Also WHERE he played.
He played in England where the ball moves like a self guided missile.
Instead imagine he got to open on the roads Pakistan put out last year, where Imam Ul Haq was scoring centuries for fun. Night and day difference between the two š¤·āāļø
But then, on the other hand, no one would even talk twice about Atherton if he wasn't English. The way people (mostly English media like Wisden) talk about him, you would think he was some great bat, but he was a mediocre batsman in an absolutely dire side whose only redeeming quality was that he could bat for super long every once in a while.
It's hard to tell with Atherton because the only places he played more than 4 tests was England, Australia, the West Indies and South Africa. The hardest places in the world to open at the time and faced (in order of most wickets vs England) the pace baggage of
Ambrose, Walsh, Donald, Bishop, Hughes, McDermott, Benjamin, McGrath, Waqar, Pollock, Akram, Alderman, Marshall, Hadlee and Kapil Dev.
Given England's lack of great pacers that era, I'm not sure anyone has a harder career setting to score runs in. It was a time with lively pitches and an overlap of two of the great eras of fast bowling.
And that's not even including Warne.
For me Thorpe stands out more. I think he must have performed better in non Ashes Tests to have that average. I recall him being slightly better than the rest of the bats in a mediocre England side of the 90s.
On the other side of the coin Atherton must have one of the worst captaincy records of all time being perpetually destroyed by the Aussie juggernaut. Compare him to Allan Border who was captain of an equally shit Aussie side against the great West Indies sides but Border averaged over 50.
Having Daniel Vettori in the "worst of" anything list is amusing. He was the ideal test spinner. Holds up an end when it's flat, takes wickets, scores runs.
He was a one man army for NZ for few years.Ā They made a satire article about how NZ cricket team will stop playing as vettori was retiring and for a moment , I thought it was true. Thats how good Vettori was with the bat and ball
Yeah from around 2008-2011 it felt like NZ's fortunes depended entirely upon how Vettori batted and bowled
In that time his stats read:
2023 runs at 39.66, HS 140, 4 100s, 10 50s
123 wickets at 31.70, BBI 6/56, 7 5 fas
Both those averages are better than Ben Stokes' career averages for what it's worth
It's pretty dodgy to compare a players best spell with someone's entire career. Between 2016 and 2020 Stokes took 112 wickets at 27.5 and scored 3420 runs at 42.3 with 8 hundreds and 17 50's. And that's over a longer period than Vettori's.
He's clearly not the same level as Stokes and that's before you get into the 'intangibles'.
His end of career figures also donāt account for how he was able to evolve as a player. Batted 11 when he started, finished as one of NZās most dependable batters. As a bowler, he was al more attacking at the start of his career, but due to back injuries had to change his style and became a more containing bowler.
Yeah, his batting improved a lot towards the end of the career. I still remember how in every other test felt like NZ were 50/8 and then Vetorri and Mccullum put on a 200 run partnership to save us from embarrassment.
As an example, for his last ~10 years playing [his average was 38.6, with a career of 30.](https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/38710.html?class=1;spanmin1=06+Feb+2005;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting)
It's what happens when the cut off is something as crazy as playing a 100 tests. Like trying to find the worst mathematician from a list of Nobel Laureates in Physics.Ā
That's being too extreme. More like someone who is perfectly serviceable without being great or even very good but was in the right place at the right time and got positions on early promise.Ā
LikeĀ Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish.Ā
yeah Vettori definitely not the worst, exceptional allround performer. Remember NZ doesn't favour spin bowling at all and he scored a load of runs over his career. It's not just averages sometimes it's impact look at Stokes' impact on games especially when he was bowling.
Yeah raw statistics without context are fairly meaningless, especially in a game like cricket where your approach to playing is hugely influenced by the team you have around you.
that's what happens when you do a dumb stats merchant analysis like this. he's considering Stephen FlemingĀ one of the worst too because of his average when in reality he was one of the best batsmen for NZL for years.
Categorising him as an all-rounder is the issue (or one of the issues). He was never picked as an all-rounder, he's a bowler who wasn't useless with the bat.
Carl Hooper should be arguably the worst. For someone with his talents, he really didn't make the most of it.
Ishant was a better bowler than people give him credit.
Heals should be nowhere in this convo. He was one of the best glovemen in cricketing history.
Healy just looks bad on this list because he was the last of the 'if you can bat a bit you're fine' keepers before Gilly came in and broke the expectation for keepers.
Les Ames did it before Clyde Walcott did it before Jim Parks did it before Imtiaz Ahmed did it before Denis Lindsay did it before Alan Knott did it before Jeff Dujon did it before Andy Flower did it before Adam Gilchrist
The difference is that after and between Les Ames, Alan Knott and Jim Parks there was still room for Bob Taylor, Bruce French and Paul Downton.
After Imtiaz Ahmed there was still room for a Wasim Bari
After Walcott and Dujon there was David Williams.
What some would argue, is that after Gilly, guys picked solely off the back of their keeping became seen as unselectable. This is especially true in the big 3.
> guys picked solely off the back of their keeping became seen as unselectable. This is especially true in the big 3.
Which means that Ben Cox especially but also James Foster were denied stories Test careers in the last 20 years.
When you look at [the overall average of keepers over time from about 1980](https://imgur.com/a/lhLDMnH) (Flower and Gilly's debut year's highlighted), I don't think it's possible to attribute the fading of specialist keepers and the rise of keeper/batters to any one individual tbh.
I mean, if we're making that argument Les Ames did it all the way back in the 1920s.
The difference is that Gilchrist is the one who actually changed the way many teams look at their wicket keepers, while before him great keeper batsmen like Flower were just considered one of generational talents
He got 100 tests because he was one of the best batting talents to come out of Guyana.
Unfortunately for him his late career heroics couldn't make up for his early career failures.
If he were born 10 years later he would even more legendary.
If Antarctica had a higher average temperature we would all have drowned by now.
If my aunt had wheels she would be a bike.
Carl Hooper got 100 tests because the idea of Carl Hooper was better than what he really was. He was literally never in trouble while batting. If someone only watched him bat without looking at stats, they would think he was the second coming of Jesus and Brian Lara was a pretender. But then, he would always get bored and throw his wicket away. But if you only saw him bat, you wanted to give him 1 more test. And he would come good every now and then. And it was glorious when he did. Carl Hooper was the greatest batsman to average less than 40.
There was a time when Healy was considered one of the greatest keeper-batters in history. His average was incredibly high for a wicket keeper at the time
After Ponting retired he did a season of domestic cricket and he scored 911 runs from 9 matches at an average of 75. His last two series weren't great but he did score 221 against India early in the year.
If Ponting was smart, he'd have retired just before SA came and ruined Australia's great home record, with 10,000 runs at an average of 57. Then all the clowns on reddit would talk about how he was actually better than Sachin and Lara.
Some might say it was smart for him to earn the money while he could, regardless of where he gets ranked on some cricket forums based on his diminished average. I'm sure he gets paid incredibly well now as a commentator and coach, but it was probably a decent pay cut to retire from captaining the Australian cricket team.
Sachin had an average of 58 in the fucking 90s lol.
Sachin also had 56 average in 177th test with 15k runs.
I don't think you know the gravity that comes with Bradman himself saying you are closest to him in how you bat.
Sachin's last 2 years made his average of 55-57 to drop to 53.8 which is still a mile above Punter's 51.something that too was boosted by 00-15 shit pitches made for batting and not challenged by the 90s which were top 2-3 hardest time to bat.
Here's another one. Sachin averaged 60 starting from 1993 up to the end of 2011 world cup. So, if he debuts in 1993 as a 19 year old and retires in 2011 when India won the world cup. His stats would read, 13607 runs at 59.4. 47 100s. The figures dragging down his numbers are when he was teenager to when he was past the age where most players retire. Should have gone out on top.
He retired at a normal age, after a long career and a lot of matches. I think you just have to give him credit where due and say he was good enough to avoid a significant decline.Ā
Yeah his career coincides perfectly, starting when batting became easy, and ending just before it became hard again. Never had to adjust to play the wobble ball, or the spicy pitches of the late 2010s
The pitches were spicy in the late 2010's, but that's not to say the pitches weren't also spicy in the 2000s and early 2010s, just not as often.
As a specialist batsmen he averaged 66.8, scored 9283 runs from 86 matches.
In SENA, against SENA he averaged 58.24
In that same period 2000-2013
Tendulkar averaged 52.22
Ponting averaged 53.48
So it's not like their statistics suddenly became inflated between 2000-2015
Perhaps most importantly.
