In the latest episode of the podcast, we discuss the idea of greatness in cricket. What do we mean when we say a player is ‘great’, how does one compare across eras, and what are the pitfalls we fall into when discussing greatness.
Apple Podcasts
SpotifyTalking Points:
- Greatness as a measurement of a player’s performance against their peers
- The habit of putting down one player as one elevates another
- The need for a transcendent moment for a player to be anointed ‘great’
- The fallacy of the match-winning innings
- Lillee v Cummins: the complexity of comparing two great bowlers
- The power of nostalgia in talking about greatness – the Andy Roberts problem
- Great batsmen in weak teams and great bowlers in strong teams
- The problem with recency bias when judging greatness
- Is this South African team better than the teams from the 1990s and 2000s?
- The high benchmark for subcontinental players in foreign conditions
Participants:
Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)
Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd)
Kartikeya Date (@cricketingview)
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India (hardback) | India (paperback, e-copy); Australia (hardback, paperback, e-copy); USA (hardback, paperback, e-copy); UK (hardback, paperback, e-copy); Canada (hardback, paperback, e-copy)
Related:
- The line of greatness – Siddhartha Vaidyanathan – The Cricket Monthly
- Wisden 100 – Wikipedia
- Who are the greatest T20 players of all – Kartikeya Date – ESPNcricinfo
- Who are the best batsmen of each decade – Anantha Narayanan – ESPNcricinfo
- The Richards standard for ODI batsmen – Kartikeya Date – ESPNcricinfo
- Alpha Average – Mahesh Sethuraman – Blogspot
- Clutch, pressure, choke: the language of cricketing discourse – 81allout podcast
- A new measure for cricketing greatness – Andy Bull – Guardian
- An all-time world Test XI, according to ICC rankings – Rupin Kale – Wisden
- 281-degree panorama – The Cricket Monthly
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Lead image from Wikimedia Commons.