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Kapil vs Botham as batsman


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yes . India had perhaps slightly better batting strength.again some one like Gooch cannot be evaluated just based on his avg: he was convincingly better than his avg: reveals. if we add Boycott to the equation and take over all performances of both batsmen of ENG and IND from those days in away conditions ' date=' India if any was only slightly better.but bowling wise it was a much wider gap.that is reflected in win-loss team performance too. India at the bottom just above SL.[/quote'] the same can be said for botham, he was way better than his average suggests. between 78-82 he scored 11 tons and took 200 wickets. i can even say the same for kapil.
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kapil had some pretty decent spinners around him during certain period of his career especially at the very beginning (bedi, chandra) then he had doshi for a few years and then later kumble, hirwani and raju. as far as pace binny was his main supporter for most of his career with ghavri, chetan sharma and srinath being there helping him at varous points. he may not of had the best pace support but it was decent and he played with quite a few spinners which would have made it hard for someone like botham when he went to india. it's not like england is a horrible place for spinners either so even with weaker seam support kapil had much better spin support. also just because someone doesn't have much support doesn't mean it's so bad for them, hadlee succeeded greatly even without a lot of support for much of his career, so if we go by the same principle as we are for kapil saying no support negatively affects the bowling stats then what does that mean for hadlee? he's already one of the best bowlers of all time does that push him up to being the best as it must mean if he had support he would have been even better? more support may have helped kapil but it may not have it's a what if just like saying botham was horrible without willis. fact is botham was already in decline when willis retired so it's hard to say whether the good botham (77-82) would have have been horrible without willis or whether he still would have done fine.
Kapil had decent support....means only above avg: quality.but Willis was better to even Botham... and this makes a difference.whether the spinner is descently good or not, the main point is he is expected to deliver and if we go thru records we can see spinners with Kapil disappointed in ENG.for your info i once went thru with the exercise of getting the bowling strengths of teams Imran and Kapil played. it was time consuming to go thru all the tests these two played, filtering out runs and wkts of other players apart from these 2 etc etc.but yet i did it. what i could get was 'combined bowling avg: of support bowlers' for Imran was slightly better than Kapil's 29.65. for Kapil it was around 38.see the difference.similarly i am sure for Botham it would be much better than 38. w.r.t Hadlee , for me atleast Hadlee is the best fast/medium pace bowler from 80s for this reason that he did it all alone.might be Chatfield and Morrison to some extend assisted him descently.but that was that.people have this habit of just taking out stats as such and determine which one was better etc etc. unfortunately a lot of past players too go this way, which my logic can't simply understand and accept. as a testimony to that Gooch is a much better batsman for me for than say Mahela.so too Desilva from SL itself. i can't go with avg: in the above cases. coming to the topic it is this 'support' factor that makes Kapil a slightly better bowler too than Botham. i am not telling Botham's fall in figures was purely because of Willis retirement, but it was a telling factor too.
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the same can be said for botham' date=' he was way better than his average suggests. between 78-82 he scored 11 tons and took 200 wickets. i can even say the same for kapil.[/quote'] but then the peak is only his first 52 tests, i suppose.also definitely this Packer cricket had some positive influence slightly on this peak.and this did not have any performance against Windies too
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for me the reason it's difficult to separate kapil and botham to any large degree is because botham had a much better peak and reached heights for a good period that kapil never did. but kapil was more reliable, he may not of had the highs that botham reached but you could always count on him to get a couple of wickets and make some runs whereas botham was just awesome for a period but then after that you couldn't expect much from him after a certain point in his career (aside from glimpses of his former self from time to time). both have their positives and both have their negatives, if i wanted someone who i knew would take a couple of wickets and make a few runs every game i'd take kapil, but if i was up against the wall and playing someone i didn't think i could beat and we were down and out then i'd take botham because he's more likely to have one of those days where he destroy's the opposition. even in decline botham managed to take an 8fer then score 81 (strike rate 78) against the west indies, a team that included greenidge, haynes, gomes, richards, lloyd, dujon, marshall, garner and harper. imo that really shows just how capable he was and how much talent he had.