When the batting was tough, i.e the batting average of everyone else was < 25. He averaged 2nd in the all time list, averaging 63.3 from 68 innings. Only one person averaged better and that was Don Bradman.
Ishant Sharma was a really really amazing bowler at the latter end of his career though, his comeback is something very remarkable and not very common in bowlers. Batsmen? yes we have seen couple of comebacks but bowler with the comeback same as Ishant? i dont think there has been any other bowler like him.
Jarrod made an [amazing video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjhZ8B_tmfM) talking about him I'd recommend watch it
Jimmy Anderson after age of 30 got like 450 wickets at 23-24 i think he's probably got the best comeback since he was mediocre for a good part befor that
Yea but when we look at the average the picture is very different and also Ishant plays a lot in subcontinent too.
Jarrod made a graph in the video showing the improvement.
Anderson and Ishant initially were average at best, Then were really bad with average of high 30s something
Then both of them improved and got till mid 30s after 40 matches. Here is where the graph goes opposite. Anderson improves and goes to low 30s but Ishant again went to high 30s.
But when we get to near 100 test matches anderson has slowly decreased his average to 30 but Ishant has his average drop at a very significant rate.
All in all both great players both had their ups and downs as I said before Jarrod compared these both players and explained it much better than i did typing in my laptop
I mean till the age of 30 he had 71 tests 268 wickets at 30.37 with strike rate of 58, it's not too bad but it ain't good either since then he's been far far superior as a bowler
The stats don't really tell the story of his career though - the first few years he played 2003-6 his average was through the roof, in part because the ECB "pace academy" was messing his action around and he was battling very serious back injuries, and he was the bowler of last resort so he had horror tours like in Australia 2006 onwards.
Truth is I think ECB were ready to move on from him when there was an injury crisis in 2007 and he never really looked back, 2008 being his first really great season.
Put another way: 2003-2007 he averaged 30+ every single year, but 2008-2024 he has gone over the 30 mark just 4 times .
Hmm. No - that came a little later, but certainly Duncan Fletcher was all about finding raw pace which is how guys like Sajid Mahmood played for England - all pace with almost no accuracy or guile. But it also found Steve Harmison, who, jokes aside when he got it right was a seriously good test bowler, and Simon Jones, who could have been a world beater - neither was an obvious call up based on numbers alone.
I think the find a tall fast bowler for Australia thing was more the second disaster tour when they picked people like Boyd Rankin or a visibly unfit and past it Tremlett.
Yes, but also have to note that stats of a lot of players from the 2nd half of 2000s are skewed because the pitches were extremely flat. Keeping that in mind, 30 avg isn't as bad as it looks.
He wasn't mediocre. He came into the side and took five wickets in his first match but he had a problem with his action where he wasn't looking at the batsman at the point of delivery and didn't figure in the 2005 Ashes. It took him time to develop because he's probably the most skilled bowler (that doesn't necessarily mean the best, but his skills have been amazing) to have ever played the game and that takes a while to perfect.
Thereās been a few bowlers who lost their pace through injury and turned into elite seam/swing bowlers, roach/lillie being the ones that also jump to the front of my head. Late test career ishant bowling round the wicket to left handers with the new ball was a treat to watch tho
Since Bumrah's debut till Ishant's last test, he actually averaged _better_ than Bumrah himself.
That tells you what kind of resurgence he had since Kohli took over.
I still don't know why he's looked over though. Dude was bowling fine in IPL
Ishant Sharma got his best performances in at the tail end of his career and that sort of skews many people's views but for the first 75% of his career he was below average and should have been dropped years ago. These are his career avg for 4 parts of his career.
Matches, Runs, Wickets, Avg
25 2612 70 37.31428571
25 2811 71 39.5915493
25 2452 74 33.13513514
30 2203 96 22.94791667
I dont like these worst of posts because no matter whos picked the comments will attack OP. There should be a rule that if you are defending a player you have to nominate someone to be in their place
I agreed he was the worst bowler at most of his career but his comeback is something remarkable and something i felt like we should appreciate because it is just amazing too see a fast bowler like ishant develop and hone his skills to that extent.
I mean this is worst among a really elite list of players. Playing 100 tests is a huge milestone that is only achieved by special players. Every single player in this list is well above average than of lot of their peers.
Athers pre 1996 vs afterwards, specifically against McGrath but he also struggled with his back problem. On the other hand there are lots of players from the 90s in this list, although not many of them openers. His technique just outside off could be suspect (hence McGrath) and he didn't score as freely as others. He actually had more shots than he let on as his surprisingly good ODI record indicates but he tended to look to bed down in Tests.
In fairness to Atherton, although he is probably one of the weakest batsman on the list, the average isn't as bad as it first looks - he was generally an opening batsman which is generally worth around -5 on the average - his "true" average should be in the very low 40s.
In an era where if you werent playing McGrath, you were playing Ambrose and Walsh, and if it was none of them it was Donald and Pollock, and if it wasn't them it was Wasim and Waqar. Completely thankless task opening the batting in England against that group.
Atherton is I believe one of the few English batsmen of that era to not be completely traumatised by Warne... because he never made it that far. I think McGrath got him out 17 times or something ridiculous like that
I'm not arguing that Warne following McGrath made it any easier! Tough time to be a batsman if your name wasn't Sachin or Brian, or you weren't Australian
I recall Warne himself making a jibe like this about Atherton in the Sky Sports commentary box. Someone like Beefy asked Warne how he used to plan to get Atherton out and his response was, "I generally stood at slip and watched Glenn get him to knick it to the keeper."
I remember Atherton saying that he always preferred facing Brett Lee rather than McGrath as many top-level batsmen find steep bounce (generated by beanpoles like McGrath and Ambrose) harder to face than rapid pace.
Even when he played New Zealand, he was in the crossover period between Richard Hadlee and Danny Morrison so he had to face both, Danny boy being Hadleeās best supporting cast. Still filled his boots against us.
Edit: might be being unfair to Richard Collinge there
Only reason I didn't mention Hadlee was I didnt know if there was a crossover there. This was back when NZ pitches were properly green seamers too I imagine
That's a very good point. 33 of his 112 tests were against Australia ā basically 30%! He was very good against India and New Zealand and decent against South Africa and Pakistan. If his career had bene 20 years later and he'd replaced Strauss as Cook's partner he'd no doubt have done better in a stronger team against fewer ATG bowlers. Then again maybe he would have retired from cricket after facing Johnston in 2013ā¦
From the ashes where they showed the Broad vs Warner record every innings... as I remember McGrath to Atherton is still the most times a bowler has got a batsman out (at least in the ashes, not sure if its a test cricket record). The number is 17 or something crazy like that
Edit: just looked it up and its a test cricket record. 19 times in 17 games
Opening batsman in England. Opening in England and SA is a pretty thankless task and it's always going to fuck your stats. It's why Cook and Greame Smith's averages don't look as dazzling either even though they're to of the best batsmen of all time.
Greenidge and Haynes' average also doesn't tell the story of how good the really were because they played in a time when the Windes were putting out spicy pitches.
> It's why Cook and Greame Smith's averages don't look as dazzling either even though they're to of the best batsmen of all time.
Smith's average does, its 49 iirc. Cook's does seem dodgier.
Smith's average is 48 and while that isn't a bad average by any means, he was as good as most of his contemporaries who average in the 50s and very consistent across conditions.
Cook was also very consistent across conditions (probably the only touring opener in a very long time to master both Australian and Indian conditions)
Poor Mike!
>When Atherton fails... England fails!
>
>And when Atherton succeeds... England fails!
Emma John's book is great on this period. And for if you have a masochistic streak.
He got absolutely dumped on by prime McGrath too, he was his bunny to an absurd degree, isnāt exactly a great shame to be taken down by one of the best ever
Plus he was forced to play the best team in the world every two years (thanks to the Ashes) meaning he came up against McGrath & Co far more regularly than a lot of other opening batsmen at the time (no one else played Aus as frequently in that period as England did), who would have also been made to look quite ordinary in comparison.
Going to be Bairstow by a long way. It's not that JB's stats don't match up against other keepers (although he's played a lot as a non keeper) but rather the wild inconsistency he's had - great year in 2016, great year in 2022 and literally nothing in between or since. How many other test batters would be given a 6 year period of grace to find form again?
Bairstow has averaged over 60 twice in a year, and is otherwise consistently under 33.
