James Anderson vs Glenn McGrath - Similarities and differences

[stephen]

Anderson is streets ahead of Dizzy. And McDermott was better that Dizzy too. Dizzy probably had more natural talent but bowled too short too often.

McDermott is so underrated. He carried the Australian attack for years and did so with little support. He also started as a teenager so has more excuse than most for starting slowly (not that I've closely analysed his record so I don't know if he did).

 

[S.Kennedy]

Never add Dizzy to twitter or you'll get a load of vegan shite.

 

[Coronis]

Never add Dizzy to twitter or you'll get a load of vegan shite.

Worse than ball tampering.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Anderson is streets ahead of Dizzy. And McDermott was better that Dizzy too. Dizzy probably had more natural talent but bowled too short too often.

McDermott is so underrated. He carried the Australian attack for years and did so with little support. He also started as a teenager so has more excuse than most for starting slowly (not that I've closely analysed his record so I don't know if he did).

I love you Stephen but your opinions on Aus fast bowlers are shite. You probably think Jackson Bird was better than Dizzy too.

Never add Dizzy to twitter or you'll get a load of vegan shite.

worst kind of people. Changing my opinion of him as we speak.

 

[FBU]

he hasn't played all those tests by accident.

again another part of his career so grossly overlooked. he deserves a **** ton of respect for the year after year after year consistency. say you give someone like john snow 140+ tests, there is absolutely no guarantee he keeps up that performance level.

11 consecutive years of 35+ wickets a year

 

[Coronis]

he hasn't played all those tests by accident.

again another part of his career so grossly overlooked. he deserves a **** ton of respect for the year after year after year consistency. say you give someone like john snow 140+ tests, there is absolutely no guarantee he keeps up that performance level.

Wonder if Anderson would've played all those tests if he had the first class schedule of Snow.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Wonder if Anderson would've played all those tests if he had the first class schedule of Snow.

or if he played for NZ

 

[stephen]

I love you Stephen but your opinions on Aus fast bowlers are shite. You probably think Jackson Bird was better than Dizzy too.


worst kind of people. Changing my opinion of him as we speak.

I admit my perception of McDermott is probably a little rose coloured given he was the best bowler Australia had during my youth. Until McGrath came along at least.

I rate Dizzy, but nowhere near as highly as others do. The West Indies support bowlers (Garner, Holding, Walsh, Bishop) were all better than him. I rate him somewhere between Kasprowicz and Anderson. There were a few moments where I thought him better than McGrath while they were playing but usually it was because he kept missing the edge in style while McGrath found it much less impressively.

In my mind he's like Morkel - so much raw talent but under achieved by bowling a bit too short.

 

[Top_Cat]

That's a meaningless metric IMO. McGrath was just a clearly better bowler in basically every way.

Number of 5-fors, or 10-fors shouldn't have much influence on how you judge a bowler, same with wpm. Too many other factors influencing it. In Gillespie's case probably does show a lack of stamina perhaps, and it's no secret that he wasn't the most durable of players.

I don't agree it's meaningless. It's not as meaningful as being in any way definitive, though.

Gillespie was SA's only bowler for most of his career, still didn't take many bags at Shield level and was rarely amongst the top Shield performers, even allowing that AO was quite flat at that time and his injury history. Doesn't make him ****, just means the role he was asked to play for Oz was different than for SA. Just wasn't really an attack leader, as his record for SA shows. This is why guys who take on leadership of an attack, doing all the harder stuff, should give a lot of credit in the bank.

McGrath beats Gillespie on this and on his record. Shows how incredibly good he was because no oppo can claim they were in any doubt about what he was going to send down at them every time. Love him, wanna boof him, get im up here, etc.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I don't agree it's meaningless. It's not as meaningful as being in any way definitive, though.

Gillespie was SA's only bowler for most of his career, still didn't take many bags at Shield level and was rarely amongst the top Shield performers, even allowing that AO was quite flat at that time and his injury history. Doesn't make him ****, just means the role he was asked to play for Oz was different than for SA. Just wasn't really an attack leader, as his record for SA shows. This is why guys who take on leadership of an attack, doing all the harder stuff, should give a lot of credit in the bank.

McGrath beats Gillespie on this and on his record. Shows how incredibly good he was because no oppo can claim they were in any doubt about what he was going to send down at them every time. Love him, wanna boof him, get im up here, etc.

Comparing McGrath and Gillespie doesn't really support what you're saying. McGrath was clearly better in practically every way. You need to compare 2 bowlers with similar records and statistics otherwise the wpm/5fors isn't even a relevant stat when comparing the 2.

