Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: England Squad Selection
tooextracool said:
im sry bicknells 80 mph ball came 6-7 years ago when he was at his peak!but as u said it probably doesnt matter
Bicknell was still bowling 80 mph deliveries last summer - believe me. He even came close to it in the Test-matches.
Whatever the situation, Bicknell's stock-ball is and always has been faster than that of Afridi, Kumble or Dharmasena, the quickest regular-international-playing bowlers around ATM.
i find this very amusing...yes it does indeed swing in the west indies, sunshine and all. it also explains why bowlers dread bowling there too doesnt it?i refuse to agree with the fact that a 70 mph bowler who swings the ball is going to get more wickets than one who doesnt at 90. if that were the case than we would see many more medium pace bowlers around the world but theyre disappearance only signifies that they are not good enough to pick up wickets at the test level. as i said earlier it would mean that ppl like ealham(okay maybe not butcher), ronnie irani, ian austin would have been star bowlers.i agree that swing is a crucial asset especially if u have pace but if u have swing and no pace its all the more easier to adjust ur shot to the slow swinging ball rather someone with just raw pace although not very accurate could at least ruffle a few batsman especially the tail,however if accurate they can be deadly.
Pace + accuracy with no swing = not much use. Accuracy + swing at 75-80 mph = deadly.
Like it or not, pace simply isn't that important any more. Protective equipment now takes it more or less out of the equation; competant batsmen don't get "ruffled". To dismiss a competant batsman, the ball has to move sideways or bounce inconsistently (and no credit goes to the bowler for one that keeps low or spits up).
Of course someone who swings it at 90 mph is eminently preferable to someone who swings it at 70, but movement is so much more important than pace it's untrue. No bowler who doesn't move the ball sideways is ever likely to be effective in Tests, because tail-enders aren't in enough supply.
It is true that West Indies is the most difficult place in The World to swing the ball, but the best have always managed it anyway.
lets test ur argument with figures just like u like to. on the australian tour of the west indies u would say that someone like glenn mcgrath swings the ball and is very bicknell like although he is much faster and more accurate but yet of the bicknell type and yet his avg on the tour was 52.7!!
Glenn McGrath most certainly does not swing the ball very often. He is not Bicknell-like either - his stock pace nowadays is around 7-8 mph faster than Bicknell.
However, it was a pleasure to see him played well, a rare occasion, in West Indies. They didn't do quite so well against another swing-and-seam bowler, Gillespie, though.
yes i quite agree with u the current era is no better than the 90s but the crucial aspect is that they are young and they will learn unlike the bunch of old hags that we had earlier.
Just because someone is young doesn't mean they will improve.
They've got to be good. We did have some reasonably good cricketers in the early 90s - Gooch, Atherton, Smith, Gower, Gatting, Stewart, Botham, DeFreitas, Lewis, Malcolm, Fraser. Then the like of Gough, Cork, Caddick, Thorpe and Hussain popped-up too.
The problem with the 90s was common; instead of reaching 90-95% of potential, too many players reached just 80 or so. For instance, Atherton, Hussain and Stewart should IMO all have averaged in the early 40s; presently, none do, and Atherton and Stewart have, obviously, finished. Injuries certainly did not help some players, especially Gough and Atherton. Others (Caddick, Cork) were simply "enigmatic". Dropped catches were often an innumerable, un-valuable factor.
For a brief period, when Duncan Fletcher first took-over, all the above problems were solved. Injuries ceased, dropped catches were solved, and players played at the top of their game for sustained periods.
Sadly, they've all returned in full measure. I presently see nothing better than the 90s all over again for the prospects for the rest of the 2000s.
let me compare harmison to a great fast bowler named javagal srinath. now when srinath started i can assure u he was just as bad as harmison...perhaps worse cause he was slower, he bowled short ,wasnt very accurate and never really got the ball to swing or seam. and towards the twilight of his career he ended up being the best bowler of the 90s for india!!!
Javagal Srinath could undoubtedly have been a great bowler IMO - sadly, like Kapil Dev before him, his Test-average in the end didn't do justice to my perception of his ability.
Anyway, to just pick a random player and assume Harmison can emulate him is very dicey indeed. I could say exactly the same about, for instance, Simon Francis - and if he ever becomes a county-standard bowler, let alone international, I'll eat my computer.
Harmison has potential if you ask me - but right now no-one seems to even know what he's got to do, let alone help him do it.
i guess we'll find out now wont we??
We will indeed - sadly we won't be able to compare him to Bicknell, though, because Bicknell isn't going to be there.
That's a good one!
