we’ve got two current players in the top 50 of shield averages (Smith and Khawaja). #50 on that list is at 49.61. So no one currently playing sheffield shield cricket is averaging more than 49.61 (10 games or more). The only millennial career on that list (Phil Hughes) was cut short at only 7 years.
Of the top 50 Shield run scorers, we have 4 currently playing (all with ~7000-8000 runs) - they are Bailey, Ferg, Karen White and Shaun Marsh. And the highest average among them is Marsh in the early 40’s.
The only 1000+ run shield seasons in the last decade have come from Adam Voges (2014/15) and Michael Klinger (2014/15 and 2008/09) and both of those guys have retired from 1st class cricket. We don’t have a single batsman in the country to have registered a 1000 run Shield Season.
Paints an alarming picture of a generation of batsman lost. Nobody doubts or discounts that the 90’s and early 2000, Gen X if you will, was the peak of our batting depth, but if you look at any batting records list (top 50 runs, averages, season totals) for the Sheffield Shield you will notice a dearth of current generation players on those lists where as every other generation is well represented to at least some extent.
To say there isn’t an issue with the quality of batsmen being produced by the Sheffield Shield is burying your head in the sand. It’s been a desolate wasteland for the best part of a decade.
Why don’t we just say cricketers?
Starc, Cummins, Cutting, Bird, Pattinson…these guys were all exciting young players, where’s that next generation of bowlers?
Or keepers, for that matter?
Mate the next gen of bowlers are all playing test cricket and they’re 25-28. but if you want to look beyond that, we had Chad Sayers break the Sheffield Shield season wicket taking record last year (or maybe year before). Chris tremain took 60+ wickets last season. We’ve got bowlers, heaps of them. Some good, some less so, some with inflated records bloated on shithouse domestic batting line ups. Barely a decent spinner in sight though.
It’s unrealistic, and hence perhaps a bit silly, to keep comparing the number of guys scoring runs now, to then.
that was an absolutely unprecedented period, for middle order bats in particular. Hasn’t been matched before, won’t be matched ever again.
To say that that’s the cause of all our woes doesn’t explain how we had good teams in the 40s, in the 70s, in the late 80s/early 90s, without half a dozen guys scoring thousands a year in Shield, like we had around the turn of the millenium.
You know what (and flame away), I don’t see Langer as close to that status on his own. As a member of a successful partnership with Hayden he was elevated to that level, but really he was ‘just’ a very good opener. His average of 45ish was obviously very good, but his numbers are bulked out by feasting on what was a pretty poor England team for most of his career.
For me “very good opener”, yes. One half of a “great” opening partnership. “Legend”, not so much…
Laugh it up, aboods boy. You still have a lot of recovering to do after…I forget the rest of this blitz meme.
Perhaps unsurprisingly I was referring to the part of his career where Gilchrist carried him.
As might have been picked up by the words ‘extended’ and, you know, ‘Gilchrist.’