Success of Right/Left Arm Medium bowlers?

[Manee]

Okay, one of the main talking points in Indian cricket is whether bowlers who bowl at the range of 125kph (at the beginning of a spell or day) to 115kph (at the end) are admissible to Test cricket? India are full of bowlers who bowl at that sort of speed and they constitute the top domestic performers in the country. People like Praveen Kumar and Joginder Sharma, etc. Or is it necessary, in the modern age, to forgo domestic performances to pick someone like Umesh Yadav, who can bowl at around 140kph, or Unadkat, who was incorrectly rumoured to be quick.

In the 1970s-1990s, there is some footage that I have seen of Test bowlers who appeared to bowl at this speed. However, all I've seen is pathetic 30 minute shows on ESPN Classic - can some of the older members shed light on whether bowlers of this sort of speed have ever been successful at Test level?

My belief is that T20 and ODI cricket leads people to view medium pacers as often useless fodder whereas they can be highly useful in the far more attritional Test format but I'd love to hear what some members, who would usually forgo this discussion due to the India-centric nature of it, think.

 

[BoyBrumby]

The trouble is with medium pacers that if they have to bowl on a lifeless deck they can be fodder whatever the format. A recent example is Jon Lewis, who's probably on the medium/medium-fast border and who averages around 77-78mph (which my calc tells me is almost exactly 125kmh). On juicy English seamers he can concentrate on putting the ball in the right areas and letting the movement from the pitch do the rest. However on a slow bunsen in India against better batting I suspect it'd be sheer murder.

I suspect the only medium pacers nowadays who might make a go of it are those who can extract steepling bounce despite their lack of clicks through the air; Martin Bicknell was a good 3 or 4 mph slower on average than Lewis, but could still trouble good batsmen because he could make the ball climb.

 

[Manee]

The trouble is with medium pacers that if they have to bowl on a lifeless deck they can be fodder whatever the format. A recent example is Jon Lewis, who's probably on the medium/medium-fast border and who averages around 77-78mph (which my calc tells me is almost exactly 125kmh). On juicy English seamers he can concentrate on putting the ball in the right areas and letting the movement from the pitch do the rest. However on a slow bunsen in India against better batting I suspect it'd be sheer murder.

I suspect the only medium pacers nowadays who might make a go of it are those who can extract steepling bounce despite their lack of clicks through the air; Martin Bicknell was a good 3 or 4 mph slower on average than Lewis, but could still trouble good batsmen because he could make the ball climb.

Is Lewis fodder on flat pitches in County Cricket though? Surely a lifeless pitch is a lifeless pitch, it is just that they are of a slightly different nature and are more frequent in India than in England.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Is Lewis fodder on flat pitches in County Cricket though? Surely a lifeless pitch is a lifeless pitch, it is just that they are of a slightly different nature and are more frequent in India than in England.

To be totally honest, given the infrequency with which FC games are shown on Sky, I had to check Cricket Archive for an answer. It does look as if he might struggle on less responsive decks as his averages on two of the more renowned English roads (Taunton & The Oval) are 50.85 & 37.10 respectively. Even at Lords, which used to have some life but has become a bit of a motorway since the new drainage was fitted, he averages above 35.

 

[Manee]

That is very interesting. I genuinely asked the question, but didn't expect he'd be so poor at Taunton, which is a renowned road, and quite poor at Oval and Lords.

On the first point of your post, Sky should definitely launch a cricket channel - having to get all my classic cricket from ESPN Classic is a sad state of affairs, indeed - especially considering they are more intent on constantly showing the 2005 Ashes than anything genuinely classic.