Ooops, who will we curse now?

[King]

Why do you guys only include this stats since Sehwag's debut? All the runs scored by Rahul, Ganguly and Tendulkar prior Sehwag's debut is a waste of time is it? I think you folks should include the career stats for the rest too given Sehwag's career stats is what is presented. How about show Sehwag's career stats since the time someone else made his debut. I think this stats is highly skewed. No doubt Sehwag is a top player but it's a shame to compare him to the likes of Tendulkar and Rahul. Both Tendulkar and Rahul are way ahead of Sehwag. If Sehwag reaches the lofty heights that Tendulkar and Rahul have achieved for more than a decade we will be hailing him as a legend. Not just yet.

Look- 10% higher than Dravid, 15.7% higher than Tendulkar, 39% higher than Laxman, and 41% higher than Ganguly.

I don't get it. The stats above says Sehwag's scored 16.55% of the team total. Rahul has scored 15% of the team total, Tendulkar 14.30, Laxman 11.89 and Ganguly 11.74. How is it 10% higher than Dravid? Sehwag has contributed 1.53 runs more than Rahul Dravid to a score of 100. Moreover this is truly a bane of Indian cricket fans. They just don't seem to enjoy the victory without having to compare the team mates. It used to be Rahul vs Tendulkar, Rahul vs Ganguly, Rahul vs Laxman and now Sehwag vs all the 4? Please don't compare these guys and make sound the victory very little. It never is due to a single player's contribution a team wins. It's more than just one person contributing to a victory always. Have you guys ever heard of Aussies comparing Gilly with Ponting or Hayden with Langer? Other than the Indian cricket fans and perhaps Pakistanis to certain extent, this business of comparing a player against his own with counting each run as a yardstick doesn't usually happen.

[Fontaine]

This thread would be comical if not so tragic. There are plenty of excellent insights here from very knowledgeable fans but the fact of the matter is Sehwag, having played brilliantly, was also very lucky. Gambhir edged it and was dropped very early, and Sehwag was lucky when the ball edged his glove and the umpire didn't spot it when he was just on 13 and again he got lucky later on when an edge just missed Van Dort. Same thing happend to Graeme Smith. Yes he scored a masterful century to win the series against England but he should have been out twice during that time. If either Tendulkar or Laxman had gotten a bit more luck (instead of Sehwag) then they would have gone on to put up a great score as well. As a matter of fact it's very very rare for a batsmen to score a century plus without have some element of luck. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. So let's take the last two test performances batting with a grain of salt, just like how we would have pissed all over Sri Lanka by now if they hadn't been so lucky in Karthik being responsible for 3 or so drops and a missed easy stumping!!

[Dhondy]

Why do you guys only include this stats since Sehwag's debut? All the runs scored by Rahul, Ganguly and Tendulkar prior Sehwag's debut is a waste of time is it? I think you folks should include the career stats for the rest too given Sehwag's career stats is what is presented. How about show Sehwag's career stats since the time someone else made his debut. I think this stats is highly skewed. No doubt Sehwag is a top player but it's a shame to compare him to the likes of Tendulkar and Rahul. Both Tendulkar and Rahul are way ahead of Sehwag. If Sehwag reaches the lofty heights that Tendulkar and Rahul have achieved for more than a decade we will be hailing him as a legend. Not just yet. I don't get it. The stats above says Sehwag's scored 16.55% of the team total. Rahul has scored 15% of the team total, Tendulkar 14.30, Laxman 11.89 and Ganguly 11.74. How is it 10% higher than Dravid? Sehwag has contributed 1.53 runs more than Rahul Dravid to a score of 100. Moreover this is truly a bane of Indian cricket fans. They just don't seem to enjoy the victory without having to compare the team mates. It used to be Rahul vs Tendulkar, Rahul vs Ganguly, Rahul vs Laxman and now Sehwag vs all the 4? Please don't compare these guys and make sound the victory very little. It never is due to a single player's contribution a team wins. It's more than just one person contributing to a victory always. Have you guys ever heard of Aussies comparing Gilly with Ponting or Hayden with Langer? Other than the Indian cricket fans and perhaps Pakistanis to certain extent, this business of comparing a player against his own with counting each run as a yardstick doesn't usually happen.

