DoG's Top 100 Test Bowlers Countdown Thread 100-1

[Burgey]

Look at the difference in peak rating between Morkel and Thompson. Enormous despite the similarly of the raw stats.


Morkel:
50 Innings Peak Average/Strike-Rate/Points Per Innings (2014-2018): 21.72 49.89 4.34

Thompson:
50 Innings Peak Average/Strike-Rate/Points Per Innings (1974-1978): 23.40 45.34 6.02

Morkels peak actually rates below Thompsons career. Im surprised he's that low. I guess competition for wickets drops him a bunch on top of actual quality issues.

TBF Thomson was competing with Dennis Lillee for wickets too. He was no slouch.

This is a great exercise from DoG here, Much respect. Generates a lot of good discussion.

 

[Days of Grace]

Thanks for the great thoughts and feedback.

Thomson also was much more impactful as a bowler than Morkel in his peak. Morkel may have had the better average but when Thomson was on song he destroyed teams and thus his performance ratings per innings were higher. 3 gold performances in Thomson's peak vs. 1 from Morkel.

 

[Days of Grace]

No.56

Harbhajan Singh (India) 722

Quality Points: 595
Career Points: 127

Career: 1998-2015
Wickets: 417
Gold Performances: 9
7/123 vs. Australia at Kolkata 2001 (17.77)
6/73 vs. Australia at Kolkata 2001 (16.50)
7/133 vs. Australia at Chennai 2001 (17.47)
8/84 vs. Australia at Chennai 2001 (19.56)
5/29 vs. Australia at Mumbai 2004 (18.67)
7/87 vs. South Africa at Kolkata 2004 (16.99)
7/62 vs. Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad 2005 (16.85)
5/13 vs. West Indies at Kingston 2006 (15.92)
6/102 vs. Sri Lanka at Galle 2008 (15.20)
Silver Performances: 12
Bronze Performances: 5

Overall Average/Strike-Rate/Points Per Innings: 28.93 (32.46) 69.12 (68.54) 4.38
50 Innings Peak Average/Strike-Rate/Points Per Innings (1999-2002): 23.53 61.12 5.26
Non-Home Average/Strike-Rate/Points Per Innings: 35.10 79.20 3.10
Quality Opposition Average/Strike-Rate/Points Per Innings: 29.16 67.21 4.77

9 gold performances for Harbhajan. Only 2 bowlers in the top 100 have more. His average takes a huge adjustment downwards due to his performances against arguably the greatest team of all time together with his career coinciding with the toughest era for bowlers in the history of test cricket.

 

[Bolo]

TBF Thomson was competing with Dennis Lillee for wickets too. He was no slouch.

This is a great exercise from DoG here, Much respect. Generates a lot of good discussion.

Ya, but he was basically in the Rabada/Steyn class, without the equivalents of Abbott, Philander, Maharaj as secondary bowlers.

 

[Starfighter]

Four gold performances in the 2001 series. Woah!

All in consecutive innings in two matches as well. Must be the best individual series surely?

 

[Starfighter]

Ya, but he was basically in the Rabada/Steyn class, without the equivalents of Abbott, Philander, Maharaj as secondary bowlers.

Walker, Dymock, Gilmour etc weren't rubbish.

 

[stephen]

Four gold performances in the 2001 series. Woah!

All in consecutive innings in two matches as well. Must be the best individual series surely?

Sachin was the second highest wicket taker for India in that series. Matthew Hayden scored about 3000 of his 7000 career runs in that series.

 

[Days of Grace]

Four gold performances in the 2001 series. Woah!

All in consecutive innings in two matches as well. Must be the best individual series surely?

80.48 points over a 3 test series would be hard to beat.

Barnes runs it close with 77.75 vs. South Africa in 1912.
Hadlee 75.71 vs. Australia in 1985.
Lohmann 75.78 vs. South Africa in 1896.

Best performances in a series:
Laker vs. Australia in 1956 108.10 (46 wickets)
Barnes vs. South Africa 1913/14: 103.49 (49 wickets)
Grimmett vs. South Africa 1935/36 93.82 (44 wickets)
Warne vs. England 2005 92.62 (40 wickets)
Imran Khan vs. India 1982/83 91.87 (40 wickets)

 

[Adders]

What about Mitch Johnsons 13/14 Ashes DOG......how does that rate?

Apologies if he has come up in the thread and I missed it.

 

[Days of Grace]

What about Mitch Johnsons 13/14 Ashes DOG......how does that rate?

Apologies if he has come up in the thread and I missed it.

90.53

 

[Burgey]

2001 was a remarkable series, and his performance was probably the most remarkable of all.

Still believe he chucked though

 

[Days of Grace]

I've decided to make a change in the wickets to career ratio. It was 4:1 but after feedback from fellow posters and thinking about it myself, I decided it was too heavily in favor of modern bowlers who play a lot more test matches in a short amount of time. It also disadvantages players from previous eras who sustained excellence over a long career or those who played for a long time but had limited opportunities to pile up the wickets because their team played so little. So I've decided to have the ratio of 2:1 (wickets to career length).