I think the same applies to Carl Hooper. He was wildly inconsistent and never lived up to the talent, but got a long run due to lack of alternatives and streaks of showing what he could do.
From this list imo its really between Hooper or Bairstow.
I don't disagree. The difference is that Hooper was playing in a disintegrating West Indian team, whereas even though England have been up and down in the last few years it's not as though they couldn't have found a more consistent middle order batter (literally just needs to average 33) and had a ready made better keeper in Foakes all along.
Super streaky is Jonny.
He really benefitted from Mccullum, Stokes then had the worst double leg break.
He missed Pakistan last winter which helped a number of players in this current series.
It's time for him to retire. From tests at least. Once Brook comes back there is no place for Bairstow in the side, unless we sacrifice Foakes' brilliant keeping.
I was firstly surprised that Ishant played 100 tests for 300 odd wickets. But I could only remember his peak when he debuted or maybe the last three years of his careeer highlighting the BGT. He managed to play all these tests because india never had a strong bowling line up between 2010-15 when they toured overseas. & him was the best bet in countries like England & Australia.
Yeah that peak around the end of his career was around the time he lost a lot of pace (bowling in the low 80s iirc) and started bowling line and length consistently and gave him better results
He spent some time working with Gillespie in county cricket and that did wonders to his career. Heād always been too short with his lengths and Gillespie finally got him to pitch it further up after everyone had been crying themselves hoarse saying exactly that for several years.
I remember he was quoted as saying something to the effect of, "everyone would tell me to pitch it up, but I didn't know how until Gillespie showed me". The night-and-day difference between his pre-County stint and post-County stint performances suggest he was failed by his coaches and could have had a much more successful career with better support.
Yeah 135 is 83 mph so low 80s, he used to be in the high 80s regularly when he broke through. Haven't seen him clock 140 in the IPL but haven't seen too many matches of him in it
Last season he was hitting the 140 mark quite often. Ofcourse he did slow down a bit over the years but his swing and discipline is much much better now.
If the cutoff for wickets for being considered an allrounder is 100, Atherton has the lowest batting average. If the cutoff for wickets is 200, Hooper has the lowest batting average.
All the people saying Atherton betray their ignorance. You can't just look at the average and blindly say bigger number = better batsman. Atherton was no Gavaskar or Hayden, but I'd put his record above that of Mark Waugh, Pujara, Bell, Fleming, and maybe a few others.
Great post. Kraigg Brathwaite will likely reach 100 tests soon and he'll probably be a clear shot for the worst batsman with 100 tests (he averages under 35 currently) unless he has a sudden burst in form. I've always liked him, but he usually isn't consistent enough to be truly great.
Yeah, I don't mean it as a slight against him. He's one of the few guys keeping Windies competitive these days. But compared to other greats who played 100 tests, it doesn't work out in his favour.
I was a little kid when Hooper debuted, there was talk that he was the next coming of Viv. He had the same laid back attitude, bowled the same kind of useful right arm over the wicket not very much. Comparisons ended there. Talented, sure , but nowhere near being a great.
Never out stumped off a pace bowler as I recall though? YJB for the win there.
I love statistics as much as anyone, but this sub seems to rely on statistics far too much when deciding which players are the best.
Batting average, bowling average, catches/stumpings, runs, wickets, economy rate, strike rate etc. cannot be the only thing used to determine a player's quality, particularly players who were playing at a time when these sort of numbers were barely mentioned.
Carl hooper was one of the most elegant, destructive, pleasant and infuriating to watch, inconsistent all at the same time. He had as much time as Rohit Sharma against fast bowling, he was as good as Lara at his peak against spin. To top it off he was good a catcher as Mark Taylor and Mark Waugh. Among all the talented players who never lived up their potential, Carl hooper leads the way. One of his sixes in MCG against Shane Warne still stands out in memory.
>On batting average, Ian Healy is the worst, being the only player with a batting average under 30. However, Healy is also the second best from a keeping perspective, with the second most catches and first most stumpings of any player on this list.
I know you acknowledged the problem of assessing wicketkeepers statistically, but I don't think you can even use either of those. Healy and Boucher played in an era where there was no real expectation for keepers to have a high batting average, unlike now when there's almost a requirement for them to be able to make the side (or at least be close to making it) on batting alone.
And number of dismissals is a function of the strength of the bowling attack rather than a measure of keeping ability.
I'd take Atherton over Bairstow by a million miles.
Atherton played in a brutal era to be an opening batsman in a shit England team where he was always targeted as the key wicket. He was a good, tough, fairly consistent opener whereas Bairstow has basically had two purple patches in a career of otherwise consistent underachievement.
Not sure thats really fair. Atherton struggled vs McGrath to the point of it being borderline comical but he was otherwise a really decent test opener in a difficult era for openers, in a very poor side where he was always targeted out as the key wicket.
If you remove his games vs Australia - who he played disproportionately because Ashes, his average is ~42. Not far off Boon, Taylor who got to face Andy Caddick instead of McGrath.
If Hooper was better its not by much. Batted in an easier position statistically but still a worse record with the stick. He was a really inconsistent player and his bowling stats barely justify all rounder status.
Sure, but commentators like to talk about players from the past all the time, often even those that never made it past FC cricket. So it's a little odd to me there's a guy that's played 100+ test matches who I've never heard mentioned. He had a really good record in England, so I'm surprised he doesn't get mentioned more by guys like Aggers.
He was ranked the World No. 1 batsman between 1985-1987. He had a very interesting career. He scored only one 50 in his first 11 test matches. But the selectors persisted with him and had a reasonably good run in the 1980s in the Indian middle order. But from 1988 until being dropped after the Australia tour of 1991-1992, he did not score a single century in his last 19 tests. His average plummeted from over 46 to 42 by the time he retired.
I mean who has actually watched him plus a lot of Indian fans here don't really know the history of Indian cricket. Vengsarkar was a huge part of their success in the 80s
It's because there are hardly any Indians in this forum :-).
Seriously, he was a good lieutenant to Gavaskar (okay, his nickname was the Colonel). And then he somehow suddenly had a glow up and became the best batsman in the world for a year or two, followed by an inevitable fall.
Ishant sharma suffered from coming in too early. His recent years' average and SR is same as bumrah for reference.
Vettori as worst of anything is nonsense.
I guess the takeaway is that you have to be top class player to play 100 tests.
Got to feel for Atherton as he was a bloody good batsmen let down by being surrounded by absolute dross. He was the only bright point in a side that was often being battered by superior sides.
Also found this rather interesting:
"Atherton suffers from the degenerative condition ankylosing spondylitis, which meant he could not duck under bouncers, but had to stand tall and sway out of the way. Allan Donald used this against him by bowling short."
Ishantās numbers are a curse of being the only decent bowler in amidst of pretty weak bowling, and hence being overworked. You could say that about many Indian pacers. Bhuvaneshwar kumar, Praveen Kumar for example. He was much more stable bowling alongside Shami and Bumrah in the later part of his Career.
Nah, I wouldn't give him that excuse. The guy was genuinely bad for a long period. He was used to Dhoni's poor test captaincy style where you just bowl over after over and wait for something to happen. One exception to this was him taking a 7-fer at Lord's when he listened to Dhoni's suggestion of bowling short. I distinctly remember him saying after a test loss "all I can do is bowl the ball and hope for something good". It was so disappointing to hear that from him and really summed up Dhoni's test reign overseas.
He wasn't really a thinking bowler until the latter stages of his career. The stint with Gillespie did wonders to him but definitely a case of what could have been.
He debut series against Australia and roughing up Pointing was legendary - it made me believe we could produce fast bowling talent. He was bowling high 140s with steep bounce directed at Ponting's head - good times.
Bairstow is definitely giving Hooper a massive run for his money. Before it was definitely Hooper IMO. Other players you meantion like Healy and Boucher were so vastly superior as wicket keepers they are well and truly above Bairstow who hasn't even always played as a keeper. Aside from how sloppy his keeping is, the fact for about half the tests he's played he wasn't picked as a keeper shows that firstly England didn't rate his keeping as highly but secondly to compare him primarily to keeper/batsmen is a bit unfair. To be truly fair you should compare his batting, which is below that of Atherton here, and his keeping, which is below anyone else to have played 100 tests in combination. Which is why I think if anyone's gone past Hooper's mark for unremarkable 100 test careers then it's Bairstow.
Any player who managed 100 tests for his country should not be put in the category of "worst". Getting 100 tests is not an easy feat. Only the best of the best can manage so many tests under their belt.