The only way to assess a player's relative impact is to compare his performances with others since he started playing. He and his team members have faced the same bowlers and played in the same conditions over that period. Fo example, Staruss had a great first couple of years, but has been completely mediocre since Pietersen made his debut. If you compare their relative contributions, Pietersen would contribute much higher than Strauss. It's quite reasonable to point this out, as quite clearly, since he made his debut, Pietersen has been a much more valuable player than Strauss. How's Sehwag scored 10% higher than Rahul? If out of 10,000 team runs scored in 30 innings, Rahul scores a 1000 runs, and Sehwag scores 1100, that's 10% higher. Similarly 16.55/15= 110, which means that Sehwag has been contributing 10% higher than Rahul, although the absolute difference is only 1.55%. And there's absolutely nothing wrong in pointing out passengers in the team who have been hitching a ride on other, more productive colleagues for a while. The Aussie selectors did the same exercise and dropped Mark Waugh, Damien Martyn and Lehman.

[Dhondy]

This thread would be comical if not so tragic. There are plenty of excellent insights here from very knowledgeable fans but the fact of the matter is Sehwag, having played brilliantly, was also very lucky. Gambhir edged it and was dropped very early, and Sehwag was lucky when the ball edged his glove and the umpire didn't spot it when he was just on 13 and again he got lucky later on when an edge just missed Van Dort. Same thing happend to Graeme Smith. Yes he scored a masterful century to win the series against England but he should have been out twice during that time. If either Tendulkar or Laxman had gotten a bit more luck (instead of Sehwag) then they would have gone on to put up a great score as well. As a matter of fact it's very very rare for a batsmen to score a century plus without have some element of luck. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. So let's take the last two test performances batting with a grain of salt, just like how we would have pissed all over Sri Lanka by now if they hadn't been so lucky in Karthik being responsible for 3 or so drops and a missed easy stumping!!

Sometimes, one can get too smart for one's own good, Fontaine. It's best not to go all Shakespearean on us. Tragi-comedy, eh? That incident when Sehwag was on 13 was referred to the 3rd umpire. No glove could be acertained on the ball, and he was given not out. Pretty sharp of you to have picked up something even the TV cameras missed. And if an edge dropping short of somebody counts as luck, every goddamn batsman who ever made any runs is lucky. That's just professional straw clutching. The point is, this fella made 201 and 50 on a track where his senior colleagues wilted like daisies in Atacama. The same thing happened at Melbourne, Adelaide, Bangalore. He's outscored all of them by sizeable margins ever since he came into the side. People will point that out, whether you like it or not.

[The Outsider]

And there you go, guys. Debate settled, arguments ended, as ever by the cold finger of stats. Many thanks, Mein Boss! The runs above are adjusted for innings, so one can't attribute Sehwag's superiority to some of the massive efforts, such as at Lahore, where very few others got a bat. Look- 10% higher than Dravid, 15.7% higher than Tendulkar, 39% higher than Laxman, and 41% higher than Ganguly. Take a bow, Sehwag! And Boss, you are the man! :hail:

Dhondy, if cold hard numbers was all that needed settling a debate without any analysis then a lot of subjects around the world would be poorer. Firstly, it's an absurd notion to bring in Ganguly and Laxman into stats like the above. Comparing the percentage runs made by number 5/6 batsmen in a team with a brittle tail to the percentage runs scored by an opener in a team with a strong middle order doesn't make any sense to me. So, Sehwag has scored 10-15% runs more than Dravid and Tendulkar. Are instances like Tendulkar's 194*, 241*, 153* taken into account by any statistical parameter above where he ran out of partners while staying not out or the team declared because they had enough runs. There will be many more times when the middle order has had to bat with the tail - Dravid's 233, Dravid's double whammy at Kingston etc. How many times has Sehwag had to bat with the tail? Does it take into account situations like Headingly 2002 where Dravid's 148 was much more valuable than Tendulkar's 193 due to the number of runs scored in tough situations? I am at a loss of words to explain a phenomenon where a 10% difference in runs scored coupled with some glaring flaws in analysis is being used as a tool to hail one and call the other passengers. That's right 10-15% when not even the error ranges have been accounted for in the numbers.

