That yardstick is of course Donald Bradman, insofar as his impact value is compared to that of all other batsmen and extrapolated to give an equivalent impact average on the same sc??ale as traditional batting average. The meth??od is as follows.

The match impact rating that I proposed previously is expressed as a percentage per Test, e.g. Garry Sobers�match impact per Test might be worth s??ay 21%, whereas Dennis Lillee might be worth 19%, but those figures don’t really mean much to anyone else but me as there’s no real frame of reference. So what I decided to do was to a) separate out the impact solely based on each player’s batting, then b) extrapolate that to a value which ??is equivalent to the range of Test batting averages, with the intent being to provide a rating scale with which those who follow cricket would be familiar (I may at some point in the future repeat this exercise for bowling and fielding).

I assumed that the obvious basis to scale from is Don Bradman. As was seen with my full impact exercise Bradman is the highest rated pure batsman (no adjustment for opponent) and as a result will have the highest impac??t purely from batting, so we can use his batting impact rating and Test batting average from which to scale. In order to scale the other batsmenI had to first run Bradman’s batting impact separation first and this gave me a figure of 22.06% �that is the equivalent impact average figure based on Bradman’s batting alone which is equated to his batting average of 99.94. In this way, once I ran each player’s batting ??impact I could then scale it to an equivalent batting average scale by comparing it to Bradman and basing it on a batting average of 99.94.

The Impactful 30

So without further ado, below is the list of the top 30 most impactful Test batsmen, based on match impact transposed to an equivalent impact batting average and the yardstick of Don Bradman’s impact.

The above shows Player Rank, Player Name, Equivalent Impact Batting Average, Actual Batting Average, Percentage Increase/Decrease, Number of Tests and Test Career Duration. I’ve included the duration of their careers for comparison as opposed to simply number of Tests, as many more Test matches were played in Dravid’s modern times as compared to Trumper and Jackson. As we can see, Trumper’s impact was massive as compared to his batting average, and his equivalent average is now comparable to all of the players listed above.

Bruce Mitchell is rarely if ever mentioned among the Test batting greats, however his equivalent impact average is higher than all of the batsmen so far listed. Of his debut innings in England in 1929, Wisden noted ‘As an exhibition of patience and restraint, his innings was quite remarkable.’ His most famous innings however was his 164* at Lord’s, an innings which was ranked as the 14th best ever Test century in Masterly Batting, wherein it was described by Richard Parry as ‘an innings of patience and determination, the ultimate acceptance of responsibility by a man who was able to lift his performance and to seize the moment. Not only that, his innings was filled with classic batting from a talented natural stroke player who had built his international career restraining his attacking instincts in the service of a weak team.’ At that time, Mitchell was ranked third in the world according to the ICC Rankings, behind only Bradman and Headley and ahead of the likes of Sutcliffe, Hammond and McCabe.

Four all-tme batting greats here…and Aubrey Faulkner. Faulkner is widely considered as one of the best ever all-rounders, however he was so dominant that he was separately ranked number one as a batsman, bowler and all-rounder during his Test career. In fact, his career-best ICC batting rating of 877 is better than was ever achieved by Rohan Kanhai, Colin Cowdrey, Graham Gooch, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Glenn Turner, among others. Nice to see Neil Harvey well represented here by his equivalent impact average – his batting average sees him ranked number 50 all-time (20 Tests minimum), whereas measured by his actual impact he ranks 18. Hammond, Chappell and Sobers are less affected and rate equally well whether impact or batting average is considered.

George Headley is negatively affected as regards impact, as was his batting average, by continuing to play after World War II, when he was aged 45. Had he retired after 1939, his batting average would have been 66.72 as against his final average of 60.83; considering his equivalent impact average, the difference is 68.18 as against 58.12 – that impact average of 68.18 would have ranked him second of all time behind Bradman. Graeme Smith, described by CW’s Gareth Bland as a colussus, was responsible for three of the highest batting impact matches of all time, culminating with the 154* at Edgbaston which ranked number three of all time in the aforementioned Masterly Batting – Rob Smyth’s account in that book was described in the book review section of the 2014 Wisden as ‘one of the best pieces of cricket writing of the year, in any medium.’ As the following extract shows, the plaudits are well deserved:- ‘On a personal level, Smith upgraded the archetypal captain’s innings for the 21st century. It had all the over-my-dead-body qualities associated with the genre, but its purpose was victory rather than the avoidance of defeat…Smith bent a match, a series and even history itself to his granite will’.

