🏏 Why do we still argue about who the greatest cricketer of all time is

Got into a genuinely long, extended debate with my father over dinner last week about who actually deserves the title of greatest cricketer of all time, and we ended up on completely different sides without either of us really budging much at all by the actual end of the entire conversation between us. He leans heavily toward players from his own generation, citing specific statistics and match situations he actually witnessed live himself decades ago, while I found myself arguing for a more recent player based on numbers that are, on pure paper at least, genuinely more impressive by most modern measurable standards used for comparison today. What made the argument genuinely interesting rather than just repetitive was realizing how much this specific debate depends entirely on which particular era you actually grew up watching yourself, the specific playing conditions, equipment, and even the fitness standards expected of players have all changed so considerably that directly comparing eras almost feels somewhat unfair to either specific side of the argument itself. My father made a fair point that I had not fully considered before, that players from earlier eras genuinely dealt with less protective equipment and considerably fewer fitness resources available to them, while I countered that modern players face considerably more matches overall and international travel that older generations simply never really had to deal with themselves at that same specific pace or intensity. We did not actually resolve anything by the end of that dinner conversation, which is honestly fairly typical for how most of our specific sports debates over the years tend to go regardless of the actual topic being debated between us that particular time. Who would people here actually pick if forced to choose just one, and do you think this kind of cross era comparison is even genuinely fair to attempt, or is it simply an impossible question that everyone enjoys arguing about anyway regardless of that fact?

Numbers alone rarely settle it for me, conditions and the quality of opposition faced matter just as much as any final tally sitting quietly in a record book somewhere. My uncle disagrees loudly every single time this comes up at dinner, insists stats are the only honest measure that matters, and we have simply agreed to keep disagreeing about it loudly every single year without any real resolution.

Grew up watching one player and my father swore by an entirely different one from his own era, and neither of us has ever budged an inch in twenty years of the same argument repeating itself at every single family function without fail. Different eras reward different skills entirely, comparing them directly probably says more about nostalgia than anything measurable on a scoreboard anyway.