The greatest of them all

Dear Mr. Xolile please go for the stats of Sobers and Kallis. In my first comments I said Sir Don is best of his era means I am not saying that he is not excellent. Dear Neutral fan, playing amatuers does not mean that all are amatuers. I have not said he is amatuer, it is your own assumption. Fastest bowler faced by him was Larwood. Without body line series he took only 45 wickets with bowling average 34.8. Highest wicket taker in fast bowling was Allen only 82 wickets. His average was best because in his own team no one has batting average more than 50-55 against England. Like Headley with average 71.23 as compare to him 89.78 but he played several timeless matches as compare to him only one timeless test against England. Even there is argument that who is actual better quality wise as Headley came from W. Indies. For English batsmen, it was very difficult to face Grimmett, Reilly, IronMonger and Gregory in timeless matches and in England, Aus spinners became most destructive.

Xoxile, thanks for clarifying the CLT. Not sure whether your running example can be used as a point of "judgment". It can be used to rank "actual performance" but not whether who was the greatest runner. Greater fitness and evolution will enable current generations to always run faster on average than previous generations. Waspsting has brought up an issue which would raise more anomalies with you and your calculations. If you downgrade the players of the past so much in your rating system, then you get issues where good players (but not great players) of this era consistently outperform the great players pre-1960s. That doesn't sit well with me, and I'm sure it will sit well with many others.

@nivek123. So whats your point? Is he head and shoulders ahead of all other cricketers? Even if someone consider him better than Lara he would be fractionally ahead. And as far as comparison with Bradman is concerned, it defies no logic. May be I am a little biased but not like some Indians who were saying that Wasim was an ordinary bowler. There were only two or three such comments but they were really strange. Sachin is great but definitely not greater than Sunny. Have you watched him bat?

@BillyCC - CLT is not going to get you there. We're dealing with a population that is certainly positively skewed. And freaks of nature are extremely rare. Consider the 100m sprint in athletics. Everybody has a go at running at some point. Chances are that if you have talent it will be spotted. Nevertheless, we can count the number of athletes that have dipped below 9.85 on our fingers. Usian Bolt stunned us all be clocking 9.58. Now let's assume for a moment that Bradman is "Boltesque". And the next bets batsman is the equivalent of a 9.85 runner. How do you explain the difference in batting average of more than 60%? It doesn't stack up. Bradman was good, no doubt; but he cannot be as good as his Test average suggests. To conclude: I am happy to accept that he is the best there ever was; but I can never accept that he is more than 5% better than the next best guy. That puts him firmly in the 55 to 60 range.

@ZA77. Think about what u r saying. If the bowlers of the time were "amateurs" that means Bradman and the batsmen of his time were amateurs also=THE SAME LEVEL.The same way players now are of the same level. And Bradman was the undisputed king of that level more so than any other player b-4 or since. If there were 5 or so others avg.90, do u think persons with objectivity would say he was the greatest ever? The truth is no-1 of his time or since has ever matched his dominance over peers. Why don't u say suppose Bradman was a professional (getting paid a lot and pampered for playing like modern cricketers), how much greater he would have been? U'r too bias and stuck in your ways, I believe. Guys like u need to learn to admire other great cricketers and not just those u like to see. THe stats are there, the footage is there, the detailed reports are there. All eras have pros and cons and eventually balance out.

@AhmadSaleem. Your argument for Lara is flawed. Lara had bowlers like Walsh and Ambrose. Indian bowlers weren't as good as them. West Indies pitches are the flattest around. Tendulkar has done better than Lara in Australia, England, New Zealand, India. Lara has only bettered Tendulkar in SRL, West Indies and Pakistan and we know about the pitches there. Please don't bring that Pakistan bias against Tendulkar here bro. Cheers.

I suppose if Tendulkar is better than Bradman, then Ramiz Raja and Salman Butt are better than Jack Hobbs, George Headley and Wally Hammond... hmmm....

@xolile: Exactly, tha'ts the point. If you see Lara's stats, he has out performed many of his team mates by a huge margin and the pacers played in his team averaged in low 20s. It shows that he played on less batting friendly surfaces and still he managed to get those runs in an epic way. Lara was best batsman for 90s, Ponting was best for 2ks. Sachin was probably more consistent but the reason has been mentioned by xolile. Still, I think what McGrath is to bowling is Sachin to the batting but his fans always over hype him.

@ZA77 - The following stats are easy to verify with StatsGuru. With Tendulkar in the team, only 8 Indian pace bowlers have taken more than 50 wickets. Here are their names and averages: Srinath 30.65; Zaheer 32.79; Prabhakar 36.62; Kapil Dev 32.13; Prasad 35.90; Pathan 34.22; Sharma 40.07; Agarkar 47.32. Also consider that with Tendulkar in the team, 21 Indian batsmen have scored more than 1000 runs. Of these the following averaged at least 85% of what Tendulkar averaged: Tendulkar 56.02; Dravid 53.33; Laxman 48.68; Sehwag 55.69; Gambhir 54.04; and Kambli 54.20. To me this clearly shows that Tendulkar has not outperformed his Indian peers by a significant margin. It also suggests, when taking into account the stats for the Indian pace bowlers, that Tendulkar has benefited from playing in batsmen friendly conditions. May I conclude by referring you to the Test stats for Sobers and Kallis.

Xoxile, by the way, I hope my application of the Central Limit Theorem is right. Haven't touched stats for a while. If not, then perhaps you can help me clarify.