I recently watched the Sachin biopic and, my goodness, he looks breathtaking in full flow. One of the criticisms of Tendulkar is that he didn’t get it done when it mattered, but a 9.34% increase over his batting average would suggest that this is an overstatement. He also rates ahead of many batsmen who outrank him in the ICC Player Rankings. Tendulkar is slightly behind his countryman Sunil Gavaskar in terms of impact.

Hobbs and Lara receive very large improvements based on impact, Hobbs now ranking ahead of his long-time opening partner Herbert Sutcliffe, which is not the case when batting average?? is used as a measure.

Review
A comparison of the impact top 30 ranking against the top 30 when ranked by batting average shows 20 of the impact top 25 also appearing in the batting top 30, 9 of the top 10 and all of the top 5 repeated, though the order is somewhat different – the correlation coefficient is about +0.5, which is halfway between an exact match and no match at all. While those numbers might suggest that the impact average is not providing much more information about actual impact than is the batting average does, this can be further investigated by reviewing those batsmen who have gained or lost the most in the comparison.

The top and bottom of it

The lists below show the top move??rs in terms of difference between impact equivalent and batting average, both positi??ve and negative.

LARGEST INCREASES BY RUNS

LARGEST INCREASES BY PERCENTAGE

The above suggests that the impact measure is ??offsetting any era scoring differen??ces.

LARGEST DECREASES BY RUNS

LARGEST DECREASES BY PERCENTAGE

Voges benefits from often coming into bat with his side well in front, so it’s not surprising that his equivalent impact average is significantly inferior to his batting average. I admit to being quite surprised by ‘Long’ Tom Graveney’s presence on the above list, we’ll discuss that in more detail later.

The lists with largest increase and decrease demonstrate that there are significant changes in some batsmen’s ranking based on the measurement of impact. Below I’ve included some direct comparisons of players with similar impact or batting averages:-

– Victor Trumper and Clyde Walcott

In terms of batting average, Walcott is far ahead of Trumper, 56.59 to 39.05, whereas in terms of equivalent impact average Trumper’s is slightly higher, 53.82 to 53.73. While some of this may be explained away by era differences, the increase/difference lists suggest otherwise, and in any case is certainly not true for the following two comparisons.

– Neil Harvey and Ken Barrington

Barrington’s average is more than ten runs higher than Harvey’s, 58.67 to 48.42, whereas Harvey’s impact average is higher than Barrington’s, 55.59 to 54.95.

– Glenn Turner and Zaheer Abbas

Zed averages 44.80 which compares with Turner’s batting average of 44.64, but impact-wise Turner is far ahead, 52.46 to 40.91. The second and third comparisons cannot be explained by era scoring differentials.

So what about Graveney?

As regards the various movers up and down, the one which surprised me the most was Graveney. When I was younger, my dad spoke highly of Tom Graveney and I therefore held him in high regard myself, plus most of what I read of him lauded his elegant and stylish batting. Given that the impact measurement downgrades him significantly, I decided to compare Graveney with a batsman from the same era having a similar batting average but a higher impact measure, namely Hanif Mohammad. Graveney played from 1951-1969, while Hanif debuted one year later and retired the same year as Graveney. As regards batting average, Graveney’s was 44.38, Hanif’s 43.98. However with the impact measure Graveney rates at 38.01, Hanif at 52.37, a massive difference.

I decided to review every Test ??match in which they played, and note the match status in terms of win probability each time they came in to bat, to try and pinpoint why the impact measures are so disparate. Below a?re the results:-

GRAVENEY

HANIF

The above shows the batsman’s own team’s win probability on coming into bat, number of innings, not outs, batting average and 100s/50s under each situation, for each match scenario of ahead (0.6-1.0), balanced (0.4-0.6) and behind (0.0-0.4). We can see that Hanif performed at a much higher level than did Graveney when the chips were down, whereas Graveney did much better when his side was ahead and there was less pressure to perform.

Isolating ??those situations when the match was either in the balance or his ??side was behind, Hanif and Graveney compare as shown below:-

We can see clearly that Hanif was a far superior performer under pressure, with twice as many centuries scored in only a few more innings. Granted, Pakistan was a lower quality team than the England team of the period of Graveney’s Test career and was not ahead very often when Hanif came in, but nonetheless Hanif clearly turned it on when it mattered most.

