ICC's list of greatest test batsmen : 'Couldn't care less'

[Guest dada_rocks]

These rankings are just the peaks reached by a batsman.

precisely bacha log kha mo kha pareshaan ho raha hai..

[Dravid]

bangla plays 2 more ODIs, even shakib will enter in top 20s with his form :haha: joke of a rating..

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'Couldn't care less' Hayden better than Tendulkar? Underwood better than Warne? Nobody may be taking the ICC's rankings seriously, but they're talking about them all right . More... The ICC's all-time rankings 'Couldn't care less' Hayden better than Tendulkar? Nobody may be taking the ICC's rankings seriously, but they're talking about them all right January 19, 2009 So where did you place on the ICC rankings then? © AFP "It is not even worth reacting. It is so disgusting. I don't care if they rank me 150th, but what is the procedure? And what is the need?" Bishan Bedi raises the pertinent question "It is appalling. The ICC has no business to humiliate some of the greatest icons of the game. How can you have Gavaskar at 20 and Sachin at 26? I am 35th, and Wasim Akram 59th. They must be joking. I have always maintained that Akram was a much better bowler than me… This ranking is like the Duckworth-Lewis method. No one knows about that. No one knows about this either." Kapil Dev is singularly unimpressed "The ranking does not really count for him [Tendulkar]. He is a great cricketer and has been scoring runs consistently for more than 15 years. He is a hero for this country." Chaminda Vaas, too, fails to see the need for the rankings "Some unfortunate PR, and how my heart weeps as I type that phrase, has made the regrettable error of offending India's greatest cricketer. You can almost picture them cowered in the corner, clutching their knees and rocking back and forth as they realise what they had done. All they had intended was to procure a little sly sponsorship for their client with a press release about Matthew Hayden, revealing that according to their oblique calculations, he was the 10th greatest Test batsman of all time." The Guardian's Andy Bull can empathise with whoever formulated the rankings "This does not necessarily mean he [Hayden] is the 10th-best Test batsman or 18th-best ODI batsman in the history of the game. The rankings give an indication of how players peaked during their careers but do not give a full picture of those players' level of consistency or longevity in the game." ICC tries in vain to clear the air "Of course, a bunch of bored schoolboys armed with a calculator and with access to www.cricinfo.com might have surely done a better job than the honourable experts to whom the ICC chose to hand over the job… But all this is not the point, really. The point is, we needn't have bothered." A balanced view from Nirmal Shekar in the Hindu "All I can say is that the greatest batsman in world cricket, Sir Don Bradman, had named Sachin Tendulkar in his team. After that, I don't think Tendulkar requires any other rankings." The BCCI isn't threatening to cancel any tours: Rajiv Shukla, a senior official, doesn't deem the rankings worth protesting about "The ICC can be forgiven for struggling with some of cricket's intricate modern politics. It doesn't help itself, though, when it produces inadequate outcomes on what are nuts-and-bolts cricket matters like these." The Age suspects cricket's governing body is, frankly, good for nothing "Some computer or some software can't decide who are the top 100. There is no need to give any importance to such rankings. I don't understand why anyone should bother about it. But then there is little cricket until we play Sri Lanka so media seems to lap it up." Anil Kumble knows exactly who is enjoying the whole affair "Perhaps, this is because there is not much international cricket right now featuring India. I don't want to give too much importance to these rankings. Just forget them." Must be the Bangalore air, for Rahul Dravid thinks the same "I think these jokers should not be given the pleasure of rating players in this way." Maninder Singh feels his blood boil "Tendulkar has been one of the greatest batsmen in the history of Indian cricket and I believe that he has even superseded the ranking standards. He is above all the cricketers in the world." Vinod Kambli elevates his old mate up beyond the pale of rankings "We can all agree that the rankings are a sham of a mockery of a charade. Cricket365 doesn't put too fine a point on things

[punjabi_khota]

"The BCCI isn't threatening to cancel any tours: Rajiv Shukla, a senior official, doesn't deem the rankings worth protesting about" :hysterical::hysterical::hysterical:

[EnterTheVoid]

wtf is this kurfufle about? However, I did enjoy these particular reactions: "It is not even worth reacting. It is so disgusting. I don't care if they rank me 150th, but what is the procedure? And what is the need?" Bishan Bedi raises the pertinent question "It is appalling. The ICC has no business to humiliate some of the greatest icons of the game. How can you have Gavaskar at 20 and Sachin at 26? I am 35th, and Wasim Akram 59th. They must be joking. I have always maintained that Akram was a much better bowler than me… This ranking is like the Duckworth-Lewis method. No one knows about that. No one knows about this either." Kapil Dev is singularly unimpressed "Of course, a bunch of bored schoolboys armed with a calculator and with access to www.cricinfo.com might have surely done a better job than the honourable experts to whom the ICC chose to hand over the job… But all this is not the point, really. The point is, we needn't have bothered." A balanced view from Nirmal Shekar in the Hindu

[DomainK]

Well, well.....the boys made a mistake. Time to move on.

