StinkyBoHoon
National Board President
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2009
- Location
- Glasgow, Scotland
sort of a different take on the under-rated/over-rated debate except rather than cricketers more specific ideas about players and aspects of the game. I think some of this has already been touched on in these and various other threads but it might be nice to more specifically discuss them.
I'll start with a few.
- "Garner bowled the ball from a height of at least 10 feet" this is a direct quote from a cricketing article, this one is from the guardian but paraphrasals can be found all over the media. This is quite blatantly utter rubbish. Yes joel garner was massive, but as we've all seen in countless no ball deliveries bowlers are not suspended in the air at the point of delivery, in fact they are usually bent over with their leg extended in front of them. even standing upright, with his arm fully extended the normal physiology of a person has a persons elbow usually going up to their head, this would put joel garners forearm at about 3 feet 4 inches, almost half the length of his body. so unless joel garner bowled from a stationary position and had to drag his knuckles across the ground when he walked, there is no way the ball was coming from 10 feet. you can easily knock 2 feet off this.
- "indians can't play the moving ball" this comes from, I think, a misunderstanding of two factors. one, there is the idea that indians in particular are poor at playing the moving ball, generally implying non sub-continental batsmen can. in actual fact the ball swings less in australia and west indian grounds than in india (where reverse is easier to come by and they don't use kookaburras) and certainly in sri lanka and pakistan. Of course, plenty of wickets can be found of indians falling to swinging balls, this is because NO ONE can play the moving ball easily. I have seen jacob oram cause english batsmen nightmares when he found a bit of nip off the seam, and green wickets in most grounds usually mean wickets are going to tumble (see australia against pakistan, that dubious test for example, and in england 6 months later, and lots of matches played in england.) the typical technical weakness indian and sub-continental batsmen have is bounce, they like playing on the front foot using the wrists. among indian batsmen only the absolute best have decent hook shots and pulls, whereas england and australia, in players like cook, vaughan, ponting, have produced some of the best in the business.
- Dravid is not under-rated. He is perhaps slightly under-appreciated by indian fans that are sweating about losing 3 aging stalwarts of their line up in one go and are looking for someone not called tendulkar to move on, but most people would put him in the best 5 or 6 batsmen of the era yet his name always comes up when talking of batsmen not getting their due. I said this in the under-rated thread but unless someone wants to say "Dravid is a better batsman than tendulkar" I don't think he's getting under-rated, he just happens to be the only really great batsman that has to share a line up with a better one.
ok, that should probably piss some people off.
anyone else got anything?
I'll start with a few.
- "Garner bowled the ball from a height of at least 10 feet" this is a direct quote from a cricketing article, this one is from the guardian but paraphrasals can be found all over the media. This is quite blatantly utter rubbish. Yes joel garner was massive, but as we've all seen in countless no ball deliveries bowlers are not suspended in the air at the point of delivery, in fact they are usually bent over with their leg extended in front of them. even standing upright, with his arm fully extended the normal physiology of a person has a persons elbow usually going up to their head, this would put joel garners forearm at about 3 feet 4 inches, almost half the length of his body. so unless joel garner bowled from a stationary position and had to drag his knuckles across the ground when he walked, there is no way the ball was coming from 10 feet. you can easily knock 2 feet off this.
- "indians can't play the moving ball" this comes from, I think, a misunderstanding of two factors. one, there is the idea that indians in particular are poor at playing the moving ball, generally implying non sub-continental batsmen can. in actual fact the ball swings less in australia and west indian grounds than in india (where reverse is easier to come by and they don't use kookaburras) and certainly in sri lanka and pakistan. Of course, plenty of wickets can be found of indians falling to swinging balls, this is because NO ONE can play the moving ball easily. I have seen jacob oram cause english batsmen nightmares when he found a bit of nip off the seam, and green wickets in most grounds usually mean wickets are going to tumble (see australia against pakistan, that dubious test for example, and in england 6 months later, and lots of matches played in england.) the typical technical weakness indian and sub-continental batsmen have is bounce, they like playing on the front foot using the wrists. among indian batsmen only the absolute best have decent hook shots and pulls, whereas england and australia, in players like cook, vaughan, ponting, have produced some of the best in the business.
- Dravid is not under-rated. He is perhaps slightly under-appreciated by indian fans that are sweating about losing 3 aging stalwarts of their line up in one go and are looking for someone not called tendulkar to move on, but most people would put him in the best 5 or 6 batsmen of the era yet his name always comes up when talking of batsmen not getting their due. I said this in the under-rated thread but unless someone wants to say "Dravid is a better batsman than tendulkar" I don't think he's getting under-rated, he just happens to be the only really great batsman that has to share a line up with a better one.
ok, that should probably piss some people off.
anyone else got anything?
Last edited:
oh well, another time...
