Greatness across eras: measures, challenges, and fallacies

In the latest episode of the podcast, we discuss the idea of greatness in cricket. What do we mean when we say a player is 'great', how does one compare across eras, and what are the pitfalls we fall into when discussing greatness.

Talking Points:

• Greatness as a measurement of a player's performance against their peers
• The habit of putting down one player as one elevates another
• The need for a transcendent moment for a player to be anointed 'great'
• The fallacy of the match-winning innings
• Lillee v Cummins: the complexity of comparing two great bowlers
• The power of nostalgia in talking about greatness - the Andy Roberts problem
• Great batsmen in weak teams and great bowlers in strong teams
• The problem with recency bias when judging greatness
• Is this South African team better than the teams from the 1990s and 2000s?
• The high benchmark for subcontinental players in foreign conditions

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Participants:

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee)

Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd)

Kartikeya Date (@cricketingview)

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Related:

• The line of greatness - Siddhartha Vaidyanathan - The Cricket Monthly
• Wisden 100 - Wikipedia
• Who are the greatest T20 players of all - Kartikeya Date - ESPNcricinfo
• Who are the best batsmen of each decade - Anantha Narayanan - ESPNcricinfo
• The Richards standard for ODI batsmen - Kartikeya Date - ESPNcricinfo
• A new measure for cricketing greatness - Andy Bull - Guardian
• An all-time world Test XI, according to ICC rankings - Rupin Kale - Wisden