Scotty_WCE
West Coast card collector!
1. Mark Taylor has been Australia's greatest Test captain since the retirement of Allan Border in 1994, and his legacy remains criminally undervalued.
Sadly, I can't really comment on this as I saw none of Taylor's career and don't have any memories of Waugh either. Personally I find it hard to rate captains - so much of their success is arguably due to the players in their team, and it's hard to tell how much success is actually due to the captain himself. I will say though that he definitely isn't mentioned in the same breath as Border and Waugh when people talk about great Aussie Test captains, but whether that's fair or not I'm not sure.
2. In the modern "batsman-friendly" era, a Test average of 60+ is the actual mark of greatness, instead of an average of 50+.
Disagree. I just did a very quick, basic statistical analysis which told me that 53 is the new 50. Looking at the list of highest Test batting averages, there are a lot more people averaging higher than 50 than ever before, but, conveniently, relatively few are averaging 53+ compared to previous eras. If you take 60 as the benchmark then only Smith and Voges are currently modern-day greats, and who knows how long Smith's average will stay there. Guys like Sangakkara, Kallis and Tendulkar are clearly "greats" even though they didn't average 60. It'd be interesting to revisit this question in 10 years time when players have played their entire careers in the "T20 era" though.
3. Australia will not win a Test series in England or India for at least another twenty years.
Geez, I hope not! Yeah, disagree. We got so, so close against India, and that was with a couple of guys with very little Test experience and against a pretty darn strong Indian team. I reckon we're a chance of winning our next series in India, with a bit of luck. We should have a pretty settled, experienced team by then. Winning in England is hard too, but we always seem to be thereabouts over there even if we don't win. I'll back us to win at least one series in England or India in the next two decades - it'll be a pretty sad couple of decades if we don't!