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Smith, Root, Williamson, Kohli

Who is/will be the 'batsman of their generation'?

  • Steve Smith

    Votes: 87 53.4%

  • Joe Root

    Votes: 14 8.6%

  • Kane Williamson

    Votes: 30 18.4%

  • Virat Kohli

    Votes: 29 17.8%

  • Other (please specify)

    Votes: 3 1.8%
  • Total voters
    163

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PhatBoy said:
Actually on the above subject, not sure if anyone has seen this because it has been hidden away a little bit in the Cricinfo page because of the WTC news, Rabada, and Kohli etc.

But The Cricket Monthly has been doing its countdown of the greatest T20 players of all time. Not T20I players, just t20 players. There’s been no real surprises so far, when they got down to the top 9 or something.

I assumed, again with a fair tinge of bias but also with a fairly high degree of realism, that the #1 was a fait accompli: how would anyone other than Chris Gayle be at the top, with the possible exception of Sunil Narine given that he has turned himself into a bowling all-rounder?

Most runs in the format (14,500) 1000 clear of the next highest who is Alex Hales, who has played 30 more games.

The only other players above 13000 are Malik who has played 94 extra games, Pollard who has played more than 200 extra games, Kohli and Warner. The latter two if they played long enough could conceivably catch Gayle if they averaged about 40, at around the same amount of matches. Both have a lower strike rate.

The player best placed to catch his total is Babar Azam because he’s played so much at such an age that he has time; he’s scored 11220 from 318 matches. But his strike rate is 20 lower.

And this is the big one. In the relatively short history of the format, Gayle has hit 22 centuries.

The only other player with more than 9 is Babar.

And no one is really even placed to pressure him at the moment; maybe Abishek Sharma who has 6 and is about to turn 25.

Remember too that Gayle’s ‘I couldn’t give a shit’ off-spin yielded him 83 wickets, a little under an over per match, at 7.5 an over.

He’s ranked at 6.

Aside from Narine, who the hell is above him?

I can’t put Kohli over him. As a T20I player, yes. As a T20 player, no.

ABDV I could see maybe an argument for but he averages less, and it’s cushioned by getting a not out better than every 5 times he bats. His strike rate is only a little higher too (5).

It’s an outrage
Click to expand...
Narine, Malinga, de Kock, Rashid Khan, Andre Russell maybe as the top five? Just a guess.

These things always have people in weird spots because the purpose is to generate engagement, and they don't get the best engagement if everyone says "yeah, that's look fair".
 
big_e said:
Absolutely miles in front as a white ball batter, though. Definitely makes the All Time XI in both ODI and T20Is.
Click to expand...

His consistent commitment to white ball cricket, particularly of the absolutely meaningless variety, is to be admired. He has certainly churned it out.

The other 3, (particularly Williamson and Smith when you snapshot his record as a genuine top order player in white ball cricket) also have stellar records but they have more or less only turned out for major tournaments for the last 5 or 6 years.
 
PhatBoy said:
Actually on the above subject, not sure if anyone has seen this because it has been hidden away a little bit in the Cricinfo page because of the WTC news, Rabada, and Kohli etc.

But The Cricket Monthly has been doing its countdown of the greatest T20 players of all time. Not T20I players, just t20 players. There’s been no real surprises so far, when they got down to the top 9 or something.

I assumed, again with a fair tinge of bias but also with a fairly high degree of realism, that the #1 was a fait accompli: how would anyone other than Chris Gayle be at the top, with the possible exception of Sunil Narine given that he has turned himself into a bowling all-rounder?

Most runs in the format (14,500) 1000 clear of the next highest who is Alex Hales, who has played 30 more games.

The only other players above 13000 are Malik who has played 94 extra games, Pollard who has played more than 200 extra games, Kohli and Warner. The latter two if they played long enough could conceivably catch Gayle if they averaged about 40, at around the same amount of matches. Both have a lower strike rate.

The player best placed to catch his total is Babar Azam because he’s played so much at such an age that he has time; he’s scored 11220 from 318 matches. But his strike rate is 20 lower.

And this is the big one. In the relatively short history of the format, Gayle has hit 22 centuries.

The only other player with more than 9 is Babar.

And no one is really even placed to pressure him at the moment; maybe Abishek Sharma who has 6 and is about to turn 25.

Remember too that Gayle’s ‘I couldn’t give a shit’ off-spin yielded him 83 wickets, a little under an over per match, at 7.5 an over.

