BBC Greatest ODI XI

[Muloghonto]

ODI bowlig ARs better than Kapil Dev Pollock Hadlee Imran Flintoff Wasim Batting all rounders better than Kapil Kallis Jayasuriya Klusener Cairns Mathews Watson Symonds Kapil, Botham, Razzaq, Shakib and Vettori will be ARs with neither bat nor the ball that will cut in to ATG XI.

words of kids who have not watched much cricket in the 80s mean nothing. Its as laughable as saying Imran, Botham, Flintoff were better ODI bowlers than Kapil as saying deSilva was a better batsman than Lara. Batting-wise, neither cairns, matthews (who is not an allrounder, he is a batsman who can bowl a bit- like Tendulkar or Steve Waugh in their heydeys), Watson are in the same ballpark as Kapil But kids who dont realize that 90-ish strike rate in the 80s, when 67 was the average, is like a 130 strike rate today. But then again, i don't really have much opinion on Sri Lankans cricketing views of the 80s or the 70s players- your cricketing culture is too new on the international level to talk beyond the 1990s. So stick to what you know and let people who actually did care and watch cricket 30-40 years ago talk about it.

[Muloghonto]

Our pitches weren't roads back in Gillys day.

Yes, they were. Australia has a higher average batting as a venue ( ie, the total runs scored divided by total wickets taken) than anywhere else on the planet since the early 2000s. Check statsguru. What you call 'roads' in INdia, were far more spin friendly wickets than the roads of Australia taking spin or pace. Australia has had the flattest wickets on the planet since late 90s/early 2000s.

[Muloghonto]

I am not denying that. Gavaskar is one of the best test opener of all time' date=' but I am just saying that WI wasnt the best team in all of the 70s. Gavaskar debuted in 71. Holding debuted in 75, Garner 77, Marshal in early 80s. WI became a real force in 80s. Cricinfo had produced a statistical article talking about this.[/quote'] WI were a real force from 1975 onwards. I hope you realize that a bowling attack of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Holder, Croft was easily as good as the Aussie attack of McWarne or Donald-Pollock/two Ws attacks etc. Sure, the attack of Marshall, Holding, Garner & Walsh/Davis/Andy Roberts was the best ever bowling attack to take the field, but WI from 75 onwards put forth attacks that would compete for #1 attack status in any day and any age.

[panther]

Muloghonto, just cos your 60 yrs old and have watched all the matches doesn't mean your right, None of those old timers can be compared to modern cricketers like kohli, sachin, inzi, steyn etc.

[Cricketics]

Muloghonto' date=' just cos your 60 yrs old and have watched all the matches doesn't mean your right, None of those old timers can be compared to modern cricketers like kohli, sachin, inzi, steyn etc.[/quote'] Bhai Inzi ke naam se pahle, yaa fir sachin ke naam ke baad "." period daala kar and then continue typing. Thank You.

[MCGGG]

Yes, they were. Australia has a higher average batting as a venue ( ie, the total runs scored divided by total wickets taken) than anywhere else on the planet since the early 2000s. Check statsguru. What you call 'roads' in INdia, were far more spin friendly wickets than the roads of Australia taking spin or pace. Australia has had the flattest wickets on the planet since late 90s/early 2000s.

You're that dude who thinks Dev was a better bowler than McCrath aren't you?

[sweetaskandy]

