The Unpopular Cricket Opinions Thread

[King Tendulkar]

6 minutes ago, Gollum said:

Pity that doesn't translate to athletics, swimming, boxing, wrestling, basketball, tennis etc. And LOL some of the Indian women swimming records are better than that of Pakistani men 

Classic looool

[saik]

DK will be a success at No.4

[Giant Tissue Box]

Your best player doesn't always have to bat 3.

 

Tendulkar, Kohli, Smith, Waugh, Border, Lara, de Villiers, Cook, and etc didn't bat at 3. 

[Gollum]

52. Dravid was a great ODI player, an Indian ATG in the format. His 1999 WC run was better than anything Kohli has managed till date. In the 1999-2007 era I would say Dravid was among top 10 ODI batsman in the world every single year. 

[Vijy]

On 1/2/2018 at 8:43 AM, Gollum said:

52. Dravid was a great ODI player, an Indian ATG in the format. His 1999 WC run was better than anything Kohli has managed till date. In the 1999-2007 era I would say Dravid was among top 10 ODI batsman in the world every single year. 

don't know if I'd go that far, but he was certainly excellent during this period. he was probably also india's 2nd best ever batsman-keeper (not keeper-batsman) after dobby.

[Gollum]

53. Dinesh Karthik is not entirely useless, his show in 2007 England test series was pretty amazing. Was a key player, dare I say our best batsman in that historic series. 

[Vijy]

3 minutes ago, Gollum said:

53. Dinesh Karthik is not entirely useless, his show in 2007 England test series was pretty amazing. Was a key player, dare I say our best batsman in that historic series. 

it's more appropriate to say he "was" not entirely useless, since he did very well as a opener for 2 series. afterwards, his form slipped and he was rightly discarded. on the whole, I agree that the Eng tour was his shining moment. kind of like Sir Aggy in Adelaide. or Rat in England. every rat has its day under the sun.

[Vijy]

Kambli had a bigger hunger for runs compared to Sachin at similar points in their careers. I'm not referring to technique, ability, etc. here - merely the fact that kambli was willing to extract the max no. of runs he could when he played in favourable conditions or against weaker teams. [I don't know if this qualifies as an "unpopular" opinion though.]

Edited January 6, 2018 by Vijy

[Gollum]

54. Che is Mahela Jayawardene 2.0.....pains me to blurt this out but there is enough sample size already to call him a HTB. May be a popular opinion around but for me this is a heart wrenching confession. The way he ran like a headless chicken 1st ball showed the scars run deep.  

[MechEng]

1 hour ago, Gollum said:

54. Che is Mahela Jayawardene 2.0.....pains me to blurt this out but there is enough sample size already to call him a HTB. May be a popular opinion around but for me this is a heart wrenching confession. The way he ran like a headless chicken 1st ball showed the scars run deep.  

I'm actually okay with that, Australia and England don't have home track bullies apart from Smith and Root, we at least have 2 guaranteed HTBs in Kohli and Pujara.

Edited January 14, 2018 by MechEng

[MechEng]

On 29/12/2017 at 11:18 AM, Gollum said:

28. SRT was somewhat a choker. He was not an outright mental midget as haters over here say, but he definitely underperformed when we needed him most. Most of our great victories like Eden 2001, Adelaide 2003, Durban 2010 etc were scripted by lesser players than him. His choke jobs in WC finals and some crucial tests when we needed someone to step up in the 4th dig will always hurt his reputation. It is true that he carried more expectation in the 90s but with the arrival of Dravid, Ganguly, Viru, Laxman in late 90s/early 00s he was unburdened, yet he continued to fail. His 85 ball 16 against Pak in Bangalore 2005 is one of the weirdest innings I have ever seen.

But then you're ignoring the Cape Town test here. Though Cape Town pitch was much flatter than Durban, Steyn was literally in 'God mode' in that test and the Durban hero Laxman looked completely clueless against him at Cape Town. Had it not been for Sachin's 146, a defeat and series loss was guranateed.

[MechEng]

On 30/12/2017 at 1:17 AM, Gollum said:

50. Sachin's repeated mention of Cronje as his most difficult adversary is his refusal to accept his consistent shortcomings against the likes of Donald, Mcgrath, Pollock, Murali and Anderson. Many bowlers have owned SRT but he simply doesn't want to give credit to those bowlers, his fat ego won't allow him to do so. 

???

[MechEng]

1.) Ishant Sharma bowled one of the greatest spells of fast bowling in cricket - his Perth spell to Ponting. Very rarely it happens in cricket that there is a duel between a fast bowler and a great batsman for long spells, I've heard of long battles between Malcolm Marshall and Boycott in county cricket. Donald to Atherton also comes to mind in 1998, but it was a barrage of short pitched bowling and lacked the aesthetic beauty which we got to see in Ishant's spell where he got every 3rd ball to hold it's line, also he was bowling to an ATG player.

 

2.) Dravid is the greatest overseas batsman in England barring Bradman probably. The 2011 England bowling attack was the best bowling attack England ever had in 200 years, yes even better than Ashes 2005 (they cheated to get reverse swing). And Dravid score 3 high class hundreds against them. His 146 at The Oval was pure masterpiece, Swann was turning it huge and Broad was high quality.

