Is Imran one of the 10 best bowlers ever?
 

There's been a lot of great bowlers in the history of cricket. And if I were to make a top 10 list the names like Lillee, Marshall, Warne, Hadlee, Murali, McGrath and Akram would all be mortal locks on my list. Then there are plenty of candidates for top ten...

Waqar Yunis - Best strike-rate of modern game
Allan Donald - High percentage of top order batsman dismissed that I know of. Majorly underrated
SF Barnes - It's called "Weight of numbers"

And there's a lot more like Trueman and a rash of West Indian bowlers. But I was looking at the best test bowling performances ever and Imran's 1982 bowling year is just insane!

9 matches

only 824 runs taken off him

62 wickets!

And an average of 13.29

I don't know what his strike rate was, but if it's below 40 then that's crazy.

My question is, is Imran Khan one of the ten best bowlers in history? His overall career figures might not say so... but it's safe to say he's an impact player.

Yes, and fairly comfortably too.

top 10 pacers for me ( no particular order) : Wasim, Ambrose, Marshall, McGrath, Hadlee, Imran, Trueman, Donald, Davidson and Holding.

top 10 spinners : Murali, Warne, Bedi, Chandra, Grimmett, O'Reiley, Laker, Gibbs, Kumble, Gupte, Saqlain.

Saqlain - taking into account his OD record? Or purely by Tests?

I was co incidentally just checking out Cricinfo's inaugral issue yesterday night. There have been a lot of great bowlers from various eras. So it would be tough for an Imran even to make it despite him being superb.

Tests mostly, ODI secondary bearing....
80-20 maybe.

People tend to forget one very important fact on Imraan.

He did not bowl a single ball in test cricket between 83-85. In other words he did not bowl between Age 29-32. Certainly its the peak period for majority of the fast bowlers and looking at his record in 82 i am sure Imraan would have been no exception.

No Abdul Qadir?

Imran was an unbelievably good bowler - express pace with prodigious movement both ways.

Think a quicker version of Simon Jones (Ashes version) with longevity, the ability to swing it with both the new and old ball, bounce.

In a word - awesome.

So would you rank Hadlee right up there given his success and the lack of proper support he had (what he had wasn't that special) much like the success of Murali in similar circumstances (in the spin bowling department you can take out Vaas since he is a pacer and the there are periods that have bordered between brilliant and inconsistent)?

If I'm not mistaken Imran had to carry the bowling attack during much of his career (not taking in account the spinners) and certaintly having to led from the front with the bat.

One thing that sticks into my mind was those ball tampering allegations, I don't know true they are (I don't have time ATM to go up and check) for for sullied his reputation a bit as IMO a bowler of his class didn't have to resort to such a thing (same applies to Wasim and Waqar).

England, Australia and the West Indies have all produced 10 better bowlers than Imran Khan if you're talking about of all time.

Name them.

yes.

I would say Imran would probably be in the top-ten because he often had to captain the side and along with Abdul Qadir was often the only real attacking options he had, i remember that he often had one or two medium-pacers but nothing much until Wasim came along in the late 80's.

But on sheer bowling he would be probably be squeezed either towards the bottom or out of the top 10 by the west indian quicks.

Charles Davis' all-time top 10 taken from Wisden Australia 2005-06 after a painstaking statistical analysis.

1. SF Barnes 5.66
2. M Muralitharan 5.47
3. WJ O'Reilly 4.87
4. RJ Hadlee 4.79
5. CV Grimmett 4.56
6. DK Lillee 4.42
7. MD Marshall 4.39
8. GD McGrath 4.35
9. GA Lohmann 4.31
10. SK Warne 4.13

17. Imran Khan 3.79