So is blind idiocy from you lot who are too young to comprehend the differences in the game today and 30 years ago and rely on nothing more than just numbers- which FYI, i have already demonstrated that Kapil has better than ANY ALLROUNDER for an ODI team as a #7. Imran does NOT make an ODI XI before Kapil. Kapil had two ATG skills,one in which no subcontinental bowler of his era or later surpassed him : the best economy rate for ANY subcontinental bowler, one of the best economy rates ever, surpassed only by a couple of West Indian greats who played in the 80s (and Ambrose). Imran does NOT have an ATG level of strike rate or economy or average as an ODI bowler. Neither does Botham , Klusener,Afridi or Kallis. Richard hadlee had it, but Hadlee bowled a lot less in his career than Kapil and ideal NZ pitches for fast medium seamers. Pollock has the Kapil-esque economy rate and containment bowler stats. So for ATG ODI allrounder, the bowling part, 3 players qualify: Kapil, Hadlee and Pollock. Kapil has ATG level of strike rate for a lower order bat, with an average in the 20s, which is what you need from a #7.He also demonstrated his ability to bat multiple times with scores being 20/5 or 40/5 and taking the team to a decent total. IE, a perfect lower order bat. In this category, Kapil has only two contenders : Afridi and Klusener. Klusener was a slightly better bat than Kapil for lower order scenarios, Afridi however, is not. He is too unreliable and is patently incapable of taking the side to a respectable total with the scores of 20/5 or 40/5. Kallis is easily the best bat in this list but he does not make the middle order ahead of Lara, Viv, ABDV, Bevan, Dhoni, Ponting, etc. as a batsman. As a fielder of this list, only two players are in the same category of Kapil the fielder: Kallis and Klusener. So its patently obvious that as far as ODIs go, Kapil is peerless, as he is the only player who successfully ticks the category of being an ATG bowler while also being an ATG lower order bat. PS: I don't have time for kids who number-crunch and have no inkling of what cricket was in the 80s, as far as actually watching the matches, the match situation, etc goes. Sorry Thongale or the other lankan kid, but you are talking outta your **** when you talk of 80s cricketers and you know it.

You silly fool. I am in my 40s and watched 1980s cricket in real time. This is why I am certain about my positions and the strengths of x or y cricketers relative to each other. Cant reason with crazy people. Rest of the world is wrong, you are right. :cantstop:

[sweetaskandy]

You're that dude who thinks Dev was a better bowler than McCrath aren't you?

:hysterical:

[Muloghonto]

You're that dude who thinks Dev was a better bowler than McCrath aren't you?

I said kapil was in mcgraths class as an odi bowler. And I am sticking to that. Mcgrath, pollock, hadlee, kapil, ambrose and walsh were similar odi bowlers. Of them, ambrose was the best Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2

[Muloghonto]

You silly fool. I am in my 40s and watched 1980s cricket in real time. This is why I am certain about my positions and the strengths of x or y cricketers relative to each other. Cant reason with crazy people. Rest of the world is wrong, you are right. :cantstop:

Majority of cricket fans consider kapil to be a shoo in in any odi xi Sent from my GT-S5830D using Tapatalk 2

[sensible-indian]

Still we are discussing Kapil to be in the league of McGrath as ODI bowler? Oh God. The humanity.

[sweetaskandy]

@mulo, I proved that false by showing 20 odd expert x1s who ignored him. Keep believing though. :haha:

[sensible-indian]

Kapil is NOWHERE in the league of McGrath in any forms of the game. This is taking things to the extreme.

[sweetaskandy]

Honestly fair analysis has left this forum ages ago. Just blind patriotism.

[rtmohanlal]

re: imran and tampering - there is 1 instance in county cricket he detailed in his books. read them. all the rest is speculation against him. what was seen as tampering - reverse swing - was not. the pakistani guys were just a bit ahead of their times. the world has caught up. now the world does it and such talk has finished. i'm sorry but most experts regard numerous AR as superior to dev. but you guys are blind nationalists. from modern times klusener is far superior to him. as is kallis, flintoff and maybe a few others. they would all play different roles. someone like imran or kallis would bat in the top 6, botham and dev in the lower order/lower middle.

I have put forward various reasons to think Kapil was on a par with even Imran in my response to Marut. And , if we add tampering issue to it , Kapil is the number 1 allrounder among FAB 4 from 80s.Yes... it is a fact that a lot of experts place Imran above Kapil. But this was hyped from times when technology was not that worth where we could analyse players data in detail and have opinions.For eg: Botham was inferior to Kapil in all 6 disciplines they were involved in.i mean, test batting,test bowling, oneday bat, oneday bowl, over all fielding & captaincy. yet several experts place him above Kapil.But if we have a deeper analysis of these 2 players, it is clear as to what I said is true. Now you are generalizing Indians as blind nationalists.Instead of coming up with such blind emotional statements why can't you produce plain data as evidences for your claims?that would be worth and logical. w.r.t ball tampering, it is not only 1 instance in county.you browse the net w.r.t this topic and you can see several instances and experts including ex cricketers testimony to Imran's ball tampering allegations. And what not ..even 5 Pakistanis have made direct or indirect statements related to Imran tampering namely Imran himself, Aamir Sohail, Sarfraz Nawaz, Rameez Raja & Shahbaz Shareef.

