Ravindra Jadeja vs Kapil Dev in Tests

[vvvslaxman]

8 minutes ago, Majestic said:

Kapil's bowling can be comparable to Botham but his batting was a level below Botham who got 14 hundreds in 100 tests compared to Kapil's 8 hundreds in 130 tests.

 

Kapil's fans main selling point remains his performance vs Windies but there are no defense point for his failures vs high school kids opponents( like New Zealand, Pakistan, England etc) who all were better than his own team during his career.

 

Kapil Dev had good record against Pakistan. Poor guy couldn't buy a leg before in Pakistan. He was good against all teams  But he had to bowl a lot more overs than he had to like he bowled 31 overs on the trot to West Indies during his 9 for 83 spell. There is no Bob willis sharing the load at the other end. THere are a lot of intangible factors we overlook. IN terms of batting skills Kapil > Botham regardless of record. Botham could whack weak bowling attacks. In West INdies he averages like 14 in 9 tests with 0 fifty.  Kapil made a 100 in 95 balls and 98 in 95 balls against 4 pronged pace attack. You cannot give Botham a pass for his batting/bowling failure against West INdies. That is a big big minus point. If your record is utterly mediocre against the best side of your generation then he shouldn't be hyped regardless of what Kapil did against other sides.

[Trichromatic]

20 minutes ago, Majestic said:

Kapil's bowling can be comparable to Botham but his batting was a level below Botham who got 14 hundreds in 100 tests compared to Kapil's 8 hundreds in 130 tests.

 

Kapil's fans main selling point remains his performance vs Windies but there are no defense point for his failures vs high school kids opponents( like New Zealand, Pakistan, England etc) who all were better than his own team during his career.

 

For all talk about Kapil being lone capable pacer in the team, he was outbowled by Cheten Sharma and Binny in England. Ravi Shastri picked up as many wickets in 3 matches as Kapil Dev got in 7 matches in NZ. Got outbowled by Manoj Prabhakar. With support his performances were really bad.

[vvvslaxman]

13 minutes ago, Trichromatic said:

 

For all talk about Kapil being lone capable pacer in the team, he was outbowled by Cheten Sharma and Binny in England. Ravi Shastri picked up as many wickets in 3 matches as Kapil Dev got in 7 matches in NZ. Got outbowled by Manoj Prabhakar. With support his performances were really bad.

 

He was not outbowled. He was the best bowler of 1986 series. HE was unplayable at Lords and LEeds. THird test he picked up a back injury and could not bowl. 

Edited March 22 by vvvslaxman

[Majestic]

4 hours ago, vvvslaxman said:

 

Kapil Dev had good record against Pakistan. Poor guy couldn't buy a leg before in Pakistan. He was good against all teams  But he had to bowl a lot more overs than he had to like he bowled 31 overs on the trot to West Indies during his 9 for 83 spell. There is no Bob willis sharing the load at the other end. THere are a lot of intangible factors we overlook. IN terms of batting skills Kapil > Botham regardless of record. Botham could whack weak bowling attacks. In West INdies he averages like 14 in 9 tests with 0 fifty.  Kapil made a 100 in 95 balls and 98 in 95 balls against 4 pronged pace attack. You cannot give Botham a pass for his batting/bowling failure against West INdies. That is a big big minus point. If your record is utterly mediocre against the best side of your generation then he shouldn't be hyped regardless of what Kapil did against other sides.

Kapil Dev has pretty bang average record with both bat and ball against all opponents except West Indies, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. Two of these three were utter minnows themselves.

[vvvslaxman]

15 minutes ago, Majestic said:

Kapil Dev has pretty bang average record with both bat and ball against all opponents except West Indies, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. Two of these three were utter minnows themselves.

It was not easy to perform well against West Indies. Honestly against Pakistan he bowled well Very unlucky not to have the numbers. Umpiring was terrible.  He was not "bang average". Don't go by stat. He was India's best bysome distance. Stats won't tell you what a crappy and lucky bowler Chetan sharma was. Binny was good only in specific condition. We are merely using cricinfo to judge how good Kapil dev was which is why i see some flawed observation. 

[vvvslaxman]

All 4 all rounders were special in their way. But out of all Kapil underachieved with bat massively. Better against all kind of bowling on all sort of pitches. He often threw his wicket away. Best counter attacking batsman. Ended up with a test strike rate of around 95. That is more than Sehwag's.

[Majestic]

26 minutes ago, vvvslaxman said:

All 4 all rounders were special in their way. But out of all Kapil underachieved with bat massively. Better against all kind of bowling on all sort of pitches. He often threw his wicket away. Best counter attacking batsman. Ended up with a test strike rate of around 95. That is more than Sehwag's.

Yeah but ultimately your output is what matters.

 

As example, suppose one guy bats like a million dollar and scored 75 but threw away his wicket and his team collapsed.