 

3.) Test cricket is not the toughest format, most mature format but not the toughest. There is a reason why Alastair Cook cannot chase down 90 runs in the last 10 overs while Suresh Raina is expected to chase 70 runs in 5 overs.

[maniac]

The previous generation of Indian cricketers were genuine ambassadors of the game and the current ones are entitled spoilt brats.

[Gollum]

5 hours ago, MechEng said:

But then you're ignoring the Cape Town test here. Though Cape Town pitch was much flatter than Durban, Steyn was literally in 'God mode' in that test and the Durban hero Laxman looked completely clueless against him at Cape Town. Had it not been for Sachin's 146, a defeat and series loss was guranateed.

Yeah he helped us draw that match but we all remember Durban because of that epic win. Sachin's epic knocks invariably came in drawn matches. You can't deny that matches won overseas get higher weightage than the drawn ones. Even Dada scored an epic 144 in Brisbane 2003 amidst talk about chin music but who remembers that anyway?

[Gollum]

49 minutes ago, MechEng said:

???

What? Self explanatory. I have never seen SRT credit the likes of Anderson, Donald, Mcgrath, Murali who had the wood over him. Always mentions Cronje as his toughest bowler when these guys made him look even worse. It is like Federer repeatedly telling that Corretja was his toughest adversary when we all know that the answer should be Nadal. 

[Gollum]

29 minutes ago, MechEng said:

1.) Ishant Sharma bowled one of the greatest spells of fast bowling in cricket - his Perth spell to Ponting. Very rarely it happens in cricket that there is a duel between a fast bowler and a great batsman for long spells, I've heard of long battles between Malcolm Marshall and Boycott in county cricket. Donald to Atherton also comes to mind in 1998, but it was a barrage of short pitched bowling and lacked the aesthetic beauty which we got to see in Ishant's spell where he got every 3rd ball to hold it's line, also he was bowling to an ATG player.

 

2.) Dravid is the greatest overseas batsman in England barring Bradman probably. The 2011 England bowling attack was the best bowling attack England ever had in 200 years, yes even better than Ashes 2005 (they cheated to get reverse swing). And Dravid score 3 high class hundreds against them. His 146 at The Oval was pure masterpiece, Swann was turning it huge and Broad was high quality.

 

3.) Test cricket is not the toughest format, most mature format but not the toughest. There is a reason why Alastair Cook cannot chase down 90 runs in the last 10 overs while Suresh Raina is expected to chase 70 runs in 5 overs.

But we have more examples of test specialists doing well in white ball cricket than the converse. 

[MechEng]

3 hours ago, Gollum said:

But we have more examples of test specialists doing well in white ball cricket than the converse. 

They excel in white ball cricket but are not able to perform in certain conditions like how even a well set Dravid in 2009 CT could not accelerate run scoring against Pakistan in last 10 overs and how Nasser Hussain managed only one ODI ton in 88 ODIs he's played.

 

3 hours ago, Gollum said:

What? Self explanatory. I have never seen SRT credit the likes of Anderson, Donald, Mcgrath, Murali who had the wood over him. Always mentions Cronje as his toughest bowler when these guys made him look even worse. It is like Federer repeatedly telling that Corretja was his toughest adversary when we all know that the answer should be Nadal. 

Those guys had statistically wood over Tendulkar, but maybe Tendulkar never found them to be unplayable although tough to face. He has hammered those bowlers in both tests and ODIs as well but he never really could hit Cronje for fours with ease. Actually most cricketers don't care much about stats, there is a reason why Aussies hated Ganguly and Harbhajan even though their stats were ordinary against them, they could impose themselves with aggresssive cricket.

[Gollum]

@MechEng I don't think these guys had just a statistical edge over Sachin. Till the end of his career SRT had no clue which way Anderson's ball would move. Except one or two innings he always struggled against Donald and Pollock. Mcgrath was another one who had a stranglehold over him, except 1996 WC and Nairobi ICC mini world cup, I never saw him take on Mcgrath, he always barely survived him and in 1999 and 2003 WC he scored 4 runs and got out twice. May be your statistical edge point could hold for Murali but not these guys. Every legend has faced problems against other ATGs and never undermine the fact. Every time Federer is asked who is his toughest opponent he says Nadal, few others have positive H2H over him but he doesn't downplay his great rival. 

 

Guys like Cronje, Razzaq, Price, Panesar, Lyon etc have had some measure of success against him but against the likes of Mcgrath, Donald and Pollock they won a majority of battles over a large sample size.  

[MechEng]

4.) Sachin's 98 vs Pakistan was better than his twin Sharjah hundreds. Chasing 250+ score was always tough in South Africa and the start which Tendulkar gave by taking on Pakistan bowlers was unusual for that pre T20 cricket generation.

India was 98/2 in 11 overs while chasing a big score and the great Australian batting line up was at 56/3 in first 11 overs facing the same attack while batting first, including the fact that Shoaib was not bowling fast enough against them rarely crossed 145 kph, while against us his top speed was 159 kph. Also Sachin probably wanted to lay the ghost of 1999 Chennai test with this knock.