One used to follow county cricket regularly till the eighties and early nineties, when all the top West Indies stars (my God how many were there !!) and all the Pakistanis played in England along with a smattering of stars from south africa and a few from Australia and new Zealand as well. It was a who's who of world cricket.
Whats particularly impressive is the number and quality of bowleing talent on display. Clearly the world was having a rich pool of bowlers (with West Indies providing a never ending stream of fast bowlers) and English cricket was the richer for it.
Surely it was worth following for a fan from India. when you add to these illustrious names, those of Boycott, Edrich, Gower, Gooch, Amiss, Stewart, Atherton, Hick, Alan Lamb, Graeme Roope, Gatting, Fowler, Botham, Greig, Randall, Knott, Fletcher, Wolmer, among batsmen
AND
Willis, Old, Hendricks, Lever, Botham, Dilley, Ellison, Miller, Emburey, Edmonds, Cook, Foster, DeFreitas, Devon Malcolm, Tony Greig, Cowans, Hemmings, Marks among the bowlers and its clear that bowling was far superior, overall in the 20 year period from mid 70's to mid 90's than we have today.
Hampshire :
- Wasim Akram
- Gorden Greenidge
- Malcolm Marshall
Surrey :
- Waqar Younis
- Intikhab Alam
- Geoff Howarth
- Carl Rackman
Sussex :
- Imran Khan
- Kepler Wesels
Glamorgan :
- Javed Miandad,
- Majid Khan
- Roy Fredricks
Kent :
- Asif Iqbal
- Steve Waugh (Somerset)
- Mark Waugh
- Terry Alderman (Gloucestershire)
Gloucestershire :
- Zaheer Abbas,
- Courtney walsh
- Alan Border(Essex)
Northamptonshire :
- Mustaq Mohammad,
- Curtley Ambrose,
- Sarfraz Nawaz
- Roger Harper
- Bishen Bedi
- Winston Davis
- Dennis Lillee
Somerset :
- Viv Richards,
- Martin Crowe,
- Sunil Gavaskar
- Joel Garner
- Aamir Sohail
- Greg Chappell
Lancashire :
- Clive Lloyd
- Hooper
- Colin Croft
- Geoff Lawson
- Patrick Patterson
- Ian Chappell
Derbyshire :
- Holding,
- Azharuddin
- Lawrence Rowe
- Venkitraghvan
- Ian Bishop
- John Wright
- Dean Jones
Nottinghamshire :
- Richard Hadlee
- Paul Reiffell
Worcestershire :
- Glen Turner
- Vanburn Holder
Middlesex :
- Desmond Haynes
- Jeff Thomson
Warwickshire :
- Alvin Kallicharran
Essex :
- Keith Boyce
- Salim Malik
- Merv Hughes