Best ever medium pacer?

[Fiery]

Best ever Medium Pacer?:

Richard Hadlee:

A natural, born to play cricket. Very, very quick in his early years before evolving into a medium pacer in the early 80s, although still capable of bowling a very quick ball at times. Loved playing cricket, and had great enthusiasm and appetite for the game. An incredibly good action. His run-up and action were very simple and technically fantastic. His head was very still, his approach very direct and beautifully balanced. Like Dennis Lillee, he continually put the ball in the danger zone, making the batsman play…unbelievable accuracy. I’ve never seen a bowler who sends or sent down as many good deliveries as he did. All bowlers bowl some good nuts and good bowlers bowl a lot but he bowled an amazing amount of them. Sunil Gavaskar once said “when Richard is bowling well we are all like detectives looking for clues”. He simply had enormous natural ability with a cricket ball (and bat actually) .
He was clinical, single minded and professional. He was a captain’s dream: you threw him the ball and he got wickets; it’s as simple as that. He got wickets at the start of the innings, he got the vital breakthroughs, he cleaned up the tail – you can’t ask for anything more. He was a champion and the greatest ever NZ sportsman or women imo


Bibliography: Christmas in Rarotonga by John Wright

[Neil Pickup]

Was interested to see Kallis hit 90mph today...

[JPLCCC]

Originally Posted by cpr

Ian Austin.

Very nice call. Best one-day guy Lancs ever had. Criminally underrated by England.

[Fiery]

Originally Posted by JPLCCC

Very nice call. Best one-day guy Lancs ever had. Criminally underrated by England.

Oh p..lease. Best overweight trundler ever maybe

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Neil Pickup

Was interested to see Kallis hit 90mph today...

I wasn't, he did the same thing 9 years ago.

[shortpitched713]

Hadlee would have to be the best player to have ever bowled at a "medium" pace. Kapil Dev would have to be up there too.

[JPLCCC]

Originally Posted by Fiery

Oh p..lease. Best overweight trundler ever maybe

Ever actually see him bowl, did you? Because if you did you would see he was a major component in Lancashire's successful one day sides of the 90s.

[aussie tragic]

Just for info, Wilkpedia definition of pace is:

Fast: 90 + mph ---- 145 + kmh
Fast-medium: 80 to 89 mph ---- 129 to 145 kmh
Medium-fast: 70 to 79 mph ---- 113 to 129 kmh
Medium: 60 to 69 mph ---- 97 to 113 kmh

[Richard]

@ Wikipedia trying to define pace.

[silentstriker]

I don't buy that definition. Anything under 80 to me is medium.

Under 128 kph (80mph): Medium
128kph - 137kph (80-85mph): Medium Fast
137 - 150kph (149mph): Fast Medium
150kph (93mph) +: Fast

Obviously these are just arbitrary. But when I think of 'fast', I think of being able to hustle out International quality batsmen with pace alone, and really even though I know some bowlers touch 90 (Mahmood, Kallis, etc), really I only think of Akhtar and Lee as the 'fast' ones.

Fast medium is being able to hurry the batsmen, but not hustle them out with pace alone.
Medium Fast is your normal international bowler that relies on accuracy (Asif, McGrath, etc).
Medium are normally either your part timers, or sometimes medium fast bowlers who have a spell or two just a touch below 80mph.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

But when I think of 'fast', I think of being able to hustle out International quality batsmen with pace alone

Uh, uh...

Seriously, how often to you see top-class batsmen simply beaten for pace - late on a stroke simply because of the speed of the delivery.

Almost never.

I can honestly only think of one occasion in my cricket-watching time that I've seen a genuine batsman lose his wicket by being beaten purely and simply by pace - this game here.

And this is completely different to being beaten by change of pace, as many people were by Anderson Roberts' quicker one and many people's slower ones.

[silentstriker]

Originally Posted by Richard

Uh, uh...

Seriously, how often to you see top-class batsmen simply beaten for pace - late on a stroke simply because of the speed of the delivery.

Almost never.

I can honestly only think of one occasion in my cricket-watching time that I've seen a genuine batsman lose his wicket by being beaten purely and simply by pace - this game here.

And this is completely different to being beaten by change of pace, as many people were by Anderson Roberts' quicker one and many people's slower ones.

Actually, when Akhtar or Lee are bowling at their fastest, a lot of their wickets are because a batsmen doesn't have the time to pick the right stroke. And that sets them up for the slower ball too.

[Richard]

Haha, nice way of spinning it there... you always have the chance of picking the right stroke if the ball isn't straight, because you always have the opportunity of leaving it.

Certainly, bowling a few straight, short deliveries at 92mph sets a batsman up for the slower-ball, but if you can't bowl a good, well-disguised, well-pitched slower-ball that's no use either. Even then, it doesn't happen especially often.

Only time a bowler can get a wicket purely through pace is if a batsman misses a straight ball which is of little different pace to previous ones by virtue of the fact that he didn't get his bat down in time. Or, very occasionally, if he gets gloved or spliced by a short one that bounces evenly and goes up in the air to a fielder.

But both of these are once-in-a-blue-moon occurrances to top-class batsmen.

[Neil Pickup]

Originally Posted by aussie tragic

Just for info, Wilkpedia definition of pace is:

Fast: 90 + mph ---- 145 + kmh
Fast-medium: 80 to 89 mph ---- 129 to 145 kmh
Medium-fast: 70 to 79 mph ---- 113 to 129 kmh
Medium: 60 to 69 mph ---- 97 to 113 kmh

That needs editing. Badly. Because that even classes me as medium and I've spent the afternoon being mullered around Tiverton by a 12 year old.

[BoyBrumby]

All the labels seem fairly arbitrarily applied I'd say. Sky has Flintoff & McGrath both down as Fast Medium & Fred's appreciably faster than the great man.

Just out of interest, when was the last time a genuine medium pacer (as opposed to medium fast) was selected as a specialist bowler for one of the 8 major test nations? Maybe Bicknell when he came back v SA in 2003?