ankitj
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
That's why you normalise average value of wickets with bowling average. So you get a ratio of number of runs you give away for average value of wicket. It's better to give away 30 runs for getting average wicket value of 40 than to give away 25 runs for average wicket value of 20.Two caveats to that hypothetical:
i) Realistically, bowling pinpoint yorkers and bouncers and being an accurate back fo a length bowler is a more reliable tactic to be excellent across all surfaces than most tactics which rely heavily on the new ball.
ii) average value per wicket can be a deceptive stat if Bowler B is taking more wickets per match than Bowler A. If Bowler B is taking 4.3 wickets per match and Bowler A is taking 3.8 wickets per match, there can be situations where Bowler B is taking as many top order wickets per match as Bowler A but Bowler B still has a worse average value per wicket because on top of that, he's also taking more tail end wickets which is an absurd result. This is why a blanket average value per wicket stat like 40% or 60% is useless without corresponding wpm stats.