He’s ranked at 6.

Aside from Narine, who the hell is above him?

I can’t put Kohli over him. As a T20I player, yes. As a T20 player, no.

ABDV I could see maybe an argument for but he averages less, and it’s cushioned by getting a not out better than every 5 times he bats. His strike rate is only a little higher too (5).

It’s an outrage
Click to expand...
getting off topic, but quite interesting nevertheless.

certainly thats the end of the aussies with watson ranked highest followed by warner , maxwell & christian.

what about rashid khan ? malinga ?
 
big_e said:
Narine, Malinga, de Kock, Rashid Khan, Andre Russell maybe as the top five? Just a guess.

These things always have people in weird spots because the purpose is to generate engagement, and they don't get the best engagement if everyone says "yeah, that's look fair".
Click to expand...

Take QDK out for de Villiers and that will be it I think.

Russell is one of the greats but his bowling economy is far too high and his batting while utterly phenomenal - he’s perhaps the greatest power hitter modern cricket has ever seen - is so inconsistent I just could never put him that high.

Rashid Khan has been immaculate I can’t argue with that and he DOES deserve to be up there undoubtedly. Can’t help but think he’s benefitted a lot from when he’s used though so his wicket taking numbers are inflated a lot by that; his sub-7 economy is the most impressive part of his record IMO.

I can’t verify this but I would guess Narine has been used a lot more with the newer ball when the onus is more on restricting batsmen from making a fast start then just dismissing them and his economy rate is similar, plus he’s opened the batting.
 

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cricketnut14 said:
getting off topic, but quite interesting nevertheless.

certainly thats the end of the aussies with watson ranked highest followed by warner , maxwell & christian.

what about rashid khan ? malinga ?
Click to expand...

Malinga is the interesting one.

I think he’s obviously a great of the format. Pretty much the first great bowler of it. I don’t think his record is THAT good that it can be ranked above Narine or Khan as a bowler alone and he’s not a batsman at all; Narine is to a degree, and Khan can bat a bit. Gayle can bowl a bit.

Malinga also finished playing at 35. His record didn’t really have time to take a dip. And he was there right at the start when economy rates were a bit lower. So I think he sort of gets looked at a little bit like a modern day T20 bowling WG Grace - a pioneer who shaped how fast bowlers should be in the format, using changes of pace and bowling slow Yorkers and reverse swing etc. On merit I actually probably wouldn’t have him quite as high. Gayle was also there right at the start but his numbers stack better than guys even coming through right now, and he played until he was 41 or something, dipping from an average over 40 down to 36 over the last few years of his franchise career.
 
Kohli was like India's Ponting (albeit not quite as good in Tests).

An aggressive batsman and captain who led his team to #1 in all formats by having his team follow his example in being more attacking in all areas. Kohli encouraged his bowlers to attack the stumps, to bat more boldly, and to field with vigour.

As a Test captain, he contrasted with the more defensive Dhoni, who was maybe a victim of his own ODI success and so set overly defensive bowling to overly defensive fields.

Even as a young tyro on his first AUS tour, when our bowlers were exposing their badly ageing batting lineup, he'd display the wristy flicks off his pads, the pushes down the ground, and the flourishing cover drives which would become his trademark - and he was unafraid to exchange words with our bowlers and batsmen.

On his day, he looked as good as anyone - any batsman would be proud to have scored those twin tons in Adelaide (2014/15), that 153 against an incredible SA attack on sporting conditions (2017/18), and that 123 against us at Optus Stadium, when we had them on the ropes (2018/19). Up until 2020, he looked like he'd finish his career averaging above 50 comfortably.

But boy, what a decline. Granted, his decline was probably exacerbated by spicier home-and-away wickets, but I don't recall any top-class batsman having a decline as protracted as Kohli's. Even Ricky Ponting petered out more slowly, and was older when he began his decline.

Like Ponting though, I suspect that stubbornness was Kohli's primarily issue - he still believed that he could push balls through cover like he did in his pomp, but because his eye and reflexes had deteriorated, he usually just pushed balls through to the keeper instead, as Boland would attest.

His record now makes him look worse than Michael Clarke (!), even though most who saw the two would instinctively prefer Kohli.

He's one of the best ODI/T20I players ever, mind. If he's a big loss in Test cricket (and credit to him for helping keep interest in that game alive), then he's a gargantuan one in those two formats.

I wish him...well, a retirement.
 
