John McEnroe's 'Who are these people?' remarks finds supporter in AB de Villiers

The importance of statistics has been huge in modern days. The influence of numbers and data has paved the way as it can provide a substantial advantage to a particular team or athlete. In sports like cricket and football, stats have often proved to be a welcoming outcome, as it also allows to generate a whole lot of influence which can be used in the betterment of that specific sport. In the last few years sports statisticians have been in major demand as crunching numbers seem to be the new game in this world.

3 things you need to know

• John McEnroe slammed the use of statistics in Tennis
• AB de Villiers too backed the legendary tennis player
• Stats have been an important part of games these days

AB de Villiers supported John McEnroe's theory in sports statistics

Tennis has probably been the most frontline sport which has used statistics to the core. However, John McEnroe seems to have an entirely different opinion. During the match between Novak Djokovic and Hubert Hurkacz, the Tennis legend quashed the importance of statistics in the game of Tennis and former South African cricketer AB de Villiers echoed his opinion.

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The former Royal Challengers Bangalore player took to social media claiming there are different components which come into play.

Listening to John McEnroe commentating in the Djoko/Hurkacz game. Love how he questions stats! Saying “who are these people?? Who are “they” we’re talking about here?” I have a very similar view! How are these people telling us how valuable a player is? Or what the win percentage…

— AB de Villiers (@ABdeVilliers17) July 10, 2023

The same thing happens in Cricket! Comparing players with different skill sets, who play in different positions with different pressure🤷‍♂️not cool

— AB de Villiers (@ABdeVilliers17) July 10, 2023

De Villiers then took the reference to cricket as he said it would not be suitable to compare different players with different kinds of skill sets.

Read More: Wimbledon 2023: Novak Djokovic sets up quarterfinal date with Andrey Rublev

Tennis players too have not been comfortable with statistics

Recently, Daniil Medvedev too crushed the importance of stats in sports as the player indirectly took a dig after setting up a quarterfinal clash with Christopher Eubanks.

“I’m not full statistic guy.

“[There are] some cool stats – but actually the BBC shows a lot and I’m like, some of them are interesting, some of them, yeah, that’s not an amazing one.”

There have been some disagreements over the importance of statistics but one cannot deny the advantage of its use these days