Martin Chandler’s piece on Long Tom revealed an interesting fact – in the first 55 Tests of Graveney’s career, played when he was between the ages of 24 and 36, Graveney scored 3107 runs at 41.02; after a three-year gap with no call from the selectors, Graveney returned for 24 more Tests between the ages of 39 and 42, and knocked up 1775 at 50.71, an increase of 9.69 runs on his average during that period. Was that difference in fortunes also reflected in his impact measure? His first 55 Tests were worth an equivalent impact average of 31.89, while the final 24 were worth 50.06, for a differential of 18.17, so the answer is a resounding yes.

While it is inarguable that Graveney was a stylish practitioner, his preference for batting under favourable match conditions was alluded to in his obituary in the Daily Telegraph:-

Yet Graveney did give the selectors cause for doubt. After his second Test, in which he untypically laboured for more than eight hours to amass 175 against India in Bombay at the end of 1951, he failed for many years to live up to his ??potential for England. To some he appeared too relaxed to steel himself to the rigours of Test cricket.

The whisper went around that Graveney lacked the strength of character to succeed when the going got tough.

In summary

While those batsmen who fashion a high batting average typically have significant impact also, as this study has shown this is not always the case and there are batsmen whos??e batting average does not tell the full story of their contribution. I feel that the results discussed ??above have positively highlighted those batsmen who can be relied on to save or turn a match when called upon.

Which was the point all along.

That yardstic??k is of course Donald Bradman, insofar as his impact value is compared to that of all other batsmen and extrapolated to give an equivalent impact average on the same scale as traditional batting average. The ??method is as follows.

The match impact rating that I proposed previously is ex?pressed as a percentage per Test, e.g. Garry Sobers�match impact per Test might be worth say 21%, whereas Dennis Lillee might be worth 19%, but those figures don’t really mean much to anyone else ??but me as there’s no real frame of reference. So what I decided to do was to a) separate out the impact solely based on each player’s batting, then b) extrapolate that to a value which is equivalent to the range of Test batting averages, with the intent being to provide a rating scale with which those who follow cricket would be familiar.

I assumed that the obvious basis to scale from is the impact of Don Bradman. As?? was seen with my full impact exercise Bradman is the highest rated pure batsman (no adjustment for opponent) and as a result will surely have the highest impact from batting only, so we can use his batti??ng impact rating and Test batting average to scale from. In order to scale the others I had to run Bradman’s batting impact separately first and this gave me a figure of 22.06% �that is the equivalent impact average figure which is equated to Bradman’s batting average of 99.94. In this way, once I ran each player’s batting impact I could then scale it to an equivalent batting average scale by comparing it to Bradman and basing it on a 99.94 batting average (which figure just seems to look more ridiculous every time I read or write it!). Applying a linear transformation, that gives us a value of around 11% as being the equivalent of a batting average of around 50 (actually 11.03% to 49.97).

As we had cut off last time following the impact rating for Greg Chappell, we start this time with legendary Indian opening batsman, Sunil Gavaskar. Bradman’s numbers are shown below for reference, showing his Equivalent Impact Average, Actual Batting Average and Impact Percentage:-

As Bradman is used as the yardstick his equivalent impact average is the same as his career batting average (in the next feature, which will include impact figures for the first 20, 30, etc. Tests of a batsman’s career, we will see Bradman’s impact average exceed 100). All other batsman are rated based on the above figures. Here is how the modern players fare.

Group 1

When measured using this impact scale Sunil Gavaskar shows up as having had significant impact as compared to how he is rated by his batting average. I have already discussed in previous features how, with this measure, Gooch rates highly as compared to Gower. As regards Viv Richards, although he increased quite a bit I was disappointed it wasn’t a more significant delta when considering his apparent impact, and I will discuss this further at the end of this feature. Note that the division into groups is basically determined by CricketArchive player numbers.

Group 2

Openers Mark Taylor and Michael Atherton both ??move up significantly when taking into account the actual impact of their batting as opposed to measurin?g success by traditional batting average. Steve Waugh drops a little, though not much, and becomes comparable to Taylor as regards batting impact.