 

The other guy struggled his way, fought hard, looked ugly for first 40 runs but then went on to score a 150 and changing the game on its head.

 

You know which one should be rated higher. Kapil ended with average of 31 and mere 8 hundreds in more innings than Botham who actually had 14 hundreds with higher runs per innings and at his peak, he was actually even better with both bat and ball. That's the true definition of an ATG all rounder. Not the one who never took his batting average beyond 32-33 and bowling average beyond 27.

 

Botham took his bat/bowl average way beyond than where he ended up. Imran took his batting average to way beyond what Kapil ended at. The gulf is pretty big, it's like comparing Jadeja to Stokes and with Jadeja, you just need to look at home away stats to understand the disparity. In case of Botham vs Kapil, there is no such discrepancy against Botham except for the performance vs only one team and in terms of his peak, he was probably the best ever since Bradman.

 

 

Edited March 22 by Majestic

[vvvslaxman]

4 hours ago, Majestic said:

Yeah but ultimately your output is what matters.

 

As example, suppose one guy bats like a million dollar and scored 75 but threw away his wicket and his team collapsed.

 

The other guy struggled his way, fought hard, looked ugly for first 40 runs but then went on to score a 150 and changing the game on its head.

 

You know which one should be rated higher. Kapil ended with average of 31 and mere 8 hundreds in more innings than Botham who actually had 14 hundreds with higher runs per innings and at his peak, he was actually even better with both bat and ball. That's the true definition of an ATG all rounder. Not the one who never took his batting average beyond 32-33 and bowling average beyond 27.

 

Botham took his bat/bowl average way beyond than where he ended up. Imran took his batting average to way beyond what Kapil ended at. The gulf is pretty big, it's like comparing Jadeja to Stokes and with Jadeja, you just need to look at home away stats to understand the disparity. In case of Botham vs Kapil, there is no such discrepancy against Botham except for the performance vs only one team and in terms of his peak, he was probably the best ever since Bradman.

 

 

 

In the name of quantifying output we are comparing useless bowlers with Chetan sharma with kapil deve. Among fast bowlers Kapil dev bowled 50% of the overs for India. Rest of them nowhere close to him in any year. He literally had to over bowl himself in series after series. He was also an important component of Indian team in the one day set up. Botham was not like that. Kapil was an important player with bat and ball. He was also an all rounder fielder who would stand from slips to boundary line anywhere. Back then he and Border were exception in hitting the stumps directly. He did that in both formats. In ODIs alone Kapil bowled 1195 overs for India. Nobody else bowled 1000 plus overs in that decade in the one dayers. He had exceptional figures as well. There is no rest most of the time. So he was never optimally used. Botham barely had sent down half the overs in the one dayers. He was the captain as well at the age of 25.  We are taking his service for granted given how much he had no predecessor to follow, how much responsibility he had to shoulder in unresponsive pitches. 

 

Botham was a good all rounder. But his performance against the best side of his era cannot be accepted. I disagree there. None of the greats have that issue. Tendulkar did not have bad record against Australia in 2000s when they dominated.  May not be Laxmansque. But he had great record. Graham Gooch was the best for England with bat as he delivered against West Indies. If purely compare numbers with zero context Botham will always look super. But he bashed the Aussies when they were at the lowest point. Even INdia dominated Australia in Australia in the 1985.  India could have whitewashed them potentially.  He didn't particularly have a good record against Pakistan as well. Imagine Bumrah bowling with Mukesh, Unadkat for 10 years. All teams have to do is see Bumrah off. 

 

WIth respect to batting Botham was not a technically good player. Kapil dev was much more versatile and skilled batsman who was always considered an underachiever with bat.  Botham had a lot of fluke innings like his 149. Literally edged his way to 149. Kapil even at the age of 30 plus dominated Alan Donald's 95 mph thunderbolts in the 1992 world cup scoring 22 runs of him then in another match where he made 131 came in at 31/6 in helpful condition.  There was one match where he literally swept one of the west indies fast bowler Winston benjamin for six. He almost always gave his wicket away.  He was also dropped from one of the test for "irresponsible" shot. You cannot say he "struggled" like Botham did against West Indies. 

 

If you are going to purely go by raw stats without using context literally anyone will come to the conclusion 1000 years from now.  Then he came back at Chennai test and played with extreme caution (still at a good rate) made a couple of 50s. If he had really decided to statpad he could have easily done.  Who can forget the famous 4 sixes in a row to avoid follow on. Against spin he was one of the most complete batsman not just raw pace. 

 

I don't think we do enough analysis on the context to judge past players. We only look at the most common stats at cricinfo and form our opinion. It is okay. People are entitled to have different opinon. My opinion will never change about Kapil Dev. Valiant servant who shouldered INdia for a decade manfully with supreme fitness with zero injury with no support until he passed ont he baton to the likes of Srinath et al. He may have overstayed for breaking Hadlee's record. But for a very long period he is someone that deserves respect.

