[al Furqaan]

Originally Posted by shakibrulz
Um yes you could, especially when you couple it with his average. Hand eye co-ordination doesn't translate into aggression - although most batsmen who have it are aggressive. For eg: Collingwood, poor technique, but great eye.

All international level players have great eyes relative to average human. An average person would struggle to get wood to leather as soon as the rock is coming even at a medium pace of 70 mph. And even top associate teams like Afhganistan and Ireland have at least one or two 85 mph bowlers.

You suggested that he only possesses or uses or relies on HEC. If this was the case, the majority of his runs would be scored via boundaries, because you don't need or use HEC to nudge the ball around, no matter what kind of bowling you face or pitch you're batting on. Its pointless to use ODIs with all its powerplay chances and field differences between openers and middle order bats, so lets look at Tests which are far more uniform. As it is, Sir Ash scores 55% of his Test runs from boundaries.

As exmaples:

Sehwag 64%
Tamim 59%
Gayle 66%
Dilshan 52%

By comparison, Collingwood has 47% indicating that he was player who most probably did not rely on HEC to score his runs, no matter how shoddy his technique might have been.

And by footwork, I mean vs pacers obviously rather. And oh, you could dominate Murali without any footwork - Sehwag did, Gambhir did too off the top of my head - Sehwag especially is known for his pathetic footwork.

Sehwag and Gambhir are generally regarded to be pretty good players, with career averages around 50. Ashraful averaged nearly twice his career average against Murali, give or take. I'll admit his footwork against pace was considerably poorer, and even he believes he's a better player of spin than pace.

Picking the length early is mostly good hand eye co-ordination, yes. Then there is balance, footwork, shot selection etc - I don't think he does well in any of that regards. none of which I see/saw in Ash.

Everyone knows of his shot selection but is there any evidence to support that his balance was not good? Bear in mind, the comparison hasn't been against all time greats, but of his contemporary BD batsman. He has better balance than anyone on the team apart from Tamim and Mushy indicated by how properly they can execute the drive shot. Don't confuse success or its lack with things like balance or technique.

Worlds better is an exaggeration - but yeah. My defense re: Anam was just due to the heavy criticism he received. I do think his footwork is poor-below par. He makes up for it massively with his shot selection, temperament, balance etc.

The gaps Anamul was leaving when playing Sammy, Roach, Rampaul and Russell could easily be used to park the Titanic! Even Shakib's technique is far tigher than that. Tamim often leaves gaps that big, but he has the ability to close the bat-pad gap when he feels like it. The jury is still out on Anamul.

That's a gross oversimplification - Ash sure as hell couldn't handle the pressure, and is better than 22 avg he curently has, but calling someone 'greatest talent of BD' etc would demand at least a potential 38-40+ odd average in tests- and I just don't see him being that kinda player. And he doesn't even pile on runs on domestic cricket consistently, averaging 50+ there either, sorta backs my point. If you claim that he can't handle 'immense pressure' of your FC cricket, well, I have nothing more to add - we'll agree to disagree.

He was easily capable of averaging a lot more than he did. But you can't simply equate averages to talent. Tendulkar was far more talented than Dravid, but at one point in their careers Dravid had the higher average. Tendulkar should have always averged 10 more than Dravid, no matter how hard working Dravid might have been.

You are making the mistake of making blanket statements like "a talented player will always score more" and "better technique will always mean higher average". You cannot work in absolutes. You can say more likely or most likely, but not absolutes. Otherwise there is no reason to play sports at all. The higher ranked team should always win on paper.

The bottom line is, Ashraful may not be as technically savy as Mushfiq, but apart from that there isn't anyone on BD who was as multidimensional. Shakib is absoltely a better batsman, but Ashraful has performed well against bowlers ranging from Kumble and Murali, to McGrath and Pollock. And thats without mentioning guys like Vaas, Zaheer, Ntini, and Harbhajan. That would suggest he was at least amongst the most talented BD batsman if not the most.