Who is the world's best Test bowler ever?

[marc71178]

Are you going to say why you believe these things? Because last I checked, it was far tougher to get top-order players out than tail-enders.

And far more important to the team.

 

[Beleg]

There's no doubt in my mind that ODI decks in Pakistan/India(?) have gotten flatter and flatter during the last decade.

The preception of Pakistani decks in particular being spin heavens is based on the eighties, early ninties when covers were non-existant outside Lahore (they had to important one from Qaddafi stadium for a game at Sheikopura) and the wickets were extremely vulnerable to climatic changes. Most of the grounds in the country were often loaned out for other activities (weddings, convocations, speeches) and the pitch often got trampled over very badly.

These days, with better treatment and understanding of the nature of soils, coupled with effective cordoning measures and a growing ammount of stadiums reserved almost completely for cricket (the newer Multan Cricket Stadium is reserved purely for cricket while Qasim Bagh was host to a myraid of events, ranging from gulli-danda playing kids to flood-lighted football games), wickets seems to be becoming easier and easier.

 

[Slow Love™]

I totally agree with that.

If we were to stretch that argument to absurdity and discount all records in home gamesand thus only the visiting teams stats should count in the game. Assuming further that the home team falls in the category of tigers at home and useless in real terms as various teams from India, Sri Lanka and new Zealand have been termed down the years, we might as well discount the records of all teams who played these paper tigers since the opponents were no good player in real terms or,in effect, minnows.

If the sub continental tracks are batting heavens, as is often claimed to run down Indian(and Sri Lankan) batsmen. then we must conced that all those who have failed on them cant bat for nuts. I wont name the worthies.

If they are spinners dream wickets, as has also been shouted from roof tops with equal ferocity, then we must conced that the 'great' spinners who have been slaughtered on these wickets must ne having something else (magical, fishy, suspect, illegal what have you) to account for their success away from these made for them wickets. Again I wont name the legend

There is an alternative possibilty, if we put our biases and aside and shed our reluctance to concede a point, and that maybe, just maybe, that the sub continental batsmen have the technique, the game AND the inherent advantage of long experience of the conditions, to play well on these wickets which are neither good nor bad but just different from those, lets say, in England and Australia.

And, could it be, could it just be, that the Indian(and Sri Lankan and Pakistani) spinners are really good , much much better in the orthodox finger spin variety (we all know what that means please dont get into the semantics of "every spinner is a wrist spinner") in particular and most spin variety in general, that this superiority is best exploited at home where they are conditioned to play and use the correct line and length (which mind you varies not just from batsman to batsman but from playing surface to playing surface) and therefore show better results because they ACTUALLY bowl better under these conditions.

How come the world is screaming about sub continental pacers not being good enough to bowl on surface other than at home and fail to say the same of spinners coming from other countries ?

How come when we downplay the achievements of one of the greatest medium pace bowlers in the history of the game without pausing to consider that he bowled on these killing fields for fifty percent of his matches. Could it not be that he would have take many more wickets if he played only the one series every three years or so in India rather than half of them. Might he not have become the genuine fast bowler that he looked like he could be when just coming out of his teens than the medium pacer he had to settle down to be on these shirt front wickets where he bowled more overs than spinners do for other countries.

Come on guys, you cant have it both ways.

I actually had a bit of trouble understanding parts of your post, SJS, which is probably just me, 'cause I'm fairly tired at the end of an extremely busy day. I think at times I found it hard to tell when your questions were rhetorical and when they were genuine.

I guess I agree that always giving wickets taken away from home a higher value is problematic, in that it doesn't factor in the types of conditions. For example, a spinner from New Zealand would likely get a better ranking away if he plays a reasonable amount of cricket on the subcontinent. But a spinner from the subcontinent's ranking may well suffer away if he's playing on some of New Zealand's greentops. Does that make the New Zealand guy a better spinner? Probably not. I guess rating the wickets themselves as to what they might favor makes more sense than a blanket home/away designation. I realise I'm sidestepping your point here, which seems to be that bowlers ought not be penalized (in terms of being rated) because they excel in conditions in their home country. I do believe though, that there's something to be said for rating a bowler's ability to excel in a wide variety of conditions, when there's a comparison between two bowlers who are clearly in a similar ballpark when it comes to overall quality.

You lost me though when you asked "How come the world is screaming about sub continental pacers not being good enough to bowl on surface other than at home and fail to say the same of spinners coming from other countries ?" - I wouldn't have thought that people in general would be denigrating Indian pace bowlers for not being any good away from their home pitches . Generally, conditions would be better for pace bowling on away wickets than they would be at home.

