B.B.E. (Before Batty Era)

dougieginn wrote:When you’re good enough to coach an Ashes winning side in Oz, that makes you  a LEGEND in my book both for Surrey and England.Batty’s limited success at a county level doesn’t compare with Mickey’s. They will never name a pavilion after him like Mickey that’s for certain. Think he would have won more CCs if he’d the financial resources that batty has had thanks to our very successful corporate hospitality  department.

I love Micky to bits and I think he has been great for Surrey, but do you honestly think the pavilion would have been named after him were Alec not so influential? If winning an Ashes for England in Australia were a key criterion we would have a Douglas Jardine stand!

VicNorth wrote:

Alex! wrote:I'm not too familiar with the Holliaoke years compared to most - was that squad of an elite caliber?

Don't get me wrong, we were brilliant in 2018 as a team, but it always felt like we had a cheat code in Morne Morkel who was clearly far, far, far too good for the Championship, and probably didn't need to retire from international cricket at that point

No international player is too good for the Championship.

My point being he should have still been playing international cricket - he absolutely bullied the division.

Jackers wrote:

dougieginn wrote:When you’re good enough to coach an Ashes winning side in Oz, that makes you  a LEGEND in my book both for Surrey and England.Batty’s limited success at a county level doesn’t compare with Mickey’s. They will never name a pavilion after him like Mickey that’s for certain. Think he would have won more CCs if he’d the financial resources that batty has had thanks to our very successful corporate hospitality  department.

I love Micky to bits and I think he has been great for Surrey, but do you honestly think the pavilion would have been named after him were Alec not so influential? If winning an Ashes for England were a key criterion we would have a Douglas Jardine stand!

Alec Stewart is only in charge of the cricket side and it’s the committee that makes such decisions!!! It also helps that he is such nice guy!

I should like to hear people's opinion regarding the Hollioake team compared to the side this year. I believe that only 2 players in this year would get into the late 90s, early 2000s team-namely Pope & Foakes.
That is not to decry what Batty or Burns have done but I think it also shows how the standard of cricket has dropped.
Obviously, the lean years between were pretty grim due to a number of circumstances.

Alex! wrote:

VicNorth wrote:

Alex! wrote:I'm not too familiar with the Holliaoke years compared to most - was that squad of an elite caliber?

Don't get me wrong, we were brilliant in 2018 as a team, but it always felt like we had a cheat code in Morne Morkel who was clearly far, far, far too good for the Championship, and probably didn't need to retire from international cricket at that point

No international player is too good for the Championship.

My point being he should have still been playing international cricket - he absolutely bullied the division.

I seem to remember Rikki Clarke's stats comparing favourably.

Don't make the mistake of comparing one era to another.  i.e. Micky Stewart/Gareth Batty. It's decades apart and the game has changed considerably making far too many variables to judge accurately. It's a bit like the "who is the best batsman/bowler of all time. Speculation at best, although Bradman and maybe Warne would have been as great today as they were then, but they're one offs.
You can make a better judgement between the Burns/Hollioake eras though because it's not so long ago:
Briefly in my view:
Hollioake was a far superior captain in every way to Burns.
Yes I agree with KJB that Pope and Foakes would have got in but only if the regulars were sick. Jon Batty was a bloody good keeper. I would judge Alister Brown marginally better than Pope is at present. Remember Hollioakes squad often missed a number of test players. Ramps, Thorpe, Ward.  In the bowling front, yes well, I don't know who would surpass, Bicknell, Clarke, Ormond, Tudor,  Mamood, Saqlain and Salisbury. By the way they ALL batted! Maybe Abbot would get in on the all rounder ticket and Worral. Certainly Morkel from 2018 vintage would replace Mahmood, just. But then you also had in the wings Ben Hollioake (RIP), Jason Radcliffe, Rupesh Amin and others who stepped up to the mark.
As well as Surrey have played since 2018 with a likelihood of 3 Championships by next month, for me Hollioakes era 1999-2002 is still by some way the greatest of the two. Indeed 2002 had some of the best CC games you could wish to see.