[zubinpepsi]

seriously, we r a bunch of sooks..our media,ex players etc......

[Desi Cartman]

seriously' date=' we r a bunch of sooks..our media,ex players etc......[/quote'] :dito: Get over it !

[bharat297]

Im as big a Tendulkar fan as the next one but seriously ... who gives a **** ... Its different peoples opinion The best 5 batsman Ive seen over the past 20 years are Tendulkar, Lara, Sehwag, Waugh and Ponting ... yet very few will agree with me ... I can produce some figures to back up my view ... You dont need to agree with me but you wont be able to disprove it on the basis of my figures. Like many I must say ... Get over it.

[DomainK]

Im as big a Tendulkar fan as the next one but seriously ... who gives a **** ... Its different peoples opinion The best 5 batsman Ive seen over the past 20 years are Tendulkar, Lara, Sehwag, and Ponting ... yet very few will agree with me ... I can produce some figures to back up my view ... You dont need to agree with me but you wont be able to disprove it on the basis of my figures. Like many I must say ... Get over it.

Where is the fifth????

[bharat297]

Oops ... Sorry, yeah I left out Steve Waugh. Mind you I was born in 1988 so it was after the Gavaskars and Richards and so I cant comment on those guys.

[coffee_rules]

ICC's list of greatest test batsmen : 'Couldn't care less' Am I missing something? This is a list of peaks attained by players in the ICC ratings. Peaks of Hayden habe been better than Tendiulkar as per their ratings. What's the BFD?

[anbuchelvan]

WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT LIST.MY NAME WILL BE ABOVE DON BRADMAN.:hysterical::hysterical:SHAME ON YOU ICC FOOLS.

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Denting Indian pride Is the ICC hinting that Sachin Tendulkar’s faultless career has been a teeny-weeny bit boring, asks David Hopps. More... Denting Indian pride Is the ICC hinting that Sachin Tendulkar’s faultless career has been a teeny-weeny bit boring, asks David Hopps. The International Cricket Council has been forced into a hurried damage-limitation exercise after having the temerity to produce a list of batting greats that did not include Sachin Tendulkar. India would probably classify Tendulkar as second only to Sir Don Bradman on a list of all-time greats — and there would be many on the ICC who would happily agree — but Indian pride has been *****ed by the publication of ICC all-time rank ings that place him as low as 26th. The outcry began when the ICC marked the retirement of the Australian batsman Matthew Hayden by pronouncing that he was the 10th-best Test batsman in history — a figure based on the all-time Reliance Mobile Test rankings, which purport to compare players from different eras. But while Bradman led, and England had three batsmen — Sir Jack Hobbs, Sir Leonard Hutton and Peter May — in the top five, India had only Sunil Gavaskar in the top 20 and Tendulkar was nowhere to be seen. One Indian cricket site chided: “It is indeed very interesting to see the ICC believes 12,429 runs, with 41 centuries over a period of 19 years, are not excellent enough. This is despite Sachin Tendulkar holding the record for getting the most runs in Test cricket.” The perennial problem is that the ICC rankings, which seek to measure a player’s worth at any time in their career, over-emphasise current form above career performance. A player’s ranking can rise or fall in a couple of months just as a company’s share price can veer wildly on the back of a single profit forecast. Tendulkar’s career has been mind-blowingly consistent. He has been a reliable production line of Test runs for two decades, but just as he has rarely had a prolonged lean patch, neither has he ever put together a stupendous run of form to impress the ICC rankings computer. While Sir Don Bradman is the undisputed No.1 in the ICC rankings, India's Sachin Tendulkar (below) is ranked a lowly 26. The ICC has now issued an emergency press release that seeks to assuage Indian hurt with the headline: “True greatness must include protracted excellence.” James Fitzgerald, an ICC spokesman, said: “The best-ever ratings are effectively snapshots of greatness. When it comes to judging a player’s greatness over his career, it’s necessary to look at his entire graph rather than his peak. It’s not so much how high a player soars as how long he stays there. If you think of a player’s graph as a mountain, a high, long plateau could be worth more than a single sky-scraping peak. Hence Tendulkar would be deemed greater than most other players despite having a lower peak.” Fitzgerald even risked an outcry from the Gold Coast by adding: “Matthew Hayden’s position of 10th and 18th in the all-time Test and ODI Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for batsmen is an impressive achievement by anyone’s standards but this does not necessarily mean he is the 10th-best Test batsman or 18th-best ODI batsman in the history of the game.” The damage, though, has been done. Tendulkar produced one of his finest Test innings to beat England in Chennai in December, in the aftermath of the Mumbai atrocities, establishing still further his iconic status. It was a privilege to witness it. But, according to official ICC figures, his entire career has been a plateau, unchanging from one year to the next, entirely reliable, but lacking ultra high-performance, the Volvo of great Test batsmen. Nearly everybody would secretly rather gaze up at mountains or down into river valleys. One hardly dare suggest it, but is the ICC hinting that Sachin’s faultless career has been a teeny-weeny bit boring?