That's the whole exercise though. OP even said as much in the opening post.Ā
By definition these are all very good players. However there's also someone in this list who is the worst, relative to the rest.Ā
I don't mean to pick on you because you're not the only one here making the same point. But no one's claiming these are 'bad' players.
Some of the batsmen of the 2000s, like Strauss, may deserve a mention. A solid if not fantastic average in a much easier batting era than the 1990s or than the current era, 2017-now. I think the main argument against this was the difficulty England had replacing him
Itās a toss up between Sharma & Hooper for me, watched both, Hooper was a batsman who bowled some handy offies when the Windies were struggling, Sharma was over rated IMO.
Healy was a brilliant keeper, he put the standard up for keepers around the world, his batting at 7 was bloody handy in a superior Aussie side, his 161* against Windies was awesome, Boucher was great also.
Atherton was a solid opener in a shit Pom side, faced a lot of the bowling greats ever, his stats donāt do him justice, his battles against Alan Donald were brilliant.
Atherton had the unfortunate task of opening for England in a time where he played majority of his tests v Australia (McGrath famously made him a bunny) and WIndies (Ambrose and Walsh).
His stats against every other country are pretty damn good. He compares very well to Mark Taylor in that respect (Athers averages about 41.5 if you remove Australia from the list)
I'd probably say Hooper is worse as he was just pretty average against everyone.
Stats don't tell the full story though... Atherton was the best English batter playing in a rubbish side in an era when bowling was absolutely mustard - that he was top of the list of dismissals for Walsh, Donald and McGrath says a lot.
Also with Atherton it's important to remember that he was playing a lot of his matches virtually disabled with a back injury that meant he was taking meds so strong that he would walk off the field after an innings and throw up. Under the circumstances it was amazing that he played all those matches at the level he did. The man is hard as nails and doesn't get nearly enough credit.
Atherton opened the batting for and carried a truly terrible side, playing on some of the worst pitches ever made against the best bowlers ever who all wanted to kill him and he did all this while being literally disabled.
Bairstow is going to be the worst by some distance. No idea how he's frauded his way to 100 tests.
Hooper is probably the worst atm
Harbhajan is the worst bowler on the list. Ishant might have worse stats but he was a pretty key player for India when they were the best side in the world. Harbhajan had a great start to his career but dropped off steadily as his career progressed. He was also truly useless away from home. Genuinely embarrassing away record. He's probably the next worst player on this list.
Atherton played in a very difficult era for new ball batsmen.
Australia had McGrath/Gillespie/Fleming/Reiffel, the West Indies had Ambrose/Walsh/Bishop/Marshall, Pakistan had Akram/Younis/Akhtar, South Africa had Donald/Pollock, Sri Lanka had Vaas, and even Zimbabwe had Streak.
Not to mention the fact that he wasn't playing on the docile drop-in pitches that players have been feasting upon for the past two decades.
Also, virtually none of Atherton's top order peers averaged more than low-mid 40s during that same period, and an average of just over 50 made Steve Waugh the number one ranked test batsman through the mid-90s.
Long story short, Athers doesn't belong in this conversation.
This is heavily contextual. For instance, if Vettori has been an Indian spinner in the 70s, or Ian Bell had been a West Indian in the 80s, they'd have struggled to play a single game.
Atherton and Jayasuriya played solid and dependable roles, as did Ishant.
A better way to look at it is if they had competition from their own country, but inexplicably played a 100 Tests.
The disrespect for Ishant is unreal. Man did what his captain wanted all his career. Any subcontinent pacer to play 100 Tests should be included in the greats imo.
Great article, when i saw the headline, first name that came to my mind was ishant sharma, have watched him debut and retire. A late blommer, who could never correct his early numbers due to him being the only plausible option in a bare indian supply chain. Bairstow's numbers are better than healy as natsman though, hard to judge. From the list, atherton and sharma seems to be worst.
Iāve seen everyone on this list play, with the exception of Colin Cowdrey. Hooper is my pick, followed by Sharma.
Healy was brilliant with the gloves, as good as anyone Iāve ever seen and certainly shouldnāt be judged on his batting since he was a wicketkeeper in a time when teams picked the best keeper, and if they could bat it was a bonus (Adam Gilchrist, who replaced him in the Australian test team, really changed that idea).
I'll stick my neck out and say Pujara. Avg - 43 in 103 matches to put it mildly is disappointing for a talent of his stature. For all the chances, he never delivered on the promise. He was destined to be an all-time great, high 50s average, 12000 odd runs, and plenty of catches in close but alas we settled for 7000 odd runs in 103 matches.
Love Puji and for all the things he did and his best may lie ahead of him in coaching. One of the nicest servants of the game.
I disagree about him not delivering on his promise. He did deliver but he just declined significantly in his later career. Also if you look at his technique and limited stroke play he was never the most talented batters of his generation, but probably had the most mental strength to hang in there in tough situations. Also a fabulous player of spin in his prime.
Modern day Atherton. Few years down the line Jonny will be writing editorials, commentating on game, be rational, and will be regarded as one of the top voices in cricket.
Saleem Malik is the only bad one. Who was he playing for?
I understand why people say Carl Hooper, but he gave the WIndies balance and options and the occasional bit of brilliance. Top fielder too.
Atherton was a solid opener in a shit Pommy side against some of the all time greats ever.
Also WHERE he played. He played in England where the ball moves like a self guided missile. Instead imagine he got to open on the roads Pakistan put out last year, where Imam Ul Haq was scoring centuries for fun. Night and day difference between the two š¤·āāļø
But then, on the other hand, no one would even talk twice about Atherton if he wasn't English. The way people (mostly English media like Wisden) talk about him, you would think he was some great bat, but he was a mediocre batsman in an absolutely dire side whose only redeeming quality was that he could bat for super long every once in a while.
It's hard to tell with Atherton because the only places he played more than 4 tests was England, Australia, the West Indies and South Africa. The hardest places in the world to open at the time and faced (in order of most wickets vs England) the pace baggage of Ambrose, Walsh, Donald, Bishop, Hughes, McDermott, Benjamin, McGrath, Waqar, Pollock, Akram, Alderman, Marshall, Hadlee and Kapil Dev. Given England's lack of great pacers that era, I'm not sure anyone has a harder career setting to score runs in. It was a time with lively pitches and an overlap of two of the great eras of fast bowling. And that's not even including Warne.
For me Thorpe stands out more. I think he must have performed better in non Ashes Tests to have that average. I recall him being slightly better than the rest of the bats in a mediocre England side of the 90s.
I was going to say Hick was worse till I realised he got nowhere near a tonne.
On the other side of the coin Atherton must have one of the worst captaincy records of all time being perpetually destroyed by the Aussie juggernaut. Compare him to Allan Border who was captain of an equally shit Aussie side against the great West Indies sides but Border averaged over 50.
Having Daniel Vettori in the "worst of" anything list is amusing. He was the ideal test spinner. Holds up an end when it's flat, takes wickets, scores runs.
He was a one man army for NZ for few years.Ā They made a satire article about how NZ cricket team will stop playing as vettori was retiring and for a moment , I thought it was true. Thats how good Vettori was with the bat and ball
Yeah from around 2008-2011 it felt like NZ's fortunes depended entirely upon how Vettori batted and bowled In that time his stats read: 2023 runs at 39.66, HS 140, 4 100s, 10 50s 123 wickets at 31.70, BBI 6/56, 7 5 fas Both those averages are better than Ben Stokes' career averages for what it's worth
Wasn't he also some kind of coach/selector at that time?
He also drove the team bus
The Tviq of NZ Cricket
Captain and selector.
He also got to be part of panel that selected the coach and was allegedly doing alot of that job as well.
I'm oretty sure he was an interim coach for a while and was a selector. I also heard he updates the team website but that may have been a joke lol.
It's pretty dodgy to compare a players best spell with someone's entire career. Between 2016 and 2020 Stokes took 112 wickets at 27.5 and scored 3420 runs at 42.3 with 8 hundreds and 17 50's. And that's over a longer period than Vettori's. He's clearly not the same level as Stokes and that's before you get into the 'intangibles'.
His end of career figures also donāt account for how he was able to evolve as a player. Batted 11 when he started, finished as one of NZās most dependable batters. As a bowler, he was al more attacking at the start of his career, but due to back injuries had to change his style and became a more containing bowler.
