Barrington was absolute quality, really - and his career would probably have gone on a few years longer had he not had a heart attack. Definitely England ATB XI in my book.
We’ve applied something of a leeway to the rating/10 approach (especially where ODI ratings differ significantly), it’s not perfect but it’s pretty good I think (you get the real top players at 90+, a good crop of 80s and then more run of the mill internationals in the 70s etc). It was really just a guide to try and get a relative consistency of skills across all the ATB sides.
I use a combination of things for rating players that seems to work. I am going to use Graham Gooch as an example. Gooch has a BA of 42 and a BWA of 49.
I start from the overall rating based on what is the stronger of the two. In this case batting. If it was bowling I'd rate the overall based on that. This I stress is a starting point. OnceI have set the overall it will automatically set the ratings.
if a batsman, I take batting average and x 2
or a bowler it's their bowling average subtracted from 110. (I read something somewhere on the DB17 forums I think the person multiplied the BA x 1.8).
Gooch's overall rating would be 42 x 2 = 84.
Then I input their batting ability the same way, I already know his starting point is 84 as overall that what he is, a batsman. I then make allowances for favourite shots, I make the favourite shots slightly higher. Gooch's batting skills would average 84 across the board, so I make tweaks here and there, some shots maybe 90, but I even out as much as I can at 84 or thereabouts. As I do this his overall may drop or increase.
Then I input their bowling ability, make allowances for stronger attributes. In this case, I know Gooch's BWA is 49. So his bowling ratings would average out at 49 subtracted from 110 = 61. So I even out his bowling ratings at 61 allowing for strengths and weaknesses.
The fielding is once again based on the overall but I keep things a bit tighter here, reasoning at test level most players not named Phil Tufnel will be at a decent levels 75 to 80 across the board. Again Ido some research putting players in the 80s if they were genuinely in the excellent fielder category. Purely subjective of course, but someone like Jonty Rhodes, Roger Harper, Colin Bland would be in the 90s.
So what of players who average above 50 for batting. Clearly here for me anything above a 90 is world class to legendary, this is where I use the ICC Ranking and divide my 10 and then tweak according to the following scale which I read here, posted in italics from
CD779
Going through the English county teams and correcting players bowling styles has been interesting, and has led to lots of changes in overall ratings e.g. a 70 rated bowler may only be a 50 rated player when he is correctly assigned to the role of all-rounder. Having also noted that even among the licensed players it seems that mentalities are off (Alastair Cook as 'aggressive'), I thought it would be good if we could come up with some sort of system for how to rate players and how to set their mentalities.
For attributes, how would people feel about a system such as this:
90-99: All-time greats (Bradman, Warne)
85-89: Best players in the world (Kohli, Root, Smith, Williamson, Steyn)
80-84: World class (Broad, Ashwin, Warner, Stokes, Bairstow)
75-79: Good international players (Woakes, Moeen, Khawaja)
70-74: Emerging international players (Handscomb, Adil Rashid, Stoneman, Malan)
65-69: Top domestic players/new internationals (Ballance, Vince, Paine, Ball)
60-64: Good domestic players (Sam Northeast, Leach, Mason Crane, Hameed)
50-59: Average domestic players
40-49: New and below average domestic players
Obviously it's always going to be subjective (I'm sure some will disagree with some of the examples I've given), but do we think it's a good idea to have something like this in mind when we edit teams or not?
For bowling mentality, I have no idea, but I thought for batting mentality we could potentially base it off strike rates? For example, Test strike rate:
Below 50 - Conservative or precise (Alastair Cook)
50-60 - Balanced or aggressive
60 and above - Aggressive or brute
What do you guys think - it could be beneficial to throw some ideas around at this early stage while teams are still being made up.
For all rounders and wicketkeepers and fielding stats I actually start with the table above and apply my system. Sometimes I start from there. So using the formula, CD779 and the ICC Rankings I can get a decent creation. However it is not perfect but a whole new way to have some fun!
