Posted by Paid the Umpire earlier...
R. Hadlee (NZ) - 95.08
Wasim Akram (PAK) - 99.88
C. Ambrose (WI) - 94.80
G. McGrath (AUS) - 94.86
M. Marshall (WI) - 90.11
W. Younis (PAK) - 93.10
DK. Lillee (AUS) - 98.94
A. Donald (SA) - 92.94
J. Garner (WI) - 92.46
M. Holding (WI) - 97.87
Paid the umpire, I think you have got the RPO formula wrong. I re-calculated assuming RPO means runs per 100 balls and here are my results, also please note that you had two glaring ommissions, S Pollock and Imran Khan who stack up very well against the rest. Also I used only fast bowlers with atleast 50 tests, there might be more ommissions (anyone?).
1 marshall 112.50
2 garner 113.08
3 s pollock 113.16
4 ambrose 114.02
5 g mcgrath 115.54
6 donald 116.60
7 hadlee 117.01
8 imran k 118.79
9 w younis 120.20
10 m holding 121.12
11 w akram 121.49
12 lillee 121.93
Now personally I always am very cautious about this kind of an index. First of all one problem that I see with this right away is the ranking of Garner and Waqar. I think Garner is over ranked and Waqar under ranked. Waqar has the strike rate of freaking 43!! about 3.5 points better than the next closest Marshall, there is no way he can be on number 9.
To make my point I did an analysis of two arbitary bowlers with fictitious bowling figures for an innings:
arbitrary 1: overs=20, runs=90, wkts=5
arbitrary 2: overs=20, runs=40, wkts=2
I think a cricket analyst can easily say that bowler 1 did much better, (it could only be different in special circumstances when for those few times in tests that runs are at a premium and wkts dont matter at all, third innings and giving the 4th batting team a huge lead, and the bowling team trying their best to curtail runs for example). But the index values are as follows:
arbitary #1 117.00
arbitrary #2 113.33
This should prove that the method of looking at s/r, ave. and rpo with equal weights is flawed.
Now I took the liberty of making another index, whihc only considers s/r and ave., equal weights:
w younis 66.41
marshall 67.71
donald 69.28
garner 71.84
haddlee 73.16
g mcgrath 73.43
m holding 74.61
s pollock 74.91
ambrose 75.56
lillee 75.94
imran k 76.35
w akram 78.27
But as you guys say that economy rate does have an impact and it cannot be ignored totally, and I totally agree. So I made a third index, in which I included all three s/r, ave. and rpo but gave 3 times more weight to s/r and ave than rpo:
marshall 35.42
w younis 36.14
donald 36.45
garner 36.68
g mcgrath 37.49
s pollock 37.57
haddlee 37.62
ambrose 37.88
m holding 38.62
imran k 38.79
lillee 39.12
w akram 39.72
I think this is the best off all the three.
Comments??