Player of the Decade

[teacup]

A few things to keep in mind when selecting the Player of the Decade: 1. Both Test and ODI performances count. 2. Context matters i.e., performances against top teams and World Cup matches matter more than others. 3. Additional responsibilities as Wicket Keeping, all-rounder, captaincy are taken into consideration. 4. Match winners are preferred against consistent performers. Hence, exceptional bowlers have an advantage over exceptional batsmen. Considering the above, Either Ponting or McGrath is likely to be selected as the player of the decade. Other close contenders have a few negatives that cannot be overlooked. For example, though Kallis has the best numbers and is also an allrounder, his strike rate in ODIs make him a sort of a liability on occasions for his team and his average of nearly 47 against the best team of the decade, Australia, is well below his overall average for the decade (58.97). Likewise, it is no secret that Murali has been less than impressive against Australia both at home and away. Shane Warne has not played in any of the World Cups in the last decade and has below-par record against India. It is a really close-call between Ponting and McGrath but my vote goes to McGrath. In a decade for batsmen, he alone was unconquered wherever he played, whoever his opponents were and in whatever context. Ponting's slump in form in the last two years, his travails in India and his two Ashes losses against England as captain are facts that put him an inch below McGrath.

[gaurav92]

Teacup, i think Cricinfo knows all this and they will surely take those things into consideration before planning to give someone a wooden spoon :P

[teacup]

I know Cricinfo knows, I was not sure some of the forum members were aware of all these factors looking at some of the names that were being suggested - Dravid, SRT, Murali, Warne etc.

[gaurav92]

Alright then, hope its GOD

[gaurav92]

A few things to keep in mind when selecting the Player of the Decade: 1. Both Test and ODI performances count. 2. Context matters i.e., performances against top teams and World Cup matches matter more than others. 3. Additional responsibilities as Wicket Keeping, all-rounder, captaincy are taken into consideration. 4. Match winners are preferred against consistent performers. Hence, exceptional bowlers have an advantage over exceptional batsmen. Considering the above, Either Ponting or McGrath is likely to be selected as the player of the decade. Other close contenders have a few negatives that cannot be overlooked. For example, though Kallis has the best numbers and is also an allrounder, his strike rate in ODIs make him a sort of a liability on occasions for his team and his average of nearly 47 against the best team of the decade, Australia, is well below his overall average for the decade (58.97). Likewise, it is no secret that Murali has been less than impressive against Australia both at home and away. Shane Warne has not played in any of the World Cups in the last decade and has below-par record against India. It is a really close-call between Ponting and McGrath but my vote goes to McGrath. In a decade for batsmen, he alone was unconquered wherever he played, whoever his opponents were and in whatever context. Ponting's slump in form in the last two years, his travails in India and his two Ashes losses against England as captain are facts that put him an inch below McGrath.

I agree that Murali's record is not good in Aus, tell me which spin bowler is very good in Aus ?.Except warne is there any one. And talking about warne's performance against india in india has not been good, because India are really great players spinners and thats why even murali has some problems playing in india.Plus the advantage we have of great batsman, who play spin really well and attack the spinner before let him settle down, this is the brutal way of playing spin, wherein the bowlers get a bit more cautious and start bowling short without flighing the ball, which has no turn and finally become more defensive in their approach.This is a very bad position of spinner and India has been successfully doing that and have been very successful in dismantling many great spinners' line and length. Again as you said that match winners, i think there are more batsman than bowlers who are match winners in cricket.The brand of cricket played nowadays, you will not find a bowler being given man of the match award too often yes it happens sometimes but batsman are given the MOM awards more frequently, that is one reason i prefer over bowlers.Other reason is the flatness of tracks in all form of the game.The track has been made in such a way that it suits the batsman and rarely goes the other way. So in all the context, all the parameters of study,m you have :fail: as a cricket analyst.

