A great theory has been propounded here. It is worth exploring.
If a player performs better than another against a particular team, a particular country, a particular set of conditions, then his is a better player. End of Story !!
Great. Makes life so easy for everyone. now all cricketing debates of the last one hundred odd years will be settled in a jiffy.
I was delighted.
I decided to immediately use this fantastic concept to settle the biggest raging controversy of recent times.
Who is better : Warne or Murali
I decided to take their respective figures , in the most trying of circumstances, namely in India, and to make sure I was on the right track and to see that there was no big variation between leg spinners and off spinners etc, i decided to throw in another 30 odd spinners of all varieties and from all countries.
I also decided to leave out the Indian spinners. Naturally. They had the undue advantage of home grounds and wickets, home crowds, home umpires and most important of all they were always faced with clueless visiting batsmen. I was smart. I left out the Bedis, Prasannas and Kumbles.
I also realised that by chosing figures in India I had not only put my spinners to the sternest of tests but had also in one stroke eliminated the 'unprofessional' lot of earlier times when Bradman and companied made runs by the hundreds against useless bowlers and Barnes and company took cheap wickets against useless batsmen. If you find this logic contradictory go and stuff yourself
I took all the figures of these 36 spinners including our two heroes and threw them in the blender fully confident that I was going to get a list with these two in the first two spots, naturally, but most important of all I would be able to inform the whole cricketing world, which of them was the greater bowler. Ha ha. I was on the threshold of a big scoop.
I gave a few big whirls to the mixer and then spread out the fruit of my labour.
Horror of indescribable horrors
What the hell was this ? The list did not contain our heroes. They had vanished. On second and then third look I found them.
Right at the bottom. The last two in the list of 36 spinners.
Here it is for you to cry over
Rank Player Country Type Average
1 Salim Malik Pak off 7
2 Clarkk Aus Left Arm 7.3
2 Howarth Hedley NZL Left arm 18.17
3 Benaud Aus Leg 18.38
4 Mallet Aus Off 19.11
5 Adams SAF Left arm 20.29
6 Saqlain Pak Off 20.96
7 Gibbs Win Off 23.38
8 Vievers Aus Off 24.45
9 Simpson Aus Leg 25.17
10 Ian Johnson Aus Off 26
11 Wasim Raja Pak Leg 26.29
12 Underwood Eng Left arm 26.52
13 Qadir Pak Leg 26.82
14 Titmus Eng Off 27.67
15 David Allan Eng Off 27.76
16 Lock Eng Left arm 28.55
17 Matthews Greg Aus Off 29.07
18 Holford Win Leg 32.4
19 Haseeb Ahsan Pak Off 32.67
20 Giles Eng Left arm 33
21 Iqbal Qasim Pak Left arm 33.86
22 Gifford Eng Left arm 34.33
23 Gleeson Aus Leg 34.7
24 Tauseef Pak Off 35.06
25 Afridi Pak Leg 36.33
26 Intikhab Alam Pak Leg 36.8
27 Pollard NZL Off 37.2
28 Mushatq A Pak Leg 37.5
29 Bruce Yardley Aus off 38.1
30 Pocock Eng Off 39.44
31 Bryan Yuile NZL Left arm 40.43
33 Hooper Win Off 40.8
34 Bracewell NZL Off 41.5
35 Warne Aus Leg 43.12
36 Murali SRL Off 48.73
Well I am really heartbroken. My heroes are trampled to the ground. But I have one satisfaction in it all, i have shown to the whole cricketing fraternity which of the two greats, sorry, which of the two ordinary spinners, Warne and Murali, is less ordinary !!
Statistics triumph and the scoreboard is not an ass.
PS. What will happen to all those who have included these two 'unworthies' in their all time great list. Or to our cricketing pundit who has included one of them in his Australian side of all time. There are are several Australians above the now discredited Shane !!
What will he do, disown Shane or disown his earth shattering hypothesis on which my research is based. I pray it is the former. If he comes with a new theory, I will grey some more
