Different measurements of bowlers

[Matt79]

I am more interested in seeing wickets per innings. Bowlers played in weak batting lineups like Hadlee etc. had no control what-so ever in the amount of innings that they played in a match. I still think Barnes will lead, but the huge gaps will be lessened IMO.

You're welcome to collate it - I don't think the stat on number of innings a bowler actually bowled in is readily retrievable online, but would be delighted to be wrong (obviously you can do it for individuals manually, so feel free to go work it out for Barnes and Murali as I get the vibe that's where you're heading with this).

As I did point out when someone raised this point before, Barnes' "match" figure includes a match where he didn't get to bowl at all due to rain.

That said, the prominance of Murali and Hadlee on the list does kinda indicate that great bowlers in weaker teams get highlighted, rather than dismissed, by this stat.

 

[Days of Grace]

Hey guys,

Here are the top 30 bowlers (at the moment) on my alltime Test cricket ratings, sorted by wickets per match, then by wickets per innings bowled in.

Wickets per match:
SF Barnes 7.00
GA Lohmann 6.22
M Muralitharan 6.00
CTB Turner 5.94
CV Grimmett 5.84
WJ O'Reilly 5.33
C Blythe 5.26
FR Spofforth 5.22
DW Steyn 5.16
DK Lillee 5.07
Sir RJ Hadlee 5.01
SK Warne 4.88
A Kumble 4.69
MD Marshall 4.64
AV Bedser 4.63
AA Donald 4.58
FS Trueman 4.58
GD McGrath 4.54
J Garner 4.47
Waqar Younis 4.29
AK Davidson 4.23
JC Laker 4.20
MA Holding 4.15
CEL Ambrose 4.13
Imran Khan 4.11
Wasim Akram 3.98
CA Walsh 3.93
SM Pollock 3.90
Shoaib Akhtar 3.87
IR Bishop 3.74


Wickets per innings bowled in:
1 SF Barnes 3.78
2 M Muralitharan 3.47
3 CTB Turner 3.37
4 CV Grimmett 3.22
5 FR Spofforth 3.13
6 GA Lohmann 3.11
7 WJ O'Reilly 3.00
8 Sir RJ Hadlee 2.87
9 DW Steyn 2.80
10 C Blythe 2.70
11 DK Lillee 2.69
12 A Kumble 2.62
13 SK Warne 2.59
14 AV Bedser 2.57
15 AA Donald 2.56
16 Imran Khan 2.55
17 MD Marshall 2.49
18 Waqar Younis 2.42
19 FS Trueman 2.42
20 J Garner 2.33
21 GD McGrath 2.32
22 Wasim Akram 2.29
23 AK Davidson 2.27
24 CEL Ambrose 2.26
25 JC Laker 2.24
26 MA Holding 2.20
27 Shoaib Akhtar 2.17
28 CA Walsh 2.14
29 IR Bishop 2.12
30 SM Pollock 2.08

Notice how Imran Khan is near the bottom of the WPM list, but is in the middle of the WPI list due to him not bowling in a number of his teams' innings in the field during the later part of his career.

Notice how Barnes' lead over Murali is reduced from 16% in WPM, to 9% in WPI, a result of Murali bowling in less innings per match on average then Barnes (1.72 innings per match, compared to Barnes' 1.85)

I think it also has a lot to do with the strengh of the team you bowl in. Warne bowls in 1.88 innings per match, because of the fact that Australia would hardly ever lose by an innings when Warne played. The only reason Warne would miss bowling a 2nd innings would 99% be due to bad weather.

 

[Sir Alex]

Gee thanks DoG. Also someone like Murali, who played for relatively weak them throughout (atleast while touring) 'might' miss out on account of not getting enough of a bowl in the second innings, owing to opposition having to chase a lower score to win, or not having to bat much in the 3rd innings owing to sizeable first innings lead.

 

[Matt79]

thanks DoG

 

[Days of Grace]

No worries. It was just a straight copy and paste job from my Excel spreadsheet.


The amazing thing about Steyn is that, apart from the O'Reilly/Grimmett pairing, he is the only bowler in the top 10 WPI list that you could argue wasn't the out-and-out dominant bowler in his side.

 

[Himannv]

WPI is a far more accurate measure as I pointed out earlier. Steyn certainly a standout performer and it remains to be seen if he can keep it up. If he does, certainly an all-time great status is in the beckoning. Murali going a bit higher was expected of course but not surprising that he is still below Barnes in WPI. Interesting that Lohmann drops below Murali, Turner, Grimmet and Spofforth in the WPI rankings when compared with the WPM rankings.

