Asif vs Bond vs Harris

[TheJediBrah]

Bond was as good as any fast bowler that had played the game in whole history of it - it's just the longevity factor that could take it away from him.

You could say that just as much about the other 2

 

[Shady Slim]

i would take harris over any pacer in the game at present except for maybe cummins

guy was a man that could perform in all seasons and perform for the whole day, wouldn’t crack the ****s if he had to bowl uphill or into the wind and would take key wickets at key times and he relied on to not bleed runs. i know there’s the meme about siddle’s heart being so big and it is but there are few fast bowlers or cricketers at large with a bigger heart than the rhyno tbqh

 

[Flem274*]

yea i've said this before and it caused a huge pile of sooking but ryan harris is solidly in the top 10, probably top 5 test quicks since i started watching. bond and shoiab are in the top 10 too. i rate people based on what they send down, and harris was absolutely relentless in a manner few have ever managed.

mcgrath
steyn
cummins
harris

yea, looks about right. granted, i never saw much peak pollock and that guy was a walking cheat code. atg bowler, can bat better than hadlee, geez **** off SA.

 

[TheJediBrah]

yea i've said this before and it caused a huge pile of sooking but ryan harris is solidly in the top 10, probably top 5 test quicks since i started watching. bond and shoiab are in the top 10 too. i rate people based on what they send down, and harris was absolutely relentless in a manner few have ever managed.

mcgrath
steyn
cummins
harris

yea, looks about right. granted, i never saw much peak pollock and that guy was a walking cheat code. atg bowler, can bat better than hadlee, geez **** off SA.

Longevity brigade will hate this.

 

[Flem274*]

Longevity brigade will hate this.

Good, the heresy needs to spread.

Longevity does not contribute to your ranking in the pantheon of greatness at all unless you are already performing at the level required to knock on the pantheon step.

In a real selection situation, no one is going to select Tim Southee or Trent Boult over Shane Bond. The former pairing are very, very good bowlers who deserve so much praise for dragging NZ from the doldrums but they're not in Bond's league and never will be unless they go on a massive tear in the latter third of their careers. If forced into this hypothetical choice we already know a selector will choose Shane Bond over Tim Southee or Ryan Harris over Mitchell Starc and accept the risk they might break in the middle of a test because this is exactly what they did - they picked the best bowlers available regardless of durability and dealt with whatever came.

Longevity will mean less and less in the future too. In the world of 3 formats, rare tour games and back to back test matches, it's no coincidence the three best bowling attacks in the world (Aus, India, NZ) are in reality bowling squads. Bowlers are going to play less games, so more emphasis is going to go on how good they actually are rather than how many caps they smuggle.

I think overs per game is a more interesting stat than raw test spam, which is affected by more than just injury rates but even by meme things like how much political power or ****s given your cricket board has. A solid reason to rate your favourite bowler Neil Wagner higher than Trent Boult, despite less raw matches and wickets (which will only become more stark once Wagner retires) is you can just spam Wagner from one end for an entire session on a motorway and he will actually do it. Media and fans tend to judge bowler fitness by raw games played and it is a very poor indicator of actual bowler fitness in game.

 

[Shady Slim]

awta but i do note australia hasn't really been a bowling extended squad for a long time beyond the big three at test level.

like siddle would've been the last non-trio guy to play tests, patto's star didn't really ascend beyond walloping WI at home that one time, and others who've had a test here or there never really came to being. i will say i rate jackson bird really high but yeah. regardless, harris is the king.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Shady is right. Wouldn't call Aus a "bowling squad" at all. If anything it's the opposite and that has been a problem, not resting bowlers when they should have.

 

[Flem274*]

As recently as 2019 Australia were running around with Cummins, Haze, Starc, Pattinson and Siddle with your Jackson Bird's etc in the wings. It's also probably not a coincidence that as guys fell away or retired, their lack of replacements directly hurt the glass trio and the Australian side in 2020 - 21.

 

[honestbharani]

Longevity does not matter from a team perspective as long as you have a good enough replacement, so in terms of value to the side at that time and how you contributed to your team's results its fine to exclude longevity.

But it is a very important factor still when ranking an individual at how good they were at their skills over a period of time.

 

[OverratedSanity]

i would take harris over any pacer in the game at present except for maybe cummins

guy was a man that could perform in all seasons and perform for the whole day, wouldn’t crack the ****s if he had to bowl uphill or into the wind and would take key wickets at key times and he relied on to not bleed runs. i know there’s the meme about siddle’s heart being so big and it is but there are few fast bowlers or cricketers at large with a bigger heart than the rhyno tbqh

Which harris? 2010-2015 ryan harris who actually was world class or 2000-2010 ryan harris who was basically mohammad sami level.

 

[Starfighter]

their lack of replacements directly hurt the glass trio and the Australian side in 2020 - 21.

Even if we did have good bowling depth (and no, I don't think Neser can make the step up, and he's 31) Langer wouldn't have selected anyone else for those tests anyway. Starc was horrendously out of rhythm and cooked and when any of the other bowlers in the squad would have done better Langer played him anyway.

 

[TheJediBrah]

As recently as 2019 Australia were running around with Cummins, Haze, Starc, Pattinson and Siddle with your Jackson Bird's etc in the wings. It's also probably not a coincidence that as guys fell away or retired, their lack of replacements directly hurt the glass trio and the Australian side in 2020 - 21.

