Haha this is a great discussion
Here's my thoughts:
Excluding Ban & Zim in analysis: I don't mind them being left off - as you say cricketlover, many people take them out. But I'm warming up to including them again. I used to leave them off all my analyses, but like Rob has said, there have been plenty of weak teams in Test history: New Zealand and Sri Lanka probably the prime examples. NZ were poor for MANY years - it took them 30 years to win a Test. And SL weren't much threat for 10-20 years.
Microanalysis in general: Fraught with danger. I was looking at the very underrated Dennis Amiss' record today (he would make this list incidently if the cutoff was 3000 runs
![Stick out tongue :p :p](/forums/styles/planetcricket/xenforo/smilies/tongue.png)
) He opened for England in the '70s and late 60s for those who've never come across his name. Anyway, Amiss has a poor record versus Australia, averaging 15, which makes you assume that he sucked against genuine pace (Lillee and Thomson), but then he's got a great record vs WI (averages 70), and they had just as much pace as Australia had in Roberts and Holding. Look at one set of figures without the other and you get a false impression. Another example: we were talking about the 2003/04 India tour the other day around here. Look at the figures and it looks great for Indian batsmen, plenty of runs vs Australia in Australia, but it doesn't mention that the legendary McWarne duo weren't playing. There's always a story behind stats I've found, so I like to keep as many of them in the analysis as possible.
Jack Hobbs vs good bowlers: Here's a list of non-English pre-WW2 bowlers who took more than 20 wickets:
Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo
Not a heap of them average under 25 and many of those missed Hobbs Test window of 1907-1930. Can't work out how to sort it like that, so doing it manually, here are the "average under 25" guys that played in his window:
Bert Ironmonger
George Bissett
Tip Snooke
Bill Whitty
Alf Hall
Jack Saunders
Bert Vogler
Ranji Hordern
Clarrie Grimmett
Claude Carter
Dunno if he faced all of them, but there's a few names I recognise there (Saunders, Ironmonger, Whitty, Grimmett of course), but I think it was generally a good time to bat in the 20s - lots of runs were scored then. In fact, the 20s have the 4th highest batting average of all the decades:
Team records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo
Before WW1 was a bit more difficult. That or Sid Barnes was an insanely good bowler to average 16 in that time.