Edited March 22 by vvvslaxman

[Kron]

13 hours ago, vvvslaxman said:

 

In the name of quantifying output we are comparing useless bowlers with Chetan sharma with kapil deve. Among fast bowlers Kapil dev bowled 50% of the overs for India. Rest of them nowhere close to him in any year. He literally had to over bowl himself in series after series. He was also an important component of Indian team in the one day set up. Botham was not like that. Kapil was an important player with bat and ball. He was also an all rounder fielder who would stand from slips to boundary line anywhere. Back then he and Border were exception in hitting the stumps directly. He did that in both formats. In ODIs alone Kapil bowled 1195 overs for India. Nobody else bowled 1000 plus overs in that decade in the one dayers. He had exceptional figures as well. There is no rest most of the time. So he was never optimally used. Botham barely had sent down half the overs in the one dayers. He was the captain as well at the age of 25.  We are taking his service for granted given how much he had no predecessor to follow, how much responsibility he had to shoulder in unresponsive pitches. 

 

Botham was a good all rounder. But his performance against the best side of his era cannot be accepted. I disagree there. None of the greats have that issue. Tendulkar did not have bad record against Australia in 2000s when they dominated.  May not be Laxmansque. But he had great record. Graham Gooch was the best for England with bat as he delivered against West Indies. If purely compare numbers with zero context Botham will always look super. But he bashed the Aussies when they were at the lowest point. Even INdia dominated Australia in Australia in the 1985.  India could have whitewashed them potentially.  He didn't particularly have a good record against Pakistan as well. Imagine Bumrah bowling with Mukesh, Unadkat for 10 years. All teams have to do is see Bumrah off. 

 

WIth respect to batting Botham was not a technically good player. Kapil dev was much more versatile and skilled batsman who was always considered an underachiever with bat.  Botham had a lot of fluke innings like his 149. Literally edged his way to 149. Kapil even at the age of 30 plus dominated Alan Donald's 95 mph thunderbolts in the 1992 world cup scoring 22 runs of him then in another match where he made 131 came in at 31/6 in helpful condition.  There was one match where he literally swept one of the west indies fast bowler Winston benjamin for six. He almost always gave his wicket away.  He was also dropped from one of the test for "irresponsible" shot. You cannot say he "struggled" like Botham did against West Indies. 

 

If you are going to purely go by raw stats without using context literally anyone will come to the conclusion 1000 years from now.  Then he came back at Chennai test and played with extreme caution (still at a good rate) made a couple of 50s. If he had really decided to statpad he could have easily done.  Who can forget the famous 4 sixes in a row to avoid follow on. Against spin he was one of the most complete batsman not just raw pace. 

 

I don't think we do enough analysis on the context to judge past players. We only look at the most common stats at cricinfo and form our opinion. It is okay. People are entitled to have different opinon. My opinion will never change about Kapil Dev. Valiant servant who shouldered INdia for a decade manfully with supreme fitness with zero injury with no support until he passed ont he baton to the likes of Srinath et al. He may have overstayed for breaking Hadlee's record. But for a very long period he is someone that deserves respect.

Good analysis. Hadlee though was superior as he carried even weak team to glory in tests. Might be the last time nz won a match in tests against Indians in India when he was still a player.

 

Kapil> Botham

 

And kapil>> jadeja unless jadeja helps us win a series in England or wins wtc with a match winning performance 

[vvvslaxman]

14 minutes ago, Kron said:

Good analysis. Hadlee though was superior as he carried even weak team to glory in tests. Might be the last time nz won a match in tests against Indians in India when he was still a player.

 

Kapil> Botham

 

And kapil>> jadeja unless jadeja helps us win a series in England or wins wtc with a match winning performance 

 

Hadlee was always the best bowler among the four. No doubt. Imran Khan had shady acts. So i will take his record with a pinch of salt. So much scuffing of the ball with external objects were done even when the ball was new. 

[Kron]

5 hours ago, vvvslaxman said:

 

Hadlee was always the best bowler among the four. No doubt. Imran Khan had shady acts. So i will take his record with a pinch of salt. So much scuffing of the ball with external objects were done even when the ball was new. 

Imran's bowling action was conducive to fast bowling though so I would say he would still average 24 to 26 without scuffing the ball or resorting to any other acts of cheating. 

 

Kapil with a decent partner in crim would be a 25 26 averaging bowler too. 

 

Hadlee yes was the best from those 4

 

Botham is last I would say. 

 

Jadeja has a couple more things to achieve. If he does then sure put him above kapil. 

 

Ashwin too. If he helps us win wtc or helps us beat England with a match winning performance in the next away series then he is in the convo too. In ash's case it's to be ahead of murali and Warne. Not as an AR. 

Edited March 23 by Kron