Who are you referring to in the last paragraph? Srinath? Anyhow, I couldn't agree more - the job of the Indian pacer has to be one of the most difficult in the game. Who knows what he might have achieved statistics-wise if he'd been born elsewhere.

 

[magsi23]

Wasim Akram

 

[Top_Cat]

Who are you referring to in the last paragraph? Srinath? Anyhow, I couldn't agree more - the job of the Indian pacer has to be one of the most difficult in the game. Who knows what he might have achieved statistics-wise if he'd been born elsewhere.

Not to mention being the only Indian pacer of note to consistently play in the team over the course of the 90's.

 

[thierry henry]

Why bring an example to prove your point which almost never occurs? Two big problems;

1) Seriously, how many Test bowlers do you know of who take top-order wickets but aren't capable of getting out tailenders? People always bring up a guy like Ambrose in this context but it only appeared that he was less effective at taking tail-end poles because of the disproportionate number of other wickets he took (he was a 'great' bowler after all). So people only remember the 5% of times he took some tap from numbers 9-11 and not the 95% of times he cleaned up the tail without a whimper.

I agree, this is obviously true. But if so, why are we having this discussion? I think it related back to Lillee? My point is, I think Lillee ended up with a career average of 23.something? Which is obviously excellent, but doesn't really justify his being claimed as the best pace bowler ever, or even of his era, which is what a lot of people claim.

Now, (apparently), one of the reasons why his average is 23 instead of, say, 21, is because he wasn't as effective against tailenders. This may or may not be true, I'm just speaking theoretically. What I'm saying is, (for arguments sake, don't get caught up in the actual players I am naming) Hadlee averaged about 22. Now let's say that Lillee had a better average against top order players, Hadlee had a better average against tail-enders, and Hadlee had a better average overall.

In my opinion you couldn't then use this as justification to say that Lillee was a better bowler, because he was more effective against top order players.

Your example is predicated on the assumption that every batsman in any given 11 has equal chance and ability to score runs. I think you'll find a huge majority of runs scored, on average, are scored by the top 6. That's what they are there for after all. Ergo, by knocking over top-order batsmen, you're 'saving' more runs than if you knock over batsmen in the bottom 5.

Example; say, on average, the average team score is 300 in a Test innings. Say that on average, the top 6, in a score of 300, will score 230 of those, leaving 70 for the bottom five. Say then, you knock over an XI for 120, the top 6 scoring 70 and the bottom 5 scoring 50. By knocking over the top 6 cheaper than is, on average, ordinarily the case, you save many more runs than you did by knocking over the bottom 5 for 50.

Yes, but no. Runs scored by the tail are worth exactly the same as runs scored by the top-order. Refer back to the Lillee v Hadlee example. If you had a team of Lillee's and a team of Hadlee's, (again- I have no idea if the stats I'm attributing to these players is actually true) then in theory the team batting against the Lillee's would score more precisely because Lillee's poor bowling against the tail cost him more runs, than his good bowling against the top order gained him.

Your argument is only correct on the assumption that every team has a balance of players who are better at taking top-order wickets, better at taking tail-end wickets, etc. If a player is bad enough against the tail that it makes a notable difference to his career stats, than I don't believe he should be immune from criticism about this.

Look at it this way; Brian Lara is a far better batsman than Shaun Pollock, averaging 55 whereas Pollock averages about 20-odd. Say you knocked both of them over in a World XI game for 20; which wicket was the more valuable to winning the game considering on average Lara scores 30 more runs per inning than Pollock?

If the other bowlers in your team were proven poor performers against inferior batsman, than the dismissal of Pollock would be more important.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is exactly these ridiculous situations that we are arguing about. We are trying to explain what it means when a bowler, inexplicably, struggles to remove inferior batsman. imo, it reflects poorly on that bowler and should be taken into consideration when comparing him with other bowlers, if it is an actual identifiable career trend.

 

[Top_Cat]

Now, (apparently), one of the reasons why his average is 23 instead of, say, 21, is because he wasn't as effective against tailenders. This may or may not be true, I'm just speaking theoretically. What I'm saying is, (for arguments sake, don't get caught up in the actual players I am naming) Hadlee averaged about 22. Now let's say that Lillee had a better average against top order players, Hadlee had a better average against tail-enders, and Hadlee had a better average overall.

In my opinion you couldn't then use this as justification to say that Lillee was a better bowler, because he was more effective against top order players.