[fuub]

ponting needs another trophy

[teacup]

I agree that Murali's record is not good in Aus, tell me which spin bowler is very good in Aus ?.Except warne is there any one. And talking about warne's performance against india in india has not been good, because India are really great players spinners and thats why even murali has some problems playing in india.Plus the advantage we have of great batsman, who play spin really well and attack the spinner before let him settle down, this is the brutal way of playing spin, wherein the bowlers get a bit more cautious and start bowling short without flighing the ball, which has no turn and finally become more defensive in their approach.This is a very bad position of spinner and India has been successfully doing that and have been very successful in dismantling many great spinners' line and length. Again as you said that match winners, i think there are more batsman than bowlers who are match winners in cricket.The brand of cricket played nowadays, you will not find a bowler being given man of the match award too often yes it happens sometimes but batsman are given the MOM awards more frequently, that is one reason i prefer over bowlers.Other reason is the flatness of tracks in all form of the game.The track has been made in such a way that it suits the batsman and rarely goes the other way. So in all the context, all the parameters of study,m you have :fail: as a cricket analyst.

Hmm...let's see, Kumble was successful in Australia during the last tour. Sulieman Benn, the West Indian spinner was pretty successful in the recently concluded series. As for spinner against India, Danish Kaneria has been more successful in India than Shane Warne. My point is, a failure is a failure and you have to count all the failures when you count all the successes. As for match winners, Bowlers win you Test Matches and Batsmen ODIs. You cannot win a Test Match if you don't bowl the opposition out at least once and most times twice.

[99.94]

ponting needs another trophy

:two_thumbs_up:

[Gambit]

Has got to be Gilly for me. Wicketkeepers, for most part, before him were considered dour 30-40 run type batsmen, not game changers. He changed all that. If I had to pick any series to showcase Gilly's mayhem, it would be the 2001 Ashes when he consistently came in at sub 300 for 5 and ravaged his way to take Australia to big totals. Total Legend.

[Mr. Wicket]

Has got to be Gilly for me. Wicketkeepers, for most part, before him were considered dour 30-40 run type batsmen, not game changers. He changed all that. If I had to pick any series to showcase Gilly's mayhem, it would be the 2001 Ashes when he consistently came in at sub 300 for 5 and ravaged his way to take Australia to big totals. Total Legend.

True, in terms of influence Gilchrist changed things entirely. A close second for Pigeon for me, who takes the edge due to truly amazing consistency - when you consider that players as fine as Tendulkar, Dravid, Gilchrist and Lara went through slumps and troughs this decade, McGrath's consistency in wicket taking in all forms of the game becomes even more amazing.

[Rajma Chawal]

Rahul Dravid

[punjabi_khota]

Rahul Dravid

:hysterical::hysterical::hysterical::hysterical:@your name and pic. :eating:

[Rajma Chawal]

^^, yes its a terrific Username.

[graphic23]

BUMP. Ponting chosen as a the player of the decade.

[vvvslaxman]

Landslide win for Punter.

[cowboysfan]

this was expected but i dont agree with this decision.

[nballa]

ponting it is. sachin is a better bat but when you include leadership in the mix its ponting by a landslide. not even a contest.

[CSK Fan]

ponting it is. sachin is a better bat but when you include leadership in the mix its ponting by a landslide. not even a contest.

I think they gave it mainly for his batting rather than captaincy. Its the player of the decade not the all time best

[achilles]

