Yes, you wouldn’t really like to see a Mankad there without a warning. Australia bowled poorly again at the death, though maybe that’s a bit unfair to Woakes and Curran. Great partnership in the chase. Stoinis still doesn’t really look the goods.

True. A few guys went to balls keeping low – Finch, Marsh, Labuschagne. Archer was nasty early on.

Have to agree with Micko here. Hadlee averaged 21.6 in Asia, 68 wickets in 13 Tests. Averaged 21.7 on all pitches away from home, a sign of true greatness. Did even better over the best 10 years of his career. Don’t accept the argument that he had an advantage because he didn’t have as much competition from teammates. This is why the average counts most as a comparator. If you have four bowlers with low averages the opposition gets out quicker. Hadlee also had to bowl against the West Indies batsmen, the strongest for most over the era while Marshall and co didn’t. Not that I would pick Hadlee over Marshall, but I might have him in my all time team ahead of Trueman, Akram or Lillee.

Nice framework for discussion. If you agree with those who rated Sydney Barnes so highly maybe there’s a case for picking him in the XI, leaving out O’Reilly (or Warne?) and keeping Sutcliffe as second opener. Ambrose would get the nod for me over Akram as the bowler of the 90s, but it’s a matter of opinion. I’d even be a bit radical and pick Richard Hadlee ahead of Richards as Test player of the 70s and 80s. All these guys rate ahead of Trueman, and Pollock gets the nod over Lara. Richards was picked by Wisden as a “cricketer of the century”, not a Test player of the century. His ODI record and his playing style and moments of brilliance earned him that title, but not necessarily his overall consistency at Test level.

Enjoyed the read. Another nomination for a world 35-plus Test team would be Clive Lloyd, who finished his career aged 40 ranked no.1 on the retrospective rankings. Checking his stats on Cricinfo gives him the following record post 35th birthday:
45 Tests, average 52.2, 8 centuries, 17 fifties. This average is identical to Viv Richards’ record over the same period, which many probably think of as Richards’ heyday and was certainly the height of the Windies dominance.

Good call on Rhodes, especially the 1926 comeback (he had played in 1920-21). Was reading about him the other day – amazing career, most first class wickets ever (over 4,000 at 17 in 30-odd years) while scoring about 40,000 runs at 30-plus. Once shared records for highest Test partnerships for both 1st wicket and 10th wicket.

Interesting piece on the Edrich innings, especially as I remember him, like Paul below, as a stolid batsman rather than a dasher: this concurs with Wisden’s description of him: “ A stocky left-hander of infinite discipline and courage, he knew his limitations and played to them unblinkingly, waiting for the right ball to put away”. A kind of non-Warner! I’m not sure it advances the case for letting Warner keep batting for the record. I didn’t have strong feelings about that one, though it wasn’t the case that the series had yet to be won – it was only 1-0 when the Adelaide Test started? I would have been just as happy with Warner getting the Australian record rather than Hayden’s record vs Zimbabwe, which feels like a bit of an asterisk, though less sure about batting on unnecessarily to get Lara’s record. My impression of the NZ team in the 60s is that they weren’t hugely ahead of the Zimbabwe attack in the 2000s – never won a series anywhere until 1969? But like Warner’s innings, still a great feat.

Repeat all you like. You still haven’t advanced your case.

Not quite true. Ashley Mallett took 28 wickets @ 19 to spearhead Australia to a 3-1 victory in India in 1969. Lyon averages 31 in India and 34 in Sri Lanka. Australia was well beaten both times in India. Lyon averages 54 in the UAE against Pakistan. But I’d still favour Lyon for his overall record.

