'How' or' How Many'?

The debate over the role of statistics in cricket has been one waged since batsmen hit their first centuries or bowlers took their first wickets. Cricket is one of the few games where it seems statistics tell only part of the story regarding players because, as we all know, aesthetics are important too. 'How' a player scores a century is almost as important as 'how many' runs they may have scored. 'How' a fast bowler picks up his wickets is seen to be almost as important as 'how many' wickets they’ve taken. Some public perception has it that certain bowlers were much better bowlers than others because they took more wickets in 'spectacular' fashion i.e. bowled with in-swinging yorkers as opposed to the more 'boring' method of consistent bowling in the 'corridor' for catches behind the wicket.

Quite frankly, the above attitude is ludicrous.

The logical goal for any bowler is to take wickets. Objectively speaking, how a wicket is taken is irrelevant to that ultimate end. Whether a fast bowler takes wickets by bowling batsmen, LBW's or catches in the outfield isn't as important as the ability to take wickets in the first place.

For mine, the perception of who might be a more 'talented' bowler has meant that the bowlers who bowl in a more consistent fashion are marginalised in favour of the more spectacular (and therefore more memorable) members of the fast bowling fraternity. Throughout history, bowlers such as Brian Statham, Curtly Ambrose, Richard Hadlee and Glenn McGrath haven't been given their due by fans because they weren't always spectacular bowlers. They were the guys that did what was required to take wickets, which in my opinion is a more professional approach.

First, though, I'd like to dispel a few myths about bowlers such as these. The most prevalent accusation levelled at bowlers like these is that their line-and-length approach is a function of their actual ability to bowl the unplayable deliveries. The myth goes that these bowlers must therefore be inferior to bowlers who bowl the 'unplayables'. Anyone who saw Brian Statham’s often lethal 'nip-backer', Ambrose’s incredible 7/25 in Perth in 1993, McGrath’s devastating 8/38 at Lords or watched Hadlee bamboozle Australian batsmen with prodigious swing in Brisbane to take 9/52 would know this is simply untrue. These bowlers have proven time and again that they can and do bowl the 'unplayables'.

Another factor to this is that you simply won't take wickets against top-level batsmen without having something special about you in terms of deliveries you are able to bowl. The perception of bowlers like Glenn McGrath and Richard Hadlee which persists (that they are line-and-length bowlers and little more) is ridiculous. There's no way they'd be successful at all let alone as successful as they have proven to be if all they did was pitch the ball on a length and waited for the batsman to get himself out.

Indeed are we to be expected to believe that all the batsmen these bowlers have dismissed were undone by deliveries which didn't have some form of movement on them? What rubbish. It’d be a stunning indictment on the techniques of batsmen at the highest level if they couldn't counter straight up-and-down bowling to the extent that record of the bowler doing it rates favourably with the very best bowlers. In fact the probability of this being the case is so very small, we could safely discount it as being a possibility.

Another prevalent myth is that the ability to bowl the 'unplayables' is paramount and that if you have that, line-and-length isn’t quite as important. Well if this is the case, someone forgot to tell bowlers such as Malcolm Marshall who whilst having the ability to knock over batsmen, also bowled an immaculate line-and-length in between the 'unplayables'. And a quick scan of the top ten Test wicket-takers reveals an interesting observation: most of them were considered 'line-and-length' bowlers who bowled very accurately and threw in the odd 'unplayable'. The top 10:

Courtney Walsh
Shane Warne
Mutthiah Muralitharan
Nikhanj Kapil Dev
Richard Hadlee
Glenn McGrath
Wasim Akram
Curtly Ambrose
Ian Botham
Malcolm Marshall

Are we to honestly believe that these bowlers got to where they are purely because they bowled unplayable deliveries more often than others? Of course not. The ability to bowl a good line-and-length is just as important and on many occasions, more important than bowling a series of unplayable deliveries. Why? Because in searching for the 'unplayables', one can release the pressure on a batsman by bowling a loose delivery, something which would happen less often if the primary concern was accuracy.

So in reality, the very best bowlers were those who are able to combine the occasional 'good' deliveries with a great line-and-length. Bowlers such as Muralitharan complement his wicket-taking deliveries with suffocating accuracy as does Warne, Akram and as did Marshall. Considering the quality of batsmen at the top level, it's inconceivable that a bowler could merely bowl on the same line-and-length and take any wickets at all, let alone be among the greatest bowlers. Yet there are those who expect us to believe that Hadlee and McGrath did exactly that. The evidence simply doesn't support it.

Posted by Corey