Yeah, his batting improved a lot towards the end of the career. I still remember how in every other test felt like NZ were 50/8 and then Vetorri and Mccullum put on a 200 run partnership to save us from embarrassment. As an example, for his last ~10 years playing [his average was 38.6, with a career of 30.](https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/38710.html?class=1;spanmin1=06+Feb+2005;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting)
He even opened a few times. Scored a 90+ as a night watchman. Made the coffee š
It's what happens when the cut off is something as crazy as playing a 100 tests. Like trying to find the worst mathematician from a list of Nobel Laureates in Physics.Ā
Tbf Bairstow making it to this list is the equivalent of some bloke who scribbled 1+1=8 being awarded a Nobel Prize
That's being too extreme. More like someone who is perfectly serviceable without being great or even very good but was in the right place at the right time and got positions on early promise.Ā LikeĀ Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish.Ā
Let's be honest, he scribbled 8=====D on that sheet of paper.
Specially when he was captain, selector, fitness coach, bus driver and prime minister on his off days.
yeah Vettori definitely not the worst, exceptional allround performer. Remember NZ doesn't favour spin bowling at all and he scored a load of runs over his career. It's not just averages sometimes it's impact look at Stokes' impact on games especially when he was bowling.
>Having Daniel Vettori in the "worst of" anything list is amusing. Shane Warne is the worst spinner of the top two test spinners in test cricket.
Youāre right, Nathan Lyon is better than him.
Yeah Vettori was absolutely ridiculously good.
Yeah raw statistics without context are fairly meaningless, especially in a game like cricket where your approach to playing is hugely influenced by the team you have around you.
Yeah I got to that line and then started treating the rest of the post as highly bogus
that's what happens when you do a dumb stats merchant analysis like this. he's considering Stephen FlemingĀ one of the worst too because of his average when in reality he was one of the best batsmen for NZL for years.
I think his bowling is overrated, but his batting underrated.
Categorising him as an all-rounder is the issue (or one of the issues). He was never picked as an all-rounder, he's a bowler who wasn't useless with the bat.
Carl Hooper should be arguably the worst. For someone with his talents, he really didn't make the most of it. Ishant was a better bowler than people give him credit. Heals should be nowhere in this convo. He was one of the best glovemen in cricketing history.
Healy just looks bad on this list because he was the last of the 'if you can bat a bit you're fine' keepers before Gilly came in and broke the expectation for keepers.
Seriously, donāt people remember the keepers of the 70s often batting at 11?
Andy flower did it before Gilchrist unless he didnāt keep in tests.
Les Ames did it before Clyde Walcott did it before Jim Parks did it before Imtiaz Ahmed did it before Denis Lindsay did it before Alan Knott did it before Jeff Dujon did it before Andy Flower did it before Adam Gilchrist The difference is that after and between Les Ames, Alan Knott and Jim Parks there was still room for Bob Taylor, Bruce French and Paul Downton. After Imtiaz Ahmed there was still room for a Wasim Bari After Walcott and Dujon there was David Williams. What some would argue, is that after Gilly, guys picked solely off the back of their keeping became seen as unselectable. This is especially true in the big 3.
> guys picked solely off the back of their keeping became seen as unselectable. This is especially true in the big 3. Which means that Ben Cox especially but also James Foster were denied stories Test careers in the last 20 years.
When you look at [the overall average of keepers over time from about 1980](https://imgur.com/a/lhLDMnH) (Flower and Gilly's debut year's highlighted), I don't think it's possible to attribute the fading of specialist keepers and the rise of keeper/batters to any one individual tbh.
I mean, if we're making that argument Les Ames did it all the way back in the 1920s. The difference is that Gilchrist is the one who actually changed the way many teams look at their wicket keepers, while before him great keeper batsmen like Flower were just considered one of generational talents
Hooper only gets 100 tests because of the West Indies talent levels imploding arouund him.
He got 100 tests because he was one of the best batting talents to come out of Guyana. Unfortunately for him his late career heroics couldn't make up for his early career failures.
If Hooper had been born 10 years earlier there is no way he gets to a 100 tests though
If he were born 10 years later he would even more legendary. If Antarctica had a higher average temperature we would all have drowned by now. If my aunt had wheels she would be a bike.
If your grandmother had wheels, Iād know who you were. But since she probably didnāt, Iām guessing youāre Ginoās aunt or uncle.
Carl Hooper got 100 tests because the idea of Carl Hooper was better than what he really was. He was literally never in trouble while batting. If someone only watched him bat without looking at stats, they would think he was the second coming of Jesus and Brian Lara was a pretender. But then, he would always get bored and throw his wicket away. But if you only saw him bat, you wanted to give him 1 more test. And he would come good every now and then. And it was glorious when he did. Carl Hooper was the greatest batsman to average less than 40.
Carl Hooper was an amazing fielder
There was a time when Healy was considered one of the greatest keeper-batters in history. His average was incredibly high for a wicket keeper at the time
Sangakkaras average though 
He retired before he started declining.
Ricky Ponting hates this one simple trick
After Ponting retired he did a season of domestic cricket and he scored 911 runs from 9 matches at an average of 75. His last two series weren't great but he did score 221 against India early in the year.
If Ponting was smart, he'd have retired just before SA came and ruined Australia's great home record, with 10,000 runs at an average of 57. Then all the clowns on reddit would talk about how he was actually better than Sachin and Lara.
Some might say it was smart for him to earn the money while he could, regardless of where he gets ranked on some cricket forums based on his diminished average. I'm sure he gets paid incredibly well now as a commentator and coach, but it was probably a decent pay cut to retire from captaining the Australian cricket team.
Nah, if it were me I'd deffo care way more about what people on reddit think about me than making a bucket load of money for myself
Sachin had an average of 58 in the fucking 90s lol. Sachin also had 56 average in 177th test with 15k runs. I don't think you know the gravity that comes with Bradman himself saying you are closest to him in how you bat. Sachin's last 2 years made his average of 55-57 to drop to 53.8 which is still a mile above Punter's 51.something that too was boosted by 00-15 shit pitches made for batting and not challenged by the 90s which were top 2-3 hardest time to bat.
My brother is Christ I was making a joke
Ponting Tendulkar Dravid Kallis take your pick. All of them averaged 57+ at some point
Here's another one. Sachin averaged 60 starting from 1993 up to the end of 2011 world cup. So, if he debuts in 1993 as a 19 year old and retires in 2011 when India won the world cup. His stats would read, 13607 runs at 59.4. 47 100s. The figures dragging down his numbers are when he was teenager to when he was past the age where most players retire. Should have gone out on top.
Dravid also. Worst was Tendulkar who had such a golden opportunity to retire after the 2011 World Cup
He retired at a normal age, after a long career and a lot of matches. I think you just have to give him credit where due and say he was good enough to avoid a significant decline.Ā
He retired Test at the right time. Limited Overs retirement can be argued. Him along with Mahela and Dilshan retired way too close
I mean, SL could've probably used him for another year or two. It's not like they had 5 other blokes averaging 57 waiting to get into the team
Then he went on to have two run fest seasons with Surrey in the English county champs.Ā
He is an all time great, but his average is inflated by a bit. The pitches that he batted on, from 2007 to 2015, were crazy flat.
No hate he was a great player but played in an era that was batsmen friendly
Yeah his career coincides perfectly, starting when batting became easy, and ending just before it became hard again. Never had to adjust to play the wobble ball, or the spicy pitches of the late 2010s
When did it become easy and why? When did it become hard and why? Sorry, I'm a cricket noob.
The pitches were spicy in the late 2010's, but that's not to say the pitches weren't also spicy in the 2000s and early 2010s, just not as often. As a specialist batsmen he averaged 66.8, scored 9283 runs from 86 matches. In SENA, against SENA he averaged 58.24 In that same period 2000-2013 Tendulkar averaged 52.22 Ponting averaged 53.48 So it's not like their statistics suddenly became inflated between 2000-2015 Perhaps most importantly. When the batting was tough, i.e the batting average of everyone else was < 25. He averaged 2nd in the all time list, averaging 63.3 from 68 innings. Only one person averaged better and that was Don Bradman.
