Yeah, I think the harshness of the punishments were because CA liked to think they had a moral high ground, and when something like this took that away, the only way to try to maintain it was to go “well we punished players who transgressed in a way no other nation ever has”. It didn’t help that our players and coaches would constantly talk about how they knew where the line was and wouldn’t cross it unlike these other players who clearly had. So when they then were shown well and truly on the wrong side of that line, the fall is harder. If you are standing on a pedestal, the fall is always going to be harder!

Definitely. This Summer was Starc’s worst of his career. He’s just lost something. When he’s at his best he’s bending the new ball back in, and he’s actually reasonably accurate. But he’s definitely had something go awry technically. But prior to that he hasn’t been all that bad. The fact that he’s not swinging the new ball either I think indicates that his issues are less related to lack of ball tampering, and more technical.

But also, I think there’s been a trend of more grass being left on the surface of pitches in recent years. Especially in Australia. And what that does is take care of the ball a lot more meaning it doesn’t rough up and start reverse swinging.

Exactly. There’s absolutely no need to drag this out now. This is the point in his career when if someone asks him about it the response should just be that he’s put it in the past, is looking to move on, and has no interest in answering any more questions about it. But he’s never been the sharpest tool in the shed!

It’s one of the reasons why a home team has never been caught ball-tampering. Because it always comes down to the home broadcasters trying to catch the visiting side out.

If you were watching so many matches during those years, Australian bowlers often got less swing than the opposition, not more. So if anything, the Aussies were playing catch up in the ball tampering stakes with most other nations much more advanced in their ball tampering to get more swing.

Warner and Smith were the two best batsmen in the team. Bancroft was a player who was barely holding his spot as it was. That’s why they’ve come back and he hasn’t. Although, to be fair, he actually did get first shot back in the team right after the suspension. He played in the first test match Australia played after his suspension ended. He’s not in the team because he’s just not good enough. Nothing to do with this incident. If this had never happened he still would have likely been gone from the team within a few more tests anyway.

It’s not about sweeping things under the carpet. Your analogy is hardly a great one, because everybody knows. He got caught. It’s more about putting it in the past and moving on instead of returning to it. He might have been asked the question, but at this point in his career the appropriate response would probably just be more like “sorry, but that’s in the past, I have no interest in continually revisiting it, I’ve moved on from that. I think I’ve learned from it and am a better person as a result, but really don’t want to talk about it anymore” and then move on. There really is no benefit to be gained by continually revisiting this any more. Leave it in the past and move on.

Well, considering the umpires judged that they hadn’t successfully changed the condition of the ball in any meaningful way that would require the ball to be changed, it’s not like the bowler was getting a ball back that had been obviously tampered with.

It’s got nothing to do with not being found out. In order to make sure that you don’t get people shining both sides and things like that, very often one player is tasked with doing most of the shining and such who get thrown the ball all the time, and the bowler gets the ball just before the end of their mark and might give it a quick rub on the pants or something, but doesn’t do the main ball maintenance.

In the Bodyline series, a tactic specifically designed to try and counter Bradman, I believed he averaged in the 50’s. So the tactic worked to an extent, brought his average to a still very good, but more mortal level. But I expect that’s a big part to do with the reduction in average against England in Australia.

There’s so much that can come into it. Sure, Bangladesh did win a test against Australia, but really, that was down to Australia just not being prepared, not Bangladesh actually being better. Australia had only one warm up match scheduled and Bangladesh scheduled it on a ground that was subject to continual flooding that was never going to be available for play, so they went into the test with no preparation. They got off to a really slow start in the test. By the end they were playing the better cricket, but just gave Bangladesh slightly too much start and fell just short in their chase, losing by just 20 runs in the end. They then smashed Bangladesh in the second test. So one reasonable warm-up game and Australia almost certainly wins that series 2-0.

Not an excuse, losing because you don’t take an opponent seriously and make sure you do the proper preparation is still losing. Just giving some context to that win.

There’s regularly context with things. England won the Ashes in 2005 and gave all their players MBE’s for it. They won 2 tests in that series. You know what, both those tests were the ones Glenn McGrath missed because of injury. And still one of them they only won by 2 runs. But regardless of the margin’s or who was or wasn’t available, they won the series. And that’s what the records show. Same here, nobody is going to list Voges as an all-time great based off his stats, we all know the context to that, and sure Sangakarra had a record slightly padded by some matches against weaker nations, but he was still one of the great players of the era who still did very well against stronger teams. And is recognised as such.

As you point out, it’s hard to just define things based on certain countries being “minnows” as all countries have stronger and weaker times.

Like I’ve also heard it described that in a lot of ways, “The Invincibles” came up against an England side that was still reeling in the wake of WW2 and probably one of the weakest England sides in quite some time because of that. Yet such things are often overlooked when looking back on such sides and players.

Yeah, dismissed once in four innings. Interestingly though, his test debut was in the West Indies and he got 130 not out where the next best score in the Aussies innings was 39 by Josh Hazlewood at #11, and the next best after that 25. So it’s not like he just piled on the runs in a runfest there. His others were though. He got 269 in Hobart where Australia declared 4/583 and won by an innings and plenty, and the next test 5 Aussies batted and four of them got hundreds. Vogues one of the not-out ones at the end.

I don’t think there’s any need to “discount” statistics, just as long as people are aware that statistics alone aren’t always a good comparison between players.

One of the other things with the Murali-Warne debate is that Murali’s home conditions were generally tailor made for him. While Warne’s home conditions were generally more fast bowler friendly ones that most spinners didn’t do great in. The fact that Warne did so well as a spinner where he played so much of his test cricket in conditions more suited to fast bowlers, and the occasions he did get spin friendly conditions it was pretty much always in an away test against players who were used to facing spinners in those conditions and therefore pretty good at it. He didn’t get to play on rank turners against players who found those very foreign conditions.

