Who are all these imitation Miyagi's? I'll meet them at their cobra kai dojo and sort this out.An Englishman and/or a West Indian? Blasphemy!
The Australian Miyagi and the Sri Lankan Miyagi are finally going to agree on one thing: you must be burnt alive at the stake.
Nice balance in those attacks. You run some long tails though besides the 1st team. Philander, Kapil, Shakib would probably all find spots in mine to help with this.Cricket fans like us who keep talking about players from the past and compare their performances and analyse their stas to the last decimal point possible agree on one thing. From, lets say, 1975 - the year of the first World Cup onwards we have had a number of fast bowling greats who could work in many delightful combos to make up winning bowling attacks.
For example, a three men fast bowling attack can be formed with any of Lillee, Roberts, Hadlee, Holding, Garner, Marshall, Walsh, Akram, Waqar, Ambrose, Donald, McGrath, Bishop, S.Pollock and Steyn. We can argue about the merits and demerits of having one combo over the other forever; but essentially any three of these guys could bowl out any batting line up on any surface most of the time.
The fourth pace bowler could be a surprise/ shock bowler like Thomson, Akhthar, M. Johnson or an all-rounder like Imran, Botham, Kapil or Kallis depending on the team's composition. Even the hugely talented, but unfortunately short changed by bad health, Bond and Ryan Harris can fill in this role.
The spinner is usually chosen from the Warne - Murali plane first and then from the Chandra, Bedi, Underwood, Qadir, Kumble, Saqlain platter.
Top five combos in my order of preference would be
Imran
Hadlee
Marshall
Warne
Lillee
Botham
Akram
Ambrose
Murali
McGrath
Kallis
Steyn
Garner
Waqar
Chandra
S.Pollock
Holding
Thomson
Donald
Bedi
M. Johnson
Roberts
Bishop
Underwood
Walsh
Someone else said it : spinners are inherently downhill skiiers, to an extent. Can't expect Murali to run through Australia (in Australia especially) when he comes in to bowl at 1-100 or so every time. Same applies when he toured India, and he did bowl out India at home a few times. Warne has less of an excuse for flopping in India, but India somehow managed to play him exceptionally well. I'd put that down as an anomaly.I don't believe in this Warne and Murali being a step above every other spinner when they've failed against the best players of spin of their day. If they cant handle Laxman and Sidhu, they wouldn't be troubling Bradman and Sobers. Both goth thrashed by Lara as well. Just looks like recency bias. Recently, the idea of having O'Reilly or Laker ahead of Warne/Murali has grown on me. Unfortunately, head to head stats for Laker and Harvey, for example would be incredibly difficult to dig up, if not impossible, so there's no certainty on whether they too failed when it mattered. O'Reilly struggled against lefties too, btw.
We have such high-standards for fast-bowlers. Walsh and Pollock are a clearly a tier below Ambrose and Donald because they struggled in Australia. Murali did as well, and he was poor in India along with Warne. Warne and Murali would most likely be the weak link in an ATG context. Or you could get a Gibbs to perform the containing role.
Obviously, there should be different standards for both but failing against quality players of spin should be a big, big hole in their records.Someone else said it : spinners are inherently downhill skiiers, to an extent. Can't expect Murali to run through Australia (in Australia especially) when he comes in to bowl at 1-100 or so every time. Same applies when he toured India, and he did bowl out India at home a few times. Warne has less of an excuse for flopping in India, but India somehow managed to play him exceptionally well. I'd put that down as an anomaly.
Quicks should find it easier to at least contain the scoring and pick up 2-70 type figures even when conditions are unsuitable for them.
Isn't this the opposite of downhill skiing?Someone else said it : spinners are inherently downhill skiiers, to an extent. Can't expect Murali to run through Australia (in Australia especially) when he comes in to bowl at 1-100 or so every time
Murali did okish on this measure. 36 vs AUS and 33 vs India. Not great, but good number of wickets and we expect spinners to average a bit more than the quicks. It was away vs the best teams that he did badly. Spinners are inherently more reliant on conditions than the best quicks. When they run into a combination of the best players of spin and conditions that don't suit I think they are all in trouble.Obviously, there should be different standards for both but failing against quality players of spin should be a big, big hole in their records.
Did they fail against the players, or did they fail in certain conditions? I've seen both their shortcomings as the latter, as I tried to explain in the other thread.Obviously, there should be different standards for both but failing against quality players of spin should be a big, big hole in their records.
There clearly is unless we go back all the way to O'Reilly and Grimmet before the great War. Harbhajan, Saqlain, Kumble, Vettori, Swann etc. are a level lower. Ashwin/Jadeja/Yasir are yet to finish their careers.To compensate for that, Murali failed in Australia. I'm just saying there's no Warne and Murali plane above all others.
That's his pointIsn't this the opposite of downhill skiing?
I think it was because he averages over 10 runs more against them than his career average (33 someone said).Murali has 7 fivers and 2 ten-fers against India. Who drilled into people's head that he hasn't been good against India? Dismissed Ganguly 9 times, Tendulkar 8 and Dravid 6.