Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

In for Mitch3? Or Jackson Bird if Mitch2 is injured.

Averages away from home :

Smith : 53.94
Williamson : 46.88
Kohli : 45.13
Root : 44.60


Career averages :

Kohli : 53.75
Root : 52.45
Williamson : 50.62

Smith's away average is higher than the overall averages of the other 3.

Smith doesn't look like a real great bat whenever I do watch him, but his stats tell it differently. 15 tons in 30 tests at 75 is remarkable. Still 25 short of the Don's career average, mind.

I'll ignore the rather infantile comment shanky, but I'm not sure what you are arguing against?

4 roads and he's averaging like bradman on steroids. 3 decent pitches, his average become pretty human?

The point raised is his average is clearly inflated by the home pitches he is playing on.

How many of those players on the link provided averaged 80 at home? How many times did Steve Waugh get to perth and find that mid pitch bouncers were taken on the half volley by a keeper? Or Melbourne pitches with no pace or bounce? Or gabba wickets with nothing in them?

I'd love to have seen Smith batting in the 80s in the windies.

Arthur Crabtree wrote:

shankycricket wrote:Narratives against facts https://twitter.com/imjsk27/status/943086885764702208

I think the feeling going around is that Smith is no longer being judged against his contemporaries but the legends. That stat actually does him no favours because it shows him close in the pack with his contemporaries. Although it's a good stat if people are arguing that he's not one of the best players of his time, which presumably no one is.

I think its soon to compare him with legends. He is not even halfway through his career yet. He should only be compared against his contemporaries who are at similar stages in their careers. It is ridiculous that a batsman gets criticized for scoring runs on flat tracks. Almost as if people would rate him higher if he failed on these flat tracks at home as his away record would stand out more in that case. But scoring more runs at home just seems to dwarf his away heroics all the more and is used as a stick to beat him up with. Do you even realize how silly that sounds? It is the same with Rafael Nadal in tennis, who is often termed as a "clay court specialist" despite winning 6 slams on grass and hard courts (same as the likes of Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg, who are rated as ATGs for solely their exploits on those surfaces) but in Nadal's case, those 6 slams dwarf in comparison to his 10 French Open titles. His exploits on HC and Grass would be rated a lot higher if he won fewer French Opens. See how that sounds?

Gingerfinch wrote:Smith doesn't look like a real great bat whenever I do watch him, but his stats tell it differently. 15 tons in 30 tests at 75 is remarkable. Still 25 short of the Don's career average, mind.

agreed

every time you watch him you think he must be vulnerable to lbw after walking across his stumps as much as he does but his hands are just so good that he hardly misses

most batting is a combination of hand-eye co-ordination and technique, for someone to rely so much on his hand-eye co-ordination without a soild technique to back it up, and be so consistent, is pretty remarkable

sussexpob wrote:I'll ignore the rather infantile comment shanky, but I'm not sure what you are arguing against?

4 roads and he's averaging like bradman on steroids. 3 decent pitches, his average become pretty human?

The point raised is his average is clearly inflated by the home pitches he is playing on.

How many of those players on the link provided averaged 80 at home? How many times did Steve Waugh get to perth and find that mid pitch bouncers were taken on the half volley by a keeper? Or Melbourne pitches with no pace or bounce? Or gabba wickets with nothing in them?

I'd love to have seen Smith batting in the 80s in the windies.

Why should his inflated home record be held against him when he has done better away from home than his contemporaries have home and away combined? And if you just look at the away averages, he is again 7 runs higher than the next highest Williamson and 6 runs higher than Root or Kohli.

rich1uk wrote:

Gingerfinch wrote:Smith doesn't look like a real great bat whenever I do watch him, but his stats tell it differently. 15 tons in 30 tests at 75 is remarkable. Still 25 short of the Don's career average, mind.

agreed

every time you watch him you think he must be vulnerable to lbw after walking across his stumps as much as he does but his hands are just so good that he hardly misses

most batting is a combination of hand-eye co-ordination and technique, for someone to rely so much on his hand-eye co-ordination without a soild technique to back it up, and be so consistent, is pretty remarkable

He does look like he could get out at any time, but he's also a dogged batsman.

shankycricket wrote:

sussexpob wrote:I'll ignore the rather infantile comment shanky, but I'm not sure what you are arguing against?

4 roads and he's averaging like bradman on steroids. 3 decent pitches, his average become pretty human?

The point raised is his average is clearly inflated by the home pitches he is playing on.

How many of those players on the link provided averaged 80 at home? How many times did Steve Waugh get to perth and find that mid pitch bouncers were taken on the half volley by a keeper? Or Melbourne pitches with no pace or bounce? Or gabba wickets with nothing in them?

I'd love to have seen Smith batting in the 80s in the windies.