Group 3

This group are largely unaffected whether or not they are measured by batting average or impact average, with two exceptions. Graham Thorpe, the man who gave way to Kevin Pietersen, shows by this measure as a much more impactful batsman than his average gives him credit for. But Brian Lara is in a class apart – his equivalent impact average of 68.14 is second only to Bradman to this point.

Group 4

Sachin T??endulkar takes a signific??ant increase based on equivalent average and is one of the highest rated impact batsmen ever, though notably his impact measures at slightly less than his compatriot Sunil Gavaskar. Sticking with Indian batsmen, I had thought that Laxman would rate higher, though he does receive a slight increase, as does Rahul Dravid.

Group 5

I was glad to see that Mohammad Yousuf rates significantly higher when measured by his impact, as do Marcus Trescothick and Mahela Jayawardene. Kallis rates highly but then he does so when measured by his batting average. The small increase for Adam Gilchrist demands further discussion in the same way as Viv Richards does – see later in the feature.

Group 6

Big increases for both Andrew Strauss and especially? Graeme Smith, bringing him close to Kumar Sangakkara with two of the highest impact scores ever. In fact, all of this group fare better when rated by impact than by batting average.

Slight digression – What exactly do I mean by impact?

When we think of impact, we tend to think of the batsmen who can seemingly turn a game in a heartbeat, like the aforementioned Richards, Gilchrist and Virender Sehwag. But impact doesn’t have to be instant – what we are measuring and giving the batsmen credit for here is based on the impact of his innings on the state of the match, whether that happens releatively quickly or relatively slowly. It’s easy to see the impact of Lara’s 153* in the successful run chase against Australia in 1999, as he turned what was a losing proposition into victory, but it’s not so easy to see the impact of a great first innings performance, when there is still no much cricket to play.

So we have to rely on probability to gauge th??e impact of such an innings, i.e. what is the most likely result given the present circumstances of the match, in order to provide a realistic assessment of the impact of an innings at any time in the game. Hence a steady batsman like Dravid can hav??e as much impact, at least in Tests, as a batsman with more instant impact like Sehwag.

Group 7

Quite a big increase for Cook, while the res?t of this group moves around slightly up or down.

Group 8

All of the current greats rate similarly highly when looking at impact or batting average, with the exception of Joe Root; this may be connected to his relatively low conversion rate, 24.5% as against almost 50% for Steve?? Smith and a whopping 57% for Ko??hli.

In summary, the above lists focus on 46 batsmen, which considering the number of Tests played is about equivalent to the 33 we looked at last time. In the next feature I’ll combine the two lists and discuss the all-time most impactful batsmen, however to conclude this piece I’d like to revisit Viv Richards and Adam Gilchrist.

Vivi and Gilly – why aren’t they rated higher on career impact?

I am old enough to recall Viv Richards’ batting masterclass during the red hot summer of 1976, when in just four Tests he plundered the England attack to the tune of 829 runs. Over his first 21 Tests he boasted a career average of 64.15 and he would go on to play in 100 more Tests, though his average would never surpass that mark. Below is a table showing how his average, and equivalent impact average, fared over time:-

We can see that Richards’ equivalent impact average was incredibly high after his first 20-odd Tests, and indeed was still massive after 43 Tests – only Bradman ever rated higher after so many Tests. But Richards’ batting average over the rest of his Test career was just 43.51, as compared to 62.76 before that. In equivalent impact the difference is even more extreme, 70.13 as compared to 43.94.

Looking at Gilly, we see a similar trend. In his last 50 Tests he aver??aged less than 38 with the bat, and in equivalent impact average the comparison between his first 30 Tests to the remainder i?s 71.04 as compared to only 40.41.

In the final feature I’ll also compare the best ever after a number of Tests, i.e. after 20 Tests, 30 Tests etc.

I’m confident that Vivi and Gilly should look pretty good in that case.

Not with a bang

Regardless of the relative success or otherwise of that exercise, the fact remains that when we compare players we tend to do it using their main discipline – Kallis is typically compared to Tendulkar only on his batting, Botham is compared to Lillee only on his bowling, and so forth. So, despite this being the antithesis of what I was trying to achieve with match impact I decided out of general interest to do the same, i.e. compare batsmen solely on their batting, but from a match impact point of view rather than traditional batting average.

