Who put what in the where now?

I didn't see an option of Jiminy.

Well, I put in my vote for Ponting, both due to his captaincy and his play. I'm mostly interested in test matches, though, which is why I didn't think Tendulkar's amazing records need to be repeated.

Then again, I'm an England fan, and I still think that KP just needed a bit more time to develop as captain.

WhoIsWillo

/sigh

I half expected to see names like "Irwin Dimplebuffer III", "Nigel Coxcoater" and "'Mean' Alistair Bubliox".

Then I saw the real names - and realized that if I ever had to go to a school as Angus Wagstaff I'd shoot myself.

Cricket? You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket.

Read then cast your vote

Subby, you've got it backward. Farkers ALWAYS comment/vote first then read the article.

The list is Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting,Jaques Kallis, Muttiah Muraltharin, Mohammed Yousef. I would have an extremely difficult time choosing any one of these players over another. Any one of these guys can win a match in any form of the game single handedly. And where the hell is Adam Gilchrist?

Tendulkar was part of the Balco investigation.

I was shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that Cricket is played in my hometown of Ocala.

/They made us play it once in middle school
//Something about knocking over a wood block behind the batter... i don't remember.

WhoIsWillo: I didn't see an option of Jiminy.

Now I've seen some low-hanging fruit in my day, but that little baby was rotting on the ground when you bit into it.

/I'm also mad you beat me.

Gormanoglu: Cricket? You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket.

A Jose Canseco bat? Tell me you didn't pay money for this?

Are these men or obscure sorting algorithms?

Those are all cricketers, Bruce!

Ah spit!

The answer is always Don Bradman.

/even if he's 101 and dead

yequalsy: The answer is always Don Bradman.

/even if he's 101 and dead

Sunil Gavaskar FTW!!!

/My vote would probably be Ricky Ponting. Excellent captain.

If Slumdog Millionaire taught me anything, the answer is Jack Hobbs.

Ponting has a higher batting average than Lara or Tendulkar.

He's a better fielder than either of them. He's a better captain (both Lara and Tendulkar were failures as captains). He contributes more to his team. He's won every trophy going on numerous occasions.

He plays a sport that has more adherents than any other besides soccer. He's a major part of the reason that a nation of 20 million (Australia) habitually beats a nation of one billion rabid cricket fans (India) and has dominated the second most popular sport in the world for two decades. Think about that for a moment.

Ponting is the man. A case could be made for Tiger Woods and/or Roger Federer, but Ponting is the best batsman since Bradman (and statistically speaking, Bradman is the best sportsman who ever lived, several standard deviations better than Wilt Chamberlain of US basketball fame).

If anything Ponting is under-rated.

I don't personally like the guy, I grew up idolising Sir Garfield Sobers, but that has to be said.

Flintoff at his very best was truly magnificent. I don't expect to see a better sporting contest in my lifetime than the 2005 Ashes. He was an absolute god in that wonderful series. So was Warne.

Kallis is boring as shiat to watch and plays for himself. I'm prepared to accept that Murali's action has been deemed legal, but I'm not going to respect him any more than is necessary.

/Hadlee and M.Crowe are the most underrated cricketers of all time. And as you've probably guessed, I'm not a Kiwi.

Trapper439, where might one locate this "All Time sportsman" index? That sounds like it will fuel endless hours of barroom debate..

drewogatory: Trapper439, where might one locate this "All Time sportsman" index? That sounds like it will fuel endless hours of barroom debate..


I have no clue what he's talking about, but the thought of somebody who plays cricket being considered the "all-time sportsman" makes me think this index is a little off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman#World_sport_context. It appears to be stat compiled by Wisden. It seems to list Bradman,Pele,Cobb,Nickluas,Jordan in that order.

MugzyBrown: drewogatory: Trapper439, where might one locate this "All Time sportsman" index? That sounds like it will fuel endless hours of barroom debate..


I have no clue what he's talking about, but the thought of somebody who plays cricket being considered the "all-time sportsman" makes me think this index is a little off.

As a batsman Bradman's lifetime test average was 99.94 runs. The next best 9 lifetime averages are in the range 60.97 - 56.94. So at the very least he's a contender for being the best all time sportsmen in terms of being so far ahead of his peers. I don't think it's worthwhile to compare between different sports though.

http://www.rootes-chrysler.co.uk/images/press/72906.jpg

I rank Eddy Merckx #1 and Don Bradman #2 as the greatest athletes ever. Alas I've never been in a debate (in the States at least) where my rankings weren't completely orthogonal to everyone else's. I'll live.

MugzyBrown: drewogatory: Trapper439, where might one locate this "All Time sportsman" index? That sounds like it will fuel endless hours of barroom debate..


I have no clue what he's talking about, but the thought of somebody who plays cricket being considered the "all-time sportsman" makes me think this index is a little off.

Baseball is the bastard child of cricket. American football is the bastard child of Rugby Union. And Rugby League is better than Union. Basketball is kinda cool, but kinda shiat.

