"oh! okay" Kohli deadbats Harbhajan's pitch jibe

[Ankit_sharma03]

21 minutes ago, mancalledsting said:

Yaar, itni scientific analysis?

Zyaada science men mat jao, visual men hi bahut farq dikh jayega

[Sean Bradley]

Apart from Mohali & Mumbai to an extent, which pitch in India has not helped  spinner's in the last 100 odd years?? Kuch bhi bakwas karta hai  Saaa!% !! Fact remains that Ashwin took over his place in the 11 and someone needs to Shove a fire extinguisher in this Sreesanth Slapper Aimless Darter's back side. 

[Sachinism]

On ‎11‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 5:22 PM, fineleg said:

Have Bhajji and Ashwin played together in recent past?

Comparison of all spinners in matches where both Bhaji and Ashwin have played.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;orderby=bowling_average;player_involve=12894;player_involve=7139;player_involve_type=all;qualmin1=5;qualval1=wickets;template=results;type=bowling

 

He should just keep quiet instead of embarrassing himself any further

[rkt.india]

57 minutes ago, Sachinism said:

Comparison of all spinners in matches where both Bhaji and Ashwin have played.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;orderby=bowling_average;player_involve=12894;player_involve=7139;player_involve_type=all;qualmin1=5;qualval1=wickets;template=results;type=bowling

 

He should just keep quiet instead of embarrassing himself any further

these stats are meaningless

[rkt.india]

11 hours ago, Sean Bradley said:

Apart from Mohali & Mumbai to an extent, which pitch in India has not helped  spinner's in the last 100 odd years?? Kuch bhi bakwas karta hai  Saaa!% !! Fact remains that Ashwin took over his place in the 11 and someone needs to Shove a fire extinguisher in this Sreesanth Slapper Aimless Darter's back side. 

Mumbai is one of the most spin friendly pitch in India in test matches.

[Vilander]

20 hours ago, putrevus said:

I am not being biased at all, those pitches were not just Indian pitches , those pitches were produced to tailor Indian team's strengths but  in 2000s we saw pitches which had  some say for fast bowlers and Nagpur 2004 ( Ganguly famously called in sick)against Aussies or Ahmadabad 2007 against SA where Indians were rolled over for 70 all out by Steyn and co. Zak being a force to reckon with all happened when Bhajji was at his best.

Indian teams were getting slaughtered when they toured abroad if you do not know all these then you need to look back in history of Indian cricket on why pitches were changed in 2000s. That trend of tailor made pitches were brought back after Dhoni's lambs got slaughtered 1-15, hopefully we do not go back to those pitches.

 

Ashwin is a bowler who does not need those tailor made pitches.

 

Irrelevant to the discussion.. Me knowing or not knowing is even more irrelevant.

 

Shami and others are doing well now in tests that does not mean there is no options to do well with spin. There is illusory correlation at play there

 

And how is any of this related to 

 

1, Ashwin not being good or being good.

 

2, Harbhajan showing bitterness towards what ever achievement Ashwin seems to be showing.

 

3, Why has a perceived slight against Harbhajan got you trading an aim on Ashwin.

 

You have not answered those queries. 

 

Again you are speaking of 'Tailor Made' pitches being 'brought back' as if they are of a evidently proven existence, and that it was by norm used in India and then when Harbhajan's played they were not used hence Zak/Steyns good performance and Harbajans relative non performance. 

 

All this is a ruse to say Harbhajan was better than his stats suggest and somehow Zak,Steyn in India, Kumble earlier  and Ashwin now were/are being helped by pitches  on offer to get better results.

 

I would say this is at best wishful thinking(about implicit associations) and at worst sour grapes( one filled with prejudice). Ashwin has better stats than Harbhajan for the same point in their career it does not even say where Ashwin will end , its best to accept it and move on. Harbhajan is just damaging his reputation by making statements out of bitterness.

[Sachinism]

5 hours ago, rkt.india said:

these stats are meaningless

Totally meaningless?

They clearly show Bhaji was outperformed by every single spinner, not just Ashwin in games he and Ashwin played together.