the problem i find with this peak is that it lasted only for 53 tests. that means the other 49(almost half) tests comprised the exactly opposite, a 'trough'.if the peak was say for 80 tests out of 102 it could have more creditablity.but here it can be said that the peak had its influence on 'Willis', 'lack of performance against WI' and to a small extend Packer cricket. But yet it was highlight and he deserves marks for the same in these comparison exercises.another highlight of his where he deserves marks are his all round performances, though i have to say w.r.t Kapil too there are brilliant all round performances as i quoted some 5 of them. so in general it can be said that Botham's all round performances where matched by Kapil to slightly lesser extends.but had Kapil got better bowling support he too would have picked more wickets that inturn would have positively affected his all round performances. where Kapil deserves marks is his performance against WI and his slightly over all better performances against quality bowling attacks. other points in favour of Kapil are his decisively superior str: rate in batting, his lack of support in bowling and his slightly better longevity(remember Kapil maintained his bowling avg: after bowling 5925 more balls than Botham),his much superior one day records, his much superior captaincy and slightly better all round fieding.
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we don't know kapil would have got more wickets in a stronger bowling line-up, he may have got less since he would have been competing for wickets much more than he had to. as far as the peak and trough it's true botham has a massive trough but it doesn't take away what he achieved in that peak which is enough for one persons career. having such a long trough is what brought him back to the pack and is the reason why he's not seen as the best all rounder of the main 4 in his era. but for me the fact that he's still very very comparable despite doing most of his best work in only a 5 year period and the other 10 years being not very good, well it really shows what he was capable and what he achieved in that period. none of the other 3 had such big declines or dips during their careers and yes it takes a bit a way from botham as they get marks for longevity, but botham beats them all for that peak period, i don't care what people say about imran and averaging 50 with the bat and 19 with the ball over a decade and a peak bowling average of 14 because botham has his own accolades that at the very least match those of the others which is why there can never be a correct answer using stats. something that i think has to have some weight is that at various different periods imran, hadlee and botham all had their time as the best bowler in the world, this is something kapil didn't do. botham was also considered one of the best bats in the world during the time he was considered the best bowler, hadlee and kapil certainly didn't achieve this in stats or impression, imran maybe because he was able to score a few centuries at the end of his career in a short time and have one of the best averages but that was a period of his career where he wasn't really bowling and the average at least (and i believe most will agree with this) was inflated due to not outs and that leaves questions about that status of being one of the best bats at the time (in any regard it wasn't at the same time as being the best bowler anyway), whereas with botham there are no questions it's pretty much agreed across the board that at one time he was one of the best bats in the world and he did it at the same time as being one of the best bowlers.

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"we don't know kapil would have got more wickets in a stronger bowling line-up, he may have got less since he would have been competing for wickets much more than he had to." if we go thru the list of bowlers with more than 200 test wkts , Kapil who has a tests/5wkts ratio of 5.7 is one among those with the least ratio.even the WINDIES fab 4 except Garner has much better ratio values than Kapil.this is quite understandable because the bowling unit was such strong to the extend that not all of them can have 5 wkt hauls in almost equal terms. yet Garner has a value of 8.29.and his bowl avg: is one of the lowest of all time in test cricket.he has 18 4 wkt hauls too.so 3 out of 4 of this mammoth unit easily surpassed Kapil .one who missed out slightly, ie: Garner benefitted in other ways for that. similarly 'all bowlers except a few' who belonged to good bowling units has better tests/5wkts ratio than Kapil.Imran,Wasim,Waqar,Khader,Saqlain,Donald,Mcgrath,Warne,Kumble, Harbhajan,Ambrose,Walsh,Ntini,Steyn,Anderson,Willis,Underwood etc etc. then it is quite natural that when for a time period, if several bowlers are atleast of good standard, 1 or 2 may slightly lag in tests/5wkts ratio.but if they are good enough bowlers they will make it up with better bowl avg:. for ex: let us take AUS bowlers who operated thru 80s. Lillee ,Mcdermott,Lawson,Alderman,Yardley,Reid- these all had better values than Kapil.Hogg & Thomson only slightly behind.Only Merv Hughes lagged convincingly with 7.57 value.but yet with this ratio he could have achieved 17.3 5wkt hauls in 131 tests against Kapils's 23.but him being a very good bowler made it up for this with a 28.38 bowl avg:, 14 4 wkt hauls and a 4wkts/test ratio. is belonging to a better bowling unit advantageous or not? W.R.T Kapil if he could fetch 23 5 wkt hauls with out much support and keeping his avg: with in 30, going by the above said factors he could easily have atleast maintained the 23. now 2 main wicket takers who