Good question. I tend to come down in favour of Lyon taking his average in context on top of his aggregate wickets and wickets per match. Obviously aggregate wickets on its own measures number of games played as much as quality – does anyone really think Broad and Anderson are even close to Hadlee, Marshall or Lillee? However, while averages are the most important we also need also to look at average scores per wicket in the relevant era when comparing players in different times – this helps adjust for things like the general quality of wickets and ease of run scoring due to bigger bats/shorter boundaries. The global runs/wicket in Lyon’s years has been about 32, about the same as in Mallett’s era, but compared to 29 in Johnson’s era and only 24 in Trumble’s. So perhaps advantage there to Mallett with a slightly better career average than Lyon. But I think that is offset by Lyon having a much higher wickets per Test rate than Mallett- about 4 compared to 3.5 – reflecting a bigger team impact (this could be misleading if part of weak bowling lineup versus a generally weaker one, but that’s not the case here).
I wouldn’t take much notice of strike rates – they are as much a reflection of the playing styles of different eras, with strike rates generally coming down recently as players go for more shots and take more risks, influenced by white ball cricket – but ultimately it is the number of runs scored per wicket that determines effectiveness and how you add up the opposing team’s score. Lyon’s main weakness has been a fairly ordinary records against South Africa and Pakistan, both averaging over 40. Trumble, by contrast, took all his wickets against England, the leading side in the world, and played Tests for five years longer than Mallett has so far. But Lyon has done well in several different countries (though not in SA or the UAE).

I’d be happy to give Lyon the crown but to say it’s not close is silly, when there are others with better averages.

Agree on the last point. But no need to bother about trying to calculate down to the last erg of force whether the ball might have hit the stumps. Leave it at – if less than 50% mightn’t have been hitting, there’s enough doubt.

Maybe he’s only intended for the T20s.

This is a bit unclear. 21 players for an ODI series? Surely it will be culled to 14 or 15, but the article says the full 21-man squad will fly out. Weird. Unless there is hell of a lot of rotation, which will make the results of the series pretty meaningless. I mean are they really going to give a game to the likes of Sams and Meredith? Is Jhye Richardson injured? Why Stoinis again?

I don’t claim to be an expert, but I think prior to 1960 Benaud almost never batted lower than Davidson, in fact he batted in the top 6 quite often. But from 1960-61 he started batting down the order at 8 or 9 quite a lot. That India series might have been the first time Davidson batted ahead of Benaud. But not sure of the history – perhaps because Davidson had a couple of good series with the bat and in first class over the previous two seasons?

I like your idea of reviewing the ball tracking first. Makes sense. Not so sure about reviewing every lbw. Your proposal makes sense if the batsman is given out, but if it’s not out we could end up with a lot of time wasting. I’d prefer just to extend the number of reviews to say three or four per innings. I dont hate umpire’s call that much, but I do like the proposal here on umpire’s call if it means anything that shows less than 50% ball hitting the stumps will be given not out. This mirrors real life umpiring where it’s pretty much impossible to tell with the naked eye in real time if a fraction of the ball is going to nick the stumps. And can the technology really tell that accurately a ball is going to just nick the stumps every time. This is also consistent with the traditional philosophy in cricket (as in the justice system) where you need to be certain beyond a degree of reasonable doubt that someone is out/guilty. There is too much muddled thinking of the “counting the number of angels on the head of a pin” variety in cricket about being absolutely certain about whether someone is out or not, when there are so many near misses (especially with edges and plays and misses) that there is a big element of luck and uncertainty. All you want is a robust framework for decision making.

Actually the biggest nonsense with replays for me is slow motion replays of outfield catches that are taken close to the ground. It’s normally easier to tell whether it was a catch at normal speed – slow motion and closeups are often misleading. Also, spending 5 minutes looking at umpteen replays of whether the foot of a fieldsman on the boundary has touched the rope is idiotic. They should really change the rule to make the criterion whether the ball crosses the line or touches it, which is easier to determine and more within the spirit of the game, in the sense that that is the basic requirement – and for most of cricket’s history and at most levels of cricket ropes weren’t/haven’t been used. And it’s easier for a spectator on the boundary (or teammate/opponent on the field) to determine with a naked eye.

Interesting to hear that Davidson bowled spin in that match. Did he do it often I wonder? Hard to believe anyone with little experience practice could be very effective in trying their hand at spin, unless the batting was poor or they were outstandingly naturally gifted. Davidson was presumably quite gifted, but surely no more gifted than guys like Sobers, Procter and Bill Johnston, who bowled a lot of finger spin but never with results that good.

Hope that boosts your morale after seeing how bad we’ve been in nailbiters!

Yes, yes, but please we only seem to make a big deal out of this and the prospective men’s T20 world cups because they were/are to be held in Australia. Does anybody really remember who won other T20 cups, where and when? Apart from the fact that our women have won a few, and the Windies have had a couple of good wins in the men’s. The fact that they are having men’s T20 cups just about every year in the next few years is going to devalue them even further. They really shouldn’t be called World Cups – that title should stay with the original and prestigious World Cup, the 50-over event.

