Osman Samiuddin: Are previous eras of cricket always better than the ones we are living through?

Jarrod Kimber:Aren't all olden days more golden, sepia-tinged, and old people's memories rosy, and about dancing to merry fiddle tunes? Why would cricket be any different? Time + cricket + romantic youth = the greatest cricket performance OF ALL TIME.

Cricket fans have fantastic imaginations, they have to. How else can you look at a scorecard and fill in the blanks? So that is why Victor Trumper scoring 100 on a sticky dog at Stamford Bridge, playing against Nazi vampires while simultaneously fighting off Godzilla and Rodan is the greatest innings you know of. We make up the details from the pretty, romantic verses about the game, and next thing you know, that innings we never saw, from that era before we were alive, with those guys we only know about from still pictures, played better than when Angelo Mathews rode Alastair Cook into the ground at Headingley.

Samiuddin: When I was (the worst three words to begin such a conversation, other than "in my day") starting out in cricket journalism, I used to scoff at older journalists who went on about how cricket was so much better when they were covering it. I actively thought to myself that I would not become like that. And now I have to actively fight from thinking it myself sometimes, or at least to give more thought as to why I might be feeling that way. It is just, as you say, a very human tendency. It is actually more deeply entrenched in music. I really can't come to accept that rock music (in itself that term is probably dead) is better now than it was not just when I was growing up but even before I was born. I am so old now that I have bought into the nostalgia of those older than me.

Victor Trumper scoring 100 on a sticky dog at Stamford Bridge, playing against Nazi vampires while simultaneously fighting off Godzilla and Rodan is the greatest innings you know of

Another reason we tend to overlook the age that we live in - and it applies specifically to this age, say from 2000 onwards - is the overload of cricket. I asked the ESPNcricinfo stats guys for some numbers and just look at this:

That is the number of days in those years on which international matches have taken place. From 2008, add the days for the IPL, which is an international tournament masquerading as a domestic one. There are hardly any days in the year left. It means, one, I can barely remember a game that took place three days ago, and two, if cricket is getting better and individual feats are becoming better, so many of them are happening in such a whirl that it effectively feels like none of them is actually happening. You know what I mean?

Kimber: How do you actually watch it all, ingest it all? Have you ever put notifications for international wickets on your phone? The vibration gives out after a week. So if AB de Villiers manages to hold off a monster Mitchell Johnson spell or Darren Bravo makes a double-hundred in a time zone that doesn't suit our social-media habits, it's gone.

Wait, let me backtrack for a second. De Villiers making runs against Johnson in Centurion. That wasn't a hundred, but it was amazing. But without it being a hundred, being from outside the two major cricket media markets, it just fades away, an asterisk in de Villiers' life of sustained excellence. It deserves more, but by the time you have even thought about it, Brendon McCullum has probably reinvented himself from franchise millionaire to Test match triple-centurion.

Johannesburg, 2005: Hoggard's swing masterclass © Getty Images

But does McCullum making a triple-century play into the problem? Don't people believe mostly, maybe correctly, that because of CEO brown pitches and a lack of champion bowlers that batting now is pretty easy? I mean, this is the golden era of No. 11s after all.

Samiuddin: So then let us take this further. Greatness cannot exist in a vacuum. Context is vital but it's just a matter of how we perceive that context. If I were to compile a list of the greatest individual performances from the last decade, I would be far more inclined to include bowling performances because of the CEO pitches you talk about. I would have the McCullum triple in there, but I reckon I would put Matthew Hoggard's 12 in Johannesburg and Mohammad Asif's 11 in Kandy higher, simply because the decade has evolved to make those kind of performances from fast bowlers difficult (disclaimer: Asif would make almost any list I ever compiled).

And with batting, a kind of contrarian spirit would take over. So as batsmanship has become more and more attacking, and as cricket has generally sped up, the innings that stand out for me would be those that subvert the modern fashion, that were genuine rearguard attempts that saved the Test or got close to doing so. Hashim Amla's unbeaten 123 in Kolkata, for instance, would be there (and he made 114 in the first innings). Faf du Plessis in Adelaide for sure. There would be plenty of Virender Sehwag in there, but I would put the great defensive rearguards higher because it just doesn't happen as much anymore (and also maybe because the first full Test series I got into was the India-Pakistan series in India in 1986-87, which elevated the art of defensive batting to new, pointless realms).

Kimber: Sure, this is a batting era. But let us stop for a quick, unscientific cricket lesson.

If cricket is getting better and individual feats are becoming better, so many of them are happening in such a whirl that it feels like none of them is actually happening

Batsmen dominated the early 1800s, then overarm bowling happened and bowlers took over. Then pitches got better from liquid manure and batsmen got used to overarm bowling. Then the bouncer came about and the lbw rule changed and bowlers started to do well again. Then the bouncer was used less and the batsmen worked out the lbw law. Then the bouncer came back massively and teams played to their bowling strength and the bowlers took over. Then helmets and covered wickets came about and it was an even contest for a while. And then batsmen got better bats, confidence from slogging in shorter formats, became stronger humans with better protection and they are dominating again.

