players just don't fit the bill as their stats could be anything from padded to academics.
OG |
Edited by - runsgetter on 08/08/2005 |
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sandeep
213 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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So, that would put Steve Waugh right at the top, OG. But, I think he'd make few (if any) "Great Batsmen" list. At the same time, you're right that a great batsman is one that makes everyone else around him better...as Waugh did with Australia.
Kinda like what Michael Jordan did for the Bulls. |
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gregwidd
626 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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I think I'll just stick with the argument that Bradman was the greatest cricketer of all time and everyone else is battling for second place.
His Test average of 99.94 is a full 64% higher than the next nearest batsman (who played less than half as many Tests) - and has to rank as one of the most dominant statistics in any sport in any era. The closest personal achievement that comes to mind was Bob Beamon breaking the long jump record in 1968 with a jump nearly 22 inches better than the previous WR. |
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runsgetter
973 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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Sandeep,
Steve Waugh carried his country Australia to victory on so many occasion with his resolute-ness, his dept, his character and style. He is a class act and someone like me will always remember him, as he's the Aussie that took away the mantle from the WI in 1995 scoring 200 at Sabina Park...Australia won the game and the series 2-1 and haven't look back since. Any scholar of the game will certainly have Steve Waugh as a great batsman, a great player and a superb captain who lead from the front. 10000 Test runs is a lot and he's one of a handful with such milestone.
OG |
Edited by - runsgetter on 08/08/2005 |
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Khushru
139 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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Rohan, Ganesh ... I retract. I take Ganguly off the list ... but the list is is not important, as in who's in and who's not ... the question I'm wondering about is 'where does the post Richards era of batting (say the last 15 years) rank in terms of other eras of batting'? Just as you could say that 1975 to 1990 was the golden age of fast bowling with Thompson, Lillee, Imran, Hadlee, and all the West Indian greats (with Walsh and Ambrose to follow).
Has there been another time in cricket where the batting around the cricketing world has included the quality, caliber, greatness of the last 15 years with Lara, Tendulkar, Waugh, Inzamam, Dravid, etc?
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rohan
1164 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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Sutcliffe, Bradman, Paynter, Headley, Hammond --- I'd say that was a pretty darn good era. Those 5 are all in the top 10 averages of all time for sure, Sutcliffe and Headley were 60+ and Hammond and Paynter were not far off it. Hobbs as well, not far behind.
If you go to the 50s/60s - Pollock, Barrington, Sobers, Weekes, Walcott
80s - Gavaskar, Border, Miandad, Viv - that's a hard quartet to top.
Still a tough comparison to make though - pitches, equipment, fitness, fielding standards - everything is so different.
Rohan. |
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gregwidd
626 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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A couple other things to remember about Bradman's era:
- Uncovered pitches
- Legside theory
We'll never see another performance like Jim Laker's - I wonder how well Viv or Clive or Greg or Sachin would have done on some of the gluepots of 80 years ago ... |
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Tigerdesert
751 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2005
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| Anil Kumble took 10 wickets against Pakistan. |
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vsvaidya
13 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2005
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I would not call Bradman as the greatest "cricketer" of all time. The greatest cricketer, in my opinion has to be Sir Garfield Sobers--there hasn't been a more complete cricketer yet who comes close to Sobers in terms of batting, bowling and fielding all put together.
We can debate all day and night about the greatest batsman and the greatest bowler, but the mantle of the greatest cricketer has to be bestowed on Sobers.
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runsgetter
973 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2005
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The golden era/ages of cricket is long gone. Personally, I think only a handful of players over the past 15 years can be called great. Again, great players win games/series single handingly and we should not confuse ourselves with players with great padded stats. A hundred is a milestone but can be of academics interest only if you batted for 2 days like Boycott with no result or if you're a selfish player with only stats on your mind....
Cricket peaked during the helmet-less, no technology decades of 1970-1990. Most teams then had a few great players and there were strong competitions. These were men of passion, pride, heart and courage who accepted cricket as modern days war. In recent times cricket is about style and money. |
Edited by - runsgetter on 08/09/2005 |
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Khushru
139 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2005
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| Owen, when are you posting the final part? |
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runsgetter
973 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2005
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K'ru,
It will be out next week. The writers travels around the Caribbean soliciting input. They'll choose Sir Isaac due the fact the his runs produced more victories.
OG |
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Khushru
139 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2005
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Owen, still waiting to read the rest.
But in the mean time this from Waugh on Lara:
No one has yet claimed to have been able to accurately assess the character of the contemporary game's most celebrated, complex and controversial cricketer. And the opponent who has played against him most has been similarly perplexed by the many sides of Brian Lara.
"He is charming, vulnerable, endearing, moody and impossible to work out at times and endlessly fascinating," is the way Steve Waugh, the former Australian captain, describes him in his weighty autobiography, Out of My Comfort Zone. Waugh says he always got on well with Lara, from the time the richly-gifted Trinidadian was the young twelfth man throughout Australia's 1991 Test series in the Caribbean to their most recent tour in 2003 when, according to Waugh, Lara, then his opposing captain, "felt ostracised by the fans".
Even after a face-to-face confrontation on the field during the last Test in Antigua in 2003, Waugh notes that there was no lingering animosity between them. "By the time a smooth Cockspur and Coke slid down our parched throats, Brian and I were hugging each other, exchanging shirts and telling each other how good we were."
Waugh was in opposition for all of Lara's eight hundreds in his 28 Tests against Australia. Among them were two of his finest, his first, 277, at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the 1992-93 series and his unbeaten 153 at Kensington Oval in Barbados that led the West Indies to a one-wicket victory in the 1999 series, described by Waugh as "one of the all-time great matches". "Lara is a good player against average bowling sides and a great one against formidable attacks but when harassed into a corner by his own brinksmanship or if he's targeted, he elevates himself into a genius."
Citing more than one instance, he adds: "Often he would initiate a conversation by being assertive and confrontational to give himself a cause. I sometimes did the same thing." Waugh's 800-page, 400,000-word tome, all authored by himself without the help of a 'ghost' writer and attracting an advance fee of Aus$1.1 million (US$730,000) from publishers Penguin, covers an international career that lasted from 1985 to 2003 in which he played 168 Tests, 57 as captain, and 325 One-day Internationals. His 10,927 runs make him second to fellow Australian Allan Border's 11,174 as Test cricket's highest scorer, but only 68 ahead of Lara. |
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