This isn't accurate. They only ever made changes if someone was injured, like any team in history. It's not like they were rotating bowlers every few games to keep them fresh.

 

[Flem274*]

But it is a very important factor still when ranking an individual at how good they were at their skills over a period of time.

The individuals value is only to his side and their results. It sucks for Umesh Yadav and Mohammad Siraj that they play in the current Indian era, the only one where they would sit on the bench, but it is great for India. They are not worse bowlers just because they would be 50 - 70 test guys in literally any other Indian era.

If Richard Hadlee was 20 years old right now, even if he still did play until 39 again he would likely risk a considerably shorter career because he would need to force his way to the top of Southee, Boult, Wagner, Jamieson, Henry and Ferguson without the selectors having the gift of knowing they had the kiwi GOAT on their hands. Hadlee averaged 35 after 17 tests - that doesn't look so good for staying in the squad let alone the team does it? Yet Hadlee having a few less tests but still the same overall quality in the end, if things did pan out for the best, should not detract from how we remember him or rank him as a bowler.

 

[Flem274*]

This isn't accurate. They only ever made changes if someone was injured, like any team in history. It's not like they were rotating bowlers every few games to keep them fresh.

It is accurate, because I remember the constant whining Siddle was being selected ahead of James Pattinson and Mitchell Starc.

Australia's rotation between approx 2012 to present is pretty evident.

 

[Starfighter]

This isn't accurate. They only ever made changes if someone was injured, like any team in history. It's not like they were rotating bowlers every few games to keep them fresh.

Yeah, the '19 Ashes is the only real exception when it comes to selection strategy. Flem making his own reality.

OTOH, I do worry about our depth moving forward except Richardson (if he fully recovers his pace). It feels like AFL is taking all the tall guys. Someone like Sutherland or Bartlett is going to have to seriously step up.

 

[M0rphin3]

In a real selection situation, no one is going to select Tim Southee or Trent Boult over Shane Bond. The former pairing are very, very good bowlers who deserve so much praise for dragging NZ from the doldrums but they're not in Bond's league and never will be unless they go on a massive tear in the latter third of their careers. If forced into this hypothetical choice we already know a selector will choose Shane Bond over Tim Southee or Ryan Harris over Mitchell Starc and accept the risk they might break in the middle of a test because this is exactly what they did - they picked the best bowlers available regardless of durability and dealt with whatever came.

Not that I disagree, I'd agree that longevity is a tad overrated around here while rating players, but really IDK about this example. Players can change through the course - Harris was pretty much a late bloomer for eg. and was seriously ordinary early (before dayboo) - and Boult had insanely good periods at the time too, when dropping him would've been unthinkable - but now we would've seriously considered this. So right now, since Bond's career ended shortish, we just won't know for sure though, if he was gonna keep up. Agreed, whatever he's done is already immense, but we just don't know if he'd have had really bad slumps - which is possible - and he hardly played anything outside NZ either. So I'm sure it'd have affected our perspective as well, if he's had lows like what Boult's going through rn.

 

[honestbharani]

The individuals value is only to his side and their results. It sucks for Umesh Yadav and Mohammad Siraj that they play in the current Indian era, the only one where they would sit on the bench, but it is great for India. They are not worse bowlers just because they would be 50 - 70 test guys in literally any other Indian era.

If Richard Hadlee was 20 years old right now, even if he still did play until 39 again he would likely risk a considerably shorter career because he would need to force his way to the top of Southee, Boult, Wagner, Jamieson, Henry and Ferguson without the selectors having the gift of knowing they had the kiwi GOAT on their hands. Hadlee averaged 35 after 17 tests - that doesn't look so good for staying in the squad let alone the team does it? Yet Hadlee having a few less tests but still the same overall quality in the end, if things did pan out for the best, should not detract from how we remember him or rank him as a bowler.

All true and this is a reason why I have recently started saying we are rating careers than actual skills. At the same time, I feel it is important to rate people on what they did than on what they could have done when comparing them individually as players.

 

[OverratedSanity]

@Flem274* If we should judge players like Harris on what he did, shouldn't we factor in the 10 years of garbage output in FC cricket where he was basically club standard?

This isnt even about longevity really. I'm glad to rate guys like Bond, Asif, Bruce Reid, Shoaib, etc who didnt play anywhere near as many tests as they could have but because of various factors like injuries/fixing/drugs etc. didnt do it. I dislike when Harris is lumped in there with those other guys because his career was nothing like theirs. He was flat out not good enough to be selected for any good test team for the majority of his career. If Harris had been slightly better (i.e) good enough to be selected but still not great, he'd have played more tests and you'd have a very different opinion of him.

If he'd been tearing up the sheffield shield for years and simply didnt get a look in because of competition, I'd 100% agree with you. But that wasn't what happened.

 

[harsh.ag]

Also another thing - If someone chooses and continues to choose a high risk route like Bond did, they are basically admitting that they would rather burn bright for 5 years and then fade away as opposed to someone who would like a full international career. Saying the former person was unlucky because of injuries completely misses the point.

Asif was clearly the one who would have had the best bowling career if he wasn't a cheat.

 

[Chrish]

Pakistan sure produces most interesting pace bowlers. Wasim/ Waqar/ Shoib/ Asif etc. I would happily spend my hard-earned money to watch any of these guys in action. Same only goes for Steyn and Donald from non-Pakistani bowlers.