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England's Andrew Flintoff, on his knees, is congratulated by teammates after bowling the wicket of Australia's Peter Siddle. AAP Images
Time to play Tony Barber. Who are we? Two cricket players with similar-ish records. I am good, but nowhere near as good as I am hyped up to be, while I am very good and nowhere near hyped up as I should be.
Take a pick of the board if you answered Andrew Flintoff and Daniel Vettori.
This week, Daniel Vettori became just the eighth cricketer to manage the double of 3000 runs – 300 wickets.
He did so by clouting 140 while batting at Number 8. Whose company has he joined? Try the very elite and exclusive club of Chaminda Vaas, Shane Warne, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Shaun Pollock, Sir Richard Hadlee and Ian Botham.
And it’s not like he sneaks in.
He has the fifth best batting average of the group and the fourth most Test centuries.
He does have the highest bowling average of the eight, but most likely the Kiwi pitches have something to do with that.
Vettori is not just a fantastic bowler and batsmen, but has blossomed into a good captain, which is something the likes of Botham, Pollock and Flintoff all struggled with.
Head to head, Flintoff has scored 3,845 runs to Vettori’s 3,492 at averages that are both close to 30. With the ball, Vettori has 303 wickets to Flintoff’s 226.
The Kiwi has taken 10 wickets in a match three times and five wickets in an innings 18 times, compared to the zero and three of Flintoff.
Going by the numbers, Vettori is the superior cricketer by some way.
Vettori has spent most of his career batting at 8 and 9.
He averages 24 at 9 and 42 at 8. Flintoff has batted at 6 and 7 and here he averages an identical 32.
Was Flintoff a victim of his own image in that bowlers made more of an effort to dismiss him while they relaxed when they saw Vettori stroll to the crease with them already six wickets down?
Did Flintoff deserve the Man of the Match award at Lords? Definitely not.
In the second innings, he dismissed both Australian opener, had Brad Haddin caught with his first over of the final day, and then clean-bowled Numbers 9 and 10.
This was seen to be better than Andrew Strauss’ 161.
Often perception is more powerful than reality.
Here is just another instance of what we see all the time in sport. For whatever reason, player A is given significantly more credit than player B, who flies under the radar.
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