Worst player to take a 5 wicket haul in Tests

[Matt79]

Basil Butcher played 44 Test matches for West Indies. He was a very powerful middle order batsman and a non serious leg spinner.

He was playing in his 32nd Test match against England at Queens Park in 1968. Till then he had just once bowled 6 overs against India at Feroze Shah Kotla. The match had half an hour or so left, it was doomed to be a draw and skipper Alexander asked Hunte nd Butcher to bowl out the match. It was in the spirit of fun as was befitting his bowling skills.

In 1968, England were 373 for 5, Cowdrey had heading for a big hundred and had put on over a hundred runs with D'Oliviera and they looked inseparable.

Sobers brought in Butcher as the sixth bowler, also because Griffith was indisposed and had bowled just 3 overs in the innings. Butcher went on to have Cowdrey caught behind in his very first over I think. He then proceeded to clean England up and took 4 wickets in his first three overs as England slipped from 373 for 5 to 381 for 9. He also got last man Jones to end up with 5 for 34 from 13.5 overs.

Sobers thought this made their spin attack pretty formidable (with him and Gibbs and Willie Rodriguez already in the side) and declared Windies second innings at 92 for 2 leaving England 215 to win. Sobers and Gibbs opened the bowling, Butcher bowled five overs for 17, Sobers, Gibbs and Rodriguez bowled 41.4 between them and England scored the runs for the loss of just 3 wickets. Griffith again couldn't bowled. Sobers could never live down the fun that was made of his captaincy though in his autobiography he talks of the strength of their spin attack the condition of the wicket and the fact that Butcher had taken five quick wickets in the first innings for next to nothing as justification !

Sobers made Butcher bowl another 15 uneventful (and reasonably frugal) overs in the next Test and that was the end of Butchers career as a Test bowler.

He bowled just 3 more overs in his career, at Lord's in his penultimate test.

There are only six bowlers in history who have a five wicket haul in Tests but only five wickets as their aggregate. But five of them have played just 2 Tests or less. Butcher played 44 !

Besides he took another 35 wickets in 125 FC matches (not counting the 44 Tests)with 4 for 30 against Leeward Islands as his best.

It will be difficult to find a bowler whose five wicket haul was a bigger surprise.

[/thread closed] Good job SJS.

 

[haroon510]

it is only fair to post this since it is about bowling..

YouTube - fast bowling has its best

 

[gunner]

agarkar

 

[Evermind]

it is only fair to post this since it is about bowling..

YouTube - fast bowling has its best

Nice video, real irritating music. Whiney generic britpop band #8734583745.

 

[African Monkey]

Jason Krejza, Daren Powell, Paul Wiseman would have to be up there for specialist bowlers.

 

[Joe Ninety]

Alan Mullaly for mine.

 

[Rant0r]

Croft, Giles, Hemmings...

Such was decent; had pretty much everything an offie needs: flight, drift, dip.

Check his figures, better than any of the gentlemen I named.

yeah point taken, giles is very harris-like though (not much unlike wheelie-bin like)

Upul Chandana..

i do rate him too though

Jimmy Adams took 5 for 17 against Kiwis in April 1996. Take away this spell of 9 overs and he took 22 wickets in 54 test matches at 60 runs each with a strike rate of over 125 !

Like Butcher this he has no other 5 wicket haul in FC matches. But he bowled more regularly than Butcher.

not bad for a keeper though :P

Many players from the past 15 years fit the criteria. I would say a couple of New Zealand spinners in Matthew Hart and Paul Wiseman.

Little suprise such average cricketers in Sami and Agarkar managed the feat. Given numerous opportunities to achieve a 5 wicket haul. As toothless as Agarkar was for much of his career, his spell of bowling against the Australians in Adelaide was one of the finer swing bowling performances I have ever witnessed.

indeed, i also seem him clean bowl kallis in a one dayer with an absolute ripper once toom will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

i rate katich's bowling, but not as highly as his 6 for against zimbabwe suggests, records against them and bangladesh should be struck from history.

has chris gayle got a 5 for ? he's very carl hooper-like

 

[Krishna_j]

to my mind it has to be Ehteshamuddin from pakistan who played a few tests for Pak in 1979-82 and took a fifer against india in kanpur in 1980.

for those who hav'nt seen him - was a cross between a portly rhino and an elephant both in figure and in approach and was the epitome of fitness in his last test at Leeds in 1982 - breaking down at a crucial time when plucked from club cricket obscurity to fill in for the injured Sarfraz.

 

[Richard]

Basil Butcher played 44 Test matches for West Indies. He was a very powerful middle order batsman and a non serious leg spinner.

He was playing in his 32nd Test match against England at Queens Park in 1968. Till then he had just once bowled 6 overs against India at Feroze Shah Kotla. The match had half an hour or so left, it was doomed to be a draw and skipper Alexander asked Hunte nd Butcher to bowl out the match. It was in the spirit of fun as was befitting his bowling skills.

In 1968, England were 373 for 5, Cowdrey had heading for a big hundred and had put on over a hundred runs with D'Oliviera and they looked inseparable.