No you'd need more but that's the essence of analysis; you'd have to first define a 'top-order' batsman, define a 'lower-order batsman', tally a list of who Lillee has played against, put each in those categories and THEN you could have a look at the numbers.

Even then, it's open to dispute; Lillee was so successful against 'top-order' players because he bowled in a high-percentage way to counter the high-percentage methods batsman have evolved to deal with fast bowlers over time. For a nick to occur, the bowler has to be good enough to bowl that sort of delivery (on a length, swinging away) and the batsman has to have a good enough technique to hit the ball because otherwise they'll just keep missing (as happened to DKL frequently). So although, prima facie, it appears Lillee didn't dismiss tailenders with fantastic success, his high-percentage style of bowling was just 'too good' for them to hit it, really.

As for my personal opinion, Hadlee had a lot of things over Lillee (accuracy, consistency and movement) but the reason Lillee was rated so highly by his peers was because of his ability to 'head-hunt' the top batsman/batsmen in the opposition. Some innings, he would only take one or two of the opposition wickets but they'd be the top two or three batters in the line-up. Hadlee was also good at this but because he did the other things so well, I guess it didn't stand out as much. Again, personally, I thought Lillee was much better at the head-hunter role, though. That was, in part, because Lillee had the luxury of bowling in a strong attack and could just attack and worry less about conceding runs (which he was apt to do on occasion). Hadlee had to carry his bowling attack so couldn't attack quite as often.

It's for the same reason Gillespie has been rated much higher than his stats suggest for many years. He rarely took a bag and I lost count of how many times he'd take two-fer but those two would be Lara and Chanderpaul or Laxman and Dravid or Trescothick and Thorpe. My guess is they suffered from the same affliction; having knocked over the cream of the opposition batting line-up, they'd mentally relax against the rest of the 'lesser' players. Hadlee, like McGrath for example, was ruthless and relentless; he kept at you no matter who you were.

This is one of those things which is more intuitive than analytical and it does depend upon what one rates higher in a bowler. The fan and historians would rate raw wickets, averages, etc. as higher than, say, Ian Chappell who rates Lillee as the best because he saw how badly Lillee wanted the opposition's best batsman to be his next wicket. The fact that Lillee might get a bit lazy against lesser batsmen probably wouldn't have mattered to him because he seems to be of the opinion that if the other bowlers couldn't knock over the rest of the batters in the line-up, then that's a problem with them, not Lillee.

Your argument is only correct on the assumption that every team has a balance of players who are better at taking top-order wickets, better at taking tail-end wickets, etc. If a player is bad enough against the tail that it makes a notable difference to his career stats, than I don't believe he should be immune from criticism about this.

True but there are criticisms and there are criticisms. If I was Lillee and someone said "You suck at taking tail-enders wickets! Therefore you're a lesser bowler than Hadlee.", I wouldn't be listening too hard to whatever else came out of their mouth.

Anyway, I still say that because, historically, top-order batsmen score the bulk of runs in any given innings, their wickets hold more inherent value if taken so therefore rating all wickets (tail-ender or top-order player) as equal is wrong.

If the other bowlers in your team were proven poor performers against inferior batsman, than the dismissal of Pollock would be more important.

Of course but you have to take into account the proportion of the populations we're talking about. There are FAR more bowlers at Test level who are better at taking top-order wickets than they are at tail-enders as opposed to the opposite which is a bowler who bowls poorly to the top-order but cleans up the tail. So taking that into account, top-order wickets should be ascribed a greater value as they generally result in more runs ergo stopping that from occurring lessens the overall score.

 

[thierry henry]

Yes. And I doubt there are many bowlers whose weakness against lower order players make much of a difference to their overall stats.

I just think that Lillee is a particularly good example because it's almost as if a supposed weakness against tailenders has been used as a justification of his lofty status. It's similar to people who say "if Viv Richards had focused on records than he would have broken all of them." Well, he DIDN'T focus on the records, he DIDN'T break all of them, and you have to take that into account when analyzing his career.

When analyzing Lillee's career I accept that he was great at getting out top opposing batsman, I accept that perhaps he slacked off against lesser batsman, and I accept that he ended up with 355 wickets at 23 or whatever it was. My opinion is that, taking all factors into account, his career record is a fair representation of his overall career as a test bowler. Hence I would rank him in the top echelon of fast bowlers, but would deprive him of the God-like status that some people give him. To me he is "only" (certainly a relative term) the equal (or slightly better/slightly worse) of Hadlee, McGrath, Donald, Ambrose, Akram, Marshall, Younis, Khan, etc, of relatively recent bowlers.