Jackers wrote:His long association with the club and fathering of Alec, who has also contributed so much to Surrey cricket, surely comes into the equation.

I hope you mean raising rather than (just) fathering. Otherwise Boris Johnson should have a very good chance of becoming a legend...

In football, club legends aren't always the stars - the Hoddles and the Kanes. Often they are the players who were seen as the heart and soul of the team and who stayed around a long time. Perryman, Mackay, Mabbutt, all good but not (bar Mackay) the real stars. Will Zaha be seen as a legend at Palace in the same way as (guessing here) John Jackson (and some bloke called Bill). Batty seems to me to fit in well as this sort of legend, whatever his actual talents.

Alex! wrote:I'm not too familiar with the Holliaoke years compared to most - was that squad of an elite caliber?

I think you mean calibre.

And the squad of the late 1990s was vastly better than the current one. Stewart, the Bicknell brothers, David Ward, Ian Ward, the Hollioake brothers, the Butcher brothers, Thorpe, Brown, Benjamin, Tudor, Saqi and Solly, Jon Batty, Ormond, Ramps, Shahid, Ratcliffe and probably several others I’ve forgotten.

Ali888 wrote: And the squad of the late 1990s was vastly better than the current one.  Stewart, the Bicknell brothers, David Ward, Ian Ward, the Hollioake brothers, the Butcher brothers, Thorpe, Brown, Benjamin, Tudor, Saqi and Solly, Jon Batty, Ormond, Ramps, Shahid, Ratcliffe and probably several others I’ve forgotten.

Now this an interesting discussion (one of the reasons I'm a Surrey fan is I moved to S London in early 2002 & went to the Oval & we won a game & I kept on going & then we won the CC ... and then there were ~10 years worth of misery).

I think we've got a very good team now (obvious point, we've won the CC twice in the last five years, notwithstanding the "pandemic").

But the 2002 team must have been one of the best ever county teams, not just one of the best ever Surrey teams. Adding to your names above, the mighty Rikki Clarke ('nuff said, he is one of Surrey's GOAT), Michael Carberry (I'm still annoyed he was dropped by England), Sclott Newman (should have won us more CCs but Chris Bl**dy Adams saw fit to get rid of him), and Tim Murtaugh (watching his Ireland debut in 2018 is a great memory).

So you're not wrong, of course not, but the 2018/2022/2023(?!) championship winning team is pretty damn good, even if it's not quite as good as the 2002 legends.

https://www.thecricketpaper.com/news/county-news/latest-news-county-news/1366/where-are-they-now-surrey-county-champions-2002/

Ali888 wrote:

Alex! wrote:I'm not too familiar with the Holliaoke years compared to most - was that squad of an elite caliber?

I think you mean calibre.

And the squad of the late 1990s was vastly better than the current one.  Stewart, the Bicknell brothers, David Ward, Ian Ward, the Hollioake brothers, the Butcher brothers, Thorpe, Brown, Benjamin, Tudor, Saqi and Solly, Jon Batty, Ormond, Ramps, Shahid, Ratcliffe and probably several others I’ve forgotten.

Forgot the Butchers and Alec(often on test duty) in my analogy, and Shahid.  Crickey how many bowled Saqlain caught Shahid (at Boot Hill) was there?
Moriarty and Virdi eat your heart out.

Actually on review I'm not sure any of the current squad bar Foakes would get in to this side. If you were their you'd know.

In a strange way I actually take pride in the fact that the one period of my life in which I did not have the opportunity to follow Surrey much was between about 1996 and 2005. In other words, you certainly can't accuse me of being a "glory hunter!"

I did go to the very occasional game, and I saw enough and read enough to know what a formidable squad we had at that time.

It is hard to compare players across generations, but I don't think there can be much argument that we had a much deeper, stronger squad then. It did help, of course, that we did not have so many of our best players missing for as much as the season as we now do with a plethora of international red and white-ball cricket, the IPL and the August nonsense. It also helped that arguably our best seam bowler and for the second part of that golden era) batsman, Martin Bucknell and Mark Ramprakash, were rarely troubled by the England selectors.