Unpopular Cricket Opinions - T20WC Edition

[Sherlock Holmes]

Imagine being disliked in your own state even. Ashwin’s got a bit of an ego (and I’m severely underplaying it) but he’s pretty much the darling for most of us here.

Atleast he makes more runs than Rahul.

 

[asprin]

H.Vihari should be a certainty in SENA Tests.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

H.Vihari should be a certainty in SENA Tests.

Why?

 

[asprin]

Why?

Ability to occupy the crease. I totally agree that he hasn't score tons of runs but being out there with a partner to stem the flow of wickets is also an admirable skill. Very useful in the lower order where 50s or 100s might not be possible but those valuable 25-40 runs in low scoring games become worth its weight in gold.

 

[Bigby Wolf]

H.Vihari should be a certainty in SENA Tests.

He is nothing but a slightly better version of Cheteshwar Pujara.

 

[asprin]

He is nothing but a slightly better version of Cheteshwar Pujara.

I'll take it.

 

[Ahmad94]

Ok - this is getting juicy. Here is a more controversial one from me:

The worship/cult-like attitude around the likes of Sachin, Kohli, and other Indian greats has meant that any criticism of any idea they have is seen as an attack on India - and is treated as a national threat by the internet. This stops you from having a discussion.

Places like r/cricket have become a safe haven for people who don't want their opinions challenged or questioned simply due to the population of Indians jumping to support another Indian.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

Ok - this is getting juicy. Here is a more controversial one from me:

The worship/cult-like attitude around the likes of Sachin, Kohli, and other Indian greats has meant that any criticism of any idea they have is seen as an attack on India - and is treated as a national threat by the internet. This stops you from having a discussion.

Places like r/cricket have become a safe haven for people who don't want their opinions challenged or questioned simply due to the population of Indians jumping to support another Indian.

Not just Sachin, Kohli etc these days. You can't criticise the BCCI without the same happening on r/cricket.

 

[Bevab]

r/cricket has become a cesspool over the last two years with constant insults hurled at players and attacks at anyone daring to challenge the narrative.

They also think Kallis is the greatest cricketer in history so I’ll criticise them a bit extra for that.

 

[Yash.]

Kallis is a massively overrated all-rounder in tests which is utterly contrary to popular opinion and comparisons between him and Ohtani in baseball are so off the mark that they make me laugh. I’d normally just run with him being overrated with the ball alone but eh, this is the spicy takes thread and I’m sticking with mine.

I'd like your complete view over that. I never did completely watch his bowling in his prime to judge much of it, but his stats do say he is a better than mediocre bowler.

 

[Bevab]

I'd like your complete view over that. I never did completely watch his bowling in his prime to judge much of it, but his stats do say he is a better than mediocre bowler.

My take is primarily in response to two things that I see commonly parroted on social media.

1. He is the one people bring up whenever Americans talk about Ohtani in baseball as the cricket equivalent (and use him as a stick to berate baseball with for not having dual way players).
2. People look at his raw averages and simply say "he is the batting equivalent of Sachin and the bowling equivalent of Zaheer"... or that he's the equal of Imran Khan and Garry Sobers.

Now I do think he gets a bit underrated as a batter despite having the benefit of batting mainly in a flat pitch era because he had to do it consistently in the one place that was still bowling friendly compared to other places (I still don't think he's as good as Sachin for other reasons but that's another story). His bowling record flatters him a bit though as his best performances by far came against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (taking them out puts his bowling average at 35). His next best record is against West Indies... and you should see where I'm going with this by now. In addition his bowling also benefitted from the pitches at home which along with England are the places where he's bowled his best if you ignore the one series in Bangladesh. He also wasn't much of a wicket taking bowler either (though to be fair to him I doubt this was the primary role he was used for).

The main reason however is that his workload as a bowler was quite less than many great pace all-rounders of the past let alone the specialist bowlers' to whom his output gets favourably compared to. He's got around twenty overs bowled on average per match across his entire career (this is a simplified way of looking at it yes but I'm not really keen on delving deep into it at the moment ). This pales in comparison to Imran Khan (who I consider the best all-rounder of all-time) with a thirty six over workload and Sobers who has a thirty eight over workload (even accounting for the fact that Sobers bowled spin too, that is a fairly big discrepancy). Sobers is the one he gets compared to often and so such a big gap is noteworthy. Even the likes of Freddie Flintoff, Chris Cairns and the dashing Keith Miller had around thirty one overs on average per match. The likes of Oram, Slasher MacKay and Big Mac hang around twenty five overs per match and for a more modern example, de Grandhomme has around twenty three overs per match.

Does this mean he should be discounted from any all-rounder discussion though? I don't think so. Stokes for instance has only nineteen overs per match and Watto along with Barlow are around fifteen per match. Cronje's got just nine per match. Asif Iqbal's got eleven overs per match. Most importantly though you'd say that all of these blokes are ones who either gave up bowling regularly at some point due to fitness reasons or workload or were just mainly batting all-rounders that bowled a bit. Kallis does straddle the line between what you would consider an all-rounder. In isolation or when simply compared to the times he played in you'd easily call him an all-rounder but when you start comparing across eras and to multiple great all-rounders you start seeing the cracks when you include him in as a pure all-rounder. Hence why I think his bowling is massively overrated given that he simply didn't bowl as much as many other greats or even decent all-rounders and when he did... he was more of a pacer they brought on to get through the overs and hopefully get a few wickets along the way because he was decent with the ball.