But either way, they both achieved a hell of a lot. (And chucking contraversy aside, by all reports, Murali is just a really likeable guy, while Warne can be a bit of a ____head. Not that such things come into the greatest players debates!)

Absolutely, commentary boxes really should be 2-3 people and no more.
I think Cricket is one that’s a bit different in the way the game works that in TV coverage (Radio of course is different) there’s not really the need for the “play caller” as such. Hence it tends to all be the ex-player types (which is generally what that “secondary analyst/colour commentator” is). But still keep the numbers down. Through the heyday of 9 cricket commentary it was always commentators in pairs. Occasionally you might have a guest come in as a third, but I think usually they would even replace one of the two rather than add a third. But that’s tonnes, no need to pile on the commentators.

Nicknames are the worst. Like in the BBL when they started talking about Mitch Marsh as “The Bison” and commenting on the size of his head and they kept going back to it game after game. It got so painful.

Definitely, it’s like people using “literally” all the time. I just can’t help feeling “you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means…”

Warne travels around the world commentating and during our winter often commentates in England and I’ve heard people who’ve heard his commentatry in England say that he’s actually much better. Just keep him away from a box full of his mates from when he played, and don’t let him interview players after a win and ask them how drunk they are going to get tonight.

In the NRL my favourite ex-player commentator has always been Peter Sterling, and not just because I was an Eels fan as a kid watching Sterlo take us to the title. But he is the one who will actually break down footage of a play and show those watching what actually happened, how this person moved here, and this pass took this defender out of play and then that allowed this to happen etc. Most of the other ex players are just “ooh”, “ahh”, “what a hit” type comments.

Yes, he hit a six, he didn’t hit a maximum!

It’s interesting, in most sports the classic set up has been one professional commentator, the “play-caller” who basically does most of the speaking and calls the action, and then one “expert commentator” who’s the ex-player to do bring the deeper understanding of what’s going on. Like in the NRL having Peter Sterling breaking down a play after a try and basically showing how the different moving parts in the play worked together to make everything work. Where the “expert commentators” main contribution is ooh’s and ahh’s and “nice hit” type comments they really shouldn’t be there.

Cricket is the one sort of outlier where the nature of the game, where you have more time spent in between balls than when the ball is actually in play, means that so much commentary tends to be filling in space and stuff rather than actually “calling the play” as such. So they’ve pretty much been all the “expert commentators” (ie all ex-players). For the cricket commentators that can be fine, don’t really need the play caller as such, but they certainly need to keep more of their comments related to the game and less just having general chats about all sorts of things completely unrelated to the action on the field.

One thing that often comes up when comparing different times is whether there were more batsmen averaging higher in those days because we had more quality batsmen or because it was just a period of having more flat decks in the Shield. But I think the fact that most of those who did make it into test cricket also thrived there suggests it is likely the former, that we were just producing better batsmen.

Hobart is similar. It’s very dry in total rainfall, but would definitely have a lot more rainy days than Sydney. But rainfall is rarely as heavy, so when it rains you get less rainfall.

The big negative for Shakhib is that he’s a more standard “bitsa” type allrounder. The all time great allrounders were the best, or among the best in their team, or even in the world in one of their disciplines. Sobers and Kallis are among the best batsmen of all time quite apart from being allrounders. Imran Khan and Keith Miller both averaged around 22 with the ball, which puts them at the top echelon of test bowlers.

The “bitsa” allrounder is someone who’s decent with both bat and ball, but if you took their individual batting and bowling records, they certainly wouldn’t be among the best at that, in fact, they’d probably struggle to keep their spot in the team long term on either record alone with batting averages under 40 and bowling averages of over 30 doesn’t support them being fully quality world class players at either discipline alone, just the combination of these makes them very useful.

Ben Stokes batting average is lower than Imran Khan’s career average, yet Stokes averages 31 with the ball compared to Imran’s 22. Massive difference, not even the same ball park. Shakhib’s batting average is slightly higher at 39, but also averages around 31 with the ball. So I wouldn’t put him near Imran based on that.

Also, when you consider that most players have a bit of a drop-off towards the end of their careers, comparing stats mid-career with players who’ve completed their careers always needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Pretty tough to compare batting allrounders to bowling allrounders. Guys who have bowling averages in the low 20’s and batting averages in the mid-to-high 30’s are incredible players, just as batsmen with averages well over 50 and bowling averages in the 30’s are.

That is certainly a good point. Someone gets completely lost and doesn’t get a hand on a catch that should be a sitter, so it doesn’t count as a dropped catch but then someone else makes an amazing effort and manages to just get fingertips to a ball and then it goes down as a dropped catch even though there was really no chance to catch it, getting fingertips on it is the best anyone could have done. Hence, it becomes a subjective stat, someone’s opinion on whether they “should” have caught it or not. Any stats that have a subjective nature to them can’t really be official stats.

Lots of these stats are used in unofficial ways by coaches to analyse things, and sometimes by broadcasters, but it’s hard to make them official. For instance, runs saved is quite arbitrary as you say. At what point have I saved a run? If the ball was hit straight at me and I field it comfortably and no run is scored, but if I wasn’t there it would have gone for four, have I saved runs? Or do I only get the credit if I had to make a really good effort to save it? If so, at what point is that effort considered enough to count as saving runs?

You would think that there are certainly some stats that could be kept. Like dropped catches, so you can know what percentage of catches were taken. Run-out’s are certainly something that could be recorded. Assisted and unassisted run outs could even be separate categories. But it’s hard to go much beyond those.