fell apart in this regard were Shaun Pollock and Botham.Pollock interestingly had huge 5wkt hauls in Donald's company.but it fell alarmingly when Donald retired. but yet he maintained respectable avg: in Steyn's company.But Botham was the one who fell drastically in all respects once Willlis and Underwood retired. "as far as the peak and trough it's true botham has a massive trough but it doesn't take away what he achieved in that peak which is enough for one persons career. having such a long trough is what brought him back to the pack and is the reason why he's not seen as the best all rounder of the main 4 in his era. but for me the fact that he's still very very comparable despite doing most of his best work in only a 5 year period and the other 10 years being not very good, well it really shows what he was capable and what he achieved in that period. none of the other 3 had such big declines or dips during their careers and yes it takes a bit a way from botham as they get marks for longevity, but botham beats them all for that peak period, i don't care what people say about imran and averaging 50 with the bat and 19 with the ball over a decade and a peak bowling average of 14 because botham has his own accolades that at the very least match those of the others which is why there can never be a correct answer using stats." each to his own. "something that i think has to have some weight is that at various different periods imran, hadlee and botham all had their time as the best bowler in the world, this is something kapil didn't do." - agreed but only slightly behind considering the fact that bowling was their main discipline and Kapil lacked bowling support.so others deserve a little marks in this regard. "botham was also considered one of the best bats in the world during the time he was considered the best bowler, hadlee and kapil certainly didn't achieve this in stats or impression, imran maybe because he was able to score a few centuries at the end of his career in a short time and have one of the best averages but that was a period of his career where he wasn't really bowling and the average at least (and i believe most will agree with this) was inflated due to not outs and that leaves questions about that status of being one of the best bats at the time (in any regard it wasn't at the same time as being the best bowler anyway), whereas with botham there are no questions it's pretty much agreed across the board that at one time he was one of the best bats in the world and he did it at the same time as being one of the best bowlers." - that is the peak period and even in this peak his maximum bat avg: hovered around 38.and there were several specialist bats with better avgs:.

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"we don't know kapil would have got more wickets in a stronger bowling line-up, he may have got less since he would have been competing for wickets much more than he had to." if we go thru the list of bowlers with more than 200 test wkts , Kapil who has a tests/5wkts ratio of 5.7 is one among those with the least ratio.even the WINDIES fab 4 except Garner has much better ratio values than Kapil.this is quite understandable because the bowling unit was such strong to the extend that not all of them can have 5 wkt hauls in almost equal terms. yet Garner has a value of 8.29.and his bowl avg: is one of the lowest of all time in test cricket.he has 18 4 wkt hauls too.so 3 out of 4 of this mammoth unit easily surpassed Kapil .one who missed out slightly, ie: Garner benefitted in other ways for that. similarly 'all bowlers except a few' who belonged to good bowling units has better tests/5wkts ratio than Kapil.Imran,Wasim,Waqar,Khader,Saqlain,Donald,Mcgrath,Warne,Kumble, Harbhajan,Ambrose,Walsh,Ntini,Steyn,Anderson,Willis,Underwood etc etc. then it is quite natural that when for a time period, if several bowlers are atleast of good standard, 1 or 2 may slightly lag in tests/5wkts ratio.but if they are good enough bowlers they will make it up with better bowl avg:. for ex: let us take AUS bowlers who operated thru 80s. Lillee ,Mcdermott,Lawson,Alderman,Yardley,Reid- these all had better values than Kapil.Hogg & Thomson only slightly behind.Only Merv Hughes lagged convincingly with 7.57 value.but yet with this ratio he could have achieved 17.3 5wkt hauls in 131 tests against Kapils's 23.but him being a very good bowler made it up for this with a 28.38 bowl avg:, 14 4 wkt hauls and a 4wkts/test ratio. is belonging to a better bowling unit advantageous or not? W.R.T Kapil if he could fetch 23 5 wkt hauls with out much support and keeping his avg: with in 30, going by the above said factors he could easily have atleast maintained the 23. now 2 main wicket takers who fell apart in this regard were Shaun Pollock and Botham.Pollock interestingly had huge 5wkt hauls in Donald's company.but it fell alarmingly when Donald retired. but yet he maintained respectable avg: in Steyn's company.But Botham was the one who fell drastically in all respects once Willlis and Underwood retired. "as far as the peak and trough it's true botham has a massive trough but it doesn't take away what he achieved in that peak which is enough for one persons career. having such a long trough is what brought him back to the pack and is the reason why he's not seen as the best all rounder of the main 4 in his era. but for me the fact that he's still very very comparable despite doing most of his best work in only a 5 year period and the other 10 years being not very good, well it really shows what he was capable and what he achieved in that period. none of the other 3 had such big declines or dips during their careers and yes it takes a