Best Bowling All Rounder

[AndyZaltzHair]

From dream perspective, it's "Procter"

From practical perspective, it's "Imran"

 

[harsh.ag]

I think my answer depends on how good a batsman you want your bowling all-rounder to be. If he needs to bat at number 6 or 7, then I would take Miller. If he can be more of a bowler and not need to take too much of a batting burden, then I would take Imran. I have no idea how to figure Procter into the analysis. Don't think it's reasonable to compare FC records to Test records. Too much romanticism happening.

 

[watson]

From dream perspective, it's "Procter"

From practical perspective, it's "Imran"

The 'dream' for me would be that apatheid never happened so we could all admire the talents of Mike Procter, Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards, and Clive Rice on the world-stage at their peak.

One can only imagine what a 1975 tour of Australia by South Africa would have been like.

 

[Hurricane]

Jason Gillespie not an option??

Indeed he was mentioned in the Aussie ATG thread.

 

[harsh.ag]

We know from observation that Procter was a damned good player, so we then look around for evidence to back-up that observation. Admittedly, FC evidence is not as good as Test match evidence, but it's not bad just the same. Therefore, I conclude that it is extremely likely that Procter would have had a superb Test match career given the chance.

FC evidence is extremely bad as an indicator of true greatness. Really now. Absolutely over the top conclusion. So many things can go wrong in a test career. So much so that talent becomes just one aspect of determining greatness. We have seen it happen to so many talented individuals.

 

[harsh.ag]

The 'dream' for me would be that apatheid never happened so we could all admire the talents of Mike Procter, Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards, and Clive Rice on the world-stage at their peak.

One can only imagine what a 1975 tour of Australia by South Africa would have been like.

Of course, had apartheid never happened, by definition we would not have had a South African test team made up of those guys.

 

[smash84]

hmmm....that is a fair point

 

[watson]

FC evidence is extremely bad as an indicator of true greatness. Really now. Absolutely over the top conclusion. So many things can go wrong in a test career. So much so that talent becomes just one aspect of determining greatness. We have seen it happen to so many talented individuals.

I disagree with regards to Mike Procter - 401 FC games with excellent stat's is just too many to ignore. It's actually an enormous amount of games and therefore the extrapolation is justified.

We can also watch this video as a memory jogger;

Mike Procter 6/13 vs Hampshire 1977 B+H Cup - YouTube

 

[vic_orthdox]

With the ball, MP's form line in FC cricket was similar both before and after Test debut, and he clearly showed an aptitude for Test cricket in his limited exposure.

 

[watson]

Of course, had apartheid never happened, by definition we would not have had a South African test team made up of those guys.

I'm not an expert in South African politics so I'm not going to get into a political discussion about South Africa in the 1960s/70s. However, I'm sure that you know what I meant.

 

[kingkallis]

Miller has 4 and Hadlee has 3 votes in "Best bowling all-rounder" thread...

*sigh*

 

[harsh.ag]

I'm not an expert in South African politics so I'm not going to get into a political discussion about South Africa in the 1960s/70s. However, I'm sure that you know what I meant.

I knew, Watson. Sorry, didn't mean to knock your statement down.

I guess you could make an exception for Procter because of the mitigating circumstances, but certainly elevating him to the standards of Imran and Miller is quite lofty, no?

 

[Satyanash89]

I disagree with regards to Mike Procter - 401 FC games with excellent stat's is just too many to ignore. It's actually an enormous amount of games and therefore the extrapolation is justified.

We can also watch this video as a memory jogger;

Mike Procter 6/13 vs Hampshire 1977 B+H Cup - YouTube

yeah, the amount of first class cricket he played indicates he would have been one of the all time great Test allrounders... shame we'll never know what he could have accomplished. Imo if people can rank pollock and richards up there with the best then why not procter too?
Looking at such a short test career is meaningless though.
Imagine if for some reason Bresnan hadnt played a game after his first 10 tests. Would he have been ranked a great of the game just because he averaged 45 with the bat and 25 with the ball? No, because we would have looked at his first class figures which showed him to be average. Thats why you look at first class figures... to better judge players who didnt have long international careers. Thats why i place Procter very high in my list

 

[Valer]

I disagree with regards to Mike Procter - 401 FC games with excellent stat's is just too many to ignore. It's actually an enormous amount of games and therefore the extrapolation is justified.