[rkt.india]

WI were a real force from 1975 onwards. I hope you realize that a bowling attack of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Holder, Croft was easily as good as the Aussie attack of McWarne or Donald-Pollock/two Ws attacks etc. Sure, the attack of Marshall, Holding, Garner & Walsh/Davis/Andy Roberts was the best ever bowling attack to take the field, but WI from 75 onwards put forth attacks that would compete for #1 attack status in any day and any age.

I think Australia had thrashed WI in 75-76 tests series. Holding was I think just a newbie at that time.

[Marut]

Kapil was awful with the bat in ATG sense. We have enough batsmen who could hammer quick 20 at a SR of 120. And KApil brings nothing to the balance of the side. My XI would be; Lara, Tendullkar, Richards, de Villiers, Hussey, Dhoni, Klusener, Pollock, Wasim, McGrath and Murali Pollock is a better ODI all rounder than Kapil any day, similar or bit inferior batting, but light years ahead with the ball. Klusener is inferior with ball, but light years ahead of Kapil with the bat.

We have now. But that was not the case in the 80s. Dev stood heads and shoulders above anybody in the strike rate department. In his days, it would be today's equivalent of a S/R of 125 with an average of 30.

[Marut]

Honest question for Indians: Why does the bulk of expert opinion regard Imran and Botham (and Kallis now) as far better than Dev?

In Imran's case it is due to his test match skills. Heck, he does not even average better with the ball than Kapil in ODIs. For Botham, it is clearly an English hype. They never had ATGs since the 70s so they hyped up Botham - why not check out how much Wisden rating Botham got in 2001? Botham's hype may be inferred from the fact that he polled more votes than Tendulkar, Marshall, Akram and so on. Kapil dev got five votes there, which is quite significant - he was just behind Sachin. http://www.espncricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/153387.html

[Marut]

He played in a poor team so had more ops to stand out. Answer my question.

Richards was #1 in batting. Was that also because he played in a poor team so he had more ops to stand out. And according to this logic, all the top rankings today must be from Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and so on because players from these teams have more opportunities to stand out. The rankings are based mostly on batting averages, batting strike rates, bowling averages and bowling strike rates and economy, then number of fifties, hundreds, number of 4wkt, 5wkt hauls etc. They have nothing to do with team composition. Kapil was #1 because he was the only AR in the 80s who was always good with the bat as well as the ball. Imran was either good with ball or the bat, and rarely he was a good batsman or bowler together, which is why his rating never crossed 480, which is one of the lowest ratings Kapil achieved.

[Marut]