[Dhondy]

Dhondy, if cold hard numbers was all that needed settling a debate without any analysis then a lot of subjects around the world would be poorer. Firstly, it's an absurd notion to bring in Ganguly and Laxman into stats like the above. Comparing the percentage runs made by number 5/6 batsmen in a team with a brittle tail to the percentage runs scored by an opener in a team with a strong middle order doesn't make any sense to me. So, Sehwag has scored 10-15% runs more than Dravid and Tendulkar. Are instances like Tendulkar's 194*, 241*, 153* taken into account by any statistical parameter above where he ran out of partners while staying not out or the team declared because they had enough runs. There will be many more times when the middle order has had to bat with the tail - Dravid's 233, Dravid's double whammy at Kingston etc. How many times has Sehwag had to bat with the tail? Does it take into account situations like Headingly 2002 where Dravid's 148 was much more valuable than Tendulkar's 193 due to the number of runs scored in tough situations? I am at a loss of words to explain a phenomenon where a 10% difference in runs scored coupled with some glaring flaws in analysis is being used as a tool to hail one and call the other passengers. That's right 10-15% when not even the error ranges have been accounted for in the numbers.

Your argument is full of holes. I'll break it into small pieces later.:-D

[The Outsider]

Your argument is full of holes. I'll break it into small pieces later.:-D

Sure. Also, make sure your analysis can answer the question how right from Rawalpindi '04 till this Galle test, all our test wins have come despite any major contribution from Sehwag when the rest are supposed to be passengers?

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Bumper]

Likewise how about RD crawling away at Chennai and single handedly nullifying Sehwags brilliance ? Or how about Melbourne when the entire set of Maharatis undid Sehwags work in one session flat ? Or the B'lore 201 circa 2005 or the Mohali 173 ? heck Galle would have followed the same route as B'lore had it not been for Harbi isnt it ?

Is this for real ? BossBhai ganging up against SRT & Dravid! Can you exclude the runs against minnows (BD & Zim) & report the relative percentages of team runs for each batsman ?

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Bumper]

Gilchrist? When has India had a wicketkeeper-batsman like him? In fact, if you want to do a fair comparison of the middle order, Gilchrist should be excluded. Langer? Langer as an opener helped Australia immensely. When did the Indian middle order have a luxury of two superb openers to provide starts to them. Australia always had the likes of Slater, Taylor, Hayden, Langer. Moreover from the '98 tour Laxman, Ganguly, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ponting are still around and others played a number of series afterwards as well. We can start from the '98 tour with three home and three away tours each and a lot of characters the same.

Lets make sure we agree on this important point. My objections to using 98 as the baseline is simple. The Aussie batting lineup of this decade hardly resembles the one back then. In the 2000s, we had Ponting, Waughs, Martyn, Lehmann, Gilly etc manning the middle order. Even if we were to include the innings from 98, its 3-3 (thats 50% of the time Aussie MO succeeds when openers fail, compared to a 95% failure rate of the Indian MO over a sample size thats THREE times bigger. The 98 baseline, does not strengthen your claim). Also, your points about including Gilly or Langer in the batting lineup is irrelevant to this debate. It doesnt matter how good Gilly was, as he was part of the great Aussie batting lineup (we've already agreed that the resp lineups are great). The point we are trying to prove is that Aussie MO is as dependent as the Indian MO on the openers. And adding an opener like Langer, can only strengthen your case, as he is an awesome opener (who would always provide the MO that extra comfort zone).

I don't know how you can ignore this case. This is the most damning scorecard for the fallibility of the middle order where despite a good start they fail. And the Australian middle order has fallen apart cheaply many times despite a good start. I don't know how this case can put the middle order into a positive or even neutral light. It's a huge negative in fact.

So you are saying "Openers succeed => Team failed" is relevant to this study ? How do we use this to prove that the MO is heavily dependent on the openers ? The debate isnt about how good the Aussie MO is. If thats the debate this data point may be relevant. We already agree that the Aussie batting line up is great. That is why it is being compared to the Indian batting lineup. The debate is about how dependent is the great Aussie batting lineup on its openers.

As I said two of those three occasions are when we had a really poor attack. If you are comparing the pressure maintained by the likes of Agarkar to McGrath and Gillespie after the initial breakthrough, I am at a loss of words.

Again irrelevant. This is all absorbed in opener's success & failure. The bowling attack does not make openers & MO fail at a diff rate. If you agree that the MO is great, they should be able to overcome a good bowling attack over a period of time. Also, the Aussie bowling lineup has always been great, but still our MO has come good in many occassions. Besides, given the spin dependent bowling attack of ours, this should only add to your case. Given that our spinners are likely to bowl at the MO more often than not and the Aussies are spin challenged, our attack should challenge the Aussie MO more than its top order & hence their MO is more suspectible to failure than their top order.

And we absolutely cannot ignore the openers succeed middle order fails case. It's a basic of cricket that a middle order wants the openers to give a good start and if they can't capitalize on it, it's a huge indictment. Moreover, that's the time when our spinners start getting good conditions like Aussie fast bowlers get with the new ball. It's an absolute must to consider scenario. Maybe, once we can agree on some of the above we can look at the scorecards in more detail.