DaRick said:
Like Ponting though, I suspect that stubbornness was Kohli's primarily issue - he still believed that he could push balls through cover like he did in his pomp, but because his eye and reflexes had deteriorated, he usually just pushed balls through to the keeper instead, as Boland would attest.
Click to expand...

Ponting ended his first decline against India and Pakistan one summer which gave him 2 extra years.

In the end Kholi was struggling to make runs against anyone.
 
revo333 said:
Ponting ended his first decline against India and Pakistan one summer which gave him 2 extra years.

In the end Kholi was struggling to make runs against anyone.
Click to expand...

In 2011/12, Ponting had a bumper season, which made us all think he had one last patch of extended form in him.

As it turned out, that season was his last hurrah.

Kohli didn't really even have that, unless his century at Perth counts.

But both had the same problem - being unwilling to adapt their game until it was too late. Ponting was lucky not to be sacked after the 2010/11 season, and only then did he move to #4 - not that it made much long-term difference, since we couldn't find a #3.
 
DaRick said:
In 2011/12, Ponting had a bumper season, which made us all think he had one last patch of extended form in him.

As it turned out, that season was his last hurrah.

Kohli didn't really even have that, unless his century at Perth counts.

But both had the same problem - being unwilling to adapt their game until it was too late. Ponting was lucky not to be sacked after the 2010/11 season, and only then did he move to #4 - not that it made much long-term difference, since we couldn't find a #3.
Click to expand...
That's what I appreciate about Smith. He could tell something was wrong at the start of last summer and he ended up making tweaks which allowed him to get back into century making form again. I don't think anyone would have picked him winding back the clock as quickly as he did.
 
Young Redleg said:
That's what I appreciate about Smith. He could tell something was wrong at the start of last summer and he ended up making tweaks which allowed him to get back into century making form again. I don't think anyone would have picked him winding back the clock as quickly as he did.
Click to expand...

Smith is one of the most adaptable batsmen I've ever seen, so I always thought that he could find a way to offset his decline, if nothing else.

He's done a bit more than that, though.
 
Someone said a little earlier that Kohli's greatest talent was his mental strength. I kind of agree, kind of not.

He was, in my opinion, inside the top 5 players ever for assessing pitch and bowling conditions when batting. I can remember a ton he made in Australia, during the 4th innings, in which he didn't hit a single cover drive; he shelved the shot as the order around him tumbled trying to play it. You could surprise him (and of course, he could get it wrong; he is only human) but most of the time he was absolutely spot on with his judgement of the conditions of play. The only player stronger might be Dravid, and he shared a playing room with the bloke.

When he started to drop off, there were two things you notice about it. The first is that it ceased to be about making a legacy and more playing to a legacy; a looking backwards instead of forwards, as though he knew his best was past him and he didn't want or need it anymore. It's like he'd done everything he'd wanted to do; he was already king of the world, and it felt hollow to him. Tendulkar wanted runs every day he played; needed them, was hungry for them. Runs were his trade. For Kohli, he wanted to be more than just the runs he made; he wanted the legend, a legend to outlive him. And it did; his reputation never waned even as his scoring did.

The other thing is, he began to believe in that legend. Where once he'd have looked at conditions and made decisions about his strokeplay based on them, he'd look at bowlers and think, "You're not able to get me. I'm better than you." Where he'd make choices around shot selection and respect the bowlers and the conditions, he believed himself above them.

I'm sure everyone remembers the time where he convinced the umpires to review a bowled because he could not believe he had gotten bowled by the bloke who did it. That moment, more than any other, exemplified Kohli's fall.

Because it wasn't that the ball was good; it wasn't, not really. It was a back a length or shorter delivery in a nothing game from an allrounder (IIRC; don't remember exactly who it was, but it was a meaningless T20) that kept a little low. In his prime, Kohli would've read that the pitch wasn't bouncing and covered his stumps; he'd have gone forward and pushed it through a vacant mid off, or tried to punch it off the back foot either side of short cover. But no; he got super deep in his crease and tried to run it off the edge through point (?) in a nothing shot, because he thought he knew better. He stared at the thing as though it was impossible; how could I, the great Virat Kohli, have been bowled in such a way?

He got it wrong, but never looked at why he got it wrong. And because of that, he continued to fail all the way until the end.
 
Gethelred said:
Someone said a little earlier that Kohli's greatest talent was his mental strength. I kind of agree, kind of not.

