I do agree with you on this as well, Hughes was agood aggressive bowler nothing more,McDermott was a decent bowler ,lawson could be very good on his day,Max Walker was a different type of bowler altogether,and Hogg was great for a short time, but teams found him out before too long.
Kaspa may not have had a great start to his bowling career, but I am confident that if he had been selected more than he has been his figures would look a lot more rosey
what matters in test cricket is taking wickets and conceding less runs than the opposition did.
I dont care how they look...kaspa might look classy at times but so does Zaheer Khan.
They have a world class spinner in Warne - I think the WIndies would not have the patience (apart from Gomes) to blunt Warne and would have tried to smash him out of the attack. You only have to see the success that Bob Holland and even Allan Border had against them to see their methods of playing spin.
one-off successes by mediocre players/part time spinners is irrelevant. By that token, Tendulkar took 5-30 or so against OZ in ODIs and Agarkar took 6-40 or 50 against this OZ team....overall is what matters.
And WI didnt dominate the spin quartet in square turners in IND but they handled them well enough.
Warne is a greater bowler than Chandra and Bedi but if WI racked up 350+ against them, its a bit of a strech to expect that they would've bombed against Warne.
Warne has strugged against good batting lineups- IND for eg and WI are good players of spin as well.
2. The Australians plan better - this is evident in the recent series in India. The WI idea of planning was which fast bowler to put on next. When the WIndies plan of intimdation didn't work (which wasn't often!!) they had little to fall back on.
every team plans and when plans go awry, they lose. WI's plan was simple but elegant- no respite and 4 superquick fast bowlers.
It worked.
OZ may plan better but in WI's case, they didnt need to have top-notch planning.
If you can get the job done by just throwing 4 superfast bowlers at the opposition, you dont need to solve differential equations to come up with an optimised plan.
3. THe WIndies mostly seemed to have one batsmen and one bowler not up to the standard of the rest. There only a few times where all four of Roberts, Garner, Holding and Marshall played. Roberts was older and not as effective as Marshall was coming into the team. Walsh and Croft were only very good bowlers (i.e. - not great) bowlers althought Walsh came into his own with his partnership with Ambrose.
yes...like i said, no team remains the same over 10 years and some players come and some players go. COmparing a weaker WI team of the 80s with OZ of the recent times is irrelevant for then one can compare the bowling attack of OZ in OZ when IND visisted and say they would get whitewashed 5-0 with that attack.
And Croft was not great ?
He was meaner, better and nastier than Thommo.......he could walk into any bowling lineup of any era except his own- due to the presence of four superb fast bowlers.
Mikey Holding once said that as bowlers, they didnt fear batsmen but injury. For WI had such quality bowlers back then that six months out of the team due to injury could spell an end to your career- like it did for Croft.
One interesting fact about WI bowlers from late 70s/early-mid 80s is their depth...bowlers such as Sylvester Clarke ( who decimated the vaunted Saffie batting in rebel tours- stalwarts like Procter,Pollock,Barlow etc.) couldnt even get a peep in the WI team.
Gilchrist is much better than Dujon ever was.
batting yes. Keeping ? no.
I think the key players that make the current team better than the WIndies of the 80's are Warne and Gilchrist and the tendancy for Aussie tailenders to try and stick around. However the WIndies teams of the 80's had an aura about them which was magical.
it is the gillchrist-Warne factor why i said WI would win 2-0 or 3-1. If they wernt present, 4-0 or 5-0 would be my prediction.
Is Kaspa as good as McDermott, Hughs and Lawson? I think thrust in the same situation of having to lead the attack he would have risen to the occasion and would have been considered one of our very good bowlers. He has shown when put into this role (in India in particular and this year in SL). He is also now very comfortable in his place in his team which has lead to improved performances (in the past he was droppped for Brett Lee)
everytime Kaspa was thrust into strike-bowler roles, he bombed. In IND in the late 90s he led the attack and got clobbered senseless.
Kaspa might look good on his day but he is overall mediocre and he is not a patch on Hughes,McDermott and Lawson, who were very good bowlers and produced sustained spells of excellence.
Kaspa's record is distinctively mediocre to say the least, particularly when one takes into account that he is surrounded by two great and one worldclass bowler, which makes his job a lot easier.
The people who say the Aussies can't handle pure pace are wrong. Its just that they don't face it very often and when you have come off facing the popgun attacks of India and NZ it takes a while to adjust. Langer is a case in fact - he was only 22 at lunch on the first day but blossomed when he had adjusted.
i didnt say all aussies are bad against pace- Langer and Ponting are excellent and i've pointed that out. And the fact is, they have succumbed to extreme pace and uneven spinning tracks of IND more often than one would like.
They may not play express pace that much, but thats no excuse. WI didnt play quality spin that much but i dont offer that as an excuse.
That is, of course, assuming that all 11 of them hit top form and were at their peak at thr same time.
When Australia were at their best, about 9 or 10 of their players were at their peak at the same time.
9-10 is an exgaggeration.
and WI had 7-8 players who hit top form in the late 70s/early 80s.
Which is my point. Not that Kasprowicz has done more for the Australian team in his brief career than bowlers like McDermott and Hughes, but that he would easily walk in to just about any Australian bowling lineup in history, because he is among the top 20 pacers Australia has ever produced, and would easily be among the top three pace bowlers in the country at almost any time in test history and would therefore make the side.
i seriously dispute that statement- he woldnt walk into most OZ lineups in the history. And he has done more for OZ in his breif career than Hughes/McDermott/Lawson etc. did ?
That is a false claim- you should check their records and see how many five-fers, ten-fers etc. they have compared to Kaspa.
