Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Traditional career totals

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep without a clear consensus after many days at AfD. A suggestion to rename or move must be made elsewhere. Bearian 23:45, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Traditional career totals

Traditional career totals (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete – the article has been created by someone from the Association of Cricket Statisticians (ACS) in breach of this concept, particularly as the notability of the ACS itself is questionable. The article attempts to show that there is an "issue" about cricket statistics when in fact there is not. Wisden is the definitive and authoritative source for all cricket statistics and is universally recognised as such; the ACS is a fringe group and the "issue" itself only exists among a small number of its own members, most of whom recognise Wisden. The ACS has no authority re the status of matches and its opinions carry no weight at all; any cricket writer's opinion counts just as much. The writer of the article is using Wikipedia to promote the ACS. As it says on this edit screen: "Wikipedia is not an advertising service". Fiddlers Three 07:39, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment NB I am the author of the article. To suggest that Wisden is more definitive and authoritative than the ACS is quite incorrect. Neither has any authority regarding the status of matches and never has had. Both have their own right to publish their own figures as has any one else. Wisden is not 'universally recognised' otherwise the ACS wouldn't produce different figures. There continues to be an issue regarding WGs figures. Both sets continue to used in various publications. It is not just the ACS that uses ACS figures, many other publications do. Also note that Wikipedia had the ACS figures for a long time until changed on 13 August 2007. It is a poor article but this whole paragraph by Fiddlers Three is proposing to delete it for all the wrong reasons. Nigej 13:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment There are no 'universally accepted totals' for WG. To suggest so is quite false. Nigej 13:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Strong Keep Whilst I think that it is a pity that ACS have gone against tradition as to which matches are accepted as first-class, and hence have come up with different career totals for some players, one can't ignore that their figures have been adopted by many authorities. Both of the major online cricket sites, CricketArchive and Cricinfo, use their figures, and most Wiki player biographies take their statistics from one or other of those sites. Like it or not, ACS are far more than a "fringe group". The article is I think useful, factual and does not push a particular POV. I can't see any promotion of the ACS in it. I should add that I am not an ACS member and have no personal axe to gring. JH (talk page) 08:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete per nom. The person above was a heavy contributor to the article in question. No big surprise he wants to keep it. Delete. Carter | Talk to me 09:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
A "heavy contributor"? I made three minor edits, correcting typos and so forth. Does that debar me from having an opinion? JH (talk page) 13:02, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment. JH has indeed made minor edits only and is perfectly entitled to state his opinion here. BlackJack | talk page 13:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Since Wisden itself has commented on the ACS's alternative view, they appear to be significant rather than a wild-eyed fringe. I see no need to rush to suppress one side in this pissing contest. Colonel Warden 09:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment. Can we have an intelligent discussion without the use of infantile expressions like "pissing contest", please? JH has put forward a sensible and reasoned argument so why can't you do the same? BlackJack | talk page 13:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Not seeing the intelligent discussion. You use hyperbole like universally accepted which is obviously incorrect, as the article explains. You seem to be pushing a POV - hence my comment. Colonel Warden 16:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually it is a "pissing contest" in the sense of being largely meaningless but liable to create some controversy. Nigej 13:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Cricket-related deletions. —AMBerry (talk | contribs) 11:27, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per Fiddlers Three. While I don't know much about cricket, I do know a bit about sports fans who believe that the "official" stats are deficient in some way, and who, not surprisingly, have a better idea that happens to be of their own invention. From what I can figure, stats in "first-class" matches make it into the books, and the authors of this article disagree with the authorities about which matches are first class. The analogy that I can think of is if someone were to include spring training or in-season exhibition games in looking at Mark McGwire's and Sammy Sosa's 1998 home run output. Mandsford 14:23, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. I don't much like this article, and its title is pretty daft (Whose tradition? Whose careers? Totals of what?). But the fact that there is a divergence in published stats between sources that are widely used and widely referred to in Wikipedia is relevant and should be explained somewhere. If someone reads the W. G. Grace article and gets interested enough in the man to follow some of the references and then finds different stats quoted outside Wikipedia, then they're going to doubt Wikipedia's reliability. The articles on the individual cricketers affected ought also to refer to the disparity between their career stats as reported by different sources. All told, an article about how this dispute has arisen and its effects would be helpful: I'd prefer the title was changed, though. BTW I'm not sure how far we get by rubbishing the work of the ACS or by over-inflating the role of Wisden in determining first-class status for matches. For the record, I would always primarily use the accepted "traditional" figures and I am not and never have been a member of ACS. Johnlp 21:24, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge a very heavily condensed version with Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. It may be a vaguely notable alternative version of cricket statistics, but this article is poorly-titled and significantly more detailed (the descriptions of the matches, for example) than is necessary. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 00:44, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep and rename the article, although it could beneficially be condensed. The fact that there is no agreed definition of what counts as a first-class cricket match is important, and I am impressed with the way that this article manages to describe the controversy in a NPOV way. Stephen Turner (Talk) 03:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC) and 15:22, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep and improve. The ACS is notable and their opinion on cricket stats carries weight. Their stance on this is notable and easily verifiable using RS. Even if, as individuals, we might deplore the schism (as I do), our role is to narrate disputes, not arbitrate on them. --Dweller 12:21, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I think the best solution would be to merge this article with Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Perhaps some of the early English domestic matches, before a bright-line definition of "first class" was agreed, should have "first class" status; perhaps not - Wikipedia does not need to reach a conclusion: just report the debate. But there is certainly scope for an article discussing how a match came to be treated (or stop being treated) as first-class - consider, for example, the South African rebel tour matches, which lost their "first class" status in 1993, and the non-white South African domestic matches in the 1970s and 1980s. -- !! ?? 13:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


  • Keep Retitle the article. What defines a "First Class match", and "When was the first First Class Match played" are crucial questions for cricket statistics. Both the ACS and Wisden can cite supporting documentation for their position. (The person who wants to know why two sets of statistics are cited will not think of looking for "Traditional Career Totals".) jonathon 21:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep without condensing. The status of early matches is a major point of contention and this article explains the confusion re. Grace et al in a very comprehensive and NPOV fashion. The "new" figures for Grace and co is hardly a minority view. It is what is followed by Cricinfo (the most popular website on any sport, incidentally) and Cricketarchive which are the top two sites for cricket statistics on the web. You can see the "new" figures scattered around elsewhere as well - as in this bbc article (BBC themselves use conventional figures elsewhere as here). I also notice that Indian Cricket which is (was ?) considered as the standard cricket yearbook in India uses the "new" stats in its records sections in its most recent (2004) edition. Tintin 06:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Revised nomination to keep, retitle and completely rewrite as per my comments on WT:CRIC. Fiddlers Three 07:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.