Have modern day fast bowlers become pansies or are they just not good enough?

[maniac]

all things aside.. I don't think fast bowling is the all in all of bowling. I know Pakistanis as obsessed with pace bowling.. I don't think we should be the same. The best bowlers the game has ever produced are spin bowlers (Mutthaiah and Warne). While there is some merit to fast bowling.. let's not give it too much credit. It is also a well known fact that good batsmen are very good at playing fast bowlers than they are with spin bowling. Pace is over estimated. Lack of pace and spin with variation is any day superior.

Good post:two_thumbs_up:

[Vijay.Sharma]

all things aside.. I don't think fast bowling is the all in all of bowling. I know Pakistanis as obsessed with pace bowling.. I don't think we should be the same. The best bowlers the game has ever produced are spin bowlers (Mutthaiah and Warne). While there is some merit to fast bowling.. let's not give it too much credit. It is also a well known fact that good batsmen are very good at playing fast bowlers than they are with spin bowling. Pace is over estimated. Lack of pace and spin with variation is any day superior.

I think both forms of bowling serve their purpose. Pace bowling tests the batsmen differently than spin bowling. When I say pace bowling I include the aspect of swing, seam, and express pace. McGrath rarely swung the ball yet ended up as the 4th on the all time wickets list. His forte was seam and accuracy. Same case with Ambrose. Marshall and Imran relied on pace but swung the ball too. Hadlee, Botham, and Kapil were great swing bowlers. Wasim and Waqar were amazing at both pace and swing. Steyn can bowl fast and move the ball. Akthar, Thomson, and Lee were out and out fast bowlers who influenced the game. I don't think any of the above bowlers were given undue credit. Pace bowling (speed, swing, and seam) is as necessary as spin bowling. I won't say either art form is overrated.

[maniac]

I think the results that OP has come up with also has to do with the rise of the Spin bowling as we did see Murali,Warne,Kumble and dare I say even Harbhajan taking bulk of the wickets for their respective teams and turning in most of the match-winning performances. It would be intresting to see a stat where the %of wickets taken by a spinner out of total wickets taken in matches won.

[maniac]

Ok we have so many stat experts on this formum....So maybe you guys can provide more advanced analysis...from I jan 2000 to 2012,there were a total of 3499 wickets in matches won from the Top 20 bowlers during this period in terms of Wickets,out of which 1359 wickets were from Spinners....If I reduce this to Top 10,it goes to 45%

[maniac]

So similarly,If you take the number of wickets taken from 1 Jan 2000 to current ,the % is 38% for top 20 and for top 10 it is 48% So since,we have already concluded that the number of results have gone up in recent times,we can conclude that either batting technique against spin has regressed or this has been a era of spin bowling

[maniac]

^ Also please not my analysis is from 2000 to current so most of those top 20 spinners have retired and some of the seamers have done really well in the last 2 years.

[rkt.india]

all things aside.. I don't think fast bowling is the all in all of bowling. I know Pakistanis as obsessed with pace bowling.. I don't think we should be the same. The best bowlers the game has ever produced are spin bowlers (Mutthaiah and Warne). While there is some merit to fast bowling.. let's not give it too much credit. It is also a well known fact that good batsmen are very good at playing fast bowlers than they are with spin bowling. Pace is over estimated. Lack of pace and spin with variation is any day superior.

Without fast bowlers, spin will be useless. Imagine spinners opening the bowling with the new ball in Australia, England or South Africa. It is the quality fast bowlers like McGrath, Ambrose, Akram, Garner, Lillie, Marshall, Lee, Akthar, Bond, etc. who makes cricket exciting. Without fast bowlers, there would have been no cricket.

[Guest]

Without fast bowlers' date=' spin will be useless. Imagine spinners opening the bowling with the new ball in Australia, England or South Africa. It is the quality fast bowlers like McGrath, Ambrose, Akram, Garner, Lillie, Marshall, Lee, Akthar, Bond, etc. who makes cricket exciting. Without fast bowlers, there would have been no cricket.[/quote'] but cricket is played from 1875 isnt it :hmmm:

[rkt.india]

but cricket is played from 1875 isnt it :hmmm:

Didn't they have fast bowlers then, may not be express. They were there. Sydeny Barnes one of the early fast bowler then. He was a seam, swing bowler, but was still a pacer.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Guest]

Didn't they have fast bowlers then' date=' may not be express. They were there. Sydeny Barnes one of the early fast bowler then. He was a seam, swing bowler, but was still a pacer.[/quote'] you only used to claim they are laughable by using some video :hmmm:

[rkt.india]

you only used to claim they are laughable by using some video :hmmm:

Cricket has changed a lot in 100 years. They may not look good in present scenario, but they were good enough at that time because cricket was still evolving.

[f.b.m]

I think a few factors need to come together in order for a bowler (immaterial of pace or spin) to be able to pick more than 6 wickets in an innings. I don't think the correlation between lack of 7-fers among pace bowlers today and supposed pansy-ness is valid. Key factors that bear an influence on 7-fers happening are - a. Ability of bowler to pick wickets (no doubt and here I don't think there is any great pansy-ness as the modern bowlers compare well with 80s and 90s bowlers on SR, number of wickets, etc) b. How many other wicket-taking bowlers are there in the team. Hadlee, Kapil, and Imran in the 80s were primarily the sole wicket takers of their teams. Obviously they will have many 6-fers compared to Wasim (who had Waqar and sundry others), Donald (who had Pollock, Ntini, DeVilliers, etc), Ambrose and Walsh (who had each other and the occasional Bishop, Rose, Dillon, etc), Steyn and Morkel (who have each other and the occasional Philander, Ntini, etc), the current English bowlers, the recent Paki bowlers, the recent-current Aussie bowlers. c. Length of spells I don't think bowlers have become greatly pansy. If you notice in most (not all) of those 7-fers usually the bowler taking the 7-fer multiple times did not have other bowlers who could pick 5-fers as often (or even in the ballpark) as he could. If you look at the list of fast bowlers who have taken the maximum 7-fers since the 70s it consists of the following 5 times Kapil, Imran 4 times McGrath 3 times Hadlee, Botham, Hoggard, Marshall, Waqar McGrath, Marshall, Waqar and to a certain extent Hoggard had other bowlers who were capable of taking 7-fers themselves. But Kapil, Imran, Hadlee, Botham (to a certain extent) were lone warriors Pansy-ness is not the cause of less 7-fers from fast bowlers of late. While it may be a correlation it is definitely not causation

Good post. Also I think the standard of batting from tailenders might have improved making the difference between say 5 and 7 wicket hauls. Are there any stats on this?