Since I've criticised or poked at his record far too much in this post I will say some things that I do like about him. His presence allowed for a very unique team setup wherein South Africa could get by with playing one or even two mediocre spinners (not sure if they did play two in reality) for Asian tours since they could rely on him to be that fourth bowler without losing any batting presence (Pollock's presence also allowed this to a lesser extent). Nicky Boje is never having a forty three test career despite his strong debut series if Kallis wasn't there. They've still not managed to replace his role in their test side despite it being close to a decade since he retired or even come close to emulating it with a different setup simply because of how unique he was. His bowling was quite decent too from a skill perspective, he was capable of bowling well into the mid to high 130s early on and could swing it to a good level. Dare I say, if he was forced to be a replacement for a long-term replacement for McMillan in the lower middle order and told to be much better than him with the ball in the long run I'd say he may have achieved it. It wouldn't have been the best use of his talent though.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

My take is primarily in response to two things that I see commonly parroted on social media.

1. He is the one people bring up whenever Americans talk about Ohtani in baseball as the cricket equivalent (and use him as a stick to berate baseball with for not having dual way players).
2. People look at his raw averages and simply say "he is the batting equivalent of Sachin and the bowling equivalent of Zaheer"... or that he's the equal of Imran Khan and Garry Sobers.

Now I do think he gets a bit underrated as a batter despite having the benefit of batting mainly in a flat pitch era because he had to do it consistently in the one place that was still bowling friendly compared to other places (I still don't think he's as good as Sachin for other reasons but that's another story). His bowling record flatters him a bit though as his best performances by far came against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (taking them out puts his bowling average at 35). His next best record is against West Indies... and you should see where I'm going with this by now. In addition his bowling also benefitted from the pitches at home which along with England are the places where he's bowled his best if you ignore the one series in Bangladesh. He also wasn't much of a wicket taking bowler either (though to be fair to him I doubt this was the primary role he was used for).

The main reason however is that his workload as a bowler was quite less than many great pace all-rounders of the past let alone the specialist bowlers' to whom his output gets favourably compared to. He's got around twenty overs bowled on average per match across his entire career (this is a simplified way of looking at it yes but I'm not really keen on delving deep into it at the moment ). This pales in comparison to Imran Khan (who I consider the best all-rounder of all-time) with a thirty six over workload and Sobers who has a thirty eight over workload (even accounting for the fact that Sobers bowled spin too, that is a fairly big discrepancy). Sobers is the one he gets compared to often and so such a big gap is noteworthy. Even the likes of Freddie Flintoff, Chris Cairns and the dashing Keith Miller had around thirty one overs on average per match. The likes of Oram, Slasher MacKay and Big Mac hang around twenty five overs per match and for a more modern example, de Grandhomme has around twenty three overs per match.

Does this mean he should be discounted from any all-rounder discussion though? I don't think so. Stokes for instance has only nineteen overs per match and Watto along with Barlow are around fifteen per match. Cronje's got just nine per match. Asif Iqbal's got eleven overs per match. Most importantly though you'd say that all of these blokes are ones who either gave up bowling regularly at some point due to fitness reasons or workload or were just mainly batting all-rounders that bowled a bit. Kallis does straddle the line between what you would consider an all-rounder. In isolation or when simply compared to the times he played in you'd easily call him an all-rounder but when you start comparing across eras and to multiple great all-rounders you start seeing the cracks when you include him in as a pure all-rounder. Hence why I think his bowling is massively overrated given that he simply didn't bowl as much as many other greats or even decent all-rounders and when he did... he was more of a pacer they brought on to get through the overs and hopefully get a few wickets along the way because he was decent with the ball.

Since I've criticised or poked at his record far too much in this post I will say some things that I do like about him. His presence allowed for a very unique team setup wherein South Africa could get by with playing one or even two mediocre spinners (not sure if they did play two in reality) for Asian tours since they could rely on him to be that fourth bowler without losing any batting presence (Pollock's presence also allowed this to a lesser extent). Nicky Boje is never having a forty three test career despite his strong debut series if Kallis wasn't there. They've still not managed to replace his role in their test side despite it being close to a decade since he retired or even come close to emulating it with a different setup simply because of how unique he was. His bowling was quite decent too from a skill perspective, he was capable of bowling well into the mid to high 130s early on and could swing it to a good level. Dare I say, if he was forced to be a replacement for a long-term replacement for McMillan in the lower middle order and told to be much better than him with the ball in the long run I'd say he may have achieved it. It wouldn't have been the best use of his talent though.

Kallis has the second highest strike rate for a pace bowler with over 200 wickets.

 

[T.J.Hooker II]

It's really hard to work out Sobers' bowling stats because he bowled pace, medium, finger spin and wrist spin.

Has there ever been a player who has ranked #1 on the points list at both test batting and bowling, even non-simultaneously? Botham might be nearest with #1 in bowling and #3 in batting.

You would think somebody will eventually do both but it's clearly quite some feat.

 

[pillowprocter]

Has there ever been a player who has ranked #1 on the points list at both test batting and bowling, even non-simultaneously? Botham might be nearest with #1 in bowling and #3 in batting.

Aubrey Faulkner is very close, closer than Botham. At times he was #1 in batting and at other times he was #2 in bowling.

 

[Yash.]

Aubrey Faulkner is very close, closer than Botham. At times he was #1 in batting and at other times he was #2 in bowling.

I don’t remember exactly but he was once number 1 in both