Average (not average)

The match impact rating that I proposed previously is expressed as a percentage per Test, e.g. Garry Sobers’ match impact per Test might be worth say 21%, whereas Dennis Lillee might be worth 19%, but those figures don’t really mean much to anyone else but me as there’s no real frame of reference. So what I decided to do was to a) separate out the impact solely based on each player’s batting, then b) extrapolate that to a value which is equivalent to the range of Test batting averages, with the intent being to provide a rating scale with which those who follow cricket would be familiar.

I assumed that the obvious basis to scale from is Don Bradman. As was seen with my full impact exercise Bradman is the highest rated pure batsman (no adjustment for opponent) and as a result will have the highest impact from batting only, so we can use his batting impact rating and Test batting average to scale from. In order to scale the others I had to run Bradman’s batting impact separation first and this gave me a figure of 22.06% – that is the equivalent impact average figure which is equated to Bradman’s batting average of 99.94. In this way, once I ran each player’s batting impact I could then scale it to an equivalent batting average scale by comparing it to Bradman and baseing it on a 99.94 batting average.

A Game of Two Halves

Even though I’ve built up a large database of Test cricket events this stuff still takes a long time, so I’ve decided to split the work in two, the first half cutting off at Greg Chappell (based on CricketArchive player number, rather than by debut or retirement date), so just before Sunil Gavaskar. Once I’ve completed the second half I can do a full comparison, then repeat the exercise for bowling and fielding.

Using a batting impact of 22.06% as equivalent to a batting average of 99.94 (which is near as dammit 100), this gives us an equivalent batting average of 50 as equating to a match impact of around 11%, which if we weren’t converting to an equivalent average would be our magic number. I don’t even know for sure if the relationship is completely linear, though I don’t see why it wouldn’t be and certainly looking at the various equivalent averages it does appear to be pretty close to being linear. What match impact also does is to remove any era variations, as the win probability already takes that into account.

The First 400

I’ll first present the equivalent batting averages chronologically, split into three groups which roughly equate to pre-WW1, between the wars and post-WWII to about 1980 (or Chappell).

Remember these aren’t actually batting averages – they’re not era-adjusted batting averages, they’re not opposition-adjusted averages, they’re not any kind of batting average; they’re a match impact average percentage which has been scaled to resemble a batting average for ease of comparison.

Looking at the?? first 400 players in the first part of this study, below are featured ??some of the greatest batsmen of the Golden Age, with equivalent impact average, batting average and impact percentage shown:-

Player group 1-400

What we can see here is that, despite playing in almost the same number of Tests and having virtually the same Test batting average, Trumper had significantly more impact through his batting in Tests than did his compatriot Clem Hill. In fact, Trumper’s impact average is slightly higher than Jackson, whose batting average was almost ten runs higher than Trumper’s but who played in only about half the number of Tests. Grace’s heyday really pre-dated Test cricket but he still had as much impact as did his own nominee for top batsman, Arthur Shrewsbury.

Player group 1-400 (cont.)

As with Hill and Trumper, we can see that Hobbs, despite a lower average than his partner Sutcliffe, has a significantly higher equivalent impact average, in fact the highest to date. South Africa’s Herby Taylor, who was good enough to average 50 in Tests with the great Sydney Barnes in the opposing attack, also fares pretty well by this measure and is much closer to Sutcliffe on impact than traditional batting average, the difference being halved when looking at equivalent impact – Taylor was described by ‘Jim’ Swanton as follows: “His method was so sound that he remained a beautiful player when nearer fifty than forty.” Clearly he had some impact, too.

The Second 400

Player group 401-800

Into the next group of 400 now, and I doubt that anyone needs an introduction to the three batsmen listed above. Bradman naturally shows as having the same for equivalent impact as his batting average, as his numbers are being used as the basis for our scaling, with other players showing higher or lower than their actual batting average based on their impact as compared to Bradman’s. Hammond shows as being further behind Headley based on impact than on purely batting average, with Headley achieving the highest level of impact batting so far (after Bradman, of course). Hammond though makes up a lot in total match impact due to his bowling, as well as in fielding. Martin Chandler pointed out in his feature on Hammond A Complex Man that had he not returned to Test cricket after the war Hammond would have retired with a Test average of 61.45 and would thus have been ranked second only to Bradman. Similarly, ignoring also the impact from those post-war Tests, Hammond’s equivalent impact average would be about 7% higher.