How is this any diffrent from say Brad Hodge or David Hussey?

 

[watson]

How is this any diffrent from say Brad Hodge or David Hussey?

They didn't have these sort of references;

"They say in the world of cricket that Sir Garfield Sobers was the best and then there were people like Ian Botham and Imran Khan, Kapil Dev," said Bacher. "I feel that if Mike had played more than those seven Tests he would have been closest to Sir Garfield Sobers. He was a magnificent batsman, had terrific timing and a very positive batting style. He was also a very astute captain."

Sir Garfield Sobers himself had only good things to say about Procter: "There have been few better all-round cricketers in the world in my time. As a bowler he is fast, hostile and aggressive. I would put him in the same class as Charlie Griffith and Roy Gilchrist for bowling a bouncer no batsman likes receiving."

Mike Procter: all round excellence - SouthAfrica.info

 

[Flametree]

In 5 matches for the Rest of the World vs England, Procter averaged 41 with the bat and 24 with the ball.

In 4 matches in World Series cricket he averaged 30 with the bat and 16 with the ball.

Still not a huge sample size I know, added to the 7 tests, but it tends to support the view that he was something a bit special at whatever level he played. I'm pretty comfortable thinking that over a long career he would have been a low-30s batsman and a very low 20's bowler, possibly even lower.

 

[watson]

Here is Ashley Mallett's opinion;

Five to do it all

Allrounders who could bat, bowl and sometimes field their sides to victory

Ashley Mallett
July 10, 2012


There are two certainties in this cricketing life: Don Bradman was the greatest of all batsmen, and Garry Sobers was undoubtedly the game's best all-round cricketer.

Sobers was cricket's lion, and he heads my pride of the five best allrounders I've seen. Because of his mercurial all-round ability, Sobers must be crowned the greatest player in cricket history. Statistics don't always tell the full story, but his stats aren't half bad: 93 Tests, 8032 runs at 57.78, with 26 centuries and a career best of 365 not out. With the ball, bowling left-arm fast, wrist- or orthodox spin, he took 235 wickets at 34.03 with six five-wicket hauls and a career best of 6 for 73.

He also took 109 catches, some of them seemingly impossible ones at backward short-leg. During a charity match in Adelaide in which I played alongside Sobers, he took a catch off my bowling at short midwicket. There was not the hint of a sound. Another catch, again no sound. Twice the ball had disappeared into a pouch of fur: Sobers was the epitome of the iron fist in the velvet glove.

Bradman reckoned Sobers' 254 against Australia for the Rest of the World team at the MCG in 1972 was the "best innings I've seen in Australia".

Sobers had a sense of history and of fair play. When South Africa played South Australia at the Adelaide Oval in 1963-64, he sidled up to his state captain, Les Favell, and asked: "Is it okay, skipper, if I wear my Test cap?" Favell said he couldn't care what cap Sobie wore, but he was intrigued as to why his great allrounder wanted to don the West Indies cap. With a not-so-subtle swipe at the injustices of the apartheid system, Sobers said: "I believe it is time these Springboks got a good, long look at the West Indies cap I am wearing." He got a big hundred.

There have been a few better batsmen than Sobers, also a number of superior bowlers, but as a complete package - batsman, bowler, fieldsman, cricket thinker - he reigns supreme. There was an ease of motion to this man which bordered on the poetic; in a cricketing sense Sobers on the prowl was something to behold.

***

Second to Sobers, in terms of skill and an innate ability to perform when needed, was Keith Miller. Miller was right out of the Boy's Own Annual. He was a war hero and a supreme athlete with the sort of star quality we associate with stage and screen. In 55 Tests he hit 2958 runs at 36.97, with seven hundreds, and he took 170 wickets at an average of 22.97, with a career-best 7 for 60 among his seven bags of five wickets or more in an innings.