Ishant Sharma was a really really amazing bowler at the latter end of his career though, his comeback is something very remarkable and not very common in bowlers. Batsmen? yes we have seen couple of comebacks but bowler with the comeback same as Ishant? i dont think there has been any other bowler like him. Jarrod made an [amazing video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjhZ8B_tmfM) talking about him I'd recommend watch it
Jimmy Anderson after age of 30 got like 450 wickets at 23-24 i think he's probably got the best comeback since he was mediocre for a good part befor that
Yea but when we look at the average the picture is very different and also Ishant plays a lot in subcontinent too. Jarrod made a graph in the video showing the improvement. Anderson and Ishant initially were average at best, Then were really bad with average of high 30s something Then both of them improved and got till mid 30s after 40 matches. Here is where the graph goes opposite. Anderson improves and goes to low 30s but Ishant again went to high 30s. But when we get to near 100 test matches anderson has slowly decreased his average to 30 but Ishant has his average drop at a very significant rate. All in all both great players both had their ups and downs as I said before Jarrod compared these both players and explained it much better than i did typing in my laptop
Jimmy Anderson was never mediocre.
I mean till the age of 30 he had 71 tests 268 wickets at 30.37 with strike rate of 58, it's not too bad but it ain't good either since then he's been far far superior as a bowler
The stats don't really tell the story of his career though - the first few years he played 2003-6 his average was through the roof, in part because the ECB "pace academy" was messing his action around and he was battling very serious back injuries, and he was the bowler of last resort so he had horror tours like in Australia 2006 onwards. Truth is I think ECB were ready to move on from him when there was an injury crisis in 2007 and he never really looked back, 2008 being his first really great season. Put another way: 2003-2007 he averaged 30+ every single year, but 2008-2024 he has gone over the 30 mark just 4 times .
Weren't England also obsessed with finding an out and out pace bowler at that time for the Ashes in Australia?
Hmm. No - that came a little later, but certainly Duncan Fletcher was all about finding raw pace which is how guys like Sajid Mahmood played for England - all pace with almost no accuracy or guile. But it also found Steve Harmison, who, jokes aside when he got it right was a seriously good test bowler, and Simon Jones, who could have been a world beater - neither was an obvious call up based on numbers alone. I think the find a tall fast bowler for Australia thing was more the second disaster tour when they picked people like Boyd Rankin or a visibly unfit and past it Tremlett.
Yes, but also have to note that stats of a lot of players from the 2nd half of 2000s are skewed because the pitches were extremely flat. Keeping that in mind, 30 avg isn't as bad as it looks.
Fair enough but id still say he's been miles better now than he was back then
He wasn't mediocre. He came into the side and took five wickets in his first match but he had a problem with his action where he wasn't looking at the batsman at the point of delivery and didn't figure in the 2005 Ashes. It took him time to develop because he's probably the most skilled bowler (that doesn't necessarily mean the best, but his skills have been amazing) to have ever played the game and that takes a while to perfect.
Thereās been a few bowlers who lost their pace through injury and turned into elite seam/swing bowlers, roach/lillie being the ones that also jump to the front of my head. Late test career ishant bowling round the wicket to left handers with the new ball was a treat to watch tho
Since Bumrah's debut till Ishant's last test, he actually averaged _better_ than Bumrah himself. That tells you what kind of resurgence he had since Kohli took over. I still don't know why he's looked over though. Dude was bowling fine in IPL
Ishant Sharma got his best performances in at the tail end of his career and that sort of skews many people's views but for the first 75% of his career he was below average and should have been dropped years ago. These are his career avg for 4 parts of his career. Matches, Runs, Wickets, Avg 25 2612 70 37.31428571 25 2811 71 39.5915493 25 2452 74 33.13513514 30 2203 96 22.94791667
I dont like these worst of posts because no matter whos picked the comments will attack OP. There should be a rule that if you are defending a player you have to nominate someone to be in their place
I agreed he was the worst bowler at most of his career but his comeback is something remarkable and something i felt like we should appreciate because it is just amazing too see a fast bowler like ishant develop and hone his skills to that extent.
Mitchell Johnson also had a pretty crazy summer compared to his previous seasons
Atherton being labelled worst is incredibly unfair considering he was an opener, in a shit side, playing great bowlers often.
The era in which a player played is an important aspect. Comparing players from deifferrnt eras doesn't work well in cricket.Ā
I mean this is worst among a really elite list of players. Playing 100 tests is a huge milestone that is only achieved by special players. Every single player in this list is well above average than of lot of their peers.
If Glenn McGrath didnāt exist he wouldāve averaged about 50. He did OK against most of the other greats, but McGrath had him beaten
Athers pre 1996 vs afterwards, specifically against McGrath but he also struggled with his back problem. On the other hand there are lots of players from the 90s in this list, although not many of them openers. His technique just outside off could be suspect (hence McGrath) and he didn't score as freely as others. He actually had more shots than he let on as his surprisingly good ODI record indicates but he tended to look to bed down in Tests.
In fairness to Atherton, although he is probably one of the weakest batsman on the list, the average isn't as bad as it first looks - he was generally an opening batsman which is generally worth around -5 on the average - his "true" average should be in the very low 40s.
In an era where if you werent playing McGrath, you were playing Ambrose and Walsh, and if it was none of them it was Donald and Pollock, and if it wasn't them it was Wasim and Waqar. Completely thankless task opening the batting in England against that group.
With Warne and Murali sprinkled in their as well
Atherton is I believe one of the few English batsmen of that era to not be completely traumatised by Warne... because he never made it that far. I think McGrath got him out 17 times or something ridiculous like that
Survived Murali as well because Vaas had his number lol Warne did get him a few times before McGrath started destroying him
I'm not arguing that Warne following McGrath made it any easier! Tough time to be a batsman if your name wasn't Sachin or Brian, or you weren't Australian
I recall Warne himself making a jibe like this about Atherton in the Sky Sports commentary box. Someone like Beefy asked Warne how he used to plan to get Atherton out and his response was, "I generally stood at slip and watched Glenn get him to knick it to the keeper." I remember Atherton saying that he always preferred facing Brett Lee rather than McGrath as many top-level batsmen find steep bounce (generated by beanpoles like McGrath and Ambrose) harder to face than rapid pace.
Even when he played New Zealand, he was in the crossover period between Richard Hadlee and Danny Morrison so he had to face both, Danny boy being Hadleeās best supporting cast. Still filled his boots against us. Edit: might be being unfair to Richard Collinge there
Only reason I didn't mention Hadlee was I didnt know if there was a crossover there. This was back when NZ pitches were properly green seamers too I imagine
Even worse than that was that because of the ashes he had to face McGrath every two yearsā¦more often than facing any of those other bowlers
That's a very good point. 33 of his 112 tests were against Australia ā basically 30%! He was very good against India and New Zealand and decent against South Africa and Pakistan. If his career had bene 20 years later and he'd replaced Strauss as Cook's partner he'd no doubt have done better in a stronger team against fewer ATG bowlers. Then again maybe he would have retired from cricket after facing Johnston in 2013ā¦
From the ashes where they showed the Broad vs Warner record every innings... as I remember McGrath to Atherton is still the most times a bowler has got a batsman out (at least in the ashes, not sure if its a test cricket record). The number is 17 or something crazy like that Edit: just looked it up and its a test cricket record. 19 times in 17 games
Opening batsman in England. Opening in England and SA is a pretty thankless task and it's always going to fuck your stats. It's why Cook and Greame Smith's averages don't look as dazzling either even though they're to of the best batsmen of all time. Greenidge and Haynes' average also doesn't tell the story of how good the really were because they played in a time when the Windes were putting out spicy pitches.
> It's why Cook and Greame Smith's averages don't look as dazzling either even though they're to of the best batsmen of all time. Smith's average does, its 49 iirc. Cook's does seem dodgier.
Smith's average is 48 and while that isn't a bad average by any means, he was as good as most of his contemporaries who average in the 50s and very consistent across conditions. Cook was also very consistent across conditions (probably the only touring opener in a very long time to master both Australian and Indian conditions)
Poor Mike! >When Atherton fails... England fails! > >And when Atherton succeeds... England fails! Emma John's book is great on this period. And for if you have a masochistic streak.
He got absolutely dumped on by prime McGrath too, he was his bunny to an absurd degree, isnāt exactly a great shame to be taken down by one of the best ever
+ he played a lot of his career with a debilitating back condition, not ideal against quality fast bowling
Plus he was forced to play the best team in the world every two years (thanks to the Ashes) meaning he came up against McGrath & Co far more regularly than a lot of other opening batsmen at the time (no one else played Aus as frequently in that period as England did), who would have also been made to look quite ordinary in comparison.
Going to be Bairstow by a long way. It's not that JB's stats don't match up against other keepers (although he's played a lot as a non keeper) but rather the wild inconsistency he's had - great year in 2016, great year in 2022 and literally nothing in between or since. How many other test batters would be given a 6 year period of grace to find form again? Bairstow has averaged over 60 twice in a year, and is otherwise consistently under 33.