Luckily, this has no affect on who made the top 100. It also has no affect on the top 55 bowlers.

The revised order from 56-100 (with their previous ranking in brackets) is:

56 (57) JR Thomson 658 66 724
57 (60) ARC Fraser 663 60 722
58 (56) Harbhajan Singh 595 126 722
59 (63) H Trumble 662 58 720
60 (59) M Morkel 638 82 719
61 (61) MA Starc 669 49 717
62 (58) GP Swann 650 67 717
63 (65) NAT Adcock 679 37 716
64 (66) LR Gibbs 615 100 715
65 (62) Saeed Ajmal 669 45 715
66 (64) R Benaud 640 75 715
67 (67) CTB Turner 666 42 708
68 (73) JH Wardle 663 38 701
69 (71) TM Alderman 643 57 700
70 (72) JB Statham 624 76 700
71 (68) GD McKenzie 625 74 700
72 (69) SR Clark 675 24 699
73 (70) JN Gillespie 630 69 698
74 (76) MW Tate 642 52 694
75 (74) FH Tyson 668 26 694
76 (75) KR Miller 640 54 694
77 (77) B Lee 609 75 685
78 (78) MG Hughes 629 55 684
79 (79) SCG MacGill 623 60 683
80 (81) GF Lawson 625 57 682
81 (80) Saqlain Mushtaq 622 59 681
82 (82) BS Bedi 604 77 681
83 (86) CL Cairns 602 71 674
84 (84) TA Boult 619 52 672
85 (83) JR Hazlewood 635 37 672
86 (88) HH Streak 611 61 671
87 (85) MJ Hoggard 609 61 670
88 (87) WA Johnston 625 45 670
89 (89) Z Khan 582 85 668
90 (91) H Verity 624 43 667
91 (90) N Wagner 627 39 667
92 (94) SE Bond 631 33 665
93 (92) PM Siddle 606 57 664
94 (93) WPUJC Vaas 565 98 663
95 (97) BA Reid 619 37 656
96 (98) GAR Lock 590 65 655
97 (99) EAS Prasanna 586 69 655
98 (95) Danish Kaneria 579 75 654
99 (98) NM Lyon 579 72 650
100 (100) BR Taylor 612 37 649

Minor changes, then. So, we'll push on with no.55.

 

[harsh.ag]

How many people would rank Harbhajan ahead of Saqlain on CW?

 

[TheJediBrah]

How many people would rank Harbhajan ahead of Saqlain on CW?

In Tests? I would. Also I feel like Harbhajan was slightly less of a chucker than Saqlain.

(Basing this on pure cricketing ability of course, not bringing personality into it)

 

[morgieb]

How many people would rank Harbhajan ahead of Saqlain on CW?

Mostly that is because of ODI's. Harby did it at Test level for quite a bit longer than Saqlain did.

 

[stephen]

I didn't think either Saqlain or Harbhajan chucked. Both had pretty clean actions IMO. It's about the only positive thing about Bhaji.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I didn't think either Saqlain or Harbhajan chucked. Both had pretty clean actions IMO. It's about the only positive thing about Bhaji.

Probably looked that way because they were in the same era as Murali

 

[Burgey]

The only reason I think he may have early on in his career at least, was because he seemed to point his front foot towards point in his delivery stride, and it seems nigh impossible not to chuck when bowling finger spin from that position (try it, even though it's finger spin and therefore horrible).

He was a terrific bowler when he was on song though. Even as he got less effective, the fact he was basically picked just to get Ponting out when India toured here said everything about his hold over Punter.

 

[ankitj]

I've decided to make a change in the wickets to career ratio. It was 4:1 but after feedback from fellow posters and thinking about it myself, I decided it was too heavily in favor of modern bowlers who play a lot more test matches in a short amount of time. It also disadvantages players from previous eras who sustained excellence over a long career or those who played for a long time but had limited opportunities to pile up the wickets because their team played so little. So I've decided to have the ratio of 2:1 (wickets to career length).

Luckily, this has no affect on who made the top 100. It also has no affect on the top 55 bowlers.

IMHO every methodology has some drawbacks. It's fine to get on with one methodology and finish the countdown.

 

[ankitj]

80.48 points over a 3 test series would be hard to beat.

Barnes runs it close with 77.75 vs. South Africa in 1912.
Hadlee 75.71 vs. Australia in 1985.
Lohmann 75.78 vs. South Africa in 1896.

Best performances in a series:
Laker vs. Australia in 1956 108.10 (46 wickets)
Barnes vs. South Africa 1913/14: 103.49 (49 wickets)
Grimmett vs. South Africa 1935/36 93.82 (44 wickets)
Warne vs. England 2005 92.62 (40 wickets)
Imran Khan vs. India 1982/83 91.87 (40 wickets)

In terms of points per match for a series with >=3 tests, Harbhajan's might be the greatest ever?