Sir Leonard Hutton told me that the best bowler he ever faced was SF Barnes. Barnes was 62, Hutton a boy of 16, but on the Test stage, Hutton said, "the most dangerous bowler was undoubtedly Keith Miller". He was just as likely to bowl a legbreak as he was a fast outswinger in his first over of a Test match. He batted and bowled on whim and the need of the side. If Australia were in trouble he lifted a few gears and got the job done.

In 1969, Miller turned up to take part in a coaching film. All he had to do was to bowl three balls at an unprotected set of stumps. He walked past me where I stood some seven paces back from my mark and said, "Ahem, son, I'll pitch leg and hit off." His first and third balls did precisely that: the ball was propelled at a speed at least as fast as Graham McKenzie, who was a fast bowler for Australia then. The seam was perfectly upright and it pitched on both occasions on the line of leg stump and broke like a Shane Warne legbreak to hit the top of off stump.

***

Imran Khan was a warrior cricketer if ever there was one. He was blessed with great strength and a calm temperament, and could "lift" as a batsman or bowler. In 88 Tests, Imran hit 3807 runs at 37.69, with a highest score of 136 among his six hundreds. With the ball he took 362 wickets at an average of 22.81, taking five or more wickets in an innings 23 times. He was also a born leader, a trait that has stayed with him in his political quest to try and steer Pakistan towards a democracy of sorts.

Imran succeeded with his pace bowling on all surfaces, even on the bone-dry parched pitches of home that powdered to the touch like some river bed in biblical times after 40 years of drought. While he batted with skill and good judgement, especially when he needed to guide his country out of the mire, it was his bowling which fired the imagination. Imran loved a challenge and was his best against the best batsmen, for they provided the greater challenge. He could be operating at a pace around fast-medium, and then, suddenly, without any obvious change in approach or action, he could deliver at savage express pace. When he was quick, he was seriously quick as he proved in Australia in the 1976-77 series.

Like a good-quality red, Imran got better with age. In his final 50-odd Tests he averaged a shade above 50 with the bat and just 19 with the ball. His stirring match figures of 10 for 77 against England at Headingley in 1987 gave Pakistan their first series win against the olde enemy on their home soil. And in 1992 he led Pakistan to World Cup glory.

***

Ian Botham had an outstanding all-round record. In 102 Tests he scored 5200 runs at 33.54 with 14 centuries, and he took 383 wickets at 28.40 with 27 bags of five wickets or more and a career-best haul of 8 for 34. He was probably lucky to have struck an Australian team mostly without its better players. Just after he began his career, Australia and West Indies lost their best players to World Series Cricket, and then came the rebel tours of South Africa.

Botham batted and bowled with great belief, but to me he seemed a better batsman than a bowler. He hit with explosive power, especially straight. As a bowler he seemed to bowl well within himself, but every now and then he would drive through the crease with amazing energy and produce a pearler of a delivery. It was this element of surprise that had batsmen guessing, and it often led to wickets. He wasn't in the class of Kapil Dev or Richard Hadlee as a bowler, yet he was a better bat than both men, and a brilliant slip fieldsman.

Perhaps Botham's magnum opus came at Headingley in 1981, when he flayed Dennis Lillee, Terry Alderman and Co to the tune of 149, which turned the match on its head and won it for England - thanks also to an eight-wicket haul by Bob Willis - after the bookies were offering 500-1 against an England victory.

***

My fifth choice is a little controversial. Mike Procter played little international cricket, and in seven Tests he averaged a modest 25.11 with the bat, though he took 41 wickets at 15.02.

As a bowler, Procter came at you like a raging bull. He was full on, bustling towards the batsman with a determined glint in his eye. At the point of delivery he was very front-on, not unlike Malcolm Marshall, and he seemed to bowl off the wrong foot, the ball seemingly coming on to you in a big rush. His pace was around Marshall's but usually Procter's deliveries came in to the right-hander. He bowled huge, dipping inswingers and clever legcutters.

