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My comparison of “better” was in a one-on-one matchup of the Sherman and the T-34.

In terms of any tank, I’d have to really form the conclusion on time, place and supporting elements.

Yes, the T-34 was superior to the Sherman, because of course we had to build Shermans to be shipped thousands and thousands of miles in large quantities. That was the main objective, and we succeeded.

The Soviets had no such logistical hurdles.

. . . a one-on-one matchup of the Sherman and the T-34.

That begs the question. The Sherman was never intended to fight one-on-one with another tank. The right question has to consider the larger picture. Given an equal-cost force of tanks and their crews, in the field for an appropriate length of time (e.g. 3 months), which force would prevail?

While we never had a direct fight against T-34s, the Sherman was unmatched in reliability and maintainability. After a reasonable period of operations, you'd have - as we had with the Germans - a dozen Shermans going up against each enemy tank because the enemy tanks would have broken down and would be in repair.

The T-34s weren't as bad as the German tanks, but they weren't as good (reliability) as the Shermans. And there are subtle differences that add up. The T-34s were notorious for poor 'fit and finish'. There were jagged edges of metal in the crew compartment, welds that cracked when it got cold, etc. A crew member who is out of service because he cut his arm on a sharp edge in the tank is still out of service.

However, the short Russian supply lines allowed them to replace broken tanks with new ones, and to replace needlessly wounded tank crews with new ones faster than we could ship new tanks and crews from the US.

So, for their purposes, and with a coldly brutal view of the value of individual soldiers, the T-34 was a better tank. It certainly had better armor and weapon, and had excellent mobility.

My own view is that the WWII Sherman was undergunned, and badly enough to be a 'fatal flaw' in the design. The assumption that tank destroyers would always be available to take on enemy tanks was foolishly wrong, and putting all (49,000) eggs in that basket was bad planning. In essence, the force on force calculation needs to be not only the tank forces, but also the combined arms forces of tank destroyers, anti-tank guns, and aircraft. That gets too complicated for reasonable analysis, and I think we (US) got it wrong. However, once they upgunned the Sherman to a reasonable level (90mm, and much higher velocity), it became an excellent all-around tank.

So, I think the T-34 design was better than the WWII Sherman, not based on a one-on-one matchup, but based on a force-on-force matchup, which is the perspective that matters.