Virat Kohli or Steven Smith - over all better batsman as of now?

[King Tendulkar]

Maradona was mediocre in 86 final . Didn’t do much . But they won and he was sensational in whole tournament so remembered as a great 

[King Tendulkar]

Smiths record in Asia is very unsatisfactory. 

[SUMO]

As of now smith ahead of kohli in tests

[Vijy]

Smith is far better in Tests, comparable in ODIs and much behind in T20s

[goose]

Smith is the better test batsman but his greatness is purely statistical. His average need only drop down a few points and Kohli's move up a bit in near future (by definition that will be away) and Kohli will probably have his nose in front. 

[vayuu1]

No but Smith does have performances in crunch games and has won a world cup. Kohli is far superior superior batsman in short forms but he does not have  that exclusive accomplishment as Smith. Avg 60 is that great in my view 

Smith had a rampaging Starc, Johnson and Hazelwood on his side, and on our side was spray gun Yadav.

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[vayuu1]

Test cricket is the real deal, Smith is so much better in it than the others that it isn't even funny anymore. Add to that his clutchness in WCs, no chance for the others now. In my eyes Kohli can be rated equal to Smith if he can bring down the test average differential to around 5 runs and have a superlative 2019 WC scoring 600+ runs and getting a match winning ton in the finals. His dreadful choking in 2015 SF and 2017 CT F can only be nullified by a Viv Richards type innings in 2019/2023 WC final. 

One needs to remember that Australian pitches have also become flat I think it's 46 something per wicket compared to next best India which is 37 or 38 per wicket that is a difference of 8-9 runs per wicket which is quite staggering.

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[ravishingravi]

Oh Indian cricket fans. Keep gushing over your superstars while team celebrates mediocrity. 

 

As an Indian, just wanted to rile up the fanboys. 

[rtmohanlal]

The basic factor that is associated with world cup performances  or multi national tournament performances is pressure.But even there too  there is a context which decides the amount of pressure.just because a batsman played a substantial inns in a world cup knock out doesn't automatically make it  an out of the world 'pressure cooker' inns.Several other factors too come into account.For instance take Smith's 56* in that final. AUS only needed to chase a paltry 184 in 50 overs at home.And the initial burst  for the inns was provided by Warner who scored 45 of the 61 runs partnership with Smith.And then in the next most vital 112 partnership , it was Clarke who scored 74 of those runs.That means  the then relatively fresher Smith(only just one of the batsmen in that line up) only played his role  to perfection.To be frank I don't find much influence of the 'pressure' factor here.What not , it is not like a team like Bangladesh comes into the final for the first time and the sort of pressure that their players would then come to face with.A player from a country like AUS  in general have to deal with the least amount of  pressure in cricket for various factors. And I find Kohli's 35 chasing a mammoth 274 in a cricket crazy nation like India just as important as that of Smith's final knock.If not for him providing ample support to Gambhir, India would definitely have lost the game.

Smith's semi & quarter knocks  too were brilliant, but not such 'soaked in pressure' knocks. Kohli's  3 champions trophy knocks loses nothing in comparison to these 2 knocks apart from that they came in slightly lesser important tournament.All in all Kohli lags only by a little in comparison, if any. That implies just because of these 3 knocks , we just can't neglect Smith's glaring weaknesses in other factors in the vast majority of his other one day matches as nothing serious.

 

Along with his extraordinary T20 performances to go with his much superior one day track record, Kohli is slightly in front for me who till yesterday thought that Smith would have been the better batsman.

[velu]

kohlis record in tests is not that inferior to that of smiths..

[SUMO]

Smith is just 500 runs ahead of kohli in same no. of innings.

Suppose smith has dip in performance next year and kohli has great english tour.

Suddenly kohli will go past him both in terms of impact or number.

[SUMO]

Just now, SUMO said:

Smith is just 500 runs ahead of kohli in same no. of innings.

Suppose smith has dip in performance next year and kohli has great english tour.

Suddenly kohli will go past him both in terms of impact or number.

