The class divide

What separates a good player from a good one? What makes them stand head and shoulders about his contemporaries? Do statistics, romanticism, or one-in-a-lifetime performances secure their greatness?

It’s a question that splits fans of the game, and unfortunately it’s a lot like the Australian player divide known as the nerds and the julios. In terms of cricket fans, it can be called ‘stats heads’ and ‘romantics’.

Now, to stats heads, a player can be judged great based primarily on his numbers. Therefore Bradman is number one in terms of batting, followed by Mike Hussey (Average 68.38 from 42 innings) and Graeme Pollock (Average 60.97 from 41 innings). Eddie Paynter has an average of 59.23, yet rarely is he spoken of in terms of the greatest English batsmen.

The romantics love a good innings, and while appreciating the stats, judge a batsman on watching him play. Therefore Wally Hammond’s legend (Along with his formidable statistics) grows, even though there are few alive who could have seen him at his peak.

Viv Richards is also a great point. He is regarded by all comers as one of, if not the best West Indian batsmen of them all. Yet there are five West Indians above him in batting average (Headley, Sobers, Weekes, Walcott, and Lara). Why is he rated so highly, well for one reason he scored those runs in an era that was tough for runs (He faced bowlers of the ilk and class of Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Bob Willis, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Richard Hadlee and Imran Khan), and never surrendered the initiative.

Romantics would also like to include statistical anomalies like Mark Waugh, David Gower, or Mohammad Azharuddin. None of these have batting averages above 50 (Azharuddin’s is closest with 45.04, Waugh’s is 41.82), yet their genius was never really questioned when watched as they made batting look so simple.

A great current comparison would be Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar. Ponting is leading Tendulkar in terms of average (58.38 to 54.23), but I have no hesitation, and I have a feeling
I’m not alone in saying this, that Sachin is far superior to Ponting as a batsman.

Punter is a great batsman, don’t get me wrong. Only Bradman is ahead of him in Australia, and only Greg Chappell is equal to him (I rate Greg that highly because of the era he played in, he made runs against everyone, everywhere). Yet Tendulkar is far superior because of his ability to tear attacks to shreds with little effort, and not just weak attacks. He has consistently defied the Australian attacks that blew teams away during the 90’s and naughties.

Ponting has never had a chance against his own team, which is unfair to hold against him. Yet to average as consistently as he has over the past few years defies belief as he gets better with age. Tendulkar, on the other hand, as managed to be monumentally steady for the majority of his career.

He has declined somewhat in the last few years, but in the Australian series in 06-07, he topped the aggregates for either side. Most impressive was the fact that he never once looked like getting out as he systematically dismantled an Australian bowling attack that was hardly weak.

Ponting struggled that series as they exposed a technical tendency for Ponting to push hard at the ball coming into him, which Ishant Sharma and Harbajan exposed with glee.

Romantics appreciate the ‘prettier’ aspects of the game, and love a flashy cover drive and a player skipping down the pitch to launch a bowler over his head for six. Stats heads have a tendency to look at the game and appreciate the number crunch.

Combine the two and you have a cricket fan able to look at the numbers, appreciate them, and put on a vintage tape of Brian Lara tearing an attack to pieces.

Do you see where I’m coming from?