Ryan goes over-the-top with Ponting praise Near the top right corner of Ricky Ponting's bat is painted the thick black outline of a kookaburra, which is appropriate, for one of the most devastating sentences in all cricket literature goes: "He not only butchered the bowling, he took a cruel delight in his total mastery, as a kookaburra takes a cackling joy in breaking the necks of snakes." So said Denzil Batchelor of Don Bradman. Add a wad of chewie, a flash of furry, sun-browned arms, then some little boy's teeth peeping out the instant before that happy cackle erupts, and you have Ricky Ponting in excelsis. That was him, the defining image of a decade ruled by batsmen: Ponting tapping, chewing, smirking, in a helmet and short sleeves, a little man fidgety with energy and always on the move, feet snapping into position, arms flying at the ball, head trusting the trueness of the bounce. Bowlers peering up from the top of their run-ups could detect no trace of softness. One confident stride towards the ball; then, hit hard. Singles, twos and threes he sprinted. On pitches that seamed or spun, before he was quite set, feet and hands thrust so firmly at the ball were sometimes difficult to retract if the ball got closer to him than he'd imagined. But Punter's luck was in. Such pitches were rare. And on flat decks, some days, he turned bowlers into ball-ferriers. Trying to unstick him was futile. "He set out to loosen the bowling, as a stonemason uses wedges to crack rock …" Bradman again, the way Ray Robinson saw him, and a neater line to describe the beginnings of a Ponting innings has yet to be invented. Runs piled up and up, as happened to Bradman, so high that seeing past them became hard - impossible, in the end, decided the selectors of Cricinfo's Player of the Decade. In 13 countries and three kinds of cricket, Ponting gathered nearly 19,000 international runs. No batsman before him had hit 15,000 in a decade. Dotted among these were 55 hundreds, several containing not a flicker of a chance, some of them scarcely a mishit. If few were the thrilling creations of all our childhood dreamings, well perhaps that was a little bit Bradmanesque too. Business cricketer, master tradesman, run machine, automaton; some of the labels flung upon The Don clung little less adhesively to Ponting. The pattern of many an Australian summer's day went like this: wake up, telly on, wicket falls, Ponting in, get distracted by the commentary team's spruiking of memorabilia and the wavelike lapping of the run flow, then by coffee and the lawnmower, return to the lounge room in time to see Ponting raising his bat again. Ponting has his pull stroke - slapped hard and flat off one swivelling leg, from deliveries seemingly too full to clobber - yet it lacks the signature gorgeousness of a Laxman, Lara or Martyn, just as Bradman's cover-drive was scant match for Stan McCabe's. No Ponting innings shines sunnier in the memory than an 88 on a Gabba seamer. It was his fifth Test. Matthew Elliott, in his first, had gone for a duck; Michael Bevan, in his eighth, would soon do likewise. In three and a bit hours of freewheeling impudence, Ponting hooked four frowning West Indian fast men to apoplexy. He did this not last decade, though, but in the previous millennium. He did it at number three in the batting order. Selectors short of sight and empty of imagination dumped him one Test later. By 1999 he'd played 30 matches for a Test average of 38. In 2002, when Wisden profiled the world's 40 finest cricketers in a booklet called The Best, Ponting was listed not in the category of "the all-time greats", nor even "the almost-greats". They filed Ponting under "the merely excellent". Finally he was trusted once more at number three. That imp-genius 88 felt long ago. Five years had flown, and been frittered, at numbers six, five and seven. "I didn't like waiting around" - in the dressing room, he was talking about, not the time it took team honchos to come to their senses. He disliked arriving at the crease "in different conditions with the ball older". Number three was his home as a boy. Going back there felt like the big career turning point. And there was one other thing. In the same year, 2001, that he reclaimed number three, Ricky got to know Rianna Cantor. "My inspiration. My love." She was something else, too. "No matter what happens on the field, as long as I have you beside me then I know everything in the world is right." Things happened fast - too fast, if you had the misfortune to be bowling to him. In Johannesburg in 2003, his buccaneering day out, Ponting's last 90 runs of the World Cup final came in 47 balls, one- and two-handed sixes pitter-pattering the roofs of the leg-side stands. At Old Trafford in 2005, his masterpiece of abstinence, a Test match was rescued with exquisitely placed strokes and nowt-shalt-tempt-me no-strokes. Between times, against India, came double-hundreds in a row, and inexorable. Before long, he was frequently being hailed as one of his country's most significant captains; one of its shrewdest, less frequently. Old Test men grizzled. This fellow couldn't set decent fields, wouldn't try part-time bowlers, didn't tolerate blokes who weren't his sort of blokes, got grumpy, never learnt, grew paranoid about over-rates, delayed declarations too late and gasbagged too long between overs. Also, he kept losing the Ashes. Ponting mightn't like hearing this - and if his eighth and latest book can be believed, he obsesses painstakingly over nearly every word written about him - but his flaws made the drama all the more watchable. At least one of them - the one about him never learning - can be crossed off the list. Against Pakistan recently, on an MCG pitch built to last a month, he declared 10 overs after lunch on day two, out-thinking everybody, and setting up victory with four hours left on the second-last day of the decade. He has blossomed, this boy whose interests, team-mates used to protest, ran far deeper than cricket; he was fond of greyhounds, golf and Aussie Rules too. In a way, the more he has learnt, the more his original passion has been rekindled. The Ponting of today is Test cricket's greatest defender, speaking up for its verities and olde-worlde eccentricities, and bucking fashion by choosing five-day cricket over cheesburger cricket. On Test match morning at the Adelaide Oval, where some of the soft, fine curves are being massacred so that more football fans can be crammed in, an idiot local ABC commentator asked Ponting if he was looking forward to seeing the North Melbourne Kangaroos play there. Radio listeners felt the air turn thick. Ponting's irritation was palpable. Why, was the mostly unspoken inference, are bulldozers dismantling paradise? And why aren't you asking me about cricket? Ponting loves cricket, you see. Once he's done playing, he might yet be a good person to have sitting on the world's cricket boards for the next four or so decades, a bit like another famous Australian who used to laugh in bowlers' faces. From - http://www.cricinfo.com/decadereview2009/content/current/story/443702.html I think this title would've suited Sehwag, not Ponting. Sehwag actually laughs at the bowlers after hitting 4s and 6s. I still remember that devilish smile he gave to Brett Lee before that 195 in Australia a few yrs back. And who can forget his umpteen laughs at bowlers of practically every nationality, age, reputation and name no bar :--D

