Who is the Modern Jessop?
CiL
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,426-1483325,00.html
set me thinking.
Who acc to u is the modern Jessop?
I have to go back to what 'Tintin' the rsc poster once said in
another place on net sometime back he had claimed that the modern
jessop would be Afridi - the unadulterated hitting, the carefree mind
that abets that kind of hitting
and I will agree with him. That Tintin portrait of afridi as the
Jessop made one actually enjoy and appreciate his batting and wonder
how the original wud have played.
so who is ur modern jessop
and sorry Mr Holmans, there is no need for u to butt in and say there
is nobody like jessop. uff...
CiL
At one end stocky Jessop crouched,
The human catapult--
Robert Henderson
<cricke...@rediffmail.com> writes
>so who is ur modern jessop
>
There is no modern Jessop for the same reason there has never been "a
modern Jessop" at any other time since he died. The man is utter unique
both in the pace and volume of his scoring - no other top order batsman
comes close to it, not even Bradman*, but the methods which he used.
A short man (around 5'7") he was a very punishing cutter, puller and
hooker - not shots generally associated with the very fast scoring, as
well as being a tremendous driver, particularly straight. Not a stylist
- hence his nickname of "The Croucher" , he was simply batting violence
waiting to happen.
He played most of his cricket before 1910 when the present law on sixes
was introduced. Before 1910 the ball had to be hit out of the ground
to score six, so he does not appear in the six hitting records as he
deserves to - he very regularly cleared the ropes.
In addition, he was a good fast bowler in the first half of his career
and one of the great cover points. in the late 1890s, Gloucs with WG,
Townsend and Jessop were if not tremendously successful team, one to go
and see.
*When Bradman scored 309 in a day in a Test in 1930, he batted almost
six hours during which more than 120 overs were bowled. Jessop normal
rate of scoring when he made his very big innings - he scored 4 double
hundreds - was around 90 runs an hour. Had he batted for as long as
Bradman did on the first day of his innings in that Test, at Jessop's
normal rate of big innings scoring he would have reached 540 by the
end of the day! Jessop's sole Test 100 (1902) was scored in 75 minutes.
RH
--
Robert Henderson
phi...@anywhere.demon.co.uk
Blair Scandal web site at http://www.geocities.com/blairscandal/
Personal web site at http://www.anywhere.demon.co.uk
CiL
<Phi...@anywhere.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>A short man (around 5'7") he was a very punishing cutter, puller and
>hooker - not shots generally associated with the very fast scoring, as
>well as being a tremendous driver, particularly straight. Not a stylist
>- hence his nickname of "The Croucher" , he was simply batting violence
>waiting to happen.
Not only front of the wicket as usual hitters do, quite frequently
scored behind the wicket as well
From a article by Roy Webber posted by Murari Venkataraman in rsc some
years ago
++++++++++ The Run-a-Minute Man - Gilbert Jessop, By Roy Webber
....I often feel that Jessop is regarded as a hitter pure and simple,
but nothing is further from the truth. The hitter of the "Big Jim"
Smith variety is likely to score most of his runs in the arc
between square leg and long-on, but Jessop scored a high percentage
of his runs behind the wicket. He naturally had to have a quick
eye, but he timed the ball well and put much power into his
strokes.
During his first-class career between 1894 and 1914 he scored
26,698 runs (average 32.63), including fifty-three centuries, and
took 873 wickets (average 22.79), so ranks as a great all-rounder
in his own right. In 1897 he achieved the "double" with 1,219 runs
and 116 wickets, but he went even better in 1900 with totals of
2,210 runs and 104 wickets.
A batsman that was capable of scoring fifty-three centuries in
first-class cricket could not possible be a "blind swiper", but the
fact remains that Jessop scored all but four of those centuries
faster than a run-a-minute. In fact, throughout his whole career
he is said to have scored at about 80 runs an hour; a statement
that is borne out by the fact that in his fifty-three centuries he
scored 7,441 runs in 5,378 minutes, an average rate of slightly
less than 83 runs an hour.
Five of these centuries were double-centuries, but only once in
his whole career did Jessop stay at the wicket for longer than
three hours, and that was *not* when he made his highest score of
286.
But statistics tell the story of this man better than any prose,
and the following items speak eloquently of a man whose records
stand alone. Look at them well, for as long as we live we are
unlikely to see another batsman remotely in the same mould as the
famed "Croucher".
First, his fifty-three centuries with the batting time given in
minutes after the score:
To read on click
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=24gm13%2474g%40doc.cc.utexas.edu&output=gplain
+++++
CiL
Yeah I know there cannot be a modern jessop n all that but the closest
thing to him, hmm?
Aditya Basrur
CiL wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 05:55:43 +0000, Robert Henderson
> <Phi...@anywhere.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >A short man (around 5'7")
Like Agarkar.
> > he was a very punishing cutter, puller and
> >hooker - not shots generally associated with the very fast scoring,
as
> >well as being a tremendous driver, particularly straight.
Like Agarkar. Sometimes.
> > Not a stylist
> >- hence his nickname of "The Croucher" , he was simply batting
violence
> >waiting to happen.
Similar to Agarkar, except most of the time, we keep waiting. And
waiting. And waiting.
> Not only front of the wicket as usual hitters do, quite frequently
> scored behind the wicket as well
Agarkar has a hot wife ((c) KaranRaj). I'm sure he can score anywhere
he likes.
So, CiL, you have my answer: Agarkar is the modern Jessop.
Both are first-class heroes, Test-match zeroes. (See Ram Jaane's recent
posts for proof of the former proposition.) Agarkar, too, has a single
Test century (and, as with Jessop, England won on that occasion.)
Neither is particularly good-looking at the crease. Both have the
ability to turn a match - although in Agarkar's case, I often wish he
didn't.
Aditya [ Agarkar can score fast, too. Some of his ducks in Australia
were scored at a furious pace. ] Basrur
Mike Holmans
tapped the keyboard and brought forth:
I'm going to object strongly to the comparison with Afridi, on the
grounds that it never looks like Afridi gives a toss one way or the
other what happens, whereas Jessop knew that he was letting people
down if he got a duck: with him, it wasn't gambling - he was a
genuinely aggressive player who would obviously give a few chances,
but it never seems to have been as random as the kind of slogging
which Afridi serves up. You will gather that I regard Afridi as a
show-pony rather than a serious cricketer.
Jessop was very serious about his cricket, and he went out and scored
his runs that way because it was the best way to help his team, and he
was good at it, which Afridi isn't a lot of the time.
Nobody has had a substantial f-c and international career and scored
his runs faster than Jessop in runs/hour terms. To offset that, over
rates were much higher in his day, and he may not be quite so
outstanding in runs/balls received terms. Except that in his day you
had to hit it into the street, not just the crowd, to get six - and
that makes rather a difference in Jessop's case.
Batting of that style went out of fashion after WW1, and has only
recently come back into fashion, which is why there haven't been many
Jessopians in most of the 20th century. But the first decade of the
21st century seems to be shaping up like the first decade of the 20th
in terms of batsmen's enterprise, so there are at last some rivals for
Jessop - although Ian Botham came close in the early 1980s, and
Klusener a few years ago. The most successful so far has been
Gilchrist. Flintoff and Sehwag show promise, as do, on the basis of
one odo series, Pietersen and Kemp.
Cheers,
Mike
CiL
Ah! Apparently my memory has not served me right this time. tintin
didnt say afridi is the modern jessop, he cleared that confusion up in
a email.
I offer my egoistic apology.