Who is better Lara or Pointing?

[Dhondy]

Re: Who is better Lara or Pointing? Not so fast, Pred! I am not finished yet! My objection was to your arbitrary choice of 38 Tests, or 4 years if you like, to judge these two. Surely, you can see that it is a point of convenience seized upon by you, because it suits the argument you put forward? To expound, why not choose the 18th, 28th, 48th or 58th Tests, or if you like, the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th years to draw comparisons? Would it not be fairer to compare them at various points, rather than take that one day in their career when they had similar averages? After all, many batsmen playing today with wildly disparate averages, would have had similar stats at a certain point in their careers. Moving on to your point about skew, sorry, that's no skew. The point is when you are talking about a small sample size (38 Tests in your case), a large score or two will change the mean dramatically. Just to illustrate, say two batsmen have scored exactly the same number of runs in 49 innings- 2500. In the 50th innings, batsman A scores a duck, and thus has an average of 50, while batsman B scores 200...and ends up with a considerably superior average of 54. If you now choose that arbitrary point- the end of the 50th innings- to compare the two bats, you are being completely unfair to A. Player B would have been at a similar disdvantage had you chosen some other cut off point, right after he had failed, and A succeeded, sample sizes remaining small, of course. That's what I meant by selective stats, or cherry-picking, in lay language. The fair method, of course, would be to take randomly selected regular intervals in their career, say 5...10..15 Tests, and see how they came out vis-a-vis each other. That way, you are allowing for the random successes and failures to be factored into your judgement, rather than seizing on the most convenient cut-off that suits your POV. Hope I make my point.

[King]

Re: Who is better Lara or Pointing? I think it is easy to get carried away by all the talk and media hype. Every time Lara scores there is praise everywhere and every time he fails there is absolutely no stick given to him. Tendulkar gets comments from all corners if he fails to score and that is his own undoing as he has set far too high standards for himself. After having read the thread fully I am convinced in test cricket there is none that has bettered Rahul Dravid in terms of scoring runs. In cricket it just doesn't matter whether you play great looking cover drive or a leg glance. All it matters are runs for the batters. The sole reason for batters to be out in the middle is to score runs. Rahul Dravid has been doing this consistently against all kinds of bowling day in day out in test cricket and as Dhondy pointed out he has done it better overseas. I don't care about Ponting's pull shot, Tendulkar's straight drive, Lara's square drive or Yousuf's grace. Rahul is the best batsman out there in the long rung. In fact adding Yousuf's name is pretty silly. His average against the Aussies and SA for a top bat is a joke. He will get his chances to set that right when they visit SA. Till about then he should not be anywhere near the list. The last couple of innings Rahul played in WI were absolute beauties that decided the series and India won the test series outside sub continent after a very long time. As for as all time best batsman is concerned (both tests and ODIs included) Tendulkar is far too good for anyone as the contenders in this list themselves have confirmed. BTW Tendulkar has not finished as yet. The way he batted in the last ODI against SA made me believe there still is plenty of runs that will be scored by the Master. :wtg:

[Bumper]

Re: Who is better Lara or Pointing?

If u take their entire career span into account' date=' u'll see that the only great bowler Lara has owned is Murali. McGrath has had the wood over Lara consistently. Against Donald, Akram, Waqar etc, the contest does not even begin. Get my point now ?[/quote'] OK, i checked this and found out that Lara averages 48 in tests played against Warne AND McGrath. I'd like to know of any batsmen who have done better ? Preferably someone not named Tendulkar... and actually, come to think of it - he did have some good series against Donald-led attacks. He scored several fifties against him in '00/01 series and a 62 in the one test the two teams played in the post-apartheid era back in '92. So it's not like he has struggled against Donald either ! So basically - Lara has scored runs against bowling attacks consisting of McGrath, Warne, Donald, Muralitharan, Pollock, etc. That, coupled with a solid 50+ average sustained over 130 tests is good enough for me.

Pietersen averages 50+ vs McG & Warney. But its a small sample. Laxman averages 45 -- reasonably large sample. The debate is about Punter & Lara, theres no way we can compare them, if the benchmark is McGrath & Warney, as Punter never faced them. How about comparing them against the two best pace attacks of the 90s, they BOTH faced: 1) vs Pak (before 2003 world cup -- when Akram & Waqar retired): Lara averages 30 compared to Punter's 73. 2) vs SA (before WC 2003, when Lara's master Donald retired): Lara: 36, Punter: 52 We could argue that Punter would have struggled against McGrath & Co, but Lara too could have struggled against Ambrose & Walsh. Before u say, Punter struggled vs Ind, lookup their resp stats vs India. Punter's 52 vs Lara's 35. Statistically Punter is well ahead of Lara against most major opponents, as shown in my stats in one of the earlier posts. Overall Punter is a MUCH better player of pace than Lara. His main weakness used to be spin, but not anymore. He averaged 50+ against Murali in SL minefields & scored tons in the TVS cup ODIs against Indian spinners. Lara had a genius of a beginning to his career, compared to the slow start of Ponting, but Punter has more than caught up with Lara. I'll conclude by saying, I have no issues with u believing Lara is a better batsman, thats your opinion, which is debatable. But ur claims that Lara is in a diff league has no merits whatsoever.