Your love for defensive rearguard batting porn is no different from an old cricket writer saying cricket was better when batsmen didn't wear helmets on uncovered wickets or when bats were so poor that Albert Trott could only clear the Lord's pavilion once. It's not science, it's wistful romance. You, Osman, are the problem.

We are living through the greatest age of attacking batting in the history of the game and instead of pouring it all over ourselves, too many of us are complaining that other things aren't better. If Ben Stokes had made the same hundred he made this year at Lord's (to go with his 92 in the first innings) 50 years earlier, they would have given him a knighthood and a Brylcreem franchise by now.

Samiuddin: You are right (about the love for defensive batting porn) but less right in the cold light of the day after Sehwag's retirement from international cricket. That reminded me that post-Brian Lara, I haven't enjoyed watching a batsman as much as I enjoyed watching Sehwag, and if I made any top-ten list of the greatest Test performances from the last decade plus a couple of years, I would include a lot of his innings: the Chennai 155 against Australia in 2004, the triple against Pakistan earlier that year, the double in Galle (where there was also a fifty in the second innings). I might even compile a separate list of Sehwag innings.

Trent Bridge, 2006: Murali's match © AFP

For him I would gladly waive away the advantages of bland pitches, lesser attacks and bigger bats.

Why? There have been plenty of very aggressive batsmen in the modern game but who did it against the new ball? David Warner may come to that space eventually. Matthew Hayden was more a bullying opener but he was still a conventional opener who batted aggressively. Sehwag? He could and did change the mood of a Test in its first sessions so often. That's why I always loved Rahul Bhattacharya's assessment of him in a piece he once wrote for Cricinfo Magazine - that he was the express fast bowler India never had. He was the opening batsman who, much to Geoffrey Boycott's chagrin no doubt, did not give the first two hours to the bowler. He took them. Adam Gilchrist was a genius but he came in as often with Australia in a position of strength as he did with them in trouble; often he didn't have a new ball to see out and the best bowlers in the world were on his side. Also Gilchrist was and remains a freak, unique as an allrounder and unmatched still.

Sehwag has, I feel, become a prototype or a template. He has inspired others to play as he did, or at least with the intent that he did - he was the last evolution in Test batting and we have not yet really gone beyond that. In limited-overs batting, sure, there has been an evolution beyond, but I think in Tests we're still in the world Sehwag brought us to. To me at least, Sehwag remains the gold standard of modern, attacking Test batting, and quite a few of the batting performances of the modern age are derivatives: good but maybe not as good.

Having been reminded of him by his retirement (see what I mean about too much cricket meaning less memories?) I would actually go back on my previous email and say that a couple of Sehwag classics would be there above a couple of the greatest defensive rearguards. Would he be pretty high in your list?

We are living through the greatest age of attacking batting in the history of the game and instead of pouring it all over ourselves, too many of us are complaining that other things aren't better

Kimber: Sehwag waddling into the MCG and slapping Australia around like they were the Coburg 3rd XI in a Sunday friendly for 195 can't be an innings you see and forget. And that doesn't even include all the innings you mentioned. Or the way he poured petrol on England's total in Chennai without even needing to stick around for a hundred. Or that first century in Bloemfontein, when he was trying to play a cover innings of Sachin and ended up inventing a version of Sachin snorting speed.

Trying to be Sehwag you would need to be some kind of zen monk western gunslinger hybrid, and even Warner can't do that.

But in the history of the game, how many players have played the way Gilchrist, Sehwag or Warner have played? I mean, Gilchrist in Hobart, when he beat Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq and Shoaib Akhtar was just unreal. Human beings don't come in at No. 7 in their second Test and do things like that. And for all the greatness of consistent batsmen, solid batsmen, even the champion ones, they nudge a game, they don't often pick it up and throw it.

At the same time, one of the greatest innings I have ever seen was by Jacques Kallis in Melbourne. All he did was survive Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne on day five to save a Test.

Johnson v de Villiers, Centurion, 2014: we know how that one turned out © Getty Images

Samiuddin: Okay, so let's get down to the business end. Give me a list of your top ten greatest Test performances from the last decade.

Kimber: Johnson - 64 and nine wickets at the Gabba in 2013. Saved Australia with the bat, ended an entire era of England with the ball.

Dale Steyn - 7 for 51 and 3 for 57 in Nagpur 2010. Ten wickets for a seamer in Nagpur. Words fail.

Kumar Sangakkara - 192 in Hobart in 2007. King Kumar at his most regal.

Johnson - 7 for 68 and 5 for 59 in Centurion in 2014. He couldn't possibly do it against South Africa at their fortress, could he?

Some of the greatest feats of our sport are happening right now, and we have to start realising that by not looking back, not ignoring them, not dismissing them, but putting them in their proper place

Michael Clarke - 151 in Cape Town in 2011. He outscored the next two innings combined.

