Cricket

that's horrible news.

How would you rank these six players? NB I know nothing about cricket.

Adam Gilchrist
Imran Khan
Ian Botham
Dennis Lillee
Richard Hadlee
Sunil Gavaskar

It's pretty difficult as there's one wicket-keeper-batsman, one specialist batsman, one specialist bowler and three all-rounders. With personal bias i'd probably say:

Khan
Gilchrist
Botham
Gavaskar
Hadlee
Lillee

There's not a great deal between them, though.

You could put them in any order tbh. Gilchrist, Lillie, Khan, Botham, Gavaskar, Hadlee maybe. Why has this come up?

yeah we would all have different orders id have botham at the top

Gilchrist top three definitely, soft spot for Hadlee has him 3, 4 or 5 and Botham probably in the bottom two. But they could be in any order, as others have said.

i feel privileged to have been old enough to have seen all of them (later parts of career obviously)

and with the 3 or 4 greatest cricketers of the last 20 years missing from there then you know what a golden era we had

and of course a lot of west indians not mentioned either

Sanath Jayasuriya the obvious name missing from the list for me, without even going near Sachin. Or Murali, or Shane Warne. Or Allan Border, or the Waughs. I'l stop now.

Yeah, I'm curious now. I mean it's clearly not a 'best of the last 40 years' list, so what is it?

Sorry to be cryptic, but it's for work!

Botham
Khan
Gilchrist
Hadlee
Lillee
Gavaskar

IMO the first four are all time, Lillee and Gavaskar not quite in the first rank.

lol what? Gavaskar was the leading test runs scorer for a long long time, in the days they didn't play as much cricket as they do now.
And try telling the aussies Lillee isnt first rank. Lillee & Thomson were FEARSOME

Not any kind of absolute list, btw. Just curious how they rank in relation to each other. Understood that a "best of the last 40 years" list would also include Warne, Tendulkar, Richards, Marshall, McGrath, Muralitharan, etc.

So Graeme Smith has done away with three England captains (Strauss, Vaughan and Hussein) as well as KP, sort of. At least Strauss didn't burst into tears.

xp to AG Gavaskar was great in the same way Boycott was, not my type of player at all though, and definitely not a team man. I would take Hadlee over Lillee every time- look at his career analysis compared to Lillee's- more wickets at a better average and a far better batsman too.

Super-over win for the West Indies! Total choke from NZ. Looking forward to seeing how England - Sri Lanka turns out.

Fuck yeah Chris Gayle!

I was sure Sri Lanka would win today. So thrilled.

what the fuck is happening in australia

Clarke's going berserk. I'm seriously worried about England's Ashes prospects now.

yup, we seem to be travelling in opposite directions. 482 is the 2nd highest first day total ever, against 'the best attack in the world' :-/

i have nothing of value to add to this worrisome cricket fretting but hello jabba hands:)

'Turn-based hurling. No tackling to speak of. No goals. Best avoided'

- Abraham Lincoln

- Bob Marley

Sounds like the Kallis injury was a turning point. Still shouldn't be getting whacked around at nearly a run a ball, though.

Tahir bowled 21 overs for 159. If only England had had a proper chance to get suck in to him in the summer, he always seemed the weak link to me.

(hi estela! despite this fretting i am consoled, as ever, by the thought of KBP's happy little face)

aw, i haven't seen his little face since the last time i saw you, that was ages ago.

"little" face

btw on Cricket issues, this was possibly the best batting from an ex-underwear model in ages

Noted popstar AB de Villiers still to bat though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-RSj4RXy2Y

Nathan Lyon has a) just taken four wickets this Test match so far and b) is the anti-Warne but the Australian public love him?

Chris Gayle!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/apr/23/chris-gayle-fastest-century-cricket-history

and still going!

credit due but joke of a sport, t20

it's the Youtube highlights reel of international sport

Well done big man but you'd still have to pay me to watch the Royal Challengers Bangalore vs. Pune Warriors et al

Gayle, Dilshan, Vettori, Rampaul, de Villiers and Muralitharan vs Clarke, Samuels and Yuvraj doesn't sound so bad to me.

I can understand being sniffy about it not being "real cricket" but if you take it for what it is, it's an enormously entertaining tournament.

it is enrmsly entertaining (third game i attended in the past month). the only thing that keeps surprising me is how incredibly silent the crowd is. like gayle was on some crazy shit and the stadium was really quiet.

weird, they were the home side too.

i agree t20 is barely cricket but 175 off 66, whoo

"Gayle completed a fine day's work by taking two wickets for five runs." lol

the bangalore stadium is the only i've been too but the crowd is kind of impassive. of the three matches i saw, there was only one where they were into it (kind of repetitive though, they only chant RCB! RCB! over an over, sometimes they might have a small chris gayle chant) and that too only when rcb was batting. i don't know, i'm used to football crowds where there's singing and the stadium's rarely silent, but here it is more often silent than not, except for a bit of yelling for 6s and 4s. can't help that they have a terrible speaker who once in a while tries to start a wave or begins rcb chants. ab de villiers fielded right in front of me, the ppl around me were really into calling his name out, seems like a nice guy, kept turning around to wave to us. he's def the biggest crowd favourite, moreso even than gayle.

i'd compare them to the crowds i saw at the only baseball game i've ever been too (so maybe not representative of what baseball crowds are like usually), as in ppl are happy enough watching what happens and talking with their neighbors but not really supporting.

yeah sounds rather like mlb. so strange tho when the noise for the national team's short-form games is near-constant iirc

These are still relatively new franchises, I suppose. People come because they love cricket and the matches are exciting but club loyalty / passion might take a while to develop.

yeah. the game against mumbai, i was sitting next to a guy, we ended up chatting and the guy told me even though he was from blore and had lived his entire life there, he supported mumbai because of sachin. i guess i can understand that, dude is a god. so ya it'll prob take a while before there's a real supporting effort, even if some ppl are already really into rcb or other teams.

Record breaking week so far. First Englishman to hit six sixes in one over in professional cricket

http://www.espncricinfo.com/db/PICTURES/CMS/167800/167845.jpg

the brattish psychosis of someone who is going to absolutely decimate bowling attacks across the world for 20 years

He bowls pretty well too.