In England in 1972, I watched on television as Procter completed an unusual hat-trick, in that though the ball was bowled from around the wicket, every batsman was plumb lbw.

As a youngster Procter spent a season on the Lord's grounds staff with Barry Richards, another player who was denied a long and successful Test career with South Africa. Procter knew that apartheid in his country would prevent him from playing any more than his seven Tests, and his ultimate became first-class cricket - mostly for his beloved adopted county of Gloucestershire. In 401 first-class matches he scored 21,936 runs at 36.01 with 48 hundreds and a highest score of 254. He also took 1417 wickets at 19.53, with 70 bags of five wickets in an innings and 15 lots of ten wickets in a match.

That he was denied Test cricket could not dissuade me from counting Procter among one of the best allrounders I've seen. I place him above the likes of Kapil, Hadlee, Richie Benaud, Daniel Vettori, even Alan Davidson, who was most assuredly Australia's best allrounder seen since Miller.

Procter reckoned his loss of a long and successful Test career was little compared with the suffering of 40 million non-whites in South Africa. In April 1971, Nelson Mandela was spending his seventh year in a cell at Robben Island, just across the water from Cape Town, where a cricket match between Transvaal and the Rest of South Africa was about to start at Newlands. The players knew the John Vorster government had decreed that it would prevent the South African selectors from picking a non-white player in the national team for the coming tour of Australia. After one ball, four players - Procter, Graeme and Peter Pollock and Denis Lindsay - walked off the field and issued a press statement supporting the selection by merit regardless of skin colour. From that moment Procter and the others could walk tall forever.


Ashley Mallett took 132 Tests wickets in 38 Tests for Australia. An author of over 25 books, he has written biographies of Clarrie Grimmett, Doug Walters, Jeff Thomson and Ian Chappell

 

[watson]

I knew, Watson. Sorry, didn't mean to knock your statement down.

I guess you could make an exception for Procter because of the mitigating circumstances, but certainly elevating him to the standards of Imran and Miller is quite lofty, no?

I agree, it is 'quite lofty', and I don't often make exceptions for cricketers who haven't played much Test cricket.

However, the two South Africans Mike Procter and Barry Richards are quite different. We have long distinguished FC careers, excellent reviews from experts, and TV footage on which to build our conclusions.

Having said that, I wouldn't mind anyone of Procter, Imran, or Miller being in my team. Anyone of those 3 would transform a side.

 

[AndyZaltzHair]

There are more to Procter's great FC Career which distinguishes him:

He virtually single-handedly lifted Gloucestershire from the lower reaches of the county championship to second in 1969 with over a hundred wickets and in 1970 he entered the record books alongside Sir Donald Bradman and C.B. Fry with six successive centuries for Rhodesia.

Four centuries for Gloucestershire followed in 1971, the last lifting them from 28 for three to a target of 201 in just over two hours against Yorkshire.

He nailed Worcestershire good and proper in 1977, scoring a century before lunch and taking 13 wickets for just 73 runs.

He picked up another century before lunch in 1979, against Leicestershire, and then ripped through their batsmen with a hat-trick for good measure.

Procter defied insurmountable odds in the very next game, against Yorkshire, by taking another hat-trick, all trapped leg-before.

Procter also made a considerable mark back home and is the only player to make over 500 runs and take 50 wickets twice in a domestic season, in 1971-72 and 1972-73, when he took a then record 59 wickets in eight Currie Cup matches.

Day in and day out for Gloucestershire, he carried the burden of being the strike bowler, best batsman and latterly the captain

In addition, in those limited no. of tests he appeared, he proved himself. If all these are not good indication that he would flourish if he had played a long career at highest level, then I'm not sure what he could do more to prove himself.

 

[kyear2]

Well said guys. Between WSC, ROW XI, his seven test matches , and his extensive first class career he has done all be can do and performed at an exccedingly high level in all levels.