Most exciting bowler to watch

[honestbharani]

The word is exciting not best so try to make this thread as subjective as possible no stats bore please

Akhtar & Warne for me.

Mine too.. Would add AA too, juz coz of my sig..

 

[chicane]

For me:

Shoaib
Steyn
Bond
Flintoff
Simon Jones
Zaheer Khan
Wasim
McGrath
Warne

and from what I've seen of their best on youtube

Waqar and Donald

Others I love watching:

Nel
Sreesanth

EDIT: Shaun Tait too

 

[Shri]

Any wicket keeper who gets a bowl after a long day for the bowlers in a test match.

 

[Cevno]

Wasim
Bond
Steyn
Akthar
Warne

In no particular order for me.

 

[smash84]

During my watching-life; it's been Warne and Wasim.

So true. Warne was so exciting to watch with all the mental games that he would play with the batsmen to set them up. Those stares, those half smiles, half appeals, big leg spinners and then straighter ones. It was an absolute delight watching him bowl (other than the time that he bowled to Pakistan of course .........)

And Wasim was just pure magic with the ball. At least in the ODIs nobody came close to being as exciting as he was. Even in test matches he would make the ball do tricks that no other bowler could. Seam, swing, yorkers, bouncers, cutters.....the guy could do everything and more. Pakistan bowling has not been the same since the time that he retired.

Shoaib "over-weight" Akhtar is injured more than half the time and he can't bowl long spells either. Although when he goes flat out he is quite interesting to watch.

Shane Bond was very exciting when he played against Australia. He looked like he would always blow the Aussies away.

Imran Khan at his peak. Probably the best bowling action of all bowlers that I have seen. An awesome leap at the crease and an especially brilliant in-dipper.

Muralitharan. He could spin the ball on glass.

Brett Lee in the days when he was competing with Akhtar for the fastest bowler in the world.

Amir and Asif were showing promise but............

But my two most exciting would be Warne and Wasim. The 2 Ws ..........

All genuinely fast bowlers when they have their tails up are exciting but of all those I've seen the one who made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up the most was an angry Sylvester Clarke

I remember Imran in an interview with Richie Benaud was telling him that he found Sylvester Clarke to be extremely quick and menacing. And that Clarke was giving the him and the Pakistan batsman a real tough time. Genuine pace.

 

[angad]

I love watching Sachin bowl

 

[Ikki]

So true.

The thing for me, about those two, is that they seemed to make every ball an event. I used to not really take much notice of stats during the 90s and I was shocked that Wasim didn't have the best SR because for me he looked like he could get a batsman out on ANY ball.

 

[weldone]

It was an absolute delight watching him bowl (other than the time that he bowled to Pakistan of course .........)

Guess what, for an Indian fan he was always an absolute delight to watch

 

[Turbinator]

Hauritz because each time he comes on my eyes light up knowing the Indian batsmen are gonna' spank him all over the ground and runs will flow.

 

[weldone]

I used to not really take much notice of stats during the 90s and I was shocked that Wasim didn't have the best SR because for me he looked like he could get a batsman out on ANY ball.

Wasim was a master swing bowler, indeed.

 

[Altaican]

So true. Warne was so exciting to watch with all the mental games that he would play with the batsmen to set them up. Those stares, those half smiles, half appeals, big leg spinners and then straighter ones. It was an absolute delight watching him bowl (other than the time that he bowled to Pakistan of course .........)

And Wasim was just pure magic with the ball. At least in the ODIs nobody came close to being as exciting as he was. Even in test matches he would make the ball do tricks that no other bowler could. Seam, swing, yorkers, bouncers, cutters.....the guy could do everything and more. Pakistan bowling has not been the same since the time that he retired.

Shoaib "over-weight" Akhtar is injured more than half the time and he can't bowl long spells either. Although when he goes flat out he is quite interesting to watch.

Shane Bond was very exciting when he played against Australia. He looked like he would always blow the Aussies away.

Imran Khan at his peak. Probably the best bowling action of all bowlers that I have seen. An awesome leap at the crease and an especially brilliant in-dipper.

Muralitharan. He could spin the ball on glass.

Brett Lee in the days when he was competing with Akhtar for the fastest bowler in the world.

Amir and Asif were showing promise but............

But my two most exciting would be Warne and Wasim. The 2 Ws ..........



I remember Imran in an interview with Richie Benaud was telling him that he found Sylvester Clarke to be extremely quick and menacing. And that Clarke was giving the him and the Pakistan batsman a real tough time. Genuine pace.

I find all genuinely quick and aggressive bowlers fun to watch. In fact, they are the only reason that I started following cricket.
Sylvester Clarke, Marshall, Patterson (85-88), Roberts, Lillee, Imran, Donald and a fit Akhtar (because of his unreadable bouncer).
Clarke has a notorious reputation as a hostile bowler. Imran did call him the scariest (not the best, but scariest) bowler he faced. Steve Waugh mentions in his book that the only time he was seriously concerned about his safety and well-being while batting was when he was facing Clarke. Dessie Haynes too rated Clarke as the nastiest of all the West Indian quicks. I wish the link to Hayne's interview was still active, in any case I saved the page since he named his favorite batsmen and bowlers.
Among the fast bowlers, Haynes said though there were quite a few genuinely quick bowlers playing for the West Indies during his time, Sylvester Clarke could easily have been the most scary of them at one point of time. "I remember one of the Rebel Tours of the 80s when Silly (Clarke) was hitting (Peter) Kirsten at will. He had a very wicked inswinger and you made a mistake if you didn't come inside the line of a delivery."