Les Ames in the 1930s was probably the first really good keeper-batsman – averaged 43.4 across 44 Tests with 8 centuries as a keeper. Batted in the top 6 more than half his innings. I believe that’s a higher average as a keeper than Sangakkara, Walcott, Dhoni, McCullum, Prior – possibly more than any long term keeper other than Gilchrist and Flower (depending on whether you count de Villiers’ 24 Tests as keeper, where he averaged 53). However, against that Ames averaged only 27 against Australia, who were the only strong opposItion at that time. Farokh Engineer of India was also a true keeper-batsman, opening much of the time, though not so stellar.

I agree with you in general, even though I wouldn’t set much store on strike rates in comparing bowlers. It’s hard to say how good Procter might have been as a Test batsman – would he have been a decent number 7, which sort of equates to Sobers as a better-than-most 5th bowler, or more of a Stokes/Botham-like no.5/6? While Sobers mostly wasn’t a frontline bowler, he did bowl a lot more than most 5th bowlersas JGK points out, and also had some peaks that few part timers have. These were mid- rather than late career : 20 wickets at under 30 in both the 1963 and 1966 series in England, and 23 wickets at 21 in India in 1962, while averaging 100 and 70 respectively in the last two series. His highest retrospective ICC ranking as a bowler was 4th, in 1964. So at his best he was way ahead of the likes of Mark Waugh or Kallis.

Yes Procter and Greig could both bowl decent off spin, Procter apparently very decently. Mark Nicholas describes Procter as “ a true allrounder – destructive batsman, excellent catcher, wicket-taking offspinner and astonishing fast bowler.” I recommend his portrait of Procter here https://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/1223347/you-ain-t-seen-nothing-like-the-mighty-mike-procter . Close to the Sobers picture of a five-tool player, despite playing only 7 Tests due to SA’s isolation. Procter’s first class bowling average was 19.5 and batting was 36, with 48 centuries. Cleaned up Australia on two tours of SA before he was 24. Topped the bowling averages in World Series Cricket ten years later, but apparently bowled more spin than pace. Possibly as good a bowler as Sobers was a batsman, and maybe nearly as good a batsman as Sobers was a bowler.

Actually it was a lot worse than Cummins, Prasad and Sayers. Tribe, Pope and Freer played a grand total of 5 Tests. Freer was the most experienced, playing 3 Tests 3 years after he bowled to Sathavisam, ending with the grand bowling average of 165!

The quotes from Worrell and Sobers seem to stem from one book, which then get repeated in numerous internet articles. There’s more Interesting detail about Sathavisam in this article, https://www.sportskeeda.com/cricket/mahadevan-sathasivam-forgotten-prince-sri-lanka-cricket.
Worrell’s experience seems to come from 3 games in 1949-50, in one of which Sathavisam scored an excellent 96. Trouble is, the article rather undermines the logic of great praise for Satha. by saying the 96 came against West Indians Frank Worrell, Geo Tribe, Fred Freer and GeoPope who were considered invincible then. Which is not true. Worrell was the only one to have a significant Test career as a bowler, but not a particularly successful one. The rest were nobodies. It’s a bit like saying someone was a genius because they scored a 100 against Anderson Cummins, Venkatash Prasad and Chad Sayers. One suspects this was just a nice piece of diplomacy by Worrell. Sobers never played a match against Sathavisam, so one suspect he was echoing or repeating what Worrell had said and some enthusiastic Sri Lankans took it out of proportion. I’m afraid a couple of exciting hundreds against sub-Test level teams, and a first class average of 41 games in Sri Lanka in the 1940s isn’t going to convince me he was on the same level as Len Hutton or Everton Weekes. But obviously some observers thought he had special qualities.

One unsung effort I remember- Ian Chappell vs West Indies, first Test in Brisbane, 1975. Ian and Greg Chappell chased down a tricky 4th innings total of 219 with a partnership of 160 on a turning pitch as off spinner Lance Gibbs was bowling beautifully. Greg took the glory for his second century of the match but it was Ian’s skill in playing Gibbs, as well as seeing off Roberts and Holding with the new ball, that was crucial in the early stages.