see...w.r.t Imran-Kapil test comparison even if we neglect tampering factor, there is a measure to the gap between Imran & Kapil. but, how much is the question.i consider Kapil an 85-87% test bowler because of 3 factors 1. longevity - Kapil played 131 tests to Imran's 88 tests 2. bowling unit strength - Kapil belonged to a bowling unit where support bowlers avg:ed 37+ where as Imran's support cast avg:ed slightly less than 29.65(Kapil's bowl avg:) 3.work density -Kapil played 131 tests in just 16 years whereas Imran played 88 tests in long 21 years. now statistical data to confirm my points are as follows. 1.at the end of 88 tests Kapil had 311 wkts.(ie: about 86% of Imran's 362) 2.Kapil has 352 wkts from cherripicked 88 tests spread across series where he took most no: of wkts in a series.(hope you got the point) 3.at the end of 62 tests Kapil had 247 wkts(4 wkts/test). then came his knee surgery. he neglected rest and played straight away before his wound completely got healed. the result was a dramatic fall to 2.6 wkts/test in next 11 tests compared to his 4wkts/test ratio before injury. Now if we take all the above said data as a whole and assume that Kapil played just 88 tests with privilages Imran enjoyed in 'work density' & 'support bowling cast' factors I have no doubt that Kapil was an 85-87% bowler to Imran because, even with out these advantages in these 2 said factors Kapil could take 86% of wkts(311:362) as that if Imran. Hope you got my point. Now.. w.r.t test batting , I feel the gap between them is not that small as generally assumed.this is because of several factors of these 3 are very important for me. 1.Kapil's huge str: rate of 80.91 to Imran's 47.52 .at the end of 87 tests this stood at 84+ before Kapil's reflexes started to slow him down. 2.Kapil's bat avg: in WI(best team) was 28.75.For Imran it was only 21.5.Keep in mind this avg: stood at 42.5 with 2 +98 scores vs Marshall & co before his 89th test.This factor carries a lot of weightage for me.i mean performances vs the best in their own den. 3.Let us take 75 as their cut of point for huge scores unlike say 100 for normal order bats. Kapil's str: rate in such 15 scores is a mammoth 96.45 where as for Imran it is only 54+ in his 9 such scores.See... how Kapil's dominance on bowlers raises to another level once he crosses 75.Now, if we go thru these set of scores for both these 2, we can see that there is a considerable difference in quality on the avg: in favour of Kapil.This, if we take such factors as str: rate, match situation,opposition bowling unit strength,contribution of other batsmen etc etc. What I mean is, if the above said points were between 2 SPECIALIST batsmen, the batsman with the advantages in these 3 factors would have been considered a much superior batsman.But in Kapil-Imran case, these points are just ignored as just another factor.More over as we all know, Imran's avg: can never be taken as such because of his high percentage of not outs. So Imran was only at the most a 90% bat as Kapil. Now we give more weightage to 'who is better in their weaker discipline' because the criteria is 'best all rounder' , not best bowler. so things evens out even at test level. Now you add to it Kapil being the convincingly better one day allrounder(he was better in both batting and bowling),much better all round fielder and only slightly lesser captain , we can see things evens out or Kapil slightly in front. I say ImRAN was a slightly better captain only because of these points.Imran's much hyped up 3 test duels with WI were in a period when WI team was going thru a transition.Only Marshall was in the team with inexperienced Walsh,Ambrose,Bishop etc to support him .Bowling wise Pak team matched WI man for man with Wasim,Waqar,Qadir & Imran himself in their line up.some of WI GREAT batsmen were already retired or not playing in some of these matches.likes of Phil Simmons & Richie Richardson who were not of that caliber and 'inexperienced too' were in the team.And to add to all, Imran played as a batsman and as a support bowler, I mean not as a premier all rounder in these test series.But Credit to Imran for his 1-0 India series & 2-0 ENG victories. On the other hand Kapil led India to 83 world cup( where he was the champion all rounder ), has a 2-0 series victory in ENG,86 AUS drawn series(India had upper hand most of the time)& 2-0 lost WI series.Of these Kapil was the premier all rounder in both AUS & WI SERIES. All this ,he achieved with a very weak bowling unit at his disposal. So in 4 of 6 disciplined they were involved in , Kapil was better in 4 of them. Now add tampering issue into the mix, I don't see how Imran can be the better all rounder.

Agree some what. Taking in account all factors which include 1. Kapil dev bowling on batsmen friendly wickets without decent support bowlers. 2. Dev getting overloaded due to not missing matches. 3. Dev not doing ball tampering. 4. Dev's exceptional performance against WI and Aus. 5. Dev's legendary match transforming skills due to legendary strike rates. Imran would be significantly ahead of Dev as a test bowler when compared without these factors. But when we take into account these factors, Imran is only marginally ahead as a test bowler and test all rounder. Imran saved himself for the tough matches by skipping a lot of matches while Kapil never took any rest whatsoever. To those think this factor does not matter should listen to what Holding says - http://www.thatscricket.com/news/2011/08/29/test-cricket-could-become-insignificant-holding.html Kapil was doing what exactly Holding says would destroy pace bowlers. In the 80s, no pace bowler came close to matching Dev on the number of matches played or overs bowled. Kapil dev sent down 4011 overs in the 80s, tests and odis combined. Imran sent down 2857 overs in the 80s, tests and odis combined. Botham sent down 3335 overs in the 80s, tests and odis combined. Hadlee sent down 3114 overs in the 80s, tests and odis combined. It can be seen that Dev bowled 20% more than Botham, 40% more than Imran, 29% more than Hadlee. It makes sense why Imran and Hadlee were statistically better than Botham and Dev - they played far less cricket and were able to perform at their peak most of the time. Dev in particular was a workhorse, and he had to do all this without decent support bowlers on the other end. When one bowler bowls 40% more than another, it is just unfair to compare them just on the basis of stats. Imran was one lucky guy, being able to bowl whenever he wanted and then take off days whenever he pleased.