[Clarke]

Player of the decade is .. Ricky Ponting: 9458 runs at 58.38, with 32 centuries in the 2000s Ricky Ponting has been voted Player of the Decade by an overwhelming majority by a jury comprising former and current players and cricket writers. Ponting got 60 points (a first-place vote fetched three points, a second place two, and third place one), 23 more than second-placed Jacques Kallis. Adam Gilchrist was ranked third (29 points), while positions four to seven went to Muttiah Muralitharan, Glenn McGrath, Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne. Ponting scored more runs and centuries in both forms of the game than any other batsman in the decade, and he was the only one to go past the 9000-mark in both Tests and ODIs. In 107 Tests between 2000 and 2009, he scored 9458 runs at 58.38, and 32 of his 38 centuries. Ponting and Kallis, along with Mohammad Yousuf, were the only batsmen to average more than 58 in Tests in the decade. Ian Chappell, the former Australian captain who was part of the jury, said Ponting's ability to survive difficult periods and also counterattack successfully, made him the best batsman of the decade. New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori said Ponting was the player of the decade "for his ability to dominate bowlers all across the world for such a long time". Tony Greig, the former England captain, said there hadn't been a modern allrounder who produced as consistently with bat and ball as Kallis did. "Jacques Kallis has been Sobers-like in respect of his all-round contribution for South Africa." Two of the biggest names of modern cricket, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar didn't fare too well. Lara got just three points, after featuring as No. 1 in one juror's list. Of the 13 jurors who voted for Tendulkar, only three rated him as No. 1. Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene, Matthew Hayden, Graeme Smith, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mohammad Yousuf were among those who did not get any votes. Apart from Chappell and Vettori, the 38-member jury included Graham Gooch, John Buchanan, Tom Moody, Javagal Srinath, Geoff Boycott, Mushtaq Ahmed, Rashid Latif, David Lloyd, Ranjan Madugalle, Tony Greig and Geoff Lawson. Ponting got 13 No. 1 votes, eight more than Kallis. Gilchrist, who got seven No.1 places, lost out overall because he got only three No. 2 slots as compared to Kallis' nine. A clear indication of Ponting's domination was that while he didn't figure at all in nine juror lists, Kallis was missing from 20. A pointer also, to Australia's pre-eminence as a team is that four of their players make it to the top seven. Tony Cozier, commentator and journalist, said many people didn't realise just how impressive Ponting's numbers were. "Mark Twain might have been right when he said there are lies, damn and statistics but even he couldn't argue with Ponting's amazing numbers." Ponting's most productive year of the decade was 2003: in 11 Tests he scored 1503 at 100.20, with three double-centuries. Outside Australia, he played in England most, averaging 43.28 from 15 Tests there. Among countries where he played five or more Tests in the decade, his form was worst in India: 21.85 from eight Tests, with only one century. Kallis, on the other hand, thrived in India and fared poorly in England. Ponting's best periods in ODIs came in the World Cup years. In the 2003 tournament he scored 415 runs, including an unbeaten 140 in the final. In 2007 he made 539 from 11 matches. Apart from his phenomenal batting exploits, he also led Australia to 192 wins (40 Tests, 145 ODIs and seven Twenty20s), including two World Cups and two Champions Trophies. ************************** Any positive comments folks :icflove: