List Only

List of all time greats batting computed by Indian newspaper "Times of India". Comments?

Friends, An Indian colleague sent me this link after we had a discussion. This list is composed by "The Times of India which is the world's largest selling English broadsheet newspaper. (Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times_of_India) Here is their list: Don Bradman Australia 52 6996 99.94 29 Ken Barrington England 82 6806 58.67 20 Wally Hammond England 85 7249 58.45 22 Garry Sobers West Indies 93 8032 57.78 26 Jack Hobbs England 61 5410 56.94 15 Ricky Ponting Australia 128 10750 56.87 37 Len Hutton England 79 6971 56.67 19 Mohammad Yousuf Pakistan 79 6770 55.49 23 Jacques Kallis South Africa 128 9988 54.57 30 Kumar Sangakkara Sri Lanka 78 6525 54.37 17 Sachin Tendulkar India 156 12429 54.27 41 Greg Chappell Australia 87 7110 53.86 24 Brian Lara West Indies 131 11953 52.89 34 Javed Miandad Pakistan 124 8832 52.57 23 Mahela Jayawardene Sri Lanka 100 7959 52.36 24 Rahul Dravid India 131 10509 52.28 26 Sunil Gavaskar India 125 10122 51.12 34 Virender Sehwag India 66 5617 51.06 15 Steve Waugh Australia 168 10927 51.06 32 Matthew Hayden Australia 103 8625 50.73 30 GC Smith South Africa 75 6271 50.57 18 AR Border Australia 156 11174 50.56 27 IVA Richards West Indies 121 8540 50.23 24 DCS Compton England 78 5807 50.06 17 S Chanderpaul West Indies 114 8203 49.71 20 http://cricket.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/News/News/All-time_cricket_greats_based_on_an_uncomplicated_formula/articleshow/msid-3991264,curpg-2.cms This list places Tendulkar in 11th position. Interestingly, Ponting, Yousuf, Kallis are still ahead of Tendulkar as in the previous list. Do you agree/ disagree with this list ? Comments? Thanks Rehman P.S: Plotting the raw data, which graph looks better to you: Few comparitive examples: Ponting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Ricky_Ponting_Graph.png Tendulkar: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Sachin_Tendulkar_graph.png Kallis: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b1/Jacques_Kallis_Graph.png Yousuf: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Mohammad_Yousuf_Graph.png The way I look at it is what % of time in a batsmans total career is the blue line (average performance) above 50. For comparison here is Bradmans graph: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Don_Bradman_Graph.png In his whole batting career the graph dipped belos 50 only on one ocassion. Keep in mind Tendulkar has played longest. What comments do you have looking at the raw data, and simply ignoring the various indices ? EDIT: ha ha plenty of food for thought. Will await your intelligent answers. Thanks everybody. Sorry I meant "batting greats" EDIT: Good point Money man, you are an intelligent chappie.

Public Comments

1. Interesting to see Barrington so high, he is largely overlooked in these sort of discussions but does have an imposing Test record. It looks to be average based, with a minimum innings criteria, hence the exclusion of Syd Barnes and M. Hussey, if this is correct you can't argue with it although it proves nothing, I mean I.V.A.Richard would was clearly a better bat than most above him on the list, and remember the great players from the "golden era" Trumper, Grace, Ranjitsinhji and the likes played in an era where the scores were vastly smaller than those being posted today. But an interesting list regardless !!
2. Are you SURE this was from an Indian publication? lol, Sachin not at the top? Mmmmmm.
3. No,not at all.its all crap thing.They can do anythin for money it seems..
4. Interesting list, I notice that it is based solely on players average runs per test. While it is probably a good indicator of retired players standings it is not really a good indication of current players. As their form still can improve or decrease. Two examples of this would be, firstly Kallis is rated higher than G.Smith, this is probably due to the amount of time that Kallis has played international cricket, I think most people would agree that Smith is the superior batsman. Secondly, if we look at Sachin, his average runs are not amazing compared to many other players, perhaps this shows that with age Sachin is no longer at the peak of his powers and this has dragged down his all time record of average runs per match. Looking purely at the blue line on the graphs, I believe Ponting's figures look the best,(excepting Bradman of course) with the least time spent below an average of fifty. Kallis' figures are more dramatic with many extremely high and low points. I must say that it was nice to see Garfield Sobers coming in fourth-my all time favorite player of the game.
5. Dear Sir, the criteria was a minimum of 5000 runs and they ranked the players according to their batting average For bowlers- criteria was a minimum of 200 wickets and the rank the players according to their bowling average So that's a very simple ranking system One positive is that the statistically overrated Graeme Pollock and G Headley are not in the list They have 60 average from 20 to 23 Tests so it's unfair to compare Ponting,Kallis,Lara,.... who have played much more with them This ranking system is again not foolproof,no ranking system is foolproof All the players in this list are excellent and I won't compare them. Any ranking system works on a formula,so of course it is not flexible and not perfect. You can't say 6000 runs with 60 avg is better than 10000 runs with 51 avg or vice versa
6. We all know that over a period of time, batting became easy. Test matches which totalled 300 runs started accumulating 1,300 runs. Player averages have thus improved. Bowling became tougher as spectators want batsmen to hammer the ball. In this situation, it is not fair to compare average per innings of one player with another player. But what is then comparable ? It is the urge to excel or dominate, irrespective of the times, the pitch conditions, the boundary distances, the protective equipments and the technology. Can we measure this spirit of domination ? Yes. Let us go from series to series. See how each batsman has dominated the bowling attack and rate it in that series itself. Then to assess the batsman in his career, take the weighted average of the domination factor. This is what I do. Why series to series ? Batsman can be outstanding in one match and very ordinary in the second and the series performance gives his level of play. Further, a match will get washed out after a portion has been played and assessment of the match performance gets skewed because of this factor. All players may not get the chance to bat in a match but in a series, they have better chance. To assess the domination, I use 'Runs per Match' of each of the players, 'Runs per Innings' and 'Percent of all the runs scored in the series' and assign 0 to 1,000 points to each batsman (for that matter to each bowler or fielder or a player). I had faced one peculiar problem while developing my system. It arose because of the towering performances of Donald Bradman which made every other batsman look like a pygmy in comparision. In order to solve this problem, I had to devise a different yardstick - that is instead of treating topmost performance at 1,000 points, I started treating the average performance in the series at 500 points. This solved the problem I faced. At the end of the day, each assessment has its negatives and we need to identify and correct them. But taking a physical average across all times, across all pitches, etc. is unscientific. A batsman like Arthus Shrewsbury with an average of 35 runs per innings is a lot better than a batsman like Sachin Tendulkar with an average of 54 runs per innings, I feel, because Shrewsbury played in low scoring matches and still dominated. Same is true for Sunil Gavaskar who I consider is a better test match batsman than Sachin. Trust this clarifies.
7. True and fair,
8. just i say .... Disagree
9. You dickhead paki do u hv some sense??? This list is not computed by times of india it is just published in it. The list was given by the icc
10. NOT AT ALL. Have a look at Yousuf's record against Australia and South Africa. He' has done absolutely nothing against them and is a flat track bunny. Sachin, Viv and Lara deserve better ranking. They should be at 2,3 and 4 respectively