On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 11:32:53 AM UTC, jack fredricks wrote:
> On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 9:28:05 PM UTC+10, Andy Walker wrote:
> > But yes, the effect is that WG is
> > not given the statistical credit in Test records that he deserves from
> > his overall importance to cricket.
> Perhaps not statistical credit, but I can assure that as I grew up here in Australia Grace was revered, and considered second only to Bradman. With, of course, partisan daylight between them.

There is another oddity when people are assessing his record. That is he was a most tremendous all rounder whose career figures are.

Mat Balls Runs Wkts BBI BBM Ave Econ SR 5w1 10wm
870 - 24831 50980 2809 10/49 - 18.14 2.45 44.4 240 64

RH

On 25/02/2023 10:15, John Hall wrote:
> I suppose one problem would lie in estimating how much players would
> have improved or deteriorated after the War through being over four
> years older and having had four summers with little or no serious
> cricket.

That's the sort of thing that's amenable to statistical analysis.
We know, from records of thousands of f-c cricketers, how much players
"normally" deteriorate [or otherwise] between, say, age 27 and age 32,
so can estimate what the perhaps 15 players who were 27 in 1914 and
resumed at age 32 in 1919 "should" have done after the war. Repeat for
all relevant ages, and compare with the actuality. Differences due to
lack of serious play "should" have disappeared by 1920 or 1921, and then
we have other effects such as weather, and any actual change in quality
of players. I wouldn't say it's easy, but there is a wealth of info
available just waiting to be analysed.

If people are going to claim that the general standard was higher
in the period 1900-14 [say] than in [say] 1924-38, then I'd say that the
onus is on them to produce some supporting facts, well beyond "mumble,
mumble, Jessop, mumble, Spooner, mumble, Barnes". It's important to look
not merely at the regular Test players, but also run-of-the-mill county
players, else there is a danger of merely confirming prejudices and
opinions.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Sinding

On 24/02/2023 05:36, Mike Holmans wrote:
[I wrote:]
>> no-one [AFAIK] has done the hard stats to
>> determine standards pre- and post-WW1.
> And how would that work?

With difficulty? I said it's hard! But, as per reply to John,
there is a huge amount of info out there, just waiting for someone with
a computer and a CricketArchive account, to do some analysis.

> Since essentially the same players for England over the last 3 years
> have had a run of 17 matches with one win followed by what already
> looks to be 11 wins out of 12, it's a bit difficult to argue that
> there was some magic which transformed dreadful players into excellent
> ones overnight, although the stats would probably seem to indicate it.

I don't know whether the stats do indicate that, but there are
in fact at least three sources of "magic". One is the coaches, where it
seems to be generally agreed that /some/ of them have been quite out of
sympathy with the players over the past couple of decades. Another is
the captains, and I would instance not merely Stokes, but also Brearley,
Rice and Ingleby-Mackenzie [examples, not an exhaustive list]. The
common feature is not merely that they made excellent tactical decisions
but also that they took struggling sides over and gave them inspiration.

That leads into the third, and by far the most important, which
is confidence. If you don't believe you can win, then you won't; if you
do, you very likely will. That applies to all sports, and competitive
activities, including warfare. There is very little difference between
a good Test cricketer and a good county player in terms of skill; the
edge comes from self-belief, trusting your team-mates, and the split
second advantage between doing the right thing automatically and having
to debate with yourself what the right thing is before doing it.

Whether any of that applies to either f-c or Test cricket either
side of WW1 is another matter.

> I'm fairly convinced that pre-WW1 cricket was a lot more adventurous,
> and that a lot of the moaning about declining standards in the
> inter-war period was in fact a reflection of the larger number of
> players dependent on contract renewal and the conservatism and caution
> which stems therefrom.

Unconvinced. But that at least is something that can be checked
reasonably easily; is the speed of run-scoring significantly different
between the two periods, whether measured by time or per over? I suspect
that it's too easy to point to two or three individuals noted for "style"
and/or fast scoring, and not the overall picture across hundreds of f-c
players. But I suspect it has little to do with amateurism or contract
renewal, and that again there may be a north-south divide. It's a cliche
but one not without some truth, that in the Roses matches it was a sin to
hit a boundary before lunch on the first day.