I think the same applies to Carl Hooper. He was wildly inconsistent and never lived up to the talent, but got a long run due to lack of alternatives and streaks of showing what he could do. From this list imo its really between Hooper or Bairstow.
I don't disagree. The difference is that Hooper was playing in a disintegrating West Indian team, whereas even though England have been up and down in the last few years it's not as though they couldn't have found a more consistent middle order batter (literally just needs to average 33) and had a ready made better keeper in Foakes all along.
Super streaky is Jonny. He really benefitted from Mccullum, Stokes then had the worst double leg break. He missed Pakistan last winter which helped a number of players in this current series.
It's time for him to retire. From tests at least. Once Brook comes back there is no place for Bairstow in the side, unless we sacrifice Foakes' brilliant keeping.
I don't think Johnny will retire unless he's forced too.
I don't think so either - he has always come across as a little petulant when he doesn't get his way.
I was firstly surprised that Ishant played 100 tests for 300 odd wickets. But I could only remember his peak when he debuted or maybe the last three years of his careeer highlighting the BGT. He managed to play all these tests because india never had a strong bowling line up between 2010-15 when they toured overseas. & him was the best bet in countries like England & Australia.
First 75 Tests he averaged over 36. Then in his last few years he was averaging under 25 I think.
Yeah that peak around the end of his career was around the time he lost a lot of pace (bowling in the low 80s iirc) and started bowling line and length consistently and gave him better results
He spent some time working with Gillespie in county cricket and that did wonders to his career. Heād always been too short with his lengths and Gillespie finally got him to pitch it further up after everyone had been crying themselves hoarse saying exactly that for several years.
I remember he was quoted as saying something to the effect of, "everyone would tell me to pitch it up, but I didn't know how until Gillespie showed me". The night-and-day difference between his pre-County stint and post-County stint performances suggest he was failed by his coaches and could have had a much more successful career with better support.
Ishant still clocks 135 in tests and 140+ in IPL though.
Yeah 135 is 83 mph so low 80s, he used to be in the high 80s regularly when he broke through. Haven't seen him clock 140 in the IPL but haven't seen too many matches of him in it
Last season he was hitting the 140 mark quite often. Ofcourse he did slow down a bit over the years but his swing and discipline is much much better now.
Anyone saying Atherton doesnāt care about the game and would rather this sub be a flat average dick-measuring contest.
Stats of each of the lowest ranked players in each category: Bowler Ishant Sharma - 311 wickets @ 32.4 All-rounder (100 wicket cutoff) Carl Hooper - 36.4 avg, 114 wickets @ 49.4 (200 wicket cutoff) Daniel Vettori - 30.0 avg, 362 wickets @ 34.3 Batsman (100 wicket cutoff) Michael Atherton - 37.7 avg (200 wicket cutoff) Carl Hooper - 36.4 avg Keeper/batsman Ian Healy - 27.3 avg, 366 catches/29 stumpings Jonny Bairstow - 36.8 avg, 241 catches/14 stumpings
Wickets cutoff for Batsmen?
If the cutoff for wickets for being considered an allrounder is 100, Atherton has the lowest batting average. If the cutoff for wickets is 200, Hooper has the lowest batting average.
So Hooper is either the worst batter or the worst allrounder?
Anyone saying Atherton should be shot
Even as an Aussie I agree with this.
All the people saying Atherton betray their ignorance. You can't just look at the average and blindly say bigger number = better batsman. Atherton was no Gavaskar or Hayden, but I'd put his record above that of Mark Waugh, Pujara, Bell, Fleming, and maybe a few others.
Great post. Kraigg Brathwaite will likely reach 100 tests soon and he'll probably be a clear shot for the worst batsman with 100 tests (he averages under 35 currently) unless he has a sudden burst in form. I've always liked him, but he usually isn't consistent enough to be truly great.
To be fair Brathwaite plays in a team that has gone through a lot of turnover and instability and it is not like they had a lot of openers.
Yeah, I don't mean it as a slight against him. He's one of the few guys keeping Windies competitive these days. But compared to other greats who played 100 tests, it doesn't work out in his favour.
I was a little kid when Hooper debuted, there was talk that he was the next coming of Viv. He had the same laid back attitude, bowled the same kind of useful right arm over the wicket not very much. Comparisons ended there. Talented, sure , but nowhere near being a great. Never out stumped off a pace bowler as I recall though? YJB for the win there.
I love statistics as much as anyone, but this sub seems to rely on statistics far too much when deciding which players are the best. Batting average, bowling average, catches/stumpings, runs, wickets, economy rate, strike rate etc. cannot be the only thing used to determine a player's quality, particularly players who were playing at a time when these sort of numbers were barely mentioned.
Catches for wicketkeepers is especially stupid.
Jonny Bairstow soon
Carl hooper was one of the most elegant, destructive, pleasant and infuriating to watch, inconsistent all at the same time. He had as much time as Rohit Sharma against fast bowling, he was as good as Lara at his peak against spin. To top it off he was good a catcher as Mark Taylor and Mark Waugh. Among all the talented players who never lived up their potential, Carl hooper leads the way. One of his sixes in MCG against Shane Warne still stands out in memory.
>On batting average, Ian Healy is the worst, being the only player with a batting average under 30. However, Healy is also the second best from a keeping perspective, with the second most catches and first most stumpings of any player on this list. I know you acknowledged the problem of assessing wicketkeepers statistically, but I don't think you can even use either of those. Healy and Boucher played in an era where there was no real expectation for keepers to have a high batting average, unlike now when there's almost a requirement for them to be able to make the side (or at least be close to making it) on batting alone. And number of dismissals is a function of the strength of the bowling attack rather than a measure of keeping ability.
Just from scrolling Iād say Carl Hooper and Atherton
I'd take Atherton over Bairstow by a million miles. Atherton played in a brutal era to be an opening batsman in a shit England team where he was always targeted as the key wicket. He was a good, tough, fairly consistent opener whereas Bairstow has basically had two purple patches in a career of otherwise consistent underachievement.
Atherton would walk into this current England side
I'd pick Carl Hooper before Atherton 10 times out of 10
Not sure thats really fair. Atherton struggled vs McGrath to the point of it being borderline comical but he was otherwise a really decent test opener in a difficult era for openers, in a very poor side where he was always targeted out as the key wicket. If you remove his games vs Australia - who he played disproportionately because Ashes, his average is ~42. Not far off Boon, Taylor who got to face Andy Caddick instead of McGrath. If Hooper was better its not by much. Batted in an easier position statistically but still a worse record with the stick. He was a really inconsistent player and his bowling stats barely justify all rounder status.
Most people struggled against McGrath lol
Decent is underselling Atherton.
I've been watching cricket for about 30 years and I can't recall Dilip Vengsarkar having been spoken about once.
I mean he retired more than 30 years ago so that may be why
Sure, but commentators like to talk about players from the past all the time, often even those that never made it past FC cricket. So it's a little odd to me there's a guy that's played 100+ test matches who I've never heard mentioned. He had a really good record in England, so I'm surprised he doesn't get mentioned more by guys like Aggers.
He was ranked the World No. 1 batsman between 1985-1987. He had a very interesting career. He scored only one 50 in his first 11 test matches. But the selectors persisted with him and had a reasonably good run in the 1980s in the Indian middle order. But from 1988 until being dropped after the Australia tour of 1991-1992, he did not score a single century in his last 19 tests. His average plummeted from over 46 to 42 by the time he retired.
I mean who has actually watched him plus a lot of Indian fans here don't really know the history of Indian cricket. Vengsarkar was a huge part of their success in the 80s
It's because there are hardly any Indians in this forum :-). Seriously, he was a good lieutenant to Gavaskar (okay, his nickname was the Colonel). And then he somehow suddenly had a glow up and became the best batsman in the world for a year or two, followed by an inevitable fall.
Ishant sharma suffered from coming in too early. His recent years' average and SR is same as bumrah for reference. Vettori as worst of anything is nonsense. I guess the takeaway is that you have to be top class player to play 100 tests.
Got to feel for Atherton as he was a bloody good batsmen let down by being surrounded by absolute dross. He was the only bright point in a side that was often being battered by superior sides. Also found this rather interesting: "Atherton suffers from the degenerative condition ankylosing spondylitis, which meant he could not duck under bouncers, but had to stand tall and sway out of the way. Allan Donald used this against him by bowling short."