And just look at the statistics. Bradman is the best sportsperson ever. It's not even close.

Imagine Joe Montana multiplied by Lawrence Taylor and then multiplied again by Babe Ruth and then multiplied by Michael Jordan and you have an idea what Bradman was like.

drewogatory: Trapper439, where might one locate this "All Time sportsman" index? That sounds like it will fuel endless hours of barroom debate..

"By Mr. Davis's calculations, Bradman led the order of career-long achievement with a 4.4 rating, followed by soccer's Pelé (3.7), baseball's Ty Cobb (3.6), golf's Jack Nicklaus (3.5), basketball's Michael Jordan (3.4) and football's Joe Montana (3.1)."

Link (new window)

Oh, and my apologies for keeping on about it so incessantly, but Bradman was born in 1908 and lost the best years of his career to WWII. So he'd have been even better if it wasn't for the Nazi's and shiat.

D) Nobody cares

yequalsy: I rank Eddy Merckx #1 and Don Bradman #2 as the greatest athletes ever. Alas I've never been in a debate (in the States at least) where my rankings weren't completely orthogonal to everyone else's. I'll live.

I think the whole thing is fairly arbitrary. If you're talking about being prodigiously better than everyone else at one specific thing, you could pick a Sergey Bubka or hell, even Usain Bolt (I don't think there's been a 1/2 gap in the world records that significant in ages). Or do you want someone like Jim Thorpe who was better than almost everyone at almost everything? He won the pentathlon and decathlon in the same Olympics, and was a terrific football and decent baseball player as well. I doubt there will ever be an athlete with that sort of breadth again with modern specialization.

Those calculations of Mr. Davis's are pretty silly. Jordan would probably have scored higher on that metric if he didn't keep coming back after he was no longer good.

To the guy way above....isn't volleyball bigger worldwide than cricket?

TheHoodedClaw: MugzyBrown: drewogatory: Trapper439, where might one locate this "All Time sportsman" index? That sounds like it will fuel endless hours of barroom debate..


I have no clue what he's talking about, but the thought of somebody who plays cricket being considered the "all-time sportsman" makes me think this index is a little off.

As a batsman Bradman's lifetime test average was 99.94 runs. The next best 9 lifetime averages are in the range 60.97 - 56.94. So at the very least he's a contender for being the best all time sportsmen in terms of being so far ahead of his peers. I don't think it's worthwhile to compare between different sports though.

MIT, CalTech and University of Quebec figured out in the late '90s what the current "greatest" player of all time is (active or retired) mathematically in any sport, ever:



/Willie Shoemaker was #2 and Jim Thorpe was #3.
//No basketball, baseball or American football player was in the top 7 - slots 4 through 7 were all... tennis players. Here's the full list:

#2: Willie Shoemaker
#3: Jim Thorpe
#4: Bjorn Borg
#5: Andre Agassi
#6: Pete Sampras
#7: Billie Joe King
#8: Michael Jordan
#9: Babe Ruth
#10: Garry Kasparov

///You aren't seeing things; no NFL player made the top 10.
////According to raw mathematics, it is highly unlikely that Gretzky is leaving the top spot for at least several decades - he posted numbers so large in the NHL that it would take, mathematically:

- Brett Favre winning the Super Bowl three more times
- Garry Kasparov to play forty Grandmaster matches without a single loss
- Jim Thorpe playing two more full Olympiads with at least a silver in each category
- Babe Ruth hitting 296 more home runs

Just to take the spot.
Let that sink in your mind.

That cheating Paki bastard who almost but not quite throws.

Jedekai: MIT, CalTech and University of Quebec figured out in the late '90s what the current "greatest" player of all time is (active or retired) mathematically in any sport, ever:

I heard there was an olympic swimmer who was pretty good lately.

Shane Warne not just for his twinkle feet and fingers but for helping to take a sport and make it fun to watch again.

Hansie Cronje

/Who but me would actually troll a cricket thread?

Trapper439:

/Hadlee and M.Crowe are the most underrated cricketers of all time. And as you've probably guessed, I'm not a Kiwi.

I can't find SINGLE thing to argue with in your post. Except Glenn McGrath's line and length, bore them out style seemed not to grab your imagination. Sheer brilliance, especially when you consider those wickets taken at the other end out of frustration with not being able to score against Ooh Ahh.

Jedekai:

MIT, CalTech and University of Quebec figured out in the late '90s what the current "greatest" player of all time is (active or retired) mathematically in any sport, ever

I find this list incredibly suspicious. A quick google search didn't yield much, could someone post a link to the actual study/list?
I think it very likely that the criteria the study used led to some very skewed results. For example, I'm wondering how on earth did Andre Agassi get in this list ahead of Rod Laver?

Anyway, Ponting got my vote. As well as excelling in batting and captaincy (he did preside over the longest streak of test wins), his catching is definitely the most remarkable out of all the candidates (apart from Gilchrist)

Jedekai: Let that sink in your mind.

And to think Mario Lemieux is even better!