Jono said:
You're clutching at straws when you start mentioning Shabbir Ahmed (who is clearly out for a long time) and Bandara and Malinga.
I don't think Pakistan's attack is rubbish, but boy its nothing like what Chappell faced.
I'm simply indicating that the attacks aren't crap. Bowling strength in the world today isn't what it was in the 90s, but people vastly overestimate the drop in class all the time, and use all sorts of insane hyperbole to back it up. Every attack in the world is garbage except for England? Give me a break. Every period in test history has poor bowlers, great bowlers, average bowlers and everything else, and every batsman makes more runs against the crappy ones than the good ones. People automatically assume that because a player played in an era of more difficult bowlers means they proved themselves more, but it's not necessarily true. It's like assuming that because Gavaskar and Ian Chappell made lots of runs against the West Indies means they had the best of the great West Indies bowlers from around the same time, which isn't entirely accurate.
I'll give a crude example using Chappell to add some substance to the debate. Arrow used the "30 average" barrier to seperate "good" bowlers from poor ones. Seems fair enough, right? So how many times did Chappell make big runs against attacks including several bowlers averaging under 30? I'll use career averages and at least 100 wickets to make it simpler.
Centuries against attacks including 4 "good" bowlers
West Indies, Brisbane 1979 - Andy Roberts (25.61), Michael Holding (23.69), Colin Croft (23.30), Joel Garner (20.98)
Centuries against attacks including 3 "good" bowlers
England, MCG 1975 - Chris Old (28.11), Geoff Arnold (28.30), Derek Underwood (25.84)
West Indies, Brisbane 1975 (both innings) - Andy Roberts (25.61), Michael Holding (23.69), Lance Gibbs (29.09)
West Indies, SCG 1976 - Andy Roberts (25.61), Michael Holding (23.69), Lance Gibbs (29.09)
England, Old Trafford 1977 - Bob Willis (25.20), Chris Old (28.11), Derek Underwood (25.84)
England, MCG 1980 - Ian Botham (28.40), Bob Willis (25.20), Derek Underwood (25.84)
Centuries against attacks including 2 "good" bowlers
England, The Oval 1972 - Geoff Arnold (28.30) and John Snow (26.67)
England, SCG 1974 - Bob Willis (25.20) and Geoff Arnold (28.30)
Pakistan, MCG 1977 - Imran Khan (22.81), Iqbal Qasim (28.11)
England, WACA 1982 - Ian Botham (28.40), Bob Willis (25.20)
England, Adelaide 1982 - Ian Botham (28.40), Bob Willis (25.20)
Now, Chappell scored 24 centuries in his career. If you rate all the attacks with 3 or more bowlers averaging under 30 as good ones, 7 of them came against good attacks, while a full 12 came against attacks that were simply crap by the standard given. By that same criteria, right now Australia, England, South Africa and Pakistan would probably have good attacks, while India and Sri Lanka would fall in the middle with 2 good bowlers.
If you look at the names as well, the likes of Geoff Arnold and Derek Underwood (on a normal wicket) don't exactly inspire massive fear. Greg Chappell obviously played some brilliant innings against great bowlers. He scored a century against one of the best attacks of all time in 1979, one in each innings against Holding and Roberts in 75, and also faced Botham and Willis at their best in the early 80s with success, and made runs against Hadlee and Imran with their weak support too. However, the assumption that because he played in the same era as Imran, Hadlee, Holding, Roberts, Garner, Croft, Botham etc and still had a good average means that he scored heaps against all of them and faced awesome attacks every time he made runs is false. Like Ponting, his career crossed with some great bowlers, and sometimes he faced them and did well, but a lot of the time he made runs against the weaker bowlers around, because they were easier to make runs off. If you did a similar study on Ponting you'd probably get about the same result.