89: Neil Harvey

79 matches. 6149 runs @ 48.41. 21 hundreds. Highest score: 205

16 years. 2x good. 1x excellent. 4x outstanding. 1x Bradman.

The discussion

When I first met my wife, we would often play the game of ‘would you rather?’. It is a simple game: one person thinks of a comparative conundrum, and the other is forced into choosing one and only one option. The best games of ‘would you rather?’ force the chooser into a catch-22 situation — with either choice having a similar upside or, more commonly, downside. Some games of ‘would you rather?’ descend into topics not quite fit for discussion in polite circles. Others prompt great debate at the club rooms on a rainy matchday afternoon. One of my cricketing favourites:

Would you rather 10 years of player X, or three years of peak player Y?

In any conversation featuring a batting ‘would you rather?’, you should think about peak Neil Harvey as your what-if comparison. For me, he is the perfect candidate.

Forget the 21 centuries in only 79 tests. Ignore the 6,149 runs at 48 in the uncovered wicket era. The significant statistic is the 20th all-time in centuries per 100 innings. It is significant because it leads into the three peak seasons I have selected to showcase just how good Neil Harvey was.

Harvey burst onto the scene in the post-war era with six centuries in his first 13 Tests. When the great Sir Donald Bradman retired, Harvey carried the mantle as the player who crowds turned up to watch. These were massive boots to fill.

Very few cricketers can boast a five-Test series in which they averaged 90+. Neil Harvey has three such seasons. There have only been 20 instances of a player scoring four or more hundreds in a series in the history of Test cricket[1]. Harvey did it twice, joining Bradman and Herb Sutcliffe as the only players to do so on multiple occasions. Neil Harvey also had two ‘Bradman series’, in which he scored 650+ runs at an average greater than 100. Check out the scores from his three peak series:

Eleven centuries and four half-centuries in just three series. His 834 runs against South Africa in 1952/53 is the 4th highest series total of any batter. At his peak, Neil Harvey was as good as any cricketer in the post-war era.

It is hard to find a lot of YouTube footage of Neil Harvey. What little there is reminds me very much of peak Michael Hussey. In fact, their early careers are eerily similar.

The verdict

Sometimes I think that without Bradman, the likes of Greg Chappell, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting would have been compared to Neil Harvey, not Sir Don. I mean, this guy could really cash in when he was on song.

I guess the era in which Harvey played has not done him any favours in terms of the number of Tests he played. In the modern era, a 15-year career would likely have yielded an extra 30 or 40 Tests. In which case we might very well be talking about a career much like Michael Clarke — 115 Tests, 8,600 runs at 49 with 28 centuries. One can only speculate, but it feels likely Harvey would sit much higher on this list had he played in the modern era.

The overall stats suggest that Michael Clarke had a better career, at least in the total numbers like Tests played and runs scored.

But the question remains:

Would you rather 10 years of Michael Clarke, or three years of peak Neil Harvey?

Me — I would rather watch peak Neil Harvey, despite the fact that Michael Clarke has a slightly superior record and will end up ranking somewhere higher on this list. But from what little I have seen, everything I have read and the peak series numbers that you can see here in the record, it very much looks to me like Neil Harvey might have been the better cricketer had all things been equal.

In one word

Underrated

Notes

[1] Clyde Walcott scored five hundreds against Australia in 1955

Bio

Record

Source: ESPN CricInfo

career peak

Sources: ESPN CricInfo