Maybe they're not relevant to his point, but his point just screams "I'm a bitter cricket who's past it, so I'll make ridiculous statements to remain in the limelight"

[New guy]

On 10/11/2016 at 11:16 PM, gakgupta said:

 

 

People should remember that Bhajji brought this comparison on himself. No one was comparing Ashwin with Bhajji or undermining Bhajji. Its his own insecurity

Edited October 13, 2016 by New guy

[sandeep]

On 10/11/2016 at 4:44 PM, Muloghonto said:

Here is my take on this whole 'Harbhajan-gate' :

 

1. Pitches : Pitches in India today are, generally speaking, slightly more spin-conductive than in the early 2000s. If you look close enough, the same tell-tale smidgen of dust-ball turning significantly etc. are there 10-15 years back, too. But it is starting to crack up by 2nd day, instead of third day. We've had the same amount of raging turners as last time as well. I do give Ashwin an advantage in the 'better suited home pitches' factor, but only marginally.

 

2. Batsmen: This is where my heart goes out to Harbhajan. He bowled to Mark Waugh, Steve Waugh, Matty Hayden in 2001, for example. Ashwin hasn't faced this type of spin dominant batsmen in a single lineup yet and dominated. South Africa comes closest, mostly because of ABDV and Amla, but beyond them, they all 'faf' around spinners in India. 

Generally speaking, the era of Harbhajan had better batsmen against spin: South Africa was a better side, simply because you still had ABDV (perhaps not at his dominant best, but a 25 year old ABDV is easily a must-have for all teams) but also had Kallis, pretty much the ONLY South African batsman i've seen who seems to have a plan to play spin on alien conditions.

 

Today's batsmen are less patient against spin and there is a good reason why in most of test cricket's history, its the spinners who have held down the economy rate category down: its because against spinners, if you wait- or rather- have the ability to wait- you will most likely prevail. 

 

 

3. Harby vs Ashwin :

This is the crux of the argument though. I've seen them both at their peaks. Ashwin currently is a better bowler than Harby ever was. Sad, but true. This is because of a few reasons.

 

a) Planning : this is a *huge* component of bowling- some say the difference between great and also-ran can sometimes simply be the ability to plan & adapt. Sometimes the difference between getting a 'set batsman' for 75 instead of letting him run away to 200+ is planning & ability to tweak your plan in real time. In this aspect, Harby was always a reactor and a slow & predictable reactor at that.

Tell me, how many times do people recall the sequence of 'Harby is bleeding singles & twos early on..Harby looks pissed...Harby is trying to keep batsmen quiet...bam, batsmen hit a few fours and Harby immediately asks Ganguly to spread the field ' ?  This is the difference between Harby & Ashwin : Ashwin has a certain, Warne-esque ability to get into batsmen's heads, appear cool & composed but hawkish- a lot like a Poker player actually. This is where Ashwin is significantly ahead.

 

b) Control : Harby had pretty good control on his deliveries- i'd say at his peak he had a slightly better control than Ashwin. But this is largely negated by the fact that Ashwin is not trying to bowl metronomically, while Harby defaulted to the metronomic style regularly. Ashwin tries more variations. I am not talking just about doosras, arm-balls, etc. i am also talking about varying spin, length, line, drift, loop,etc. 

If you try to do more stuff, you will obviously give up a bit of control. But there is a payoff potential : if you are good at more stuff and have decent control over those things, you'd atleast fox the batsmen more often and thus get more wickets. Ashwin satisfies this principle exceedingly well. 

 

c) Variations : This is again, where Harby gets owned by Ashwin. And its obvious to those who see them both bowl. Ashwin has excellent control, he occasionally drops more 'hit-me balls' as he is continuously playing around with the line, length, spin, loop, drift, flight etc. of things.

Harby bowled like he wanted to bowl the 'perfect, unhittable big turning, spitting off break' and if the pitch didnt help him, go into the 'bowl ordinary off breaks and 1 doosra/over' mode. But once Harby found his length, he'd exact a stranglehold on that length against all batsmen, until the plan didn't work. 

So though i sympathize with Harby, but Ashwin is a greater bowler than him at peak form so far. But Harby has been good for a very long time  and Ashwin still is just over half way where Harby ended up. So Ashwin still needs to get there.

