England's best ever bowler

[harsh.ag]

Ha ha!! BBC self referencing is the best.

 

[Pratters]

Caddick was a greentop bully.

Na just a softcock. Get an early wicket and he was lethal, fail to get one and he spat the dummy out too quickly.

Averaged 37 in first two innings of a game, 20 in the last two. Jekyl and Hyde.

 

[Pratters]

Benaud rated Tyson the fastest and could not split Barnes and Trueman overall

Boycott rates Tyson very highly as well. If you are to ask who was the most lethal, has to be one of Tyson or Snow.

 

[TheJediBrah]

If they did this for Australian bowlers I'm betting it would be McGrath. He dismissed the top-order batsmen and opposition star batsmen with alarming regularity.

 

[harsh.ag]

If they did this for Australian bowlers I'm betting it would be McGrath. He dismissed the top-order batsmen and opposition star batsmen with alarming regularity.

If only they could stop sucking Warne's **** for a few minutes.

 

[watson]

Boycott rates Tyson very highly as well. If you are to ask who was the most lethal, has to be one of Tyson or Snow.

'Lethal' doesn't have to be synonomous with fast.

At his peak (1950 to 1953) Alec Bedser took 132 wickets at an incredible 18.75. Among those 132 wickets were 13 5fers. Based on those numbers and the testimony of some great Australian batsman you could easily make a case for Bedser being the greatest English bowler.

Great bowlers are also innovative, and Bedser certainly was that - the first bowler to develop the leg-cutter?

Most fast bowlers pre-war bowled outswingers because of the lbw law [then in vogue]. The ball had to pitch [in line] stump to stump before an lbw appeal was upheld. Inswingers were rather frowned upon by the so-called experts - not many were bowled, so Don never really had to cope with the late inswing bowling and especially difficult was such a bowler who could also get the ball to move from leg to off after the ball pitched. I needed to develop such a ball. Today they call this a legcutter and because of the big seam on the ball these days it deviates upon pitching. Balls just after the war had hardly any seam, so I found I had to actually spin the ball. I found my big hands helped the process and that I did not have to change my action at all

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/775599.html

 

[Pratters]

'Lethal' doesn't have to be synonomous with fast.

At his peak (1950 to 1953) Alec Bedser took 132 wickets at an incredible 18.75. Among those 132 wickets were 13 5fers. Based on those numbers and the testimony of some great Australian batsman you could easily make a case for Bedser being the greatest English bowler.

Well, Frank Tyson was fast from all reports.

In terms of raw, unbridled pace, few bowlers in history can match England's Frank Tyson. Richie Benaud rated him the quickest he's ever seen. In 17 Tests, Tyson took 76 wickets at an average of 18. (CI profile)

Doesn't mean he was the best, obviously. That's debatable. The case against Tyson would be the longevity obv.

 

[NZTailender]

Not the best of all time obviously but possibly one of England's most underrated. The only English bowler in that 06/07 Ashes series who wasn't a chump; scorelines would've looked even worse if it weren't for him.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Not the best of all time obviously but possibly one of England's most underrated.

Like all players I think he's either underrated or overrated depending on who's giving their opinion. He's a pretty extreme case though where the English press and his teammates overrate him immensely and the dumb "Clouderson" crowd have no idea how good he is.

 

[Migara]

If they did this for Australian bowlers I'm betting it would be McGrath. He dismissed the top-order batsmen and opposition star batsmen with alarming regularity.

Without McGrath that Aussie team was half what it was. Unless for McGrath, they would have been annihilated in the sub continent as well as in West Indies (late 90s).

 

[Migara]

Have any one mentioned Barnes?

 

[Pratters]

Has to be Fred Truman really.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

5 man attack:
Trueman
Larwood
Barnes
Botham
Laker

 

[watson]

It's interesting that out of all the ATG sides the England bowling attack seems to be the least cut n' dried;

06. Botham
07. Keeper
08. Verity
09. Snow/Larwood
10. Trueman
11. Barnes/Bedser

If Botham is batting at No.6 then I really think that Verity's batting (average 21) is needed at No.8, otherwise the tail is too weak. Verity followed by Larwood would actually be quite strong.

Very close between Barnes and Bedser. Similar pace (according to Arlott), and similar in-swinging 'leg-cutter' - actually spun if you believe both Barnes and Bedser.

Not much at all between Larwood and Snow IMO. I prefer Snow, but it's a gut feeling more than anything else.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

It's interesting that out of all the ATG sides the England bowling attack seems to be the least cut n' dried;

06. Botham
07. Keeper
08. Verity
09. Snow/Larwood
10. Trueman
11. Barnes/Bedser

If Botham is batting at No.6 then I really think that Verity's batting (average 21) is needed at No.8, otherwise the tail is too weak. Verity followed by Larwood would actually be quite strong.

Very close between Barnes and Bedser. Similar pace (according to Arlott), and similar in-swinging 'leg-cutter' - actually spun if you believe both Barnes and Bedser.