> Whether they were "better" or "worse" because
> they played the game in a completely different style is not something
> which I think can be readily determined from sets of numbers.

We'd need to look at the sets of numbers first!

> It seems highly likely that the early 20s and late 40s were periods
> when cricket went backwards because a whole swathe of players had had
> their careers interrupted, tragically terminated and the like and it
> would take time to bring on the next generation,

I think it's beyond serious doubt that it took time to recover,
for new players to emerge and gain experience, and for ancient players,
playing largely for sentimental reasons or to provide continuity, to
retire. But the size and duration of the effect is another matter. In
particular, I don't believe that it persisted into [eg] Hammond's time;
his first Test was 1927, slightly more than 9 years after the war ended.

> but otherwise there
> is very little reason to believe that cricket has, uniquely among
> major sports, not exhibited a gradual raising of standards throughout
> history.

Right. But rose-tinted spectacles are also pretty universal.
Not just in sports; somehow, the younger generation is always worse
than their parents, whether in behaviour, educational standards, work
ethics, .... Yet, somehow, society survives and even thrives. I would
be very interested and curious to visit Roman times, or ancient Greece,
or 18thC science, but I wouldn't want to live there.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Sinding

In message <c474ff74-8d72-4996-a737-b25beb06f23fn@googlegroups.com>,
jack fredricks <jzfredricks@gmail.com> writes
>On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 8:52:180 >> Grace's greatest period was teetering on the edge in 1880 but it is
>>worth noting that when he played his last Test in 1899 aged 51 his
>>Test batting record was arguably better than anyone else up to that
>>date , viz:
>
>Who do you think were his batting peers throughout the main phases of
>his career? I'd like to take a gander.

Depending on your definition of "peer" you could say that from 1865,
when he played his first f-c match, to around 1880 he didn't really have
any. Among those who came closest in the 1860s and early 1870s were
probably Harry Jupp, William Yardley, Richard Daft, Thomas Hayward and
Robert Carpenter.

Here are the leading f-c batting averages for arguably his most dominant
season, 1871, copied and pasted from CricketArchive (which unfortunately
requires a subscription, so I can't just provide a link):

Name M Inns NO Runs HS Ave
WG Grace 25 39 4 2739 268 78.25
GM Royle 1 1 0 45 45 45.00
TG Matthews 5 7 0 277 201 39.57
R Daft 12 19 4 565 92 37.66
RP Carpenter 9 16 4 446 87* 37.16
GF Grace 14 24 4 716 98 35.80

If you discard batsmen who played 7 or fewer innings, Grace's average
was over double the next best and his aggregate was out of sight,
admittedly helped by playing more matches than anyone else. (GF Grace
was WG's younger brother.)
--
John Hall "Do you have cornflakes in America?"
"Well, actually, they're American."
"So what brings you to Britain then if you have cornflakes already?"
Bill Bryson: "Notes from a Small Island"

On Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:25:33 +0000, Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk>
wrote:

>On 24/02/2023 05:36, Mike Holmans wrote:
>[I wrote:]

>
>> I'm fairly convinced that pre-WW1 cricket was a lot more adventurous,
>> and that a lot of the moaning about declining standards in the
>> inter-war period was in fact a reflection of the larger number of
>> players dependent on contract renewal and the conservatism and caution
>> which stems therefrom.
>
> Unconvinced. But that at least is something that can be checked
>reasonably easily; is the speed of run-scoring significantly different
>between the two periods, whether measured by time or per over?

>> Whether they were "better" or "worse" because
>> they played the game in a completely different style is not something
>> which I think can be readily determined from sets of numbers.
>
> We'd need to look at the sets of numbers first!

It depends on what "better" and "worse" mean.

I'm sceptical that the spectacle-wearers of the 1920s relied
exclusively on rose-tinted lenses. I'm also very sceptical that even
those wearing the pink jobs were attempting to draw a difference based
on statistics. I am convinced that there was a qualitative difference
between the cricket of 1910 and that of 1925; what I'm not completely
convinced of is that is a higher/lower difference rather than, say, a
right/left difference.

I'm therefore wondering how much mileage there would be in examining
statistics only for teams which won their games. Winning matches is
after all the object of the game, so finding out what it took to win
in various eras might be more enlightening than examining everything
and coming up with an average.

Cheers,

Mike