Player group 401-800 (cont)

Hutton shows a very high impact average, and we can see that the ‘minnows’ were well-represented by the other Sutcliffe, New Zealander Bert. Arthur Morris was Barry Richards’ opening partner in Don Bradman’s dream XI and we can see why.

The Third 400

Player group 801-1200

On to the third group of the first part of the study, players 801-1200. I’m not surprised to see Neil Harvey rewarded here, he had a number of high impact innings which may not be fairly reflected by his traditional batting average. Everton Weekes rates as having the highest impact average of the three Ws; I don’t have a problem with that either, as I’ve always considered Weekes to be the finest batsman of the three – as Jim Laker wrote He has the killer instinct…he murders the bowling.

Player group 801-1200 (cont.)

Glad to see the batting of Hanif and Peter May recognised (Hanif significantly so) and though Sobers’ equivalent impact average is lower than his batting average, the best all-round player ever still ranks highly on batting impact alone.

Player group 801-1200 (cont.)

I had thought Dexter would take mo??re of an upward hike based on his batting, but he does rank much higher when his bowling and fi?elding impact are also taken into account. Cowdrey inches closer to Barrington on this measure, though still some way behind.

Player group 801-1200 (cont.)

Kanhai and Hunte in particular rate as high-impact batsmen in ??this impressive group of West Indian? batsmen.

The fourth group – Player 1201 Through Greg Chappell

Player group 1200-1364

Pollock has the highest impact rating since George Headley – note that his compatriot Barry Richards rates at an astronomical 78.96, albeit over just four Tests and, though he has been highly rated by many expert witnesses, it’s unlikely he would have been able to maintain that level over a significant number of Tests. Sir Geoffrey, deaspite his somewhat dogmatic approach, rates well from an impact perspective. I saw Ian Redpath bat at Headingley during the 1968 Ashes in what was my first taste of Test cricket, thankfully he treated the crowd to a fine 92, which was just as well as Cowper had crawled to just 15 by lunch.

Player group 1201-1364 (cont.)

The final two batsmen featured this time around, Chappell still rates higher than Turner, but th?e gap is much smaller as regards impact than when considering batting average, where the difference is close to ten runs.

How the pre-Gavaskar group rank

Having now rated all of the first 1200 or so (well, 1364) players based on batting impact equivalent average, below is th??e top ten ranking list so far:-

Even though we’re only halfway through, it’s amazing to see that Bradman still has such a large lead over the rest based on actual batting impact. If we were to rank the same group of 1200+ players by batting average, then we can see from the above that Hobbs has moved up the rankings significantly, as have Hutton and, particularly, Harvey.

Looking at the players ranked by highest run differe??ntial between equivalent average and batting average (DeltaR):-

Nari Contractor’s is one of the sadder stories in cricket, as his career was cut short by a bouncer from Charlie Griffith, requiring emergency surgery and long periods of recuperation. Contractor was good enough to score 438 runs against an Australian side which the previous winter had seen off Peter May’s England 4-0, and it seems that his batting impact has not been fairly represented by his batting average. Trumper’s impact equivalent average is some way higher than his batting average, in fact the highest increase in terms of runs of all of the players looked at in this first part of the study. If we rank on delta runs as a percentage the gap is similarly large:-

Roy Dias was ‘a joy to watch at the crease’, though he did not begin his Test career until age 30 upon Sri Lanka’s election to Test status. It would be nice to think that I’ve unearthed a method of ranking stylish batsmen more highly, however it’s more likely that those who thrilled us also had significant impact as compared to how their batting average rates them, when compared to their peers.

As far as those w??ho have an equivalent impact average which is lower than their actual batting average, most of those are shown above:-

A final word on Trumper

Victor Trumper was nominated in Number One by Simon Wilde as being the champion batsman for ten years at the beginning of the 20th century.? From the above rankings it is clear that ?Trumper has benefitted from this study more than any of the cricketers assessed so far.

There are times when an early and tragic demise will result in a kind of ‘halo effect’ regarding the person who was plucked from us too soon, and though Trumper was no Archie Jackson, he had played some of his best cricket just three or four years before his death – the fact that he died from Bright’s Disease, from which I myself suffered as a child, has had no impact on my opinion of him.

It seems in Trumper’s case that all of the accolades afforded his batting were warranted – I am delighted to propose a rating system which sets him closer to his true place among the great pantheon of batting greats.

Next time we’ll look at the second group of batsmen, from Gavaskar-onwards.