Greatest of all times

[SachDan]

Talking of great fielders, I read many greats of the past picking Colin Bland of SAF as the best of all time. They have seen the best of Jonty still they reckon Bland was a superior fielder than Jonty. He must be special then !

[Mr. Wicket]

Neil Harvey and Learie Constantine are also written up as amazing fielders. I have seen bits of footage of Harvey, but not enough to convince me. I haven't seen any footage of Constantine though, so have no idea just how good a fielder either of them were.

[nikred]

Glad you mentioned Solkar. The great spin quartet - Bishen Singh Bedi, Prasanna, B S Chandrasekar and S Venkataraghavan were blessed to have close-in catchers like Eknath Solkar and Abid Ali. I wish Subash Gupte had such great fielders during his time.

I only heard a lot about Eknath Solkar from my dad but never got to see him in action. Any youtube videos?

[Don Sharma]

Please provide some further details to try and convince some of us of this.

I am going by hear-say. I haven't seen him bowl not sure if there are any videos too but looking at stats of Gupte and Kumble, you gotta say Gupte was better considering the fact he had to be contented with "butter-fingered Indian fielding of those days". I have read somewhere this joke that the Pakistani batsmen had absolutely no clue as to which way his ball would go, the Indian fielders too didn't have any. That's how pathetic our fielding was. Anyway here are the stats.. Gupte has an average of 29.55 compared to Anil's 29.65 but his SR(75.7) is a bit high compared to Anil's(70), again as I said before the Indian fielding wasn't that great during those times. BTW I am just saying he was the best Indian spinner, Sobers went on to say "he was the best ever".:winky:

[Don Sharma]

I only heard a lot about Eknath Solkar from my dad but never got to see him in action. Any youtube videos?

Not sure. I watched him on a programme called "India Glorious"(on star cricket) where they play BBC videos of India v. England series of the 70s.

[Mr. Wicket]

I am going by hear-say. I haven't seen him bowl not sure if there are any videos too but looking at stats of Gupte and Kumble' date=' you gotta say Gupte was better considering the fact he had to be contented with "butter-fingered Indian fielding of those days". I have read somewhere this joke that the Pakistani batsmen had absolutely no clue as to which way his ball would go, the Indian fielders too didn't have any. That's how pathetic our fielding was. [/quote'] You are taking one intangible factor into account when making this comparison. What about looking at the general run/average inflation between eras, looking at the change in batting approaches between flatter pitches, improved bats, and also taking into account that the Indian fielding for a good chunk of Kumble's career was never really that great, Azharuddin aside? If you are going to pull up random factors to try and flesh out an argument, how about picking out more than just what supports only your conjecture? And regardless, can you provide some more concrete evidence to try and at least support your claim that Gupte was the best Indian spinner ever? Right now all you have to back that bold claim is your suggestion that India's fielding in those days was atrocious (which you seem to have no genuine comparison markers to for India's fielding in the 90s), while it is very hard to pick between him and Kumble on most other grounds, and statistically/for longevity, Kumble stands a good distance above.

[Don Sharma]

You are taking one intangible factor into account when making this comparison. What about looking at the general run/average inflation between eras, looking at the change in batting approaches between flatter pitches, improved bats, and also taking into account that the Indian fielding for a good chunk of Kumble's career was never really that great, Azharuddin aside? If you are going to pull up random factors to try and flesh out an argument, how about picking out more than just what supports only your conjecture?

Well, then nobody can be compared across eras. The modern day GOOD fast bowlers will always look superior than the predecessors if we are going to take into account things like the flat pitches, improved bats, etc. that are staked against them. Not that the bolwers of 60s and 70s had to bowl on tailor made wickets for bowling.

And regardless, can you provide some more concrete evidence to try and at least support your claim that Gupte was the best Indian spinner ever? Right now all you have to back that bold claim is your suggestion that India's fielding in those days was atrocious (which you seem to have no genuine comparison markers to for India's fielding in the 90s), while it is very hard to pick between him and Kumble on most other grounds, and statistically/for longevity, Kumble stands a good distance above.

Gupte did not last long enough in Indian cricket. Discipline was not his forte. He was one of the early rebels who was dropped in his early 30s on disciplinary grounds.So, we can't compare both based on longevity either. Our fielding was not that good in 90s, agreed, but it can't be worse than in the 60s. Infact, in all the articles that I have read about Gupte, they keep on mentioning about the sub-standard fielding. Once he took nine West Indian wickets in an innings, and Lance Gibbs, the only batsman he missed was dropped by the wicket keeper. This pretty much sums up the story.

[bunny]

For me the best slip catcher would be Brian McMillan. The best short leg fielder has to be Eknath Solkar, though I have seen some clips of Gary Sobers' amazing reflexes and it seems to me that catching at short leg was much better in yesteryears, even though it was riskier.

[bunny]

I think Kumble definitely is above Gupte: 1. Kumble played a lot many more matches. Gupte's average and SR would have gone worse had he played more matches. 2. If you look at the batsmen dismissed by Gupte the only welll-known player seems to be Kanhai. (Barrington, Hanif and all come quite late, and the returns are quite diminishing). Btw, one also needs to consider Chandrashekhar. He had an awesome SR iirc. 3. The batting average of players Gupte dismissed is 25.5 (dont ask me how I got this stat). That of Kumble is 29.x ... so Kumble dismissed more pure batsmen while conceeding the same amount of runs. One thing in favor of Gupte though. He never got a chance to bowl in the 4th innings.

[DomainK]

Talking of fielding, I have to mention one of my favorite fielders on the cricket field: David Boon. Really amazing fielder, wan't he?

[SachDan]

Talking of fielding' date=' I have to mention one of my favorite fielders on the cricket field: David Boon. Really amazing fielder, wan't he?[/quote'] Exceptionally good at short-leg position.