Sport Today

Reading all the responsed to my flame bait on Hazare, all
I can say is that I was close to tears. What spirit to
defend a player?

Except for Samrath, no one seems to have grasped the reason
why I trolled, specially Uday Rajan :-)

So here I am asking again. What was so special about Hazare
that he can be considered great but not SRT/Prasanna/Chandra
(per Suresh Abraham). What did he achieve which the other 3
didn't.

RK-

PS: forget about other 3, I think Jimmy Amarnath was greater
than VH.

        Congratulations on your successful troll. So you think
that Hazare was a great player, and it was a troll to
suggest that he was not? I suppose that means you also
think that Kapil was a great bowler (especially after
1990), and that Gavaskar was a terrible bat. Fair
enough, everyone is entitled to their opinions.

Thanks for an excellent troll.  On the one hand everyone is sitting around
congratulating themselves on knowing someone so clever as you, on the other
you stimulated some interesting discussion on Hazare which broadened
readers' knowledge (myself included).  Well done.

<snip>

Andrew

Nope. I neither consider VH as a great player nor a crap.
Generally I refrain from passing a judgement about a player
whom I have not seen. VH retired years before I was born.

I wouldn't have bothered to troll if Suresh Abraham didn't
come with his list of 'great' cricketers which included only
SMG and VH.

Since you know about VH well, pray tell what he achieved for
Indian cricket which Pras/Chandra or even SRT didn't.

thanks.

RK-

        Well, I don't think of greatness as a competitive event, in
the sense that you have to beat out someone else to be
called great. OTOH, the word "great" would be meaningless
unless there were relatively few players who could be put in
that category.
        Mike mentioned this in the other Hazare thread (GRV vs
Hazare or something?), but Hazare's claim to greatness lies
in his overall average and in some great innings and
excellent series against quality teams (teams which included
bowlers who would also be classified as "great").
Personally, I rate Chandra as a great bowler (how can I
not?  He has very good career figures, and, in addition, he
got India its first wins in England and Australia. All that,
plus Lloyd b Chandrasekhar 28), with Pras in the "very good,
not quite great" category (although Pras was the main bowler
in the 3-1 win in NZ in 1967-68, India's first overseas Test
and series wins). OTOH, I don't think either Chandra or Pras
came up against opposition quite that strong (in terms of an
all-time "great" sense), or, at least, didn't quite perform
as well against really strong opposition. That's a matter of
opinion.
        As for SRT, my opinion on him is well-known. He's a
brilliant player who doesn't play great innings, but,
perhaps paradoxically, I still think of him as a great
player.
        As for achieving things for Indian cricket (or for their
team in general), achievements often consist of a single
Test or a single series that was won. Players can play
critical roles in that, without having the career figures to
fit the "great" label. Venkataraghavan is a classic case in
point. Picked up a 5-fer in the second innings of India's
first win the WI, in 1970-71, and the critical wicket of
Sobers in the first innings. Plucked a few critical catches
in England in '71, and held one end tight for a while as
Chandra cleaned up at the other. But there's no real case
for labelling him a great player.

Are you serious ? That's his standard bail out strategy each
time he gets his ass kicked. Substitute Tendulkar or Kapil for
Hazare and one gets the sense of history repeating ad nauseam.