But smith can't catch kohli in odis or t20 he is so far behind and also lacks the game for it

[mishra]

2 hours ago, rtmohanlal said:

The basic factor that is associated with world cup performances  or multi national tournament performances is pressure.But even there too  there is a context which decides the amount of pressure.just because a batsman played a substantial inns in a world cup knock out doesn't automatically make it  an out of the world 'pressure cooker' inns.Several other factors too come into account.For instance take Smith's 56* in that final. AUS only needed to chase a paltry 184 in 50 overs at home.And the initial burst  for the inns was provided by Warner who scored 45 of the 61 runs partnership with Smith.And then in the next most vital 112 partnership , it was Clarke who scored 74 of those runs.That means  the then relatively fresher Smith(only just one of the batsmen in that line up) only played his role  to perfection.To be frank I don't find much influence of the 'pressure' factor here.What not , it is not like a team like Bangladesh comes into the final for the first time and the sort of pressure that their players would then come to face with.A player from a country like AUS  in general have to deal with the least amount of  pressure in cricket for various factors. And I find Kohli's 35 chasing a mammoth 274 in a cricket crazy nation like India just as important as that of Smith's final knock.If not for him providing ample support to Gambhir, India would definitely have lost the game.

Smith's semi & quarter knocks  too were brilliant, but not such 'soaked in pressure' knocks. Kohli's  3 champions trophy knocks loses nothing in comparison to these 2 knocks apart from that they came in slightly lesser important tournament.All in all Kohli lags only by a little in comparison, if any. That implies just because of these 3 knocks , we just can't neglect Smith's glaring weaknesses in other factors in the vast majority of his other one day matches as nothing serious.

 

Along with his extraordinary T20 performances to go with his much superior one day track record, Kohli is slightly in front for me who till yesterday thought that Smith would have been the better batsman.

Agree but how do you explain this, Since India is not crazy test lover nation, Our players should have no pressure in test arena? But Sachin used to loose his sleep if he was not out overnight against Aussies. While Ashes is pinnacle of Australia England rivalry, Every performance is Ashes game to be considered a pressure Cooker performance.

 

And yes, Fact is Ashes means a lot to either of two nations. Hence you see fans trying to somehow knockout opponent players in bar, if they can

Edited November 28, 2017 by mishra

[rtmohanlal]

2 hours ago, mishra said:

Agree but how do you explain this, Since India is not crazy test lover nation, Our players should have no pressure in test arena? But Sachin used to loose his sleep if he was not out overnight against Aussies. While Ashes is pinnacle of Australia England rivalry, Every performance is Ashes game to be considered a pressure Cooker performance.

 

And yes, Fact is Ashes means a lot to either of two nations. Hence you see fans trying to somehow knockout opponent players in bar, if they can

Hope you are not joking.130 billion people of which fair share are game lovers.Even among them are a fair share who are not educated enough and emotional.Players are even forced to disguise themselves in public. Almost all of the time  cricket grounds get jam packed whether if be any format. The pressure of expectations Sachin faced was unreal.Spectators  even  wished for an  Indian wicket to fall so that Sachin would come to the crease as early as possible.Do you know that?

  On the other hand Aussies are only around 1.5 crore of them.Most of them are understandably educated and sensible enough to treat a game as a game.More over Aussies have lot  of other games of interest .That is why Aussie players can freely mingle in public.There public respect their players but not adore them as stars.Nor do the Aussie players get their homes stoned if a game of cricket is lost.

" fans trying to somehow knockout opponent players in bar"'-not sure an instance of such incident ever happend though players get into animated exchanges.Yes Aussies care about ashes.But i don't think Aussie players generally face that much pressure in world cups.Infact for Smith every thing was to his advantage.The Aussie bowling as ever was of the normal high standard of theirs.Smith was only  one of the  rookie batsmen in the team.Aussies already had 4 world cup wins in their kits which was higher than that of any other country.In the semifinal  where he scored big  he faced a sub standard  Indian bowling unit that too batting first.In the other 2 matches he was facing a moderate target each time.And in both matches other batsmen contributed too.So I don't get as to what sort of pressure was Smith facing apart from that those where  world cup knock outs.Pressure is what Sanga faced in his last  world cup knock out.Being the best batsman of the team and having lost 2 consecutive finals before , Lankan game lovers expected a lot from him. But he couldn't cope with that.Similar is the case with Saf  players who carries the choker tag on their shoulders despite SAF always being a top tier team.

[mishra]

25 minutes ago, rtmohanlal said:

Hope you are not joking.130 billion people of which fair share are game lovers.Even among them are a fair share who are not educated enough and emotional.Players are even forced to disguise themselves in public. Almost all of the time  cricket grounds get jam packed whether if be any format. The pressure of expectations Sachin faced was unreal.Spectators  even  wished for an  Indian wicket to fall so that Sachin would come to the crease as early as possible.Do you know that?

