Reducing cricket to numbers

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Lurker]

Harsh realities of modern competitive sport.

Harsh realities are NOT selective, as you are. You argue that fielding today has gone up (for example). What does that entail? That suddenly slip catchers are picking more catches?? Or that players in the short leg area are taking more catches?? You would be ridiculed for suggesting either since Solkars and Mark Waughs are much ahead of the current brigade.(I could also go back to Hammond and Comptons but clearly you will start getting nausea). By all account what you are hinting at is players sliding around, stopping 3s into 2s and stuff like that. How can you not look at that intelligently and think sliding around wont tear down a player??? More so if he is doing that every single day??? If Sachin does this 300 days a year and Bradman does it 100 days a year, whose body would be better served?? You can keep yapping about yesteryear players and their supermen abilities but the question mostly is your sheer hypocracy. You can NOT have exemplary fielding without its affect on today's cricketers. So which one is it?? xxx

[vvvslaxman]

Both bowlers and batsmen have hectic schedules. So it kinda neuters the argument of modern day batsmen's performance dips coz of hectic schedule. Modern day bowler's performance should also dip in that case.

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Lurker]

Lurker Iam not even talking about fielding .... and fielding is not just about catching these days. Not even the most rabid old foggy thinks that the guys back in the 30s and 40s were diving on the bondary rope to safe a measly run. Lets not even get into that aspect. Lets just stick to the primary skills of batting and bowling.

And obviously I am not merely talking about fielding but surely fielding is a taxing aspect. You can not have a player play 200-300 days of cricket, spend atleast half of that time in the field and expect him to behave same as the person who spends less than a quarter time that way. If he is a batsman it would be further compounded as he has to spend more time running in the middle. If he is a bowler that would be absolutely worst. Point being how can you look at today's cricket and even wonder why they are not lasting past 40?? Do you think any superman would last 20(in may cases even more) years of day-in-day-out cricket?? And dont you realize how the situation was totally different in 30s and 40s?

[vvvslaxman]

Recently an article was written by Ian chappell. He highlighted how Tendulkar who made debut in 1989 is still going strong while Lee who made debut in 1999 already quit. Bowling is far more difficult these days . Look at the major injuries that ruined career . They are all bowlers. Flintoff, Lee, Bond, Akhtar

[King Tendulkar]

I can't believe some are arguing that cricketers were better in 30s then now. Some even waffling that no improvements in fileding, fitness, batting and bowling in 2010 compared to 30s. Some people are making a laughing stock out of our themselves but they don't realise it and actually think they sound clever! Some posters need to stop reading about cricket and start watching and playing it. 30s standards are as good as now!!!!! This site has gone bonkers

[King Tendulkar]

These pre war players/black and white tv players are great historical figures of cricket and are basically great pioneers of cricket. Who are to be cherished and rembered. BUT to compare their standards to modern players is nuts!!!

[The Outsider]

This site has gone bonkers

I agree. We have people claiming Sami is better than Marshall because Marshall played with older players than Sami. :hysterical:

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Lurker]

Take VVS ... the man hardly plays any cricket these days ... I will be surprised if he lasts a year maybe 2. Do you think the man has any less work ethics desire and ambition than anyone else ? The simple point is the level of cricket is soo high these days that you will be found wanting even if your skills and reflexes drop a fraction. The guy has played a fraction of cricket that Hobbs and Co played during their times and has hardly any wear and tear comparable to SRT. Either this guy has really horrible genes or Hobbs & co were supermen that could walk in day in and day out for yrs playing cricket OR that the bar was so low that it was much easier to make the cut than it is today.

Sure, lets take VVS. VVS has played twice the number of test matches(110 as against 61) in almost 2/3rd of the time (14 as against 22). Being a number guy and all you can extrapolate to see all else variable remaining the same VVS would end up playing 173 tests, or close to 3 times that played by Jack Hobbs. You do the math. I would be interested if you could even tally all the first classes matches played by Hobbs, and those played by VVS and show that average number of days per year is not huge for VVS. Hence the whole wear and tear.

Unless you are saying that the human gene has degraded to such a large extent that we no longer produce those types of supermen I really find it hard to believe that they were able to play at such ages against the same quality of bowling that is today. This is as simple as it gets.

