If only He was there...

[cochise]

It is not a meaningless stat as far as I am concerned. For a team like India , which does not have a star performer who always troubles the batsman, it is very crucial to get early breakthroughs, and that stat shows me that he has very often done and given us opportunities to dominate the first sessions in the test match. It also shows that he is able to take use of the new ball available in Test cricket better than most other bowlers. I remember in England, several times when the new ball was taken, we got 2 or 3 quick wickets to put pressure on them (if they lasted that long).

We really could have used him in the last test to get some breakthroughs at crucial moments that may have actually changed the result. We were getting bugger all with RP, Sree and Pathan with the form they have been showing. What a waste!

[f.b.m]

What's that supposed to mean? What you meant to say is that he cant clean up the tail which is an essential ingredient for all great fast bowlers like Kapil' date=' McGrath, Wasim[/quote'] In the England, SA and Pak tours, Kumble came in straight after a lower order batsman came in. Look at the scoreboards. Eg: Look at this scorecard. Or this one. Or this Something tells me that you havent actually watched these recent matches. No one in their right minds would argue that "Zaheer isnt good enough".

[f.b.m]

Either way, I dont believe in moaning about who isnt there, as I said before. Play with what you've got.

[Rohip]

It is not a meaningless stat as far as I am concerned.

It would only be meaningful if he took took 10% of tail end wickets and other bowlers took 35% or something like that. So what if he takes 20% and other players take 25 or 30% it's an insignificant difference. From 20 wickets in a match Zaheer would take 4 tailenders and other bowlers would take 5 or 6. It makes little substantial difference. It's not something worth going on about

[gult]

Anantha Narayanan's article on Cricinfo about High quality wickets is interesting. Zaheer is top in the list of "Lowest % of lower order wickets" and 7th in the list of "High Quality wickets" when Batting Quality Index is taken as the parameter for judging the effectiveness of the bowler on high quality batsmen. I can't post the links. So please cut and paste in the address bar to read his post blogs.cricinfo.com/itfigures/archives/2008/03/the_bowlers_who_took_the_most.php So, he is by far, the best Indian bowler to trouble the top order/class batsmen

[amits]

the choice of bowlers for tests has to be in the order 1. zaheer 2. ishant 3. sreesanth 4. pravin kumar 5. rp singh 6. irfan(more of a batsman than bowler now, can play if we decide to play 5 bowlers) others 999. agarkar 1000. munaf