 

Good post.  Harby was always a 'front-runner' type of bowler.  He always got more dangerous after picking up a wicket.  It wasn't as if he didn't fight through tough stretches - we wouldn't have competed against the ATG Aussie sides if he had just keeled over.  But you always wanted him to get that first wicket to really get switched on as a bowler.  Ash doesn't appear to need that, but yeah.  We still need to see Ash challenged with a quality spin-playing line-up as opposed to the odd good batsman.  Its a shame Pakistan would rather play games with terrorists - if they give that up, it would be such a fun test series, and Ashwin would match up against a decent spin playing line-up for a change.  

 

 

[sandeep]

http://www.wisdenindia.com/cricket-blog/the-bowling-bradman-that-ashwin-is-fast-becoming/225355

[Austin 3:!6]

Bhajji is behaving bit like ex Pak cricketers TBH. Take some lessons from Sehwag, retired prematurely yet not a bad word for the team. Bhajji and Gambhir need to mind their words.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[rkt.india]

10 hours ago, New guy said:

 

People should remember that Bhajji brought this comparison on himself. No one was comparing Ashwin with Bhajji or undermining Bhajji. Its his own insecurity

He only compared pitches and there is some truth to it.

[rkt.india]

11 hours ago, Sachinism said:

Totally meaningless?

They clearly show Bhaji was outperformed by every single spinner, not just Ashwin in games he and Ashwin played together.

Maybe they're not relevant to his point, but his point just screams "I'm a bitter cricket who's past it, so I'll make ridiculous statements to remain in the limelight"

They are meaningless because Bhajji was literally past his prime when Ashwin came in. Ashwin actually replaced Bhajji in the team who was on decline. I pretty certain a Bhajji of 2000-2006 would have done pretty similar these pitches. Bhajji played 49 tests during that period and had 21 5-fers and in those years, we barely had pitches like these which started turning from first session of day 1. I am not claiming Ashwin isn't good. I am just saying there is some truth to what bhajji said. Also, bhajji bowled to several ATGs and better players of spin. Playing spin efficiently is in decline these days, even Indian batsmen struggle.  Since 2013, we have just seen 4-5 test hundreds scored by the batsmen. It shows how the pitches have been spin friendly.

[Texan]

9 minutes ago, rkt.india said:

They are meaningless because Bhajji was literally past his prime when Ashwin came in. Ashwin actually replaced Bhajji in the team who was on decline. I pretty certain a Bhajji of 2000-2006 would have done pretty similar these pitches. Bhajji played 49 tests during that period and had 21 5-fers and in those years, we barely had pitches like these which started turning from first session of day 1. I am not claiming Ashwin isn't good. I am just saying there is some truth to what bhajji said. Also, bhajji bowled to several ATGs and better players of spin. Playing spin efficiently is in decline these days, even Indian batsmen struggle.  Since 2013, we have just seen 4-5 test hundreds scored by the batsmen. It shows how the pitches have been spin friendly.

FYI - ATGs become ATGs only after they have had a significant career. Probably Williamson will become an ATG in the future. Cook is already probably an ATG. Amla, ABDV too are already ATGs. Hayden was not an ATG in 2001, actually he was just trying to establish his place in the team at that time.

 

The big difference between Ashwin and Bhajji is that Ashwin has shown continuous improvement as his career has progressed, while Bhajji went the other way round. Ashwin is a thinking cricketer who continues to work on his bowling and always hungry to learn new tricks, while Bhajji was just "content" with what he could muster up and there was no learning curve for him after his initial successes. Also, for all this talk about raging turners, how many bowlers in the current Ind-NZ series were really able to extract the amount of turn that Ashwin was extracting? Look at the NZ spinners and also Jadeja - nobody was able to exploit the pitch as well as Ashwin did. Very likely that even Bhajji in his prime would not have been able to exploit the turn on the pitch. So, let's not just denounce Ashwin's achievements and credit the pitch for all his successes.

[rkt.india]

24 minutes ago, Texan said:

FYI - ATGs become ATGs only after they have had a significant career. Probably Williamson will become an ATG in the future. Cook is already probably an ATG. Amla, ABDV too are already ATGs. Hayden was not an ATG in 2001, actually he was just trying to establish his place in the team at that time.