 

[BoyBrumby]

Waqar for my quid. Just loved watching him in action. His late inswinging yorker is my favourite delivery of any bowler. In his youtful pomp he's still the best I've seen.

Pace has always floated my boat tho; limited to the shorter formats as they now are, I reckon Tait and Akhtar bombing in are still the most thrilling sights in the sport. Shoaib is overweight (despite the lypo) and almost visibly creaking, but can still crank it up into the 90s. Fastest 35yo ever?

 

[aussie]

I find all genuinely quick and aggressive bowlers fun to watch. In fact, they are the only reason that I started following cricket.
Sylvester Clarke, Marshall, Patterson (85-88), Roberts, Lillee, Imran, Donald and a fit Akhtar (because of his unreadable bouncer).
Clarke has a notorious reputation as a hostile bowler. Imran did call him the scariest (not the best, but scariest) bowler he faced. Steve Waugh mentions in his book that the only time he was seriously concerned about his safety and well-being while batting was when he was facing Clarke. Dessie Haynes too rated Clarke as the nastiest of all the West Indian quicks. I wish the link to Hayne's interview was still active, in any case I saved the page since he named his favorite batsmen and bowlers.
Among the fast bowlers, Haynes said though there were quite a few genuinely quick bowlers playing for the West Indies during his time, Sylvester Clarke could easily have been the most scary of them at one point of time. "I remember one of the Rebel Tours of the 80s when Silly (Clarke) was hitting (Peter) Kirsten at will. He had a very wicked inswinger and you made a mistake if you didn't come inside the line of a delivery."

Indeed Sylvester Clarke was special. I've always said this Windies 1984 side:

1st Test: Australia v West Indies at Perth, Nov 9-12, 1984 | Cricket Scorecard | Cricinfo.com

Would have been the undisputed greatest playing XI ever, if he played instead of a young Walsh & was not banned due to his involvement in those rebel tours.

 

[Burgey]

Thomson
Lillee
Croft
Warne

 

[Kylez]

Akhtar for me. Even though he was a douche bag at times, I just couldn't help but love watching this guy bowl and play cricket.

 

[smash84]

Guess what, for an Indian fan he was always an absolute delight to watch

The thing for me, about those two, is that they seemed to make every ball an event. I used to not really take much notice of stats during the 90s and I was shocked that Wasim didn't have the best SR because for me he looked like he could get a batsman out on ANY ball.

Yeah. He really looked like a bowler who could do that. He was a magician with the ball really. Actually I sometimes thought that he did to much with the ball and the batsman was completely baffled so he never got a wicket. The batsman would most of the times completely miss the ball and not edge it. Or the ball would swing too much and miss the stumps etc.

I find all genuinely quick and aggressive bowlers fun to watch. In fact, they are the only reason that I started following cricket.
Sylvester Clarke, Marshall, Patterson (85-88), Roberts, Lillee, Imran, Donald and a fit Akhtar (because of his unreadable bouncer).
Clarke has a notorious reputation as a hostile bowler. Imran did call him the scariest (not the best, but scariest) bowler he faced. Steve Waugh mentions in his book that the only time he was seriously concerned about his safety and well-being while batting was when he was facing Clarke. Dessie Haynes too rated Clarke as the nastiest of all the West Indian quicks. I wish the link to Hayne's interview was still active, in any case I saved the page since he named his favorite batsmen and bowlers.
Among the fast bowlers, Haynes said though there were quite a few genuinely quick bowlers playing for the West Indies during his time, Sylvester Clarke could easily have been the most scary of them at one point of time. "I remember one of the Rebel Tours of the 80s when Silly (Clarke) was hitting (Peter) Kirsten at will. He had a very wicked inswinger and you made a mistake if you didn't come inside the line of a delivery."

Sylvester Clarke was indeed scary. Imran was a treat to watch because of this lovely inswinger and lovely bowling action. The best bowling action that I saw.

 

[irottev]

Hamish Bennett

 

[smash84]

Waqar for my quid. Just loved watching him in action. His late inswinging yorker is my favourite delivery of any bowler. In his youtful pomp he's still the best I've seen.

Pace has always floated my boat tho; limited to the shorter formats as they now are, I reckon Tait and Akhtar bombing in are still the most thrilling sights in the sport. Shoaib is overweight (despite the lypo) and almost visibly creaking, but can still crank it up into the 90s. Fastest 35yo ever?

Waqar owns the yorker. Even if you see his inswinging yorkers on youtube today it gives you goosebumps. They would boomerang into the block hole and they would start swinging very late.

 

[smash84]

Shoaib is overweight (despite the lypo) and almost visibly creaking, but can still crank it up into the 90s. Fastest 35yo ever?

Indeed he might be the fastest 35 year old ever. Haven't heard of fast bowlers cranking it up too much once they cross 33.

 

[Jono]

Shoaib's lack of cricket overall (missing many tests throughout his career) has to be the reason he can bowl so fast at such an old age and looking so unfit. There can't be any other reason.

There's no way he trains the house down like Lee does.