Great batting from Stokes & Bairstow today. Both clearly hampered but showing some fight.
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Cricket
- Thread starter mb64
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What a great days cricket so far, wickets, tight, accurate bowling, plenty of sixes, gutsy batting from Stokes, Bairstow and Wood. Give me test cricket every day of the week, it's a much better game than the other formats.
Cmon lads , how can you put a state player in the conversation as one of best ever, crazy stuff . It’s like all the could have been footy stars in the bush, didn’t do it, didn’t happen.
I use to work with a big fan of Berry and I’m pretty sure he said he only ever kept for a touring team once , obviously was a very good state keeper but the fact h3 was in the system for a long long time yet never got a gig says a lot I say , geez we can’t even compare him because he simply never kept at the top level .
Nothing against Berry personally seems a ripper on radio, however
I use to work with a big fan of Berry and I’m pretty sure he said he only ever kept for a touring team once , obviously was a very good state keeper but the fact h3 was in the system for a long long time yet never got a gig says a lot I say , geez we can’t even compare him because he simply never kept at the top level .
Nothing against Berry personally seems a ripper on radio, however
Jack Russell performed a similar stumping of Dean Jones off Gladstone Small.
Keeping is keeping. It's catching a ball. A fifth day Test pitch with Warney bowling around the wicket into the rough would separate the men from the boys, but Berry was one of the men.
There's only room for one keeper in a team. Healy got the job a couple of years before Berry hit the scene, and kept it for more than a decade. From my memory he only ever missed one Test and the NSW mafia replaced him with Phil Emery when Berry should have got the job. Then Gilchrist emerged and showed he was a match-winner with the bat at least three years before Healy retired. He got the ODI job because of course, and proved he could handle the level. Door closed.
I have no doubt Berry's below average batting cost him. Emery's was no better, but he was from NSW.
So all Berry not getting a national gig says is that the Australian Team of the Century keeper got in before him, NSW bias and his batting cost him a fill-in game, and then the greatest no.7 in history showed up. The bloke was a top-shelf keeper.
Yeh, listen to any past cricketer and they all acknowledge Berry's keeping genius.
Ultimately Gilly's form made it impossible to ignore him.
A better keeper may have executed perhaps a dozen more dismissals over their carer but when a guy averages near 50 (he was close to 60 for much of his career) at a strike rate of 82 and is a match winner its no contest.
As much as I respect most of PREs and cricketing greats opinions , to say a guy who NEVER kept at the highest level , never had the pressures of keeping for Australia , didn’t keep to the best bowling line ups each week , kept the majority of his career at the bouncy G it’s just crazy , sorry for the disagreement against much more educated cricket minds , but I’m generalising in sport , seriously who gives a rats about someone who didn’t compete at the highest level , potential, potential, potential worst 3 words in sport . I do understand the difficulties of getting an opportunity as a keeper , however genuine greats , get these opportunities.
There’s a million of these stories
There’s a million of these stories
It's not crazy, Mr B. You're wrong.
How can you in one breath say we should pick the best gloveman, implying that we didn't do so in the cases of Haddin, Wade and now Carey, yet in the next breath point to Berry's non-selection as proof he wasn't good enough? He wasn't a good enough batsman, he was a brilliant keeper.
Also disagree that his rep is better because he never got his shot. Mike Hussey's rep would be so much worse if he'd never got his (and he nearly didn't). Stuart MacGill would have taken 500 Test wickets if not for Warne. Jamie Siddons, Brad Hodge, Martin Love, Stuart Law, et al just didn't get the opportunities to fulfil their talents at the top level.
400-odd footballers get to ply their trade at the top level every week. Only 11 get to play cricket for Australia at any one time, and only one of those is a keeper. Imagine if only one key forward got to play footy at a time, and Jack had got stuck behind Buddy.
How can you in one breath say we should pick the best gloveman, implying that we didn't do so in the cases of Haddin, Wade and now Carey, yet in the next breath point to Berry's non-selection as proof he wasn't good enough? He wasn't a good enough batsman, he was a brilliant keeper.
Also disagree that his rep is better because he never got his shot. Mike Hussey's rep would be so much worse if he'd never got his (and he nearly didn't). Stuart MacGill would have taken 500 Test wickets if not for Warne. Jamie Siddons, Brad Hodge, Martin Love, Stuart Law, et al just didn't get the opportunities to fulfil their talents at the top level.
400-odd footballers get to ply their trade at the top level every week. Only 11 get to play cricket for Australia at any one time, and only one of those is a keeper. Imagine if only one key forward got to play footy at a time, and Jack had got stuck behind Buddy.
Well said. There's a fair slice of serendipity in some careers.
Siddons was a super talent, also a freak fieldsman. Used to watch a bit of shield cricket and he could do it all. Recall one day he chased a ball from the slips down to 3rd man. He slowed a little as he approached the ball to encourage the batsman to take another run. It worked, and he picked the ball up and threw the stumps down from 3rd man. I'll never forget it. It was a staggering piece of work. He'd be earning a fortune in 20/20 nowadays. (IIRC Viv Richards did a similar thing in a one day game against Australia albeit when fielding in the circle - goaded the batsman into another run and threw the stumps down?).
Ah, Dizzy. One of my all-time faves. There are three young fast bowlers who have debuted for Australia in my time watching that from the first ball I called 'star': a 19-year-old Craig McDermott, 21-year-old Dizzy and 18-year-old Cummins.
On the day. By a fraction of a second. Now imagine only one got selected, and it wasn't necessarily the guy who won the race, but the one who was also better at the 200.
Before it gets all nasty 
it’s a wasted argument with me , all you guys say proved to me more an more that he can not be considered great ,great state level , certainly but how can you rate a guy as one of the greatest when he didn’t even play at the top level , bewildering, not one other sport in the world would have experts claiming a guy who never played at the top level …. Loo de Chris . Good day my friends
it’s a wasted argument with me , all you guys say proved to me more an more that he can not be considered great ,great state level , certainly but how can you rate a guy as one of the greatest when he didn’t even play at the top level , bewildering, not one other sport in the world would have experts claiming a guy who never played at the top level …. Loo de Chris . Good day my friends
the record books seem to back up Mr B.
Can't see Berry in this list:
www.smh.com.au
Or even this list:
stats.espncricinfo.com
Can't see Berry in this list:
Who are the top 10 Australian wicketkeepers of all time?
The Australian Test cricket team has had 45 captains but only 33 wicket keepers. Here is Malcolm Knox's top 10 Australian keepers of all time.
Or even this list:
Australia Test matches keeping most dismissals career | ESPNcricinfo
Find Australia cricket Test matches keeping most dismissals career at ESPNcricinfo. Records and stats of Australia Test matches keeping most dismissals career.
Geez as long as Dudford doesn’t jump on the wagon , we know he’s a known Wagon jumper
We just need, Leysy, mate. Then you can run up the white flag.