First tell me how it is relevant to the study in question. If you convince me, we can use that data point as well. But 1 success out of 18 attempts when both openers failed (and that lone success coming on the back of VVS' 281) tells me all I need to know from this study. If thats not a glaring enough stat, I dont know what else is.

[Fontaine]

Sometimes, one can get too smart for one's own good, Fontaine. It's best not to go all Shakespearean on us. Tragi-comedy, eh? That incident when Sehwag was on 13 was referred to the 3rd umpire. No glove could be acertained on the ball, and he was given not out. Pretty sharp of you to have picked up something even the TV cameras missed. And if an edge dropping short of somebody counts as luck, every goddamn batsman who ever made any runs is lucky. That's just professional straw clutching. The point is, this fella made 201 and 50 on a track where his senior colleagues wilted like daisies in Atacama. The same thing happened at Melbourne, Adelaide, Bangalore. He's outscored all of them by sizeable margins ever since he came into the side. People will point that out, whether you like it or not.

The ball's trajectory clearly changed after the glove but in real time I've seen those given out so the TV umpire would then try to find undisputable evidence of not out and Sehwag would have gone. But you see my point anyways. It does take luck. Sri Lanka's best partnership between Dilshan, and Samaraweera-whatever was one drop by Karthik and another edge just falling short. The point is why get upset when the batsmen doesn't have that kind of luck? Dravid was unlucky to be given out in my opinion. And I'm not criticizing or reducing Sehwag's contribution.

[Bumper]

This thread would be comical if not so tragic. There are plenty of excellent insights here from very knowledgeable fans but the fact of the matter is Sehwag, having played brilliantly, was also very lucky. Gambhir edged it and was dropped very early, and Sehwag was lucky when the ball edged his glove and the umpire didn't spot it when he was just on 13 and again he got lucky later on when an edge just missed Van Dort. Same thing happend to Graeme Smith. Yes he scored a masterful century to win the series against England but he should have been out twice during that time. If either Tendulkar or Laxman had gotten a bit more luck (instead of Sehwag) then they would have gone on to put up a great score as well. As a matter of fact it's very very rare for a batsmen to score a century plus without have some element of luck. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. So let's take the last two test performances batting with a grain of salt, just like how we would have pissed all over Sri Lanka by now if they hadn't been so lucky in Karthik being responsible for 3 or so drops and a missed easy stumping!!

Comical value ? With that kinda starved sense of humour, you would find a Frankenstein movie funny. I dont know you well, but its easy to throw in these blanket comments in an elitist tone. Its significantly harder to apply yourself & make a fact filled post. Try it!

If either Tendulkar or Laxman had gotten a bit more luck (instead of Sehwag) then they would have gone on to put up a great score as well.

Oh really, its all luck, eh ? First of all, the invisible edge at 13, is entirely your imagination. If it hadnt been reviewed or the bowlers missed to appeal, you may have a case. Even then I dont see your point. Are you telling me that Sachin or Laxman would have dominated M&M on their way to a double hundred, had they been given a second chance. Exactly what have they done against M & M in this series, to raise your hopes to that levels ? Extending your argument, I'd say Dinesh Karthik, who wasnt given a second chance, who outscored Laxman & Ganguly in the second innings at Galle, would have gone on to hit a triple ton, had he been given a second chance ? Now thats the comical value, you are looking for!

[Fontaine]

Comical value ? With that kinda starved sense of humour, you would find a Frankenstein movie funny. I dont know you well, but its easy to throw in these blanket comments in an elitist tone. Its significantly harder to apply yourself & make a fact filled post. Try it! Oh really, its all luck, eh ? First of all, the invisible edge at 13, is entirely your imagination. If it hadnt been reviewed or the bowlers missed to appeal, you may have a case. Even then I dont see your point. Are you telling me that Sachin or Laxman would have dominated M&M on their way to a double hundred, had they been given a second chance. Exactly what have they done against M & M in this series, to raise your hopes to that levels ? Extending your argument, I'd say Dinesh Karthik, who wasnt given a second chance, who outscored Laxman & Ganguly in the second innings at Galle, would have gone on to hit a triple ton, had he been given a second chance ? Now thats the comical value, you are looking for!