He was, in my opinion, inside the top 5 players ever for assessing pitch and bowling conditions when batting. I can remember a ton he made in Australia, during the 4th innings, in which he didn't hit a single cover drive; he shelved the shot as the order around him tumbled trying to play it. You could surprise him (and of course, he could get it wrong; he is only human) but most of the time he was absolutely spot on with his judgement of the conditions of play. The only player stronger might be Dravid, and he shared a playing room with the bloke.

When he started to drop off, there were two things you notice about it. The first is that it ceased to be about making a legacy and more playing to a legacy; a looking backwards instead of forwards, as though he knew his best was past him and he didn't want or need it anymore. It's like he'd done everything he'd wanted to do; he was already king of the world, and it felt hollow to him. Tendulkar wanted runs every day he played; needed them, was hungry for them. Runs were his trade. For Kohli, he wanted to be more than just the runs he made; he wanted the legend, a legend to outlive him. And it did; his reputation never waned even as his scoring did.

The other thing is, he began to believe in that legend. Where once he'd have looked at conditions and made decisions about his strokeplay based on them, he'd look at bowlers and think, "You're not able to get me. I'm better than you." Where he'd make choices around shot selection and respect the bowlers and the conditions, he believed himself above them.

I'm sure everyone remembers the time where he convinced the umpires to review a bowled because he could not believe he had gotten bowled by the bloke who did it. That moment, more than any other, exemplified Kohli's fall.

Because it wasn't that the ball was good; it wasn't, not really. It was a back a length or shorter delivery in a nothing game from an allrounder (IIRC; don't remember exactly who it was, but it was a meaningless T20) that kept a little low. In his prime, Kohli would've read that the pitch wasn't bouncing and covered his stumps; he'd have gone forward and pushed it through a vacant mid off, or tried to punch it off the back foot either side of short cover. But no; he got super deep in his crease and tried to run it off the edge through point (?) in a nothing shot, because he thought he knew better. He stared at the thing as though it was impossible; how could I, the great Virat Kohli, have been bowled in such a way?

He got it wrong, but never looked at why he got it wrong. And because of that, he continued to fail all the way until the end.
Click to expand...

Looking back at his 2014/15 highlights, I noticed that Kohli pounced ruthlessly on Johnson's short stuff.

He didn't really do that during the 2024/25 series - partially because we didn't bowl there to him, but also because I don't think his declining eye and reflexes made it as easy.

I agree that ego and bloody-mindedness clouded his judgement. That bloody-mindedness helped him craft some truly terrific innings, but also kept him from adapting when he got older.

His reaction after Boland dismissed him for the last time in the usual way (him pushing a good-length ball to slip) summed up the man - he couldn't overcome his natural instincts the way Smith can. And he knew it, too.
 

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FreoRicci said:
Williamson not being Aussie, Indian or English isn’t his fault but he sure would’ve been up there with records.
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A great player to be sure but when he has had his chances just hasn’t consistently enough delivered in the tougher circumstances to be quite on the smith/root level

Kohli is so hard to assess because his final record simply doesn’t look that elite but everyone knows how damn good he was for a long time before he got SO mediocre for a very lengthy period at the end
 
Root is a great bat, and he will probably rectify this in the Summer, but not scoring a century in Australia in a significant asterisk.

Pretty sure we would assess Steve Smith's career differently if he had zero hundreds in England.
 
Indians not coping well with the fact Tendulkar might lose the record.

The main stats for them is it's not fair as Tendulkar played an average of 8 tests in his career while Root has played an average of 12 tests a year in his career.

It does give Root an advantage to get bulk runs while in form but I think most sports have records being broken because there are more games being played.

For me Joe Root is a bit like Scott Pendlebury. A very nice, consistent and classy player but I've seen better.
 
revo333 said:
Indians not coping well with the fact Tendulkar might lose the record.

The main stats for them is it's not fair as Tendulkar played an average of 8 tests in his career while Root has played an average of 12 tests a year in his career.

It does give Root an advantage to get bulk runs while in form but I think most sports have records being broken because there are more games being played.

For me Joe Root is a bit like Scott Pendlebury. A very nice, consistent and classy player but I've seen better.
Click to expand...

Tendulkar: 79.61 runs per match
Root: 85.41 runs per match
 

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lets see where root is at, at the end of the 2027 ashes series.

all going well he will have 16,000 runs @ 50+.

that record would be difficult to surpass.
 

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