It some ways genes are degrading yes. Our parents led a more active style than we did. You and I when we grew up we would walk to the bazaar, buy the veggies and walk back home. We would play, fly kites, walk and cycle all day long. None of my friends(and this is 80s) had a bike much less a car. These days kids have computers, 3 year olds have iPods, every second child has a car and bikes are regular norms. You seriously telling me the active lifestyle is not taking a hit? Of course i can not quantify it, nor do I have a scientific survey done but you only have to look around and see how our lifestyle is fast changing...often for worse. xxx

[Roshanrocks]

Unless you are saying that the human gene has degraded to such a large extent that we no longer produce those types of supermen I really find it hard to believe that they were able to play at such ages against the same quality of bowling that is today. This is as simple as it gets.

looking at records being broken in all kinds of sports we can safely assume that humans ARE eveolving into fitter, faster human beings.. we could say that people now are fitter than before ... BUT for God sake Bradman lived upto almost 100 years. he certainly seemed the fittest ever cricketer didnt he? :D so this argument could...may be ..not hold for Mr. Bradman Boss Bhai i may not agree with you on the age aspect ... living for that many years.. he he.. is not a joke :D

[vvvslaxman]

Cricket is meant for players who have all kind of fitnesses. Honestly tell me would guys like Duleep Mendis, Rantaunga, Inzamam, David Boon, Powar have been allowed to play any other sports except may be golf where even very old guy win PGA tour even now. Do you honestly think Bradman would have been more unfit than Powar?

[Lurker]

Cricket is meant for players who have all kind of fitnesses. Honestly tell me would guys like Duleep Mendis' date=' Rantaunga, Inzamam, David Boon, Powar have been allowed to play any other sports except may be golf where even very old guy win PGA tour even now. Do you honestly think Bradman would have been more unfit than Powar?[/quote'] Not only that I would say one can easily make a case that in many cases the players were fitter than today. Take Harold Larwood for example. The man spent his time working in mines and played cricket when he could. Same with Trueman if I am not mistaken. As someone who enjoys fitness I can assure you working in mines would get you 10 times fitter than working out in a gym. of course one has to consider working environments, pollutions etc as well. But pound for pound a Larwood, a Trueman would eb lot stronger/fitter than a Nehra/Ishant/Brett Lee. Of course this does not mean everyone was fitter back then, but life was more active, players often had hard working jobs and it should not be very surprising that many of them were in good shape in 40s. At the same time one also has to look around and see how humans, specially men, have started to age very fast. Those who are in late 20s often look like late 30s. Specially evident in desk jobs where people use computers all day long. But I digress. xxx

[Guest BossBhai]

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[vvvslaxman]

Comparing a batsman to a superfast bowler .... Wow !

I thought you said Bradman averages 99 because of 40 plus bowlers. So you are talking about batsmen. How exactly 40 year old batsmen helps Bradman average 100!! Bradman made debut at the age of 19. Not even Rahul Dravid made debut at that age. According to your argument all batsmen should have made debut late in their career rather than early in their career? Between 1920 and 1949 .. 467 players who played were aged between 0 and 35. I still don't know how you are connecting the dots to prove Bradman averaged 99 which was well above every goddamn player in that era is not as good as Sachin. We have shown clearly how Tendulkar was unable to score a triple hundred even in the first class level let alone international level. He sure faced so many rubbish attacks which he could never capitalize on. So this age, smage talks are mere distractiosn nothing else.

[Lurker]

Jack hobbs played 834 FC matches in his entire career .... the tally is 1110 for Wilfred Rhodes ... So far VVS has played just a fraction (240 FC) of what these guys played ... forget that ... both Hobbs and Rhodes went on to play about twice the amount of FC cricket after 40 that VVS has played so far and he is 35 today ! Do you understand how lopsided that equation is ?

Why are you suddenly worried about FC cricket?? I thought we were discussing test cricket and other Internationals here. Whats next Mark Ramprakash discussion?? I would even take you up on FC later, but for now do you agree that pound for pound VVS will end up playing 300% test cricket as Jack Hobbs in near about the same time??

It takes 1000 of yrs for Genes to mutate ... I wont even bother going down that line.

You dont have to wait for gene mutation, start watching TV and see how almost every country is fighting obesity. Junk foods are getting banned at school, reality tv has disciplinary nanny shows and restaurant have to show their calorie content. You think thats all a fashion fad or a real social issue?? xxx

[Guest BossBhai]

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[vvvslaxman]

The main argument of janab admin-ullah-khan is that DGB domniated his peers like nobody did hence the age factor. And speaking of bowlers you can only imagine the quality of bowling that was bowling against sides that had avg ages above 35.

So according to you.. Tamim iqbal would dominate the same bowling attack more than Tendulkar because Tamim is much younger than Tendulkar ?

[Guest BossBhai]

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