Oh FFS I said in my post there are plenty of excellent posts here and knowledgeable fans so get over it. And no I didn't say its all luck but knock yourself out. We just won a test match in unique conditions and sometimes that's more important that finding out who the best batsmen is in a big repetitive circle jerk. I'm done with this thread. :-D

[Bumper]

^Hey I didnt mean to chase you away. Stay right here!

[punjabi_khota]

Woa man..this thread has some big number crunching. Without being sure of what we are looking for, it is a mostly a circular argument. Reminds me of the column by a guy (desi) on cricinfo, who churns out various numbers based on his random definitions...and then all hell breaks loose in the comments.

[Guest BossBhai]

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[CSK Fan]

I have already gone thru this exercise of highlighting Veeru's role in our success (vs Australia) in another thread, starting from 1999 series all the way to the latest one, analysing score card by score card. Am sure you have seen it. Let me know if you would like me to dig that up. 2nd inns is most relevant when you play big opponents. Batting once & batting BIG, scoring 600+ & wearing the opponents down, might work with lesser opponents such as England, Pakistan or NZ. It wont work with bigger opponents, atleast not very frequently. Against big opponents, what you do in the 2nd innings, makes or breaks the game, more often than not. I am not calling for replacements. In fact, I want to give Dravid time, atleast till the end of the BG trophy. The point am making is simple. Our middle order is not worth the hype. Atleast not on its current form. And they almost never show up in the 3rd & 4th inns of a test match.

And of course throughtout all this you ignore the small fact, that Sehwag averages a paltry 27 in the 2nd innings throuhout his career as opposed to his first innings score of 70. But i guess the bashing only applies to seniors Our middle order might not be too hot, but so is Sehwag using the same logic. In fact in the lats 2 yrs Dravid and Sahcin have contributed t more wins than Sehwag. In fact Sehwag's big scores were in drawn or losing scores. Sachin's average is over 50 this year but that doesnt stop the bashing.

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Dhondy]

Dhondy, if cold hard numbers was all that needed settling a debate without any analysis then a lot of subjects around the world would be poorer. Firstly, it's an absurd notion to bring in Ganguly and Laxman into stats like the above. Comparing the percentage runs made by number 5/6 batsmen in a team with a brittle tail to the percentage runs scored by an opener in a team with a strong middle order doesn't make any sense to me. So, Sehwag has scored 10-15% runs more than Dravid and Tendulkar. Are instances like Tendulkar's 194*, 241*, 153* taken into account by any statistical parameter above where he ran out of partners while staying not out or the team declared because they had enough runs. There will be many more times when the middle order has had to bat with the tail - Dravid's 233, Dravid's double whammy at Kingston etc. How many times has Sehwag had to bat with the tail? Does it take into account situations like Headingly 2002 where Dravid's 148 was much more valuable than Tendulkar's 193 due to the number of runs scored in tough situations? I am at a loss of words to explain a phenomenon where a 10% difference in runs scored coupled with some glaring flaws in analysis is being used as a tool to hail one and call the other passengers. That's right 10-15% when not even the error ranges have been accounted for in the numbers.

The first half of your argument assumes that batsmen down the order have less opportunity to score big runs, average more and contribute a larger share of team runs than those up the order. Fallacious. You have assumed that because of the practice of most teams playing their best batsmen at numbers one through four rather than down below. But not always. Inzamam-ul-Haq batted at number five throught his career, and scored more prolifically than any set of Pakistani openers you'd care to name. Steve Waugh batted at five, and out batted his twin up the order and most of the Aussie openers like Michael Slater, Mark Taylor and Justin Langer. No doubt, both batsmen batted more with the tail than the openers did, but still found ways to score runs. Clearly, this doesn't negate Sehwag's dominance over the middle order tyros. On to the second part. Your reasoning is that Dravid at number 3 and Tendulkar at number 4 had to bat more often with the tail, and therefore had some of their longer innings curtailed. There is tautology there. The reason Tendulkar and Dravid bat more often with the tail is because they score more slowly than Sehwag. Sehwag's hundreds, double and triple hundreds are scored at the rate of noughts, and he's gone by the time the tail arrives, having done his job. In fact, sometimes he does it so well, the tail doesn't get a chance to have a look in. IMO, this prehensile preoccupation masks the fact that as an opener, Sehwag has far more chance of being dismissed with the new ball than his colleagues down the order. That more than neutralises any advantage he might have gained in playing with upper order batsmen. You don't have to take my word for it. Boss can statistically prove that more wickets fall in the first fifteen overs of an innings than any other similar period during the innings.