But that's just an opinion.

I suppose you could put it like this- I would probably rather have an entire bowling attack of Hadlees, slightly ahead of an entire bowling attacking of Lillees. However, Lillee might be slightly more effective than Hadlee when placed in a normal bowling attack where the players were able to take the lower order wickets that Lillee himself was not as focused on (or effective at getting?). I suppose it's a moot point as to which is the better way of comparing players.

 

[Top_Cat]

I don't think it's ever been in dispute that Lillee's 'god-like' status is more a function of his personality than the sheer wickets he took. Just about every fast bowler I've seen say "Lillee made me want to bowl fast" talks about the flashing chain around his neck, the sheer aggression, the nasty bouncers, etc. It's rare for people to talk about the clinical way in which he dismissed batsmen with perfectly-pitched outswingers. I adefinitely agree he's int he top-echelon WITH those other guys, though. Not above them.

 

[SJS]

I actually had a bit of trouble understanding parts of your post, SJS, which is probably just me, 'cause I'm fairly tired at the end of an extremely busy day. I think at times I found it hard to tell when your questions were rhetorical and when they were genuine.

I guess I agree that always giving wickets taken away from home a higher value is problematic, in that it doesn't factor in the types of conditions. For example, a spinner from New Zealand would likely get a better ranking away if he plays a reasonable amount of cricket on the subcontinent. But a spinner from the subcontinent's ranking may well suffer away if he's playing on some of New Zealand's greentops. Does that make the New Zealand guy a better spinner? Probably not. I guess rating the wickets themselves as to what they might favor makes more sense than a blanket home/away designation. I realise I'm sidestepping your point here, which seems to be that bowlers ought not be penalized (in terms of being rated) because they excel in conditions in their home country. I do believe though, that there's something to be said for rating a bowler's ability to excel in a wide variety of conditions, when there's a comparison between two bowlers who are clearly in a similar ballpark when it comes to overall quality.

You lost me though when you asked "How come the world is screaming about sub continental pacers not being good enough to bowl on surface other than at home and fail to say the same of spinners coming from other countries ?" - I wouldn't have thought that people in general would be denigrating Indian pace bowlers for not being any good away from their home pitches . Generally, conditions would be better for pace bowling on away wickets than they would be at home.

Who are you referring to in the last paragraph? Srinath? Anyhow, I couldn't agree more - the job of the Indian pacer has to be one of the most difficult in the game. Who knows what he might have achieved statistics-wise if he'd been born elsewhere.

Sorry for that SL. I know long posts can be a bit confusing and if they contain the kind of long sentences that I am guilty of, its a bad combination. Add to that a poor attempt at wit/sarcasm and the plot is lost

Let me try to make ammends.

1. The basic point of the post is that though their is undoubtedly a home advantage, every one has it. On their own turfs naturally.

2. The visitors get to play on the same conditions as the home side so that cant be unfair, the advantage is only to the extent that the hosts have done it most of their cricketing lives so are better conditioned to exploit them.

3. The sub-continental conditions are simultaneously called batting paradises as well as 'tailored-for-home-grown' spinners. This is used, depending on the point one is trying to make to run down sub continental batsmen, sub continental spinners and sub continental teams. Surprisingly the same is not used to run down spinners from other countries who cant exploit these conditions as well, lets name Warne.

OR to run down batsmen who fail in India, lets name Ponting.

On top of it when Indian batsmen, lets name sachin and Siddhu, take Warne to the cleaners, it is said that they can do it because the wickets are batsmen's paradise, etc etc.

The point I was making was that lets just accept that there is a home advantage , ALWAYS. Its not just the wickets mind you. I have talked to Indian cricketers from the past and they said they couldnt hold the bat let alone the ball in England due to the cold. I am sure the same applies to English men visiting India. Similarly, the swing bowlers make merry in the English conditions. Why, their have been bowlers used only for playing in England, mainly, and almost discarded in Australia inspite of remarkable bowling in the earlier (and subsequent Ashes series).

SO. A player should not be grudged his home advantage for its not just he (or his countrymen who have it) nor should he be decried if his home performance is a bit better than his away performance. That is natural in normal conditions.

Then there will be the exceptions. Players who can perform best ONLY in one type of .environment. Believe me, it may not always be home as in the case of, Terry Alderman who had 10 five-fors in 12 matches played in England in which he took nearly 7 wickets per test match (one more wicket would have done that) and yet managed only 3.4 per test in 20 games at 50% higher cost per wicket !!!

