Wasim Akram vs Dennis Lillee

[kyear2]

Lillee played majority of his tests in England, Australia and NZ. He was more effective than Mcgrath in these countries. Rest unknown.

Akram played 18 years, Mcgrath 15
If you compare first 15 years of their career, not much difference there.. From what i remember Akram's ER was better and had more 5 wickets / Match and 10 wickets / match. Also McGrath played more pace friendly conditions, had massive support from better and consistent batsmen, fielders and WK. Actually Pak fielders costed Akram more runs per match than the diffrence in the averages. ( and there were dropped catches too)
Catches contributed more than 2/3 of McGrath's Wicket tally.. Akram took majority of his wickets by clean bowled or LBW.

When talking about Mark Waugh or Ponting, people always blah blah about their fielding and explains how that helped the team immensely.. But the same people wont factor this when comparing with other team bowlers. I dont understand this.
Either Mark Waugh did nothing special in the field or He helped the bowlers to achieve better numbers.He was not Schrödinger's fielder to be both useless and useful at a time.

In a recent thread, I offered that Akram was the most difficult bowler for me personally to rate.

The two above arguments do wear on me.

He played longer than most other bowlers, should be focus on his elongated prime or rate him over his career? If we do the former the wpm goes up and the average comes down.
Ponting is similarly punished for going a bit beyond his peak, while Viv (CW apart) less harshly so. I don't agree with taking from the beginning because that all contributed to his growth, and guys like Sobers also had a way too young start and even stated in a different disciple. But where do we cut off, and do we also do the same for Ponting and other guys? It opens Pandora's box to a certain degree.

Then there's the fielding conundrum. The crazy part is that it's brought up by people who then say slip fielding doesn't matter, but I'll ignore that for now.

Lillee had the Chappell brothers; McGrath had Warne, Waugh and Ponting; Ambrose has Lara and Hooper; Marshall had Lloyd, Richards and Richardson; Steyn had Smith, Kallis and deVilliers. There's no way that didn't make a difference for them, Hadlee too had his guys, even Murali had Jayawardene. Yes it mattered, how much, I honestly don't know and can't quantify.

I don't think he's the GOAT, but think he's in the top 10 and definitely in my second tier of pacers along with Lillee, Donald, Garner, Lindwall, Holding.