Not much at all between Larwood and Snow IMO. I prefer Snow, but it's a gut feeling more than anything else.

I'm glad I'm back in prison this afternoon and won't have to witness some nitwit saying - and without a hint of jest - that Alec Stewart bats at six and keeps wicket and Botham bats at seven.

 

[Red]

I'm glad I'm back in prison this afternoon and won't have to witness some nitwit saying - and without a hint of jest - that Alec Stewart bats at six and keeps wicket and Botham bats at seven.

Prison?

Forget Stewart, Les Ames is the man for that job.

6. Ames
7. Botham
8. Peel
9. Larwood
10. Trueman
11. Barnes/Bedser

 

[ankitj]

Shouldn't they divide the numerator by average runs conceded per wicket rather than number of wickets? Something like this: http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/48524-how-valuable-wicket.html

For me, it's Barnes, Trueman and Laker as top 3

 

[watson]

Shouldn't they divide the numerator by average runs conceded per wicket rather than number of wickets? Something like this: http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/48524-how-valuable-wicket.html

For me, it's Barnes, Trueman and Laker as top 3

You may be interested to know that a similar study to yours involving all bowlers was performed in 2008;

The bowlers who took the most high-quality wickets

....The computation is simple. Every wicket captured by a bowler in the 1865 Test matches played so far is analysed, and the sum of career batting averages of the batsmen dismissed is calculated. It is then divided by the number of wickets captured by each bowler and a Batting Quality Index (BQI) arrived at. It's a simple but exhaustive calculation, which is impossible manually.

The top ten bowlers in this list - criterion being at least 100 Test wickets - ordered by BQI is startling. (I would appreciate it if readers do not immediately write in saying "Wasim Akram is the greatest", "Who are these clowns", "Boje and Dillon could not find a regular place in their teams" etc.)


Table 1: Ordered by BQI

1.Boje N
2.Flintoff A
3.Connolly A.N
4.Giles A.F
5.Dillon M
6.Collinge R.O
7.Zaheer Khan
8.Caddick A.R
9.Hoggard M.J
10.Martin C.S


The list is headed by virtually unknown bowlers. Why does this happen?

Possibly because they do not bowl at the end, picking up tail-end wickets. The other more established bowlers get the opportunity. These bowlers tend to bowl during the middle of the innings......

At the other end of the table we have the pre-World War-I players, indicating very low batting averages for batsmen playing at that time. Dale Steyn is a surprise inclusion, possibly because his last 54 wickets (over 50%) have been against the weaker batting teams of New Zealand, West Indies and Bangladesh, who have lower batting averages.


Table 1: Ordered by BQI

136.Steyn D.W
137.Barnes S.F
138.Blythe C
139.Wardle J.H
140.Noble M.A
141.Turner C.T.B
142.Giffen G
143.Peel R
144.Briggs J
145.Lohmann G.A


However let us seek to address this situation by looking at two other measures. The first is the difference between BQI and the career bowling average for the bowler. While it is true that having a high BQI means that the bowler has picked up better quality wickets, it might be more than offset by a high bowling average, which means the bowler has conceded a lot of runs for each wicket captured. The difference between these two figures will give a clear indication of the bowler's quality. The higher the difference, the better the bowler.


Table: Ordered by Difference between BQI and Bowling Average

1.Marshall M.D
2.Davidson A.K
3.Ambrose C.E.L
4.McGrath G.D
5.O'Reilly W.J
6.Barnes S.F
7.Laker J.C
8.Croft C.E.H
9.Miller K.R RF
10.Adcock N.A.T

The bowlers who took the most high-quality wickets | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo

 

[watson]

If the same methodology is used, but raise the bar is raised to 200 Test wickets then the respective Top 10s are;

Table: Ordered by BQI

1.Caddick A.R
2.Hoggard M.J
3.McKenzie G.D
4.Gough D
5.Bedser A.V
6.Thomson J.R
7.Snow J.A
8.Underwood D.L
9.McDermott C.J
10.Lillee D.K


Table: Ordered by Difference between BQI and Bowling Average

1.Marshall M.D
2.Ambrose C.E.L
3.McGrath G.D
4.Donald A.A
5.Trueman F.S
6.Lillee D.K
7.Hadlee R.J
8.Bedser A.V
9.Imran Khan
10.Pollock S.M

Bowlers with the most high-quality wickets - a follow-up | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo

Which all goes to show that you have to be very careful when gathering stats and drawing conclusions from them. Sometimes the conclusions can be sheer nonsense.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Nonsense "analysis" like those punish superior bowlers. Steyn gets lots of top order and lower order wickets. Like, tons of them. He rips through everyone in the opposition. Hence he has a lower percentage of top order wickets and is hence "inferior" to someone like say a Flintoff who picks up 3 top order wickets and nothing else. It's absolute rubbish because it punishes bowlers for running through the tail, and essentially being better.