 

[Days of Grace]

One thing to keep in mind is that the WPI measurement is not team innings, but a bowlers' innings.

i.e. if a bowler doesn't bowl in his team's bowling innings, it doesn't count.

Therefore, it can look distorted for part-time bowlers who rarely bowl but when they do, they pick up wickets. Michael Clarke would have had a very good WPI average in his early career.

Therefore, newball bowlers would suffer in comparison to spinners. Even if the opposition needs only 10 runs to win in the 4th innings, it still counts towards the bowler's records.

Perhaps a measurement where an innings only counts towards a bowlers' WPI if his team bowls something like a minimum of 30 overs?

 

[Matt79]

Days, how did you get the Innings stat for each bowler? Manually going through their record?

 

[Migara]

Days, how did you get the Innings stat for each bowler? Manually going through their record?

When you run the query, number of innings are also displayed. It's just a copy paste job on to a spreadsheet and a simple calculation after that followed by a sort.

 

[Matt79]

Unless I'm mistaken, that's the number of innings batted in, rather than bowled in, even in the "bowling format" - delighted if that's not the case, but I think it is.

 

[Himannv]

Just checked it and Migara is right. If its a bowling query, it displays as the number of innings bowled in.

 

[Athlai]

Barnes

 

[Matt79]

Just checked it and Migara is right. If its a bowling query, it displays as the number of innings bowled in.

Awesome - thanks Migara, Himannv.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Perhaps part of the reason why he's under-rated on CW is that there are lots of English here, and his record against us is relatively poor. But as this thread demonstrates, his record is absolutely outstanding.

Yeah, it's something I've definitely been guilty of. I'm enough of a luddite/old git to still prefer the evidence of my own eyes to these new fangled databases and whatnot. Steyn's first couple of series v England were quite unimpressive (mitigation of youth and injury respectively notwithstanding) but he did come to the party (as I believe the kids put it) on our last tour.

But let's just see if the blighter can do it in, er, blighty before we fit the halo tho, eh?

 

[stephen]

Yeah, it's something I've definitely been guilty of. I'm enough of a luddite/old git to still prefer the evidence of my own eyes to these new fangled databases and whatnot. Steyn's first couple of series v England were quite unimpressive (mitigation of youth and injury respectively notwithstanding) but he did come to the party (as I believe the kids put it) on our last tour.

But let's just see if the blighter can do it in, er, blighty before we fit the halo tho, eh?

Running through India in India, spearheading what was both the first test series victory South Africa have had against Australia ever and the first series victory by anybody in Australia in 15 years should be good enough for anyone to see that Steyn is a special bowler.

 

[Jono]

Brumby, what the hell did your last sentence mean?

 

[Furball]

Running through India in India, spearheading what was both the first test series victory South Africa have had against Australia ever and the first series victory by anybody in Australia in 15 years should be good enough for anyone to see that Steyn is a special bowler.

Saying that Steyn needs to do it in England has as much validity as the ludicrous questioning of Lillee over his record on the subcontinent.

 

[zaremba]

Brumby, what the hell did your last sentence mean?

He meant let's see if he can perform in England (Blighty) before considering him a Saint of fast bowling

 

[Jono]

Heh, cheers

I feel like this bloke sometimes when I read Brumby's posts:

 

[Ikki]

Kinda using this topic's idea for a different measurement: big hauls. Got the idea from the Lillee thread. Lillee got 7 10fers in 70 tests. For a fast bowler, one that had pretty good competition in his team for about half his career, that's quite incredible.

I'm positive big-hauls, even if they are expensive, are remembered much more fondly than smaller but more economical hauls. These tend to change matches more and for this very reason are more memorable, or laudable. This is kinda exemplified by Lillee IMO.

The proportion of 4fer/5fer/10fer in relation to Tests is an important tool IMO. Albeit it relies on certain other factors to use such a stat to gauge a player properly. Undoubtedly though, these are important. It's a reason why I think Warne often outshined McGrath - or was perceived to have done in certain matches.

I guess the point I am making is; while we are often preoccupied by a decimal point in statistical comparisons here (with regards to average and strike-rate), and sometimes reputations seem bigger than those stats suggest, looking at these kinds of performances puts it in a better/more accurate perspective IMO.