Steyn - 10 for 154 and 76 in 2008 in Melbourne. Five wickets in the first innings, 76 in a great partnership with JP Duminy, and then another five wickets to beat Australia at home for the first time in a generation.

McCullum - 302 in Wellington in 2014. Who woulda ever thunk this? It still feels weird typing it.

Sehwag - 201 and 50 in Galle in 2008. Smashing the unplayable. Ajantha Mendis took 6 for 47 against nine batsmen in the first innings, he took none for 70 off 77 balls against Sehwag, who scored close to two thirds of India's runs.

Rangana Herath - 9 for 127 and 5 for 57 in Colombo in 2014. Took five more wickets in the match than the other three spinners combined (including old-model Saeed Ajmal).

Mac Daddy: McCullum walks off having scored 281 in Wellington, not quite done © Getty Images

Johnson - 8 for 61 and 3 for 98 in Perth in 2008. On a slow, lifeless WACA, with no seam movement, a ball 70 overs old and no reverse swing he took 5 for 2 in 20 balls. De Villiers and Kallis were set, and were still in that five.

Samiuddin: The thing I love most about this selection is the symmetry. There are four pure batting performances, four pure bowling performances and a couple of all-round performances. I initially balked at three entries for Johnson, though on thinking about it some more, it kind of makes sense: forget whether or not he ends up being remembered as a great bowler, he indisputably was a creator of great performances and moments and he did have plenty of them over the last decade.

But still three sounds too much and so, if pushed, I would take out my least favourite of the three Johnson performances, the 8 for 61 (and 3 for 98) in Perth, which in my mind's eye remains neither as fast nor as threatening as his other two performances on the list. To replace it? It would have to be Asif in Kandy against Sri Lanka in 2006, which was Asif as I now remember him: a little faster than the 2010 version but as smart, and those wrists even whippier and looser. The amount of movement he extracted off the surface was obscene and almost unseen in those parts.

Maybe even Hoggard's 12-fer in Johannesburg in that 2004-05 series would sneak in somewhere. He tends to get the least attention out of all of England's major modern pacers but he was such a beautiful, traditional swing bowler and that match contained one of the best pure swing-bowling performances.

This is the problem with lists. Mine is obviously right and yours is just a collection of fanboy stuff written by a 13-year-old boy with a Warne fetish

Can any such list exist without the presence of Shane Warne in it? Adelaide in the 2006-07 Ashes - perhaps not, but maybe Trent Bridge from '05, which wasn't just the wickets or the 45 in that second innings but just so Warne, not only getting into the heads of a great England side but actually leading with some outstanding bowling.

And I might replace Herath with another Sri Lankan. Herath is a supreme bowler and one of those I have loved watching most over the years, but monumental as the statistics of his feat are against Pakistan, they were against Pakistan, who have, on occasion, played spin like it is something they have never seen before. In his place, I would put in Muttiah Muralitharan at Trent Bridge against England, the 8 for 70 (and 3 for 62 in the first). There felt something so inevitable about that performance right from the very start of the Test, the fact that it would be Murali's last Test in England and that you just knew he would have wanted to do something extraordinary. And then the stage being set just right with England chasing a target they were, in fairness, never going to chase and the thing is, even if it sounds so predictable that Murali did it, to reach up to such high expectations in itself is a sign of greatness, to make it all look so inevitable.

And don't think I didn't notice no KP in your list. In some parts of the world, that would be blasphemy.

Kimber: This is the problem with lists. Mine is obviously right and yours is just a collection of fanboy stuff written by a 13-year-old boy with a Warne fetish. I don't know why we ask other people's opinions on things when my opinion is always right. We could have sorted all this out so much easier if I had just done all of this on my own. I am sure KP agrees with me.

In 1997 at the MCG, Kallis mostly just hung in there, photographic evidence to the contrary Ben Radford / © Getty Images

But if we have done anything, it is at least proof that there have been some amazing Test performances in the recent years. Just because you can see them on YouTube instead of hearing them misremembered from your uncle doesn't mean they aren't as special.

Some of the greatest feats of our sport are happening right now, and we have to start realising that by not looking back, not ignoring them, not dismissing them, but putting them in their proper place, up on the pedestal with the grainy black-and-white memories from whatever golden era we love.

People need to go back to YouTube and bathe in all the KP, Sehwag, Kumar, Mitch, Rangana and Dale they can find. Maybe this isn't a golden era, but look at who I have just mentioned, and look who I could: Saeed, Trent, Michael, Shiv, Younis, Hashim, Jimmy, Sachin, Mahela, Ryan, Graeme, Rahul, AB, MS, oh I give up, but you get it right. Think of what they have done, all of it, can your mind even factor in all that at once? No.

The last ten years may not have been the greatest but there has been plenty of greatness in them.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

 

RELATED ARTICLES