  On the other hand Aussies are only around 1.5 crore of them.Most of them are understandably educated and sensible enough to treat a game as a game.More over Aussies have lot  of other games of interest .That is why Aussie players can freely mingle in public.There public respect their players but not adore them as stars.Nor do the Aussie players get their homes stoned if a game of cricket is lost.

" fans trying to somehow knockout opponent players in bar"'-not sure an instance of such incident ever happend though players get into animated exchanges.Yes Aussies care about ashes.But i don't think Aussie players generally face that much pressure in world cups.Infact for Smith every thing was to his advantage.The Aussie bowling as ever was of the normal high standard of theirs.Smith was only  one of the  rookie batsmen in the team.Aussies already had 4 world cup wins in their kits which was higher than that of any other country.In the semifinal  where he scored big  he faced a sub standard  Indian bowling unit that too batting first.In the other 2 matches he was facing a moderate target each time.And in both matches other batsmen contributed too.So I don't get as to what sort of pressure was Smith facing apart from that those where  world cup knock outs.Pressure is what Sanga faced in his last  world cup knock out.Being the best batsman of the team and having lost 2 consecutive finals before , Lankan game lovers expected a lot from him. But he couldn't cope with that.Similar is the case with Saf  players who carries the choker tag on their shoulders despite SAF always being a top tier team.

I will not compare pressure Sachin had on his shouldiers each time he walked in with expectations of whole nation. Not just that it was very clear to him that whole world neutral cricket fans wants him to bat including all ATGs, non ATGs, reporters, Administrators, interested Corporations. Cricket is a both team and individual sport too. But to Sachin, we allways expected him to beat a team. We wanted to see him bat, format doesnt matter, And he rescripted how Indian Cricket team should be. And hence I mentioned, he couldnt sleep if he was not out overnight specially against Aussies. Cos he knew, they were damn good and if he fails, wrist slitting will start even before next batsman walks in.

 

But barring him, there has been never a player who Indian fans craved so much to see bat. Now thats the point I am making. In test arena, Indian players including Kohli do not share any more expectation than Say Smith or Root . There is similar level of apathy to a win or loss in test cricket. If anything, Ashes for them players is very serious high pressure condition. The pub brawl was hyperbole to Warner Root incident, or Bancroft/Bairstow incident.  I am yet to hear a Indian player loosing his cool against player of another country after a test loss.

[rtmohanlal]

3 minutes ago, mishra said:

I will not compare pressure Sachin had on his shouldiers each time he walked in with expectations of whole nation. Not just that it was very clear to him that whole world neutral cricket fans wants him to bat including all ATGs, non ATGs, reporters, Administrators, interested Corporations. Cricket is a both team and individual sport too. But to Sachin, we allways expected him to beat a team. We wanted to see him bat, format doesnt matter, And he rescripted how Indian Cricket team should be. And hence I mentioned, he couldnt sleep if he was not out overnight specially against Aussies. Cos he knew, they were damn good and if he fails, wrist slitting will start even before next batsman walks in.

 

But barring him, there has been never a player who Indian fans craved so much to see bat. Now thats the point I am making. In test arena, Indian players including Kohli do not share any more expectation than Say Smith or Root . There is similar level of apathy to a win or loss in test cricket. If anything, Ashes for them players is very serious high pressure condition. The pub brawl was hyperbole to Warner Root incident, or Bancroft/Bairstow incident.  I am yet to hear a Indian player loosing his cool against player of another country after a test loss.

In one dayers Indian players face a lot more pressure than  Aussie players.And general over all team strengths especially in bowling too influence that pressure factor. But in tests I agree that Ashes creates more pressure.But if it is against Pakistan the situation would be far more intense for Indian players which is not happening as of now.

[King Tendulkar]

Smith out average goes down . Can’t play swing once again exposed under lights !

 

meanwhile virat piling it on 126 not out . Average on way up 

[Shunya]

22 minutes ago, King Tendulkar said:

Smith out average goes down . Can’t play swing once again exposed under lights !

 

meanwhile virat piling it on 126 not out . Average on way up 

 Even if smith score 15+ ducks in next year, he will still be 50+ on average. He is truly no.1 currently.

[King Tendulkar]

4 minutes ago, Shunya said:

 Even if smith score 15+ ducks in next year, he will still be 50+ on average. He is truly no.1 currently.

What would kohli average be if scores 350 not out in this innings . Does anyone know ?

[philcric]

13 minutes ago, King Tendulkar said:

What would kohli average be if scores 350 not out in this innings . Does anyone know ?

 

55.5