There are exceptions like Ponting in India. He clearly has a problem with spin that comes slower off the track. Its the opposite of Laxman who loves the ball coming quickly off the turf in Australia (although he would play the Aussie bowling on the moon to I suspect).

This is something which can be and is dscussed in cricketing circles and strategies are made around it. But to generally denigrate whole teams, their batsmen, their bowlers for home advantage is unfair AND as I have tried to show(in my muddled way) contradictory in terms.

Coming to the bowler in the last paragraph, I was talking of Kapil and not Srinath.

 

[honestbharani]

With regard to the top order Vs lower order wickets, I think there was a point when I felt the RSA lower middle order was significantly stronger than their top order.

 

[marc71178]

With regard to the top order Vs lower order wickets, I think there was a point when I felt the RSA lower middle order was significantly stronger than their top order.

And looking at the current England game, you could argure that their tail is better than the top or middle order!

 

[honestbharani]

lol, must be new tactics by Fletcher.

 

[Jono]

Sorry for that SL. I know long posts can be a bit confusing and if they contain the kind of long sentences that I am guilty of, its a bad combination. Add to that a poor attempt at wit/sarcasm and the plot is lost

Let me try to make ammends.

1. The basic point of the post is that though their is undoubtedly a home advantage, every one has it. On their own turfs naturally.

2. The visitors get to play on the same conditions as the home side so that cant be unfair, the advantage is only to the extent that the hosts have done it most of their cricketing lives so are better conditioned to exploit them.

3. The sub-continental conditions are simultaneously called batting paradises as well as 'tailored-for-home-grown' spinners. This is used, depending on the point one is trying to make to run down sub continental batsmen, sub continental spinners and sub continental teams. Surprisingly the same is not used to run down spinners from other countries who cant exploit these conditions as well, lets name Warne.

OR to run down batsmen who fail in India, lets name Ponting.

On top of it when Indian batsmen, lets name sachin and Siddhu, take Warne to the cleaners, it is said that they can do it because the wickets are batsmen's paradise, etc etc.

The point I was making was that lets just accept that there is a home advantage , ALWAYS. Its not just the wickets mind you. I have talked to Indian cricketers from the past and they said they couldnt hold the bat let alone the ball in England due to the cold. I am sure the same applies to English men visiting India. Similarly, the swing bowlers make merry in the English conditions. Why, their have been bowlers used only for playing in England, mainly, and almost discarded in Australia inspite of remarkable bowling in the earlier (and subsequent Ashes series).

SO. A player should not be grudged his home advantage for its not just he (or his countrymen who have it) nor should he be decried if his home performance is a bit better than his away performance. That is natural in normal conditions.

Then there will be the exceptions. Players who can perform best ONLY in one type of .environment. Believe me, it may not always be home as in the case of, Terry Alderman who had 10 five-fors in 12 matches played in England in which he took nearly 7 wickets per test match (one more wicket would have done that) and yet managed only 3.4 per test in 20 games at 50% higher cost per wicket !!!

There are exceptions like Ponting in India. He clearly has a problem with spin that comes slower off the track. Its the opposite of Laxman who loves the ball coming quickly off the turf in Australia (although he would play the Aussie bowling on the moon to I suspect).

This is something which can be and is dscussed in cricketing circles and strategies are made around it. But to generally denigrate whole teams, their batsmen, their bowlers for home advantage is unfair AND as I have tried to show(in my muddled way) contradictory in terms.

Coming to the bowler in the last paragraph, I was talking of Kapil and not Srinath.

Brilliant post SJS, I wholeheartedly agree with that (Now that you have rephrased it in a clearer way ). Excellent point about Indian wickets. They're batting paradises plus raging turners which favour spinners all at the same time So hence, any batting accomplishment by Indians is denigrated because of their home conditions, and the same goes for the bowlers. What's left?

 

[Neil Pickup]

I can't imagine Tresco's batted nine many times before!

 

[luckyeddie]

I can't imagine Tresco's batted nine many times before!

... and top-scored

 

[Jamee999]

That's not very nice, Eddie, I'm sure Tresco has top scored quite a lot of times

 

[luckyeddie]

That's not very nice, Eddie, I'm sure Tresco has top scored quite a lot of times

batting at 9?

 

[Jamee999]

I haven't got a match today, Eddie.

 

[luckyeddie]

I haven't got a match today, Eddie.