[coffee_rules]

Where is the fifth????

WHere's your math knowledge? Don't you know Tendulkar has to to take first two places!

[coffee_rules]

So, that's the outrage. ICC is to blame. It had a system to rank performances across eras. It was called PWC rankings, now they have new sponsor, they call it Reliance rankings. But it called the list "ICC's All-time list of Top Test Batsmen" instead of the original name. So, it has bit the backside of all Tendulkar fans. So, to all Tendulkar fans - It is the same list as PWC. Tendulkar attained the highest of 898 as per them. Gavaskar had 916. Others have had better peaks. So, what?

[SachDan]

Can Tendulkar get anything right? By R.Mohan

Poor Sachin Tendulkar. Apparently, he cannot get anything right, apart of course from scoring a winning Test match century in a tense fourth innings chase and then turning out for his home state Mumbai to inspire then to yet another title triumph. What more must the titan do to be anointed one of cricket's great batsmen and one of the world's great sportsmen? Rankings, whether they are officially recognized by the ICC or not, may represent no more than a talking point for a master of the game who has been around the international scene for 19 years. His placement at a lowly No. 26 on a purportedly all-time merit list must, however, have been galling for Sachin who could not possibly have avoided reading newspapers at a time when he is free from cricket. But it would hardly have caused a ripple in the record-breaking batsman's thinking. The fact that he found the time to play for Mumbai in the semi-final and final of the Ranji championship is a simple reiteration of his deep commitment and devotion to the game. His very presence had often led to his colleagues lifting their game to greater heights and this season it was no different as Mumbai went on to win the title for a world record 38th time. The irony is Sachin made only four runs in the final while also earning the dubious distinction of a first ever duck in domestic first class cricket:yikes: But it is not so much the weight of his runs that his side needs as much as his exalting presence. But it is not as if Sachin does not contribute to his state team's wins. A few years ago, Tamil Nadu had the mortification of dropping him early in the slips and paid the penalty since the drop was the equivalent of dropping the trophy since Sachin made a double hundred. But then Tamil Nadu players have a dubious history of being intimidated at the very thought of playing Mumbai. Much of the game is played in the mind and when a player of Sachin's stature steps on to the turf, he has already helped play a few tricks on the minds of the opposition. Sometimes it does also help to be part of a big team as the umpiring also tends to favour them. The shocking decision not to give Jaffer out early in the final was illustrative of a larger problem. There have always been complaints against the standard of umpiring in domestic cricket. Sadly, this season they were more so, and too many of them were not without validity. Saurashtra had the most reasons to nurse a grouse because they were hastened out of the semi-final just when they had a chance to bat out in the gathering gloom of monsoon clouds. Again, there is more reason to worry because the umpire against whom the complaints were aired in that match is said to be one of the country's best and who officiates in international cricket. While a token bias in favour of big teams is part of the way all major sports are played, a leading official cannot afford to be seen to be wrong so many times in crunch situations. Mumbai's domination does go well beyond minor help from umpiring. The team has lost only four of the finals it has contested while winning a whopping 38. Such a record is not built in a day. Sachin's preeminence has helped keep the tradition afloat to the extent that Mumbai is going further and further ahead of New South Wales and Yorkshire in terms of number of championships won:two_thumbs_up:

http://www.espnstar.com/opinion/columnists/column/item61776/

[DomainK]

Okay, lets get past it.