tooextracool said:
and how many wickets are taken with wicket taking balls? if you look at any match outside of a seamers paradise or an absolute turner you will see that far more often wickets are taken off good but not wicket taking balls. wicket taking balls are far more often too good for the batsman and dont come too often, and therefore they dont take many wickets.
A ball that is too good for the batsman isn't a wicket-taking ball - it's a Jaffa.
A wicket-taking ball has to take a wicket. A ball that takes a wicket doesn't have to be a wicket-taking ball, though.
Neither, however, does a wicket-taking ball have to be a RUD, an example being Shoaib-Yuvraj Singh today. That wasn't realistically unplayable, because he could have left it, but he was drawn into playing it, it moved away and deserved the wicket in itself.
But of course one-day-cricket isn't always the best form to look at those sorts of things.
oh i dont like wickets off long hops or leg stump balls either, and when that happens you are dead right that the bowler no matter how well he bowled previously doesnt deserve the wicket. which is why i dont rate macgill. but i personally dont mind it if a bowler bowls 3 balls that got the batsman playing and missing and then bowls a good delivery that the batsman plays a poor shot to and gets out. the bowler hasnt done anything wrong at all, if everything in the world were fair he should have got a wicket with his 3 previous deliveries, but the fact that he got it with the 4th delivery, suggests that he deserved the wicket.
Funny how you don't rate MacGill but you did all that work previously trying to prove he was better than I was saying he was.
and i too like bowlers(like craig white) who could do tricks with the ball rather than being naturally gifted. but that doesnt mean that people who can do that should be dismissed as useless. face it there have been several batsman who had barely any technique but who were naturally gifted with such brilliant hand-eye coordination that they didnt need it at all. and hand eye coordination and reflexes is also something that you are born with, something that you cant learn. people like vivian richards didnt have much technique, or concentration, yet he will go down as a great batsman. i dont see you saying anything about how lucky he was or that bowlers bowled poor balls only to him.
finally you make a post of sense, its all about your preference, you personally dont like bowlers who are 'naturally gifted' and therefore refuse to look at any of their achievements or even consider them as good players.
I don't like bowlers who are naturally gifted, eh?
I think most people would have considered Malcolm Marshall pretty naturally gifted, and though I never saw him bowl live I still rate him the finest bowler of the modern (post-1930) era.
And to call Viv Richards a player of no technique or concentration is plain ignorant. He had a thoroughly sound technique and would not have been able to bat for the lengths he batted for of times without fantastic concentration.
Just because something is not the first thing that strikes you about a cricketer does not mean they do not possess it in abundance.
It is generalisation to think that, for instance, pace (85mph+) bowlers cannot be seam and swing bowlers; similarly, that batsmen who clearly possess the ability to score quickly do not have extremely good concentration.
The best bowlers are Darren Gough\Craig White-type movement bowlers who have a large amount of the natural assests: height, pace and accuracy. A la Dennis Lillee, Michael Holding, Curtley Ambrose. Most of the best bowlers also have a perfect natural action.
