Is Graeme Smith cricket's greatest tosser?

Who cares about the coin toss and hes only a average captain in crap era of cricket. He wouldnt be in the top 20 captains of all time!

The problem with somebody like Smith is that due to his mouthing off earlier in his career, he has made many enemies. If you look at his captaincy from the start till now, it is evident it has improved and many commentators see him as a good captain these days. He is not orthodox, but he can destroy any bowling line up. Just because people does not like him, does not mean he is bad captain.

I think he's the biggest tosser in cricket in the pejorative, not the literal coin tossing sense. He's hated by most international cricket peers and most fans. His performance as skipper leaves a lot to be desired. He's tactially poor and can't command the respect of his teammates.

I thought the headline was "Is Greg Smith cricket's greatest tosser?" and I was going to wholeheartedly agree.

Greg must have seen the comments coming while he was writing this article. Hestill has many years ahead of him and he is improving, so let's not judge where he will be when he retires. Just because you don't like somebody, it does not mean they are not good. I mean I am not crazy about Ponting or Pietersen, but they are both very good players. Give credit where it is due despite you petty dislikes.

He made a fool of himself in south africas last visit to Aussie mouthing off telling everyone how good he and his side were and how they were going to beat Aussie and it put pressure on himself and his side and they crumbled like all good yarpie cricket sides he was the laughing stock. Smiths career batting average in test cricket is 48.57 which is very good but if you look at who he scores his runs against you realise why its so high, he only averages over 50 against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, West Indies and England hardly quality bowling sides and then look at his pathetic average against Aussie which is 22.25 i think it would be fair to say hes a great player against average sides not the greatest like some claim. He has scored 5392 runs in his career and if you minus the runs hes scored against crap teams (england,windies,bangladesh,zimbabwe) hes only scored 2466 in the 37 tests against other nations and say in those 37 tests against decent sides hes had 2 innings per game which is fair because he opens the batting hes only averages 33 which i believe to be on par with his talent not his over inflated average boosted against teams like west indies.

Compare Smith with say Matt Hayden who averages over 45 against all test playing nations except Bangledesh and New Zealand. It shows Matt Hayden to have scored majority of his runs against India (1654 at 66.16) and south africa (1369 at 48.89) who have good bowling line ups, your a bit simple greg so your probably wondering what this means? It means Smith is a pretender who performs against average sides while Hayden performs under pressure against the best tests in the world a true great player. Did i mention i didnt even both to compare smith to say Lara, Tendulkar or even Bradman?

Brad, lay off the glue sniffing ! Your 'if', 'but' and 'boo hoo' comparisons are pathetic ! And as captains go.... Lara was crap, Tendulkar worse and Bradman ? SMITH is the greatest 27 year old CAPTAIN ever ! At 35 ? He'll have re-written the history books and there'll be a footnote for tw*ts like you ...

Smith is average and if you werent a bias african fool you might understand no south african man would ever be considered to be best not just because hes from south africa but because your country hasnt and probably wont produce cricketers like Bradman, Lara and Warne. Everyone other than morons like yourself see smith for what he is, well see how good he is facing brett lee because he was useless against McGrath and Warne.

Brad- SA have produced great player like Graham Pollock, Barry Richards, Jaques Kallis to name three. You are so anti SA that you refuse to see reality. We have two young, very fast bowlers in our team so I do not think the prospect of facing Lee worries our batsman. (We have the number one ranked fast bowler-but I bet you think the top ten are all Aussies). Funny how cricket writers (and not only South Africans) who probably know abit more about cricket than you do. rate Smith as a good captain. And he is improving. Yes, he was a blabber mouth when he was younger, but he has matured. And so has his playing. Stop living in the past. Warne and MGrath have retired. Live with it. Give Mr. Smith another ten years and then judge.

SA are average i doubt they have a bowling attack to get 20 wickets in a test and they cant rely on kallis to get all the runs because we know smith aint think hes averages 22 against us pretty good hey? Once we piss of Mitchell Johnson and get a better quickie in we will be sweet!

If you have even followed the SA over the past year you will note that there have been other match winner- McKenzie, Amla, Prince....and yes, even Smith. The Aussie attack is not as wow as it used to be. As for the SA atatck- it is improving. Steyn is the best fast bowler int he world, Morkel is quick and improving, Ntini is back on form..so 20 wickets aint much of a problem. You should also know that averages are not as reliable as they look. Smith may have a low average, but one or two 50-100s could win a match. The point is, that the Aussies will not stomp all over SA as they have in the past.