Who’s the best cricketer to emerge from the West Indies?

You know what is boring? someone simply stating opinion as fact and then deriding others for how they come to their own conclusions.

As the thread starter, perhaps you should have done a better job of steering the discussion and clarifying your question. You asked, "who's the best cricketer to emerge from the West Indies?" You didn't ask who was the most exciting, or who had the most swagger. You simply asked who was the best. Given that cricket is a game that is heavily built upon statistics, simply providing an answer based on who was the most exciting belies the actual question you posed.

I would also suggest you actually take the time to read through this thread as ketchim and Goog Lee chose Kanhai, bushmaster selected Kallicharan and I posited Marshall - none of whom are in the West Indies top 5 of the ICC ratings averages. So we didn't simply make our selections based on numbers. Just because our answers don't match up with yours, doesn't make ours any less valuable.

One final point regarding your derision of numbers - numbers help us to compare players across all generations, even those that we may not have seen in person. It is thanks to these stats that we can put George Headley's brief but incredible career into context with other West Indies greats.

the best eh.  allyuh like to butt allyuh head on hard things.  my fren here have a car fender to straighten out.  he can use some hard beads to bend it back into shape.  I see lots of volunteers here

I mus' be nuts..to try to pik one out of Worrell, Headley, Sobers, Kanhai, Marshall, Viv, Lara, Gibbs and a few more modern tests...not to mention going back to some of the old greats who have claims too...George Challenor for sure,  and Tim Tarilton, Constantine, Ramadin, Valentine, Kalliecharran, even Rowe..all of whom must register high on a list based on ability alone

if we talk about pure naked world class ability the list would be long indeed

Mail..you back.  good show!

Someone else posted that I'lll soon realize this is not a cc forum, well I must be an ignorant because I have no idea of what he means by that. This is the first forum I join in my life and it's only my third day and don't want to get involved in useless discussions.

Everyone has the right to have their own opinion, and to base them in whatever they want. I wrote that Viv Richards is the best cricketer FOR ME. I then wrote another post saying that FOR ME it's not only about number and statistics, that Viv Richards was exciting to watch. Of course that is MY opinion. You've been here for a long time I guess, but that does not mean that everyone has to agree with you. If for me numbers are boring what the heck? I love cricket and get excited and laugh and cry when my team is losing. I'm passionate, and I don't care about statistics because all that interests me is having fun, is to keep feeling that knot in my stomach and jumping when they do something awesome.

If this makes me arrogant, supremacist or ignorant then, whatever. And next time I post a thread I'll choose my words carefully to explain if I want opinions or numbers, so you don't get confused. 

Best WI bat for Gavaskar?

Rohan!   

Sunil Gavaskar named his son after Rohan.

so did all of Jamaica  !!

Vivian , who ?  ::LOL::

pheeeeeeeew.  like a certain individual here meet his match

As Maps said, the list of WI greats is long.

One thing's for certain, though, there are no greats in our current team, though I hold hope that Paint may one day join such ranks.

Those who never saw Rohan Bat will not understand your choice.
For me he was the first master blaster. Very entertaining too.