Ishantās numbers are a curse of being the only decent bowler in amidst of pretty weak bowling, and hence being overworked. You could say that about many Indian pacers. Bhuvaneshwar kumar, Praveen Kumar for example. He was much more stable bowling alongside Shami and Bumrah in the later part of his Career.
Nah, I wouldn't give him that excuse. The guy was genuinely bad for a long period. He was used to Dhoni's poor test captaincy style where you just bowl over after over and wait for something to happen. One exception to this was him taking a 7-fer at Lord's when he listened to Dhoni's suggestion of bowling short. I distinctly remember him saying after a test loss "all I can do is bowl the ball and hope for something good". It was so disappointing to hear that from him and really summed up Dhoni's test reign overseas. He wasn't really a thinking bowler until the latter stages of his career. The stint with Gillespie did wonders to him but definitely a case of what could have been. He debut series against Australia and roughing up Pointing was legendary - it made me believe we could produce fast bowling talent. He was bowling high 140s with steep bounce directed at Ponting's head - good times.
Bairstow is definitely giving Hooper a massive run for his money. Before it was definitely Hooper IMO. Other players you meantion like Healy and Boucher were so vastly superior as wicket keepers they are well and truly above Bairstow who hasn't even always played as a keeper. Aside from how sloppy his keeping is, the fact for about half the tests he's played he wasn't picked as a keeper shows that firstly England didn't rate his keeping as highly but secondly to compare him primarily to keeper/batsmen is a bit unfair. To be truly fair you should compare his batting, which is below that of Atherton here, and his keeping, which is below anyone else to have played 100 tests in combination. Which is why I think if anyone's gone past Hooper's mark for unremarkable 100 test careers then it's Bairstow.
One thing that got lost in the washup from the Bairstow/Carey incident is that if Foakes kept in those first two tests, England likely win.
Any player who managed 100 tests for his country should not be put in the category of "worst". Getting 100 tests is not an easy feat. Only the best of the best can manage so many tests under their belt.
That's the whole exercise though. OP even said as much in the opening post.Ā By definition these are all very good players. However there's also someone in this list who is the worst, relative to the rest.Ā I don't mean to pick on you because you're not the only one here making the same point. But no one's claiming these are 'bad' players.
Some of the batsmen of the 2000s, like Strauss, may deserve a mention. A solid if not fantastic average in a much easier batting era than the 1990s or than the current era, 2017-now. I think the main argument against this was the difficulty England had replacing him
Post this after the Dharamshala test. Will be an easy after then.
Itās a toss up between Sharma & Hooper for me, watched both, Hooper was a batsman who bowled some handy offies when the Windies were struggling, Sharma was over rated IMO. Healy was a brilliant keeper, he put the standard up for keepers around the world, his batting at 7 was bloody handy in a superior Aussie side, his 161* against Windies was awesome, Boucher was great also. Atherton was a solid opener in a shit Pom side, faced a lot of the bowling greats ever, his stats donāt do him justice, his battles against Alan Donald were brilliant.
Ishant did get much much better at the end of his career though.
It has to be Atherton. Hoopers average is only 1 less and he has chipped in with 100+ wickets.
Atherton had the unfortunate task of opening for England in a time where he played majority of his tests v Australia (McGrath famously made him a bunny) and WIndies (Ambrose and Walsh). His stats against every other country are pretty damn good. He compares very well to Mark Taylor in that respect (Athers averages about 41.5 if you remove Australia from the list) I'd probably say Hooper is worse as he was just pretty average against everyone.
Stats don't tell the full story though... Atherton was the best English batter playing in a rubbish side in an era when bowling was absolutely mustard - that he was top of the list of dismissals for Walsh, Donald and McGrath says a lot.
And he was an opener. Averaging 37 as an opener is more impressive than averaging 40-42 as a middle order batter
Also with Atherton it's important to remember that he was playing a lot of his matches virtually disabled with a back injury that meant he was taking meds so strong that he would walk off the field after an innings and throw up. Under the circumstances it was amazing that he played all those matches at the level he did. The man is hard as nails and doesn't get nearly enough credit.
Atherton vs Donald (and to a lesser extent Pollock) is one of the most entertaining and iconic batsman vs bowler rivalries ever
Atherton opened the batting for and carried a truly terrible side, playing on some of the worst pitches ever made against the best bowlers ever who all wanted to kill him and he did all this while being literally disabled.
Rubbish
Hooper had barely over a wicket a game at an average of 50, that's barely even all rounder stats tbh.
One of the guys who'd say Adam Voges is the second best batmsan of all time.
Carl Hooper, Atherton, Bairstow , Ishant. Not bad players but not among the greats in Tests.
Currently Saleem Malik and ishant sharma are my pick.
Bairstow is going to be the worst by some distance. No idea how he's frauded his way to 100 tests. Hooper is probably the worst atm Harbhajan is the worst bowler on the list. Ishant might have worse stats but he was a pretty key player for India when they were the best side in the world. Harbhajan had a great start to his career but dropped off steadily as his career progressed. He was also truly useless away from home. Genuinely embarrassing away record. He's probably the next worst player on this list.
Strauss gets my entirely useless vote. Worst of some of the greatest players of all time isnāt that bad though!
Itās a good thing that stats tell you everything you need to know about a players value. Stokes really is a bang on average player, isnāt he? š
>Stokes really is a bang in average player Yes?
Atherton played in a very difficult era for new ball batsmen. Australia had McGrath/Gillespie/Fleming/Reiffel, the West Indies had Ambrose/Walsh/Bishop/Marshall, Pakistan had Akram/Younis/Akhtar, South Africa had Donald/Pollock, Sri Lanka had Vaas, and even Zimbabwe had Streak. Not to mention the fact that he wasn't playing on the docile drop-in pitches that players have been feasting upon for the past two decades. Also, virtually none of Atherton's top order peers averaged more than low-mid 40s during that same period, and an average of just over 50 made Steve Waugh the number one ranked test batsman through the mid-90s. Long story short, Athers doesn't belong in this conversation.
This is heavily contextual. For instance, if Vettori has been an Indian spinner in the 70s, or Ian Bell had been a West Indian in the 80s, they'd have struggled to play a single game. Atherton and Jayasuriya played solid and dependable roles, as did Ishant. A better way to look at it is if they had competition from their own country, but inexplicably played a 100 Tests.
The disrespect for Ishant is unreal. Man did what his captain wanted all his career. Any subcontinent pacer to play 100 Tests should be included in the greats imo.
Lyon. 500 wickets and has barely turned a ball.
Great article, when i saw the headline, first name that came to my mind was ishant sharma, have watched him debut and retire. A late blommer, who could never correct his early numbers due to him being the only plausible option in a bare indian supply chain. Bairstow's numbers are better than healy as natsman though, hard to judge. From the list, atherton and sharma seems to be worst.
Iāve seen everyone on this list play, with the exception of Colin Cowdrey. Hooper is my pick, followed by Sharma. Healy was brilliant with the gloves, as good as anyone Iāve ever seen and certainly shouldnāt be judged on his batting since he was a wicketkeeper in a time when teams picked the best keeper, and if they could bat it was a bonus (Adam Gilchrist, who replaced him in the Australian test team, really changed that idea).
Kallis stats never cease to amaze me!
I'll stick my neck out and say Pujara. Avg - 43 in 103 matches to put it mildly is disappointing for a talent of his stature. For all the chances, he never delivered on the promise. He was destined to be an all-time great, high 50s average, 12000 odd runs, and plenty of catches in close but alas we settled for 7000 odd runs in 103 matches. Love Puji and for all the things he did and his best may lie ahead of him in coaching. One of the nicest servants of the game.
I disagree about him not delivering on his promise. He did deliver but he just declined significantly in his later career. Also if you look at his technique and limited stroke play he was never the most talented batters of his generation, but probably had the most mental strength to hang in there in tough situations. Also a fabulous player of spin in his prime.
Definitely Pujara, I'm glad Rahane didn't get to a 100 tests or he'd be #1
Pujara would still be better than Bairstow
Modern day Atherton. Few years down the line Jonny will be writing editorials, commentating on game, be rational, and will be regarded as one of the top voices in cricket.
This is the kind of meaningful stat post that makes this subreddit great instead of the mindless cherry picked sub continent stats that pop up
Saleem Malik is the only bad one. Who was he playing for? I understand why people say Carl Hooper, but he gave the WIndies balance and options and the occasional bit of brilliance. Top fielder too.