Sports 🏏 Black Caps
- Thread starter jonesy101
- Start date
NZWarriors.com
PM to me by a poster:
1) Yes this is an acknowledged problem. It is not so much pitches that are variable, although they very much are, the bigger problem is the variability in the international bowling attacks from each era to era. Eg, the 1980s averages are often observed as being a bit lower as the West Indies fearsome attack was in its pomp. And also to your point it has been observed there were more green tops in the 1980s than now.
2) One person on the site I used to belong to made standardised test averages where they discounted or raised people's batting averages by up to 3 or 4 runs based on the decade they came from and he factored in everything into account such as the strength of the bowling oppositions. There was no real changing of the guard at the top of the all time great test batting averages and the only real adjustments were of interest to trainspotters such as perhaps, and I am making this up, Stephen Fleming might have had his batting average lifted from 40 to 43 and Crowe from 45 to 48. But really the pantheon and conclusions and pecking orders weren't greatly re-shuffled by his analysis so perhaps that is a partial answer to your question.
3) In general test match batting averages are regarded as being highly reflective how good someone is and the rankings are perceived as allowing comparisons between players from the 1960s to today on an apples to apples basis by most people. Many don't like going too much further back than that though in terms of giving credibility to older stats. While Bradman's 99.94 is reveered and everyone thinks he deserves it and was that good. Cricket from that era of the 1920s 19030s and earlier doesn't show well in some footage. The fast bowlers like Larwood were genuinely as good as anything today and the spinners were as good as Ashwin is today however there were a plethora of nuffy bowlers in the attacks who gave the good bowlers a rest and the likes of Hammond and even Bradman could fill their boots against bowlers about as good as Colin Munro's bowling if you remember him. So this allowed the top batsman respite before the fast bowler was reintroduced.
In general the point I am making here is that you most analysts readily compare across generations back about as far back as 1960 and then they start making caveats and being more careful.
In Summary - people tend to be aware each decade is easier to harder than the previous but they just compare the averages anyway and then if challenged concede that the person yes has an inflated average because of the era it is or a deflated average as the case maybe. Again because the variance would "only" be 3 or 4 runs if normalised then people don't get too concerned about this issue.
It does become heavily discussed when making a list of the greatest 50 players of all time in exact order but for all of us 50 runs is something of a gold standard for truly great batsman and has been for over 120 years. And low twenties is the target average for all bowlers and has been for over a century as well (exempting the 1800s when some demon bowlers averages 12 or 13 in a season of county cricket).
