1st class cricket-a true yardstick?

[Harsh Thakor]

Can performances in Ist class cricket be used to ***** the true merit of a batsmen or bowler as an all-time great?W.G.Grace would never have been classed great without his outstanding peformances in 1st class cricket.Jack Hobbs is clubbed with the 5 top cricketers of all time largely because of his 197 first class centuries and 61,237 runs.Geoff Boycott in terms of batting average in 1st class cricket is the best opening batsman of all averaging 56.94 while Zaheer Abbas would be ahead of Viv Richards and Greg Chappell in centuries and run aggregate. It is significant that batsman like Graeme Hick,Tom Graveney,Frank Woolley,Geoff Boycott,Glen Turner,Zaheer Abbas Dennis Amiss and Colin Cowdrey have made the '100 centuries club'while Brian Lara,Sachin Tendulkar,Sunil Gavaskar ,Greg Chappell,Ricky Ponting and Gary Sobers did not reach that landmark. In terms of first class average Vijay Merchant was 2nd to only Bradman averaging 73 run s including 2 outstanding English first class season sin 1936 and 1946. Personally we cannot ignore first class cricket,particularly English county cricket.Great players from all over the world participated in that cricket.Remember Zaheer Abbas's 8 matches where he scored a century in each innings and 4 when he scored a century and a double hundred.Vijay Merchant's batting on wet pitches in 1936 and 1945 was the batting of a God and so was that of Ranjitsinghji and W.G Grace.Imagine Grace batting on tarcks with uncut grass and still amassing a score of 344 for M.C.C.Denis Compton's genius was too reflected when he scored 3816 run sin 1947.Could anyone equal Jack Hobbs scoring 98 centuries after the age of 40 or his mastery on wet tracks.One can never forget Majid Khan's exhibition against wourcestershire on the worst of batting tracks when scoring 156 runs or Rohan Kanhai's famous batting partnerships with Billy Ibadullah(402) and Jameson.(465)Graham Gooch would also be promoted in greatness adding run sin 1st class cricket.And finally the genius of Barry Richards who demolished the greatest of bowling but was denied a proper test career.In Australia in 1971-72 he averaged 109.86 in a single season amassing 356 in an innings against South Australia that too 329 runs in a day.It is only in performances in 1st class cricket where Barry could reveal his true greatness. However if we don't differentiate 1st class cricket then we would have to rank the likes of Zaheer Abbas,Glen Turner,Geoff Boycott with Viv Richards or Gary Sobers as batsman.It is so difficult to mkae the true drawing line.Personally I feel we have to give atleast twice more emphasis in test cricket.The fact that Barry Richards is still classes with Viv Richards,Lara and Tendulkar shows how cricket is not merely about statistics and is also about at and skill..Again is it correct to class Barry with those greats only on the basis of 1st class cricket?I would place W.G.Grace in the same light .In some books Grace is rated the best of all cricketers.

[rkt.india]

Agree. Who can forget Piyush Chawla's blistering 112 for a struggling Somerset against a formidable Middlesex.