Greg Chappell the great ODI all rounder

Did you know that besides being an all time great batsman the Indian cricket coach is quite Viv Richards-like in qualifying as one of the top all rounders to have played in ODI's?? I never even bothered to check until I came across this Friday column by S Rajesh on cricinfo.

Chappell Jr. has taken 72 wkts in the 74 ODI's he played!! Now I know what makes him bowl so much at the top order men in the nets.

The article gives a reasonable method to judge all rounders in ODI's. Problem is, while the bowling economy rates of players is available on the players' stats pages the batting strike rate is yet to become a permanent feature in those columns...Wisden and Cricinfo, are you listening??

Strike rates and economy rates of individual players are functions of average strike rates / economy rates for that era and need to be viewed as such. You need to make a few adjustments while judging specialist bowlers and batsmen from different generations with those figures. But for the all rounders the relevant figures, as indicated in Rajesh's article, are differentials of batting and bowling figures - and that should essentially cancel out such 'generation gaps'.

Clarification: Players' career batting strike rates are already available on the individual player pages of cricinfo. In the post above I was suggesting their incorporation on statsguru so that we get filtered values of strike rates.

[cross posted on Different Strokes]