Why should his inflated home record be held against him when he has done better away from home than his contemporaries have home and away combined? And if you just look at the away averages, he is again 7 runs higher than the next highest Williamson and 6 runs higher than Root or Kohli.

The stats you provide in the link suggests smiths performance away is within 0.2 runs of amla and a small dot more than AB. Unsure why Williamson is there quoted as the best, you seem to providing conflicting numbers. Which are true?

Ita key to note, most batsman on the list have not got a huge difference between away and home performance. Averages are pretty consistent, say 5 runs margin is common between home/away and career average. Smith is 25 odd, which would suggest a huge difference in lurch standards.

One could argue he's just that good, and that his Home form is unsurpassed. Yet, voges out averages him on the same pitches and same games. So that can't be true. His home form has been surpassed by someone else in the same team. So that doesn't cut it.

His away form shows he is the best bat around, his home form suggests the extent is very much distorted.

Not that I am holding it against him, the point raised was that Aussie pitches are so dead now they inflate averages heavily. I said he'd probably average 10 runs less in another era.

So he'd average 53 odd. Which is what, the same as Tendulkar? So yeah, my point is clearly he is rubbish.

Maybe listen for a change

sussexpob wrote:

shankycricket wrote:

sussexpob wrote:I'll ignore the rather infantile comment shanky, but I'm not sure what you are arguing against?

4 roads and he's averaging like bradman on steroids. 3 decent pitches, his average become pretty human?

The point raised is his average is clearly inflated by the home pitches he is playing on.

How many of those players on the link provided averaged 80 at home? How many times did Steve Waugh get to perth and find that mid pitch bouncers were taken on the half volley by a keeper? Or Melbourne pitches with no pace or bounce? Or gabba wickets with nothing in them?

I'd love to have seen Smith batting in the 80s in the windies.

Why should his inflated home record be held against him when he has done better away from home than his contemporaries have home and away combined? And if you just look at the away averages, he is again 7 runs higher than the next highest Williamson and 6 runs higher than Root or Kohli.

The stats you provide in the link suggests smiths performance away is within 0.2 runs of amla and a small dot more than AB. Unsure why Williamson is there quoted as the best, you seem to providing conflicting numbers. Which are true?

Ita key to note, most batsman on the list have not got a huge difference between away and home performance. Averages are pretty consistent, say 5 runs margin is common between home/away and career average. Smith is 25 odd, which would suggest a huge difference in lurch standards.

One could argue he's just that good, and that his Home form is unsurpassed. Yet, voges out averages him on the same pitches and same games. So that can't be true. His home form has been surpassed by someone else in the same team. So that doesn't cut it.

His away form shows he is the best bat around, his home form suggests the extent is very much distorted.

Not that I am holding it against him, the point raised was that Aussie pitches are so dead now they inflate averages heavily. I said he'd probably average 10 runs less in another era.

So he'd average 53 odd. Which is what, the same as Tendulkar? So yeah, my point is clearly he is rubbish.

Maybe listen for a change

Fair enough.

As I said, you look at some of the home stats and how generally the best batsman in the last few decades have performed home/away relative to overall performance, the numbers here don't add up at all. They are very one sided.

Khawaja, Warner and Handscomb all average over 55. Smith is near 80. Shaun M is over 40.... Voges up near 90...

If these are indicative of overall talent, and fall within that usual 5 run swing either way, that would be enough to suggest this is the best line up of all time.

Yet, how many tests are they winning away? Hardly any.

And yet, how many of these players smack of basic test match class? I'd say Smith would get in the all decade team for Australia, would anyone else? Warner maybe a spot as 12th man

Last thing I'll say....take the top ranked players in the icc list who have toured Australia in recent years....

Kohli, azhar ali, williamson, de kock, ross Taylor, chandimal are all top 10 players who averaged over 80 in their respective series.

Seems the best batsman all find batting on these pitches equally as easy

Only Amla and Root aren't killing it.

It's not happening in this series though. No one else has more than one ton on either side. All the England players are struggling. Paine, Handscom, Bancroft, Khawaja average under 40. Smith has half again the runs Warner has, twice the total of S.Marsh, four times the rest... The pitches have been good enough to produce results (and there would have been one at the MCG if Smith hadn't dropped Cook on 50...).

Smith is the best batsman amongst his contemporaries in test cricket. Technically definitely he is not even in average class, but performance wise he is surpassing the best test batters of this era.

It is wrong to call him a flat track bully. He has a superb average in all countries. There is no country where he has flopped.

In Australia-58.41
In Bangladesh-54.58
In England-58.97
In India-46.61
In New Zealand-65.66
In South Africa-58.35
In Sri Lanka-51.67
In U.A.E.-40.55
In West Indies-52.6