bit a way from botham as they get marks for longevity, but botham beats them all for that peak period, i don't care what people say about imran and averaging 50 with the bat and 19 with the ball over a decade and a peak bowling average of 14 because botham has his own accolades that at the very least match those of the others which is why there can never be a correct answer using stats." each to his own. "something that i think has to have some weight is that at various different periods imran, hadlee and botham all had their time as the best bowler in the world, this is something kapil didn't do." - agreed but only slightly behind considering the fact that bowling was their main discipline and Kapil lacked bowling support.so others deserve a little marks in this regard. "botham was also considered one of the best bats in the world during the time he was considered the best bowler, hadlee and kapil certainly didn't achieve this in stats or impression, imran maybe because he was able to score a few centuries at the end of his career in a short time and have one of the best averages but that was a period of his career where he wasn't really bowling and the average at least (and i believe most will agree with this) was inflated due to not outs and that leaves questions about that status of being one of the best bats at the time (in any regard it wasn't at the same time as being the best bowler anyway), whereas with botham there are no questions it's pretty much agreed across the board that at one time he was one of the best bats in the world and he did it at the same time as being one of the best bowlers." - that is the peak period and even in this peak his maximum bat avg: hovered around 38.and there were several specialist bats with better avgs:.
he got the average up to about 41 at one point, but that's not the point there was a period of 4 or 5 years where he only trailed gavaskar for centuries i think the period is from 78-82 and gavaskar got 12 tons with botham coming 2nd with 11. true his average wasn't quite up there but that didn't take away the fact that he was still one of the best batsmen at the time not only just in terms of tons but a lot of people who watched that era would say so. in that period botham came 5th for runs scored, 2nd for tons scored, 5th for 50+ scores. he came 3rd for ducks with 9 which obviously had an impact on his average. he had a lot of good days but also a lot of bad days, and his good days were as good as anyone ever and his bad days were just the opposite. during that period he was the best bowler in the world and in the top 5 batsmen (even with his inconsistencies).
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depending on how you want to manipulate it botham did have an average of 40+ whilst averaging in the 18s with the ball from the start of 78 until june 1980 he averaged over 42 with the bat scoring over 1300 runs and in the 18s with the ball taking 120+ wickets. a short period of time but the amount of runs he scored and wickets he took in a less than 2 year period is phenomenal no matter how you look at it.

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depending on how you want to manipulate it botham did have an average of 40+ whilst averaging in the 18s with the ball from the start of 78 until june 1980 he averaged over 42 with the bat scoring over 1300 runs and in the 18s with the ball taking 120+ wickets. a short period of time but the amount of runs he scored and wickets he took in a less than 2 year period is phenomenal no matter how you look at it.
i did not manipulate any thing. if we go thru his cumulative bat avg: in cricinfo it did touch 40 once after about 25th test. and i do not take any thing away from him . his peak does deserve a lot of credit and extra marks .so is his all round performances.but it is up to the extend of marks we differ it seems. so too Kapil for his brilliant 1983 tour as captain to WI.here is the all conquering team looking for one of the rare best players in the opposition.he captains,scores 2 run a ball +98s of which one is very crucial, avg: 44 with the bat, avgs: 24 with the ball taking 17 wkts and minimises the damage to 2 losses.what more can you ask? .Kapil for this deserve marks just as Botham's peak, if not at least slightly near to it. My main point from the above is that all these highlights deserve small small extra marks based on importance.but nothing more than that
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i did not manipulate any thing. if we go thru his cumulative bat avg: in cricinfo it did touch 40 once after about 25th test. and i do not take any thing away from him . his peak does deserve a lot of credit and extra marks .so is his all round performances.but it is up the extend of marks we differ it seems. so too Kapil for his brilliant 1983 tour as captain to WI.here is the all conquering team looking for one of the rare best players in the opposition.he captains,scores 2 run a ball +98s of which one is very crucial, avg: 44 with the bat, avgs: 24 with the ball taking 17 wkts and minimises the damage to 2 losses.what more can you ask? .Kapil for this deserve marks just as Botham's peak, if not at least slightly near to it. My main point from the above is that all these highlights deserve small small extra marks based on importance.but nothing more than that
except being the best in the world at one aspect or being in the top few (even more so when doing it in batting, bowling and fielding all at the same time) deserves more marks than just a little, at the very least this for botham equals what kapil did against WI imo. even if they just get small marks botham has a lot more of them and it all adds up.
