Yeah i d assume fielding has improved and of course the faster forms of the game would contribute to that.
It's hard top compare era's i think if you're a good player you would be regardless of era's, you'd adjust to different conditions and players. My memories of cricket are clearest from about 1977 onwards , and whilst i appreciate the current crop of cricketers, they aren't better than players from 70s 80, 90's or even early 00's. There certainly isn't the formidable bowling attacks of those decades imo, which must give a false indication of the current batsmen (to a ceratin degree).

I honestly think it just seems that way. Athletes, and people in general are getting bigger, faster and stronger. Cricketers are also all full time now and a lot more professional then they were in the 70's and 80's.

This will cause a stir, but I reckon if you took this current australian team and had them play a test series against the late 70's Australian team, the current guys would win comfortably.

That doesn't necessarily mean they're more talented, I just think they'd blow them away. Go back to the 20's and 30's and I'm even more confident.

You may be right, same thing could be said about footballers, due to professionalism, fitness etc. I suppose you can only compare in the same situation. But do you really think Watson and Katich would smash holding ,garner Marshall and Roberts around the park, even Akram Younis etc, or Hilfenhaus, Johnson tearing through Greenidge, Richards and Lloyd as examples? sorry i cant imagine that happening.

Also given all things equal, besides ponting (who debuted in 95), how many of the current Australian side would make the Australia side of say 15 years ago? and would any bowler make our sides or 70's early 80's?

Yeah, if they could go back in time as they are now I'm sure they would.

Today's bowlers have a lot more stamina than those of yesteryear, they'd be considered machines if they just popped up in the late 70's...but especially if they popped up in the 30's.

And today's batsmen all score a lot quicker than the typical player of previous decades.

I think the real professional era started around the mid 90's, though it has increased significantly even since then. Cricket is obviously not as reliant on athletic ability as other sports, but I still think the extra athleticism and strength, and professionalism would make a good player in 2010 a great player in 1980.

Maybe modern bowlers popping up in early years of cricket or playing a 20-20 game against those guys sure. Do you really think the current bowlers are that good? Tendulkar 20 years into a batting career scored a double century with ease against these modern bowling machines. I cant imagine Viv or a few others of his era being too worried about any current bowlers, but thats just me.

There is no bowler around these days like this guy, i know this was posted a while back but look again, and how quick was he ? he must be 150km here and consistently quick unlike bowlers now who can bowl are few good quick balls and thats it.
The best fast bowler of all time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqtMvzOP ... re=related

There's no bowling machines like these guys now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6RamWV- ... re=related

150 in the shade.
http://stats.cricinfo.com/ci/content/re ... 83875.html

Cricinfo World XI - Jack Hobbs, Len Hutton, Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, Viv Richards, Garry Sobers, Adam Gilchrist, Malcolm Marshall, Shane Warne, Wasim Akram, Dennis Lillee

http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/conten ... 82936.html

And also:
http://blogs.cricinfo.com/itfigures/arc ... es_eff.php
Interesting look at batting averages, in fact the whole blog is pretty interesting actually.

Imran not in that side is ridiculous. absurd. how do these guys continually fuck up these lists?

that is an interesting article. shows lara vastly outperforms ponting and tendulkar in terms of the 'quality' of the innings he played in the 2000's.

hahaha rv you're such an Imran and Lara fan boy!! Imran is no certainty for an all time XI. Sobers is a certainty at 6 and Imran would have to be picked at 8 purely for his bowling, because in a team like that, the batting ability of your number 8 is a fairly minor consideration. That's not to say he isn't a very strong candidate, because he was one of the best bowlers ever, but there are probably a handful of quicks rated higher and the fact Imran was a much better batsmen doesn't really mean so much here.

The article above is interesting, but statistics are not to be played with lightly!

I thought one of the person's comments in relation to that article were pretty accurate:

Posted by: Tanmay Shukla at October 22, 2010 6:52 PM
I'm sorry to write that, as with most cricket statisticians, there is very little rigour or consideration of confounding effects in your analysis. (1) Instead of leaving out Zimbabwe, B'desh, you should see how they performed in the test compared to their average performance over all tests. This should in fact be extended to all teams. Why throw away information? De-mean it. (2) Half-fixing a problem is often worse than leaving it alone (think Bush). While you account for variation across tests, you ignore variation within. Did the pitch deteriorate over time? Which day of the test was the innings played on? These matter as much as overall Test difficulty, if not more. (3) If you do not de-mean the data, a batsman with great teammates is naturally disadvantaged in your analysis. Think Lara, as an example. Since he's almost always played in a fragile batting order, the total runs scored would always be a little lower than if he'd been on a strong team. This would inflate his stats.

Posted by: Tanmay Shukla at October 22, 2010 6:59 PM
I do not expect you to believe me, but while writing the previous pos I still hadn't seen your final results. Regardless of whether or not you do, point (3) explains very well why West Indian cricketers dominate the rankings and the Australians are lower down.
It also just occurred to me that apart from de-meaning the data, you should also exclude the batsman's scores themselves from your calculations. Otherwise you'll end up attenuating your estimates: run for run, the importance you'll give to scoring, say, 50 runs higher that average will be greater when you've scored 50 runs in total, than say 150 runs in total (because the remaining 100 runs you've scored will also increase the average number or runs scored in the match, thus devaluing your "lead" over other batsmen.

guilty as charged as an imran fanboy. but seriously hes probably a better bowler than any of those guys, then you throw in his considerable captaincy and batting. i bet cricinfo the boneheads only allowed one all-rounder for the side. even hadlee should have been selected ahead of wasim as a pure bowler. also id rather take a guy that can actually keep (healy, knott) than gilly when you're going to have runscorers coming out your ears, gilly was a very poor gloveman.

oh right i didnt realise the guy had tweaked it to favour batsmen that score a high percentage of teams runs. thats probably unnecessary. haha and im not the lara fanboy thats mr rogerson give me laxman or sehwag