Sobers brought in Butcher as the sixth bowler, also because Griffith was indisposed and had bowled just 3 overs in the innings. Butcher went on to have Cowdrey caught behind in his very first over I think. He then proceeded to clean England up and took 4 wickets in his first three overs as England slipped from 373 for 5 to 381 for 9. He also got last man Jones to end up with 5 for 34 from 13.5 overs.

Sobers thought this made their spin attack pretty formidable (with him and Gibbs and Willie Rodriguez already in the side) and declared Windies second innings at 92 for 2 leaving England 215 to win. Sobers and Gibbs opened the bowling, Butcher bowled five overs for 17, Sobers, Gibbs and Rodriguez bowled 41.4 between them and England scored the runs for the loss of just 3 wickets. Griffith again couldn't bowled. Sobers could never live down the fun that was made of his captaincy though in his autobiography he talks of the strength of their spin attack the condition of the wicket and the fact that Butcher had taken five quick wickets in the first innings for next to nothing as justification !

Sobers made Butcher bowl another 15 uneventful (and reasonably frugal) overs in the next Test and that was the end of Butchers career as a Test bowler.

He bowled just 3 more overs in his career, at Lord's in his penultimate test.

There are only six bowlers in history who have a five wicket haul in Tests but only five wickets as their aggregate. But five of them have played just 2 Tests or less. Butcher played 44 !

Besides he took another 35 wickets in 125 FC matches (not counting the 44 Tests)with 4 for 30 against Leeward Islands as his best.

It will be difficult to find a bowler whose five wicket haul was a bigger surprise.

I only opened this thread to post about Basil Butcher, wasn't much point in me doing so.

Haha, i had no idea he'd taken two five-wicket hauls, let alone ten. Against 1989 West Indies too, hardly minnows. What the hell happened there?!

BTW as no-one's answered this, I will... it was a dead Test (WI were already 3-0 up) and played on your classical SCG bunsen. Bob Holland had taken a 10-for 4 years previously under the exact same circumstances, and AB, who as mentioned earlier in this thread had never really taken his bowling terribly seriously, somehow managed to land it really well and got an 11-for. By all accounts West Indies played him with considerable abandon, and this allied to the pitch (allied to the extreme weakness of Australia's seam attack) allowed him to take a massive stash.

A bit mystified how this related in the slightest to Warne's career though.

 

[stumpski]

I know he's always an easy target on here, but Craig White has a couple ...

And Gary Cosier has to be the worst in ODIs doesn't he?

Regarding England spinners, the last offie to take 100 Test wickets was John Emburey, and it doesn't look as if there'll be another in the foreseeable. We favour SLAs for some reason these days.

 

[BoyBrumby]

I know he's always an easy target on here, but Craig White has a couple ...

And Gary Cosier has to be the worst in ODIs doesn't he?

Regarding England spinners, the last offie to take 100 Test wickets was John Emburey, and it doesn't look as if there'll be another in the foreseeable. We favour SLAs for some reason these days.

Swanny seems to be ahead of Monty in the pecking order now, so maybe he could yet do it?

If he goes on as long as Embers did he's certainly a chance!

 

[Kweek]

Nice video, real irritating music. Whiney generic britpop band #8734583745.

That band is american as ****, so how can it be britpop?

good song actually, wondering which band it is.

 

[Evermind]

That band is american as ****, so how can it be britpop?

good song actually, wondering which band it is.

Err...It's Ash, Northern Irish outfit, a well known britpop band.

Song is called Burn Baby Burn. Generic as all hell.

 

[Richard]

Regarding England spinners, the last offie to take 100 Test wickets was John Emburey, and it doesn't look as if there'll be another in the foreseeable. We favour SLAs for some reason these days.

In no small part due to the fact that many of the best fingerspinners tend to be left-armers. This has echoed down England Test history. Mostly the best right-arm fingerspinner has been bettered by the best left-arm fingerspinner also available at the time. Croft and Giles is a moot-point, but Giles could've been better; Tufnell > Such; Edmunds probably > Emburey; heck, even Cook > Hemmings. And obviously Underwood > Illingworth; Verity and Rhodes > any other England spinner ever, or at least, since the dawn of 1900.

I imagine Johnny Wardle reckoned he was better than Jim Laker too. And he might've been right, an' all. If he wasn't, Laker is the only case ever of the best right-armer available bettering a left-armer available.

Fortunately we've finally escaped the nonsensical pick-two-spinners-under-most-circumstances notion, 2 decades later than we should've done. So we're no longer forced to endure the right-armer out-ineffective-ing the left-armer.

 

[DaRick]

Hmm...

Part-timers: Michael Clarke 6/9 - In a normal world, on a pitch that was anything other than horrifically sub-standard, would probably not have taken more than 3 or 4 in an innings at his very best

Specialists: Mohammad Sami, Daren Powell, Jason Krezja etc. - each poor to very poor bowlers (although Krejza has been somewhat unlucky with selection and can bowl the odd jaffa)

 

[sudhindra9]

Mohammed Sami i8s my go

A very bad bowler

NoConsistency