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what more do you want? most consider botham the better test allrounder (those who saw and that's important not just a little thing), he also has better career statistics, not just for averages but for highest score, best bowling performance, 10fers, 5fers, equal in 4fers, more overall runs, more tons, better bowling strike rate etc and it was all done in less matches and he had a better peak. he also managed to be one of the top bowlers and batters during periods of his career. what is there from kapil to counter all this? don't go on what if's like if botham had played as long as kapil, he didn't so it's irrelevant all we can really base things on is statistics and what people who saw them say and in both of those botham comes out on top. for the couple of things kapil pips botham (batting strike rate and WI) there is a bunch more things that botham pips kapil in. even if you consider kapil's WI=to botham's peak which i don't have a problem with, botham still has the more achievements and the better career statistics in less matches.

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except being the best in the world at one aspect or being in the top few (even more so when doing it in batting, bowling and fielding all at the same time) deserves more marks than just a little, at the very least this for botham equals what kapil did against WI imo. even if they just get small marks botham has a lot more of them and it all adds up.
let us analyse their highlights Botham 1. peak period 2. slightly better all round performances considering the 'support bowling' factor effect on Kapil's all round perormances Kapil 1. much better performance against the best team 2. scored more runs against more variety of quality bowlers. 3. much better captaincy 4. slightly better all round fielder and runner between the wkts 5. convincingly better 1 day player 6. convincingly better longevity than Botham in both forms of the game. 7.though slightly behind bat avg: in +35, +75 scores his scored much more here with about +20 str: rate in both the aspects you may argue with Botham's no: of 100s, but as i said if we keep aside this statistical highlight of '100', there is nothing much between them in that Kapil has 15 +75 scores against Botham's 16.
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let us analyse their highlights Botham 1. peak period 2. slightly better all round performances considering the 'support bowling' factor effect on Kapil's all round perormances Kapil 1. much better performance against the best team 2. scored more runs against more variety of quality bowlers. 3. much better captaincy 4. slightly better all round fielder and runner between the wkts 5. convincingly better 1 day player 6. convincingly better longevity than Botham in both forms of the game. 7.though slightly behind bat avg: in +35, +75 scores his scored much more here with about +20 str: rate in both the aspects you may argue with Botham's no: of 100s, but as i said if we keep aside this statistical highlight of '100', there is nothing much between them in that Kapil has 15 +75 scores against Botham's 16.
- captaincy is a non issue when talking about batting or all rounder performance. - botham's all round performances were much more than "slightly" better you just don't want to believe it. - botham was the better fielder, he was a considerably better catcher and close in fielder in that regard he's right up there, kapil may have been a really good fielder but he's not considered up there with the very best, for slip catching at least, botham is. - being a better one-day player at best means botham and kapil are equal. being a better test player is more important imo. - kapil with more longevity yet couldn't achieve as much as botham could, therefore longevity is not a plus for kapil. - statistical 100s are significant because kapil clearly had a problem converting 75+ scores to 100+ scores, that means kapil wasn't mentally as capable in this regard as botham. do you want your batsmen to be capable of scoring tons or not? - strike rate is a non issue in test matches and even if you make it an issue botham still had a strike rate in the 60s which is still rapid in the format meaning kapil's higher strike rate isn't as big of a deal. why doesn't every select sehwag in their all time XI? an opener averaging nearly 50 with a strike rate of 80+, because strike rate isn't a big issue in test matches that's why.
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conveniently ignoring botham's highlights and boosting up kapil's is biased. FACT botham achieved more and in less matches than kapil' date=' nothing you say will change that.[/quote'] Another fact is botham failed to perform against the best, tailed off after 5 yrs in a 15 year career and was hopeless as a bowler when put in kapils situation: no support. Basically botham got found out after hid first few years and was a minnow basher who failed against quality opposition. Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2
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Another fact is botham failed to perform against the best, tailed off after 5 yrs in a 15 year career and was hopeless as a bowler when put in kapils situation: no support. Basically botham got found out after hid first few years and was a minnow basher who failed against quality opposition. Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2
Yeah except he wasn't.
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