 

[Flem274*]

I think CW's Australia fans may have surpassed Indian cricket fans in being one-eyed and having extremely dumb opinions and thinking their players fart out rainbows whenever they play. Cummins better than Anderson, Gillespie as good as Walsh, Starc better than Rabada, all utterly ludicrous opinions which deserve to be laughed at. You guys ****ing suck and so do your opinions. You're as embarassing as any of the Indian fans you make fun off. Why this stupidity is tolerated is beyond me.

Just stfu. No one cares about Australia. Your players are overrated cheats. **** off.

this is a beautiful post. i'd dig up that yarn from the ashes comparing their attack to the 80s windies if i could be bothered but i'm far too lazy to provide supporting evidence.

the aussies postings on anderson do provide a small kernel of truth though - no other bowler gets as many weasel words in his plaudits. "most skilled bowler in the world" etc.

my verdict - any fast bowler who can put in 161 tests and average 25 for about 140 of those is an immense cricketer. there's a good reason many very good and great pacers struggle to reach 50 tests - keeping your fitness and your best performances up for an extended run is really hard.

 

[Top_Cat]

Sort of already did with Flintoff. Inferior average and strike rate, not many 5 bags, injury-prone, similar bowlers picked for similar roles but, not even taking into account batting, Flintoff not a ridiculous pick over him as 3rd.

 

[S.Kennedy]

Anderson is a red rag to an Australian bull.

 

[Starfighter]

Anderson is a red rag to an Australian bull.

More like a red ball over an Australian fence, if George Bailey has anything to say about it.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Sort of already did with Flintoff. Inferior average and strike rate, not many 5 bags, injury-prone, similar bowlers picked for similar roles but, not even taking into account batting, Flintoff not a ridiculous pick over him as 3rd.

No you didn't, you said Gillespie and FIintoff were similar. That doesn't support what you were saying at all.

Of course someone with a higher wpm and more 5fors is going to be a better bowler if they are clearly a better bowler with a much better average, ie. McGrath v Gillespie/Flintoff

 

[stephen]

The problem with Jimmy is that he always loses in the "who would you pick for a test tomorrow in country X" debates unless country X happens to be England.

It's why people don't really rate Ashwin or Jadeja that highly either.

Jimmy is a gun and has been a gun for a long time. That doesn't mean I'd take him on an MCG road over Starc, or a South African greentop over Rabada, Steyn or Philander. I'd take him over any of those bowlers at Trent Bridge with some cloud cover though.

And see that's the whole thing as rating players as ATG/ATVG etc... is that cricket is never played in a vacuum (all the players would be dead if that were the case). It's played in countries on wickets against other humans. It's not played between stat generating robots that have a variance built into them. Which is why cricket video games have never been appealing to me. Cricket is drama. It's beautiful, it's intense, it's occasionally slow, it's sometimes butt clenchingly intense but most of all it's a sport that demonstrates and exaggerates the skills, determination, attitude and concentration of all involved.

It's like the debates around Hayden and whether he could face extremely high quality 150kph+ bowlers who could move it off the seam. In all honestly it doesn't really matter. What does matter is the memories I have of him clubbing Pollock over his head in the 2007 World Cup, or him not knowing where his off stump was against Ambrose.

Anderson can never develop McGrath's record. It's mathematically impossible without him touring for another 4 years and taking 10/0 in each of his bowling performances. But what he can do is to be the best Jimmy Anderson that he could be and I honestly think he's achieved that. He's superman when the conditions are right and when they aren't in his favour he does the best he can do given the tools he's got. And that's all anyone can ask really.

 

[TheJediBrah]

That's a great point. I'd probably laugh and shake my head at anyone rating Starc ahead of Anderson but honestly if it was almost anywhere but England I'd take Starc every day of the week.

 

[Flem274*]

mitchell 'bully sri lanka and the west indies to keep my bowling average below 30" starc loses to Anderson in any country, including Australia

he's the most overrated bowler to play a ever test, solely based on being an odi god and australian fans desperate for the glory days of the 00s to return.

 

[stephen]

mitchell 'bully sri lanka and the west indies to keep my bowling average below 30" starc loses to Anderson in any country, including Australia

he's the most overrated bowler to play a ever test, solely based on being an odi god and australian fans desperate for the glory days of the 00s to return.

Starc is a bowler who is able to take wickets that other bowlers cannot. You would never want 3 Starcs in your team because you would go for 500 or get your opponents out for 100. But it's great to have a Starc on unresponsive pitches because he's the kind of bowler who can take the pitch out of the equation.

At times he's the third best quick bowler in his team. At other times he's absolutely the only guy who can take the wicket that needs to be taken.

Australia drew the MCG test last season and a large part of that was because we had Bird instead of Starc on the worst road of the series.

 

[Starfighter]

Funny how Starc's combined record against England is markedly better than Anderson's. Anderson doesn't even average under 30 against Australia in England. And I really don't rate Starc.


Of course Flem, if you're taking the piss feel free to abuse me. But i gotta feeling not.