StinkyBoHoon
National Board President
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2009
- Location
- Glasgow, Scotland
no, I'm telling you that your arguement is over simplistic and makes use of specious language. even the way you use entertainment is ignoring its wider implications. when people say akram is entertaining that does not follow that he simply had a more fun way of getting batsmen out, akram's entertainment is derived from his ability to do things almost no player in the history of the game has been able to do, including mcgrath. afridi's entertainment is derived from a somewhat callous approach to batting, akram's is not. it is too easy to merely dismiss that as being nothing but entertaining. and if you look back you can find me both refusing to be drawn on who I think is better and defending mcgrath against the accusation he is boring so it's not because I like him better.
as regards to consistency there isn't much doubt that mcgrath was more consistent, but I wanted to look at it in depth so increased the quota to innings. and where does it stop if we take matches over innings? should we look at series then? because mcgrath played 6 series where he went over 40 and akram played 9, except 2 of those he bowled less than 3 overs, presumably due to injury, so really 7. akram also took wickets at under 20 more often than mcgrath, so it seems like there was plenty of times akram made up for a bad performance by bowling well the next match. this is why I had a problem with the statement "all those times" you claimed he was useless. it was an incredibly vague sentiment and personally I think demonstrates you've created a strange exagerated view of akrams role as an inconsistent entertainer when he was in fact an extremely prolific wicket taker, he took on average 2.25 wickets a match to mcgraths 2.31, no one is saying mcragth wasn't statistically superior, but the degree is marginal. akram still took wickets at about 23, that's impressive statistically no matter how he achieved it and if he was a "boring" player he'd still merit being talked about as an all time great. regarding consistency it's also worth noting akram started cricket at 19 to mcgraths 24, looking at their stats suggest mcgrath benefitted greatly from a bit of experience as it was really 25, almost 26, before he started performing well, wasim had very good stats from the off and only declined in his final year. that's a 15 year career of continued success, compared to mcgraths 12, I think it would churlish to really use this against mcgrath, but if you were to make an extremely wide comparison of career consistency then it surely being able to take wickets over a longer period counts in akrams favour. mcgraths higher test caps is in this way misleading as it does not indicate a more sustained succesful career (a player that plays 30 tests over 2 extremely busy years cannot be claimed to be as consistent as one that played 30 over 5 or 6 years)
debut and retirement provide convenient starting and end points but it's worth remembering at akrams height, 1990 to 1997 he took wickets at abour 20 and picked up 12 mom awards in the 48 tests he played. is 8 years enough time to qualify a player as consistently brilliant even if it his bookended by lesser success? I think it is.
this, again, is over simplyifying. of course, there are some advantages to bowling on home wickets, but it does not follow that you can make a sweeping generalisation and put all home wickets equal to each other. do you think cook or trott or kallis' runs in england and south africa should be given absolute equal weighting to sehwag's truck load of runs in india? do you think warne or murali had similarly easy tasks one bowling on regular turners that significantly deterioated over a match and the other bowling on largely flat wickets that held together? murali's home average is massively superior to warnes, but then they were both home wickets so warne has no hiding place. akram had to bowl on less helpful surfaces, sure he was helped in learning how to do it he played there a lot as it was his home, it doesn't make the skills honed any less impressive.
I wondered if someone was going to bring this stuff up. I wouldn't go down the "teammates stop him picking up wickets" route here. akram was partnered by significantly better pace bowlers than mcgrah ever was in Imran khan and later Waqar. if either of the two suffered in this respect it was akram as during spells in which pace bowling was being rewarded he was directly competing with almost equally brilliant fast bowlers for the spoils. waqar tooks wickets at a phenomenal strike rate, I think only barnes and currently steyn have ever surpassed him, how many more wickets would akram have got had waqar not been hoovering up batsmen along side him? this is perhaps actually a pertinent point to make, because it lends weight to akram being able to bowl more unplayable deliveries as he had to feed off batsmen that in many cases were able to resist imran and waqar. personally, it's not an arguement I like though, blaming teammates for statistical manipulation, and mcgrath had warne, and akram was shown to be much more succesful alongside waqar than in his absence, so I'd leave it be.
I think you're suggesting it when you say there is "no justifiable reason" you can see where akram is better than mcgrath. again, as I said, I think they can barely be seperated, but that you can't see any reason akram is better? any at all? to me that's a pretty blinkered over view of the situation and I also mentioned that of the two akram usually comes out on top in expert assessments of fast bowling.
by all means go with mcgrath, but it's slightly rich to call me arrogant for not seeing your arguement when you've already dismissed out of hand any arguement that disagrees with your own as unjustifiable. you can see things your way, I can see things mine, chappell can see things his and go ahead and disagree if you wish, but don't call them unjustifiable. you've steamed in here like a bit of a know-it-all prick to be honest and presented a pretty dumbed down opinion, which is why I called you an idiot. in the big spin bowler debate I think murali is better than warne, but I am not so arrogant as to attempt to lock down the thread and end it but saying "averages".
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