 

The big difference between Ashwin and Bhajji is that Ashwin has shown continuous improvement as his career has progressed, while Bhajji went the other way round. Ashwin is a thinking cricketer who continues to work on his bowling and always hungry to learn new tricks, while Bhajji was just "content" with what he could muster up and there was no learning curve for him after his initial successes. Also, for all this talk about raging turners, how many bowlers in the current Ind-NZ series were really able to extract the amount of turn that Ashwin was extracting? Look at the NZ spinners and also Jadeja - nobody was able to exploit the pitch as well as Ashwin did. Very likely that even Bhajji in his prime would not have been able to exploit the turn on the pitch. So, let's not just denounce Ashwin's achievements and credit the pitch for all his successes.

How long has Ashwin been playing? About 4 years of test cricket and how did Bhajji decline? Bhajji had very successful 6-7 years before he declined. Every player declines at some point. Not everyone can be on top of their game for whole of his career. Actually even likes of Ponting and Dravid too only had 5-6 years of great performance. Ponting before 2002 and after 2007 was an ordinary batsman but is still considered an ATG. Same with Dravid. He also declined after 2006, averaged around 40 in his last 6 years of test cricket very much like Ponting. They both are still ATGs. Ashwin is yet to complete those 6-7 years of test cricket. We will see how he does after he reaches that point.

[Texan]

35 minutes ago, rkt.india said:

How long has Ashwin been playing? About 4 years of test cricket and how did Bhajji decline? Bhajji had very successful 6-7 years before he declined. Every player declines at some point. Not everyone can be on top of their game for whole of his career. Actually even likes of Ponting and Dravid too only had 5-6 years of great performance. Ponting before 2002 and after 2007 was an ordinary batsman but is still considered an ATG. Same with Dravid. He also declined after 2006, averaged around 40 in his last 6 years of test cricket very much like Ponting. They both are still ATGs. Ashwin is yet to complete those 6-7 years of test cricket. We will see how he does after he reaches that point.

Dravid averaged 46 after 2006, hardly a slump. His overall average is 52, so not quite peak form, but still better than most other batters.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/28114.html?class=1;spanmin1=01+Jan+2006;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting

 

Harbhajan Singh, from 2006 to 2015, averaged 36 as a bowler, nearing an Ishant Sharma like average over a 10 year period. This was exceptionally poor for who was considered to be the leading spinner in our team then. 

 

Also, in order to truly understand the difference between why Ashwin has improved and Harbhajan did not, you have to only look at the way Ashwin is bowling these days as against when he started. He has added drift and loop to his repertoire, which was missing earlier. Even at the peak of his career, Harbhajan lacked both these ingredients. In many of the matches in which Harbhajan played, Sehwag and Sachin were often able to extract more turn from the wicket than Harbhajan. 

[Texan]

 

 

 

 

 

[rkt.india]

25 minutes ago, Texan said:

Even at the peak of his career, Harbhajan lacked both these ingredients. In many of the matches in which Harbhajan played, Sehwag and Sachin were often able to extract more turn from the wicket than Harbhajan. 

really? then how did he pick up 21 5-fers in his first 49 tests at his peak by bowling to some of the best batsmen in the world? He did not have turn or loop and still picked so many wickets and mind you we had some of the flattest track in India in those days.

[Texan]

4 minutes ago, rkt.india said:

really? then how did he pick up 21 5-fers in his first 49 tests at his peak by bowling to some of the best batsmen in the world? He did not have turn or loop and still picked so many wickets and mind you we had some of the flattest track in India in those days.

I said "drift" and "loop", not "turn". Read my post carefully. You need to look up what they mean in cricketing terms to understand that Harbhajan had neither. They are difficult arts to master. Harbhajan operated mostly on delivering the ball at a pace at which batsmen cannot adjust their shots and avoid an LBW or bowled or an inside edge on the pad. Drift and loop are used to beat a batsman in the flight, which Harbhajan lacked even at the peak of his career.

[Texan]

Here's some batting statistics for Tests in which Harbhajan Singh played:

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;groupby=team;home_or_away=1;orderby=runs;player_involve=7139;team=6;template=results;type=batting

 

Our batting average for matches played in India in matches that involved Harbhajan was 37.64

 

And here are the corresponding statistics for Tests in which Ashwin has played:

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;groupby=host;home_or_away=1;orderby=runs;player_involve=12894;team=6;template=results;type=batting

 

Our batting average for matches played in India in matches that involved Ashwin is 37.82

 

So much for flat tracks!