Starfighter
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
What do Morne Morkel, Peter Siddle, Vernon Philander, Mitchell Starc, Trent Boult, Josh Hazlewood, Graeme Swann and Kemar Roach all have in common? They're bowlers with extended careers who have not - and in the retired cases, never will - taken seven wickets in an innings. You would be hard pressed to find bowlers with careers so long and successful who had not done so in prior eras (though Tate, Garner and Streak are three prominent ones).
The seven-for is sort of like the bowler's equivalent of the double century. In Australia there have only been two since I started watching around 2010, compared to sixteen double centuries, although our hard, flat pitches have meant Australia has never been a good place for taking big hauls of wickets. However, I've done some rough calculations and it seems that from the thirties to the nineties double centuries and seven fors had about the same frequency. Now, double centuries are almost twice as frequent. This isn't just a function of more double centuries, though their frequency has increased from about one every 300 innings as defined by Cricinfo (i'm not entirely sure what it's actually measuring) to one in 200. The frequency of seven-fors has decreased to about 1 in 400 innings.
Unlike previous eras, the list of big hauls is also now dominated by spin bowlers, and three bowlers in particular (Herath, Ashwin and Lyon). Now I'm not sure how reliable Cricinfo's data is - and there's quite bit missing, but the 2010s was first decade since the sixties in which classified spin innings exceeded pace innings. This probably reflects a relative decrease in the volume of cricket played by WI, SA and NZ compared to Asia (and Pakistan's exile as well). But spin exceeded pace in the sixties too (by more slightly more) yet the proportion of seven-fors was slightly in favour of pace. Now spinners take them at nearly double the rate. The only other decades since WWI where spin exceeds pace is the fifties and thirties (the latter a very pace unfriendly period). The gap in frequencies used to be about 100 in favour of pace, now it's one in 272 for spin and one in 463 for pace - a dramatic reversal.
Bigger hauls have become less common for pace but more for spin, with one six wicket innings every 73 innings for both now compared to 56 and 102 respectively in the eighties. But the proportion of seven-fors has dropped, especially for pace. The percentage of 7+ out of 6+ has dropped from about 30% in prior decades to 16% in the 2010s for pace, and declined about 5% for spin.
The seven-for is sort of like the bowler's equivalent of the double century. In Australia there have only been two since I started watching around 2010, compared to sixteen double centuries, although our hard, flat pitches have meant Australia has never been a good place for taking big hauls of wickets. However, I've done some rough calculations and it seems that from the thirties to the nineties double centuries and seven fors had about the same frequency. Now, double centuries are almost twice as frequent. This isn't just a function of more double centuries, though their frequency has increased from about one every 300 innings as defined by Cricinfo (i'm not entirely sure what it's actually measuring) to one in 200. The frequency of seven-fors has decreased to about 1 in 400 innings.
Unlike previous eras, the list of big hauls is also now dominated by spin bowlers, and three bowlers in particular (Herath, Ashwin and Lyon). Now I'm not sure how reliable Cricinfo's data is - and there's quite bit missing, but the 2010s was first decade since the sixties in which classified spin innings exceeded pace innings. This probably reflects a relative decrease in the volume of cricket played by WI, SA and NZ compared to Asia (and Pakistan's exile as well). But spin exceeded pace in the sixties too (by more slightly more) yet the proportion of seven-fors was slightly in favour of pace. Now spinners take them at nearly double the rate. The only other decades since WWI where spin exceeds pace is the fifties and thirties (the latter a very pace unfriendly period). The gap in frequencies used to be about 100 in favour of pace, now it's one in 272 for spin and one in 463 for pace - a dramatic reversal.
Bigger hauls have become less common for pace but more for spin, with one six wicket innings every 73 innings for both now compared to 56 and 102 respectively in the eighties. But the proportion of seven-fors has dropped, especially for pace. The percentage of 7+ out of 6+ has dropped from about 30% in prior decades to 16% in the 2010s for pace, and declined about 5% for spin.
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