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Pathetic Bowling actions

Jigga988

State 12th Man
Just curious to see what people thought on some cricketers bowling actions. Probobly been a thread about this but we will see....

Couple examples are Andre Nel and Sulieman Benn, but i am sure there are a hell of a lot more, going back a while, Colin Croft had quite a strange bowling method. Anyway, who has got pathetic bowling actions and who has got the worst????
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Neil Hawke's is one of the worst I've ever seen. Especially given he usually bowled alongside Garth McKenzie and Alan Connolly, both of whom were really fairly excellent. Think there might've been a chap called Corling somewhere around that time too.

Ruchira Perera's is poor as well, even when he wasn't throwing. Maybe, in fact, the poorness of his action is why he had the problem with throwing in that one game.

Seem to remember I always hated Martin McCague's as a youngster, though I don't really remember it now and might be mixing it up with someone else. I certainly know I always hated watching the filth McCague served-up every time he played for England.

Someone once said to me they hated John Emburey's, because it looked like he "wasn't trying". :wacko:
 

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
Someone once said to me they hated John Emburey's, because it looked like he "wasn't trying". :wacko:
For an orthodox (aka unthreathening) offspinner, Emburey had a lovely action - side-on, high arm, economical, rhythmical, and an arm so straight that it would have made Murali blush.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
For an orthodox (aka unthreathening) offspinner, Emburey had a lovely action - side-on, high arm, economical, rhythmical, and an arm so straight that it would have made Murali blush.
Yeah his action was pretty classical in the build-up - it's just he never really seemed to make any effort to spin the ball to the maximum extent a fingerspinner can.

Clearly he did spin it, else he'd never have had any success. But it always looked (it might well have been a mistaken impression) like he could've tried to spin it quite a bit more.

I've actually never seen Phillipe-Henri Edmunds bowl and often wondered how the two went in comparison.
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Bob Willis had a pretty ungainly action


I've often wondered if embers bowling action may have been affected by his notorious physical attribute
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Bob Willis had a pretty ungainly action
I quite liked ol' Bob's myself. Vaguely Donald-esque in the power, if not the class.

Perhaps that's coloured by the fact that the only real extended footage I've ever seen of him is his greatest performance (Headingley '81), though.
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
I quite liked ol' Bob's myself. Vaguely Donald-esque in the power, if not the class.

Perhaps that's coloured by the fact that the only real extended footage I've ever seen of him is his greatest performance (Headingley '81), though.
It's the look on his face that day that was so incredible - all that bitterness and resentment - you could see it with every grimace - I do hope with the passage of time that he has grown to get some pleasure from his performance that day
 

Michaelf7777777

International Debutant
Bert Ironmonger has to be up there for weirdest bowling actions I've ever heard of. He spun the ball off the stump of a finger he lost during his childhood in an accident
 

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