Please tell me how were McGrath & Hadlee better than Imran Khan?Imran unlike Hadlee played for most of his career on flat tracks of Pakistan & not on greentops of New Zealand(New Zealand strategy in 1970s & 1980s almost always used to be "prepare as green wicket as possible & let Hadlee do the job).I think Hadlee was one of the greatest ever bowlers(he succeeded in subcontinent even but that was only for small number of games that he played there) but not as good as Imran.
McGrath was also great but look he always had bowlers like Warne,Flemming,Gillespie,MacGill etc to support him who all average in 20s while for most of his career Imran alone had to carry the load of his teams bowling was the first truly successful genuine fast bowler that subcoontinent produced.Till the age of 38,he was as effective as he was at 25(didn't bowl much for last one & a half year).And when made catain of the side,he just got,better,better & better.
I think he could be compared to Hadlee & Marshall(or one could say he was close to Marshall) but to compare him with Dennis"greentop bully"Lillee is insult of the legend.Lillee enjoyed tremendous success on bowling friendly wickets & home conditions Australia but failed miserably in subcontinent especially Pakistan.Personally,I don't think he was better than Jason Gillespie & Damien Flemming.The gap between Imran Khan & Dennis Lillee is huge.Its just like comparing Steve Waugh to Don Bradman IMO.
Saw a lot of Lillee bowl, did you? Plainly not. In Australia at the time he went around, the WACA was fast, the Gabba was green, Adelaide was a road, Sydney spun and Melbourne was so low and slow that he bowled off three steps in a test there in the late 70s/ early 80s because there was zero bounce and pace in it. Still got wickets too.
Most of us have been through this a thousand times, but here goes.
He played 4 tests on the subcontinent and performed poorly. Hadlee, whom you cite as another example, played a small number as well, and performed well. Imran played 13 in Australia and averaged a respectable but hardly outstanding 28, presumably on the "green tops" you assert Lillee revelled in. So, was Imran nothing more than a respectable bowler here? I'd say not, because he's a fine player, rated very highly by people who saw him play, played against him and officiated him. Just as Lillee is rated very highly by those who had the misfortune to play against him, those who watched him or officiated him. See, they were both excpetional bowlers.
Imran had one golden tour with the ball here, averaging 19.00 in the three test series in 81/82. That was against a pretty good Australian line up. Aside from that he averaged 28, 40 & 41 with the ball in his other 3 bowling tours (in 83/84 he didn't bowl). If we accept your logic that Lillee was a green top bully who performed well at home on fast pitches, where was Imran on those other tours? Who knows? He may have been injured, he may have been at a stage in his career where he was not bowling well, he may have been just plain unlucky. I'm not prepared to undersell him as a bowler though, just because he didn't do as well here on those tours. Yet on a representative sample far smaller for Lillee on the subcontinent, you're prepared to pigeon-hole him someone not fit to carry Imran's jock strap.
Now I know it might burn your cheese, but their careers overlapped to some extent, and many more players who played vs both rated Lillee higher than they rated Imran. Whether that's justified in the stats, with the wisdom of hindsight or whether the stats undersell one over the other, who knows?
But to simply denigrate Lillee as a green top bully is facile. Especailly when guys like Richards, Lloyd, Boycott, Chappell, Dickie Bird - guys who've watched 100s if not 1000s of fast bowlers ply their trade over a span of decades - rate him as among the greatest ever, if not the greatest. Or that when things got tough for him in the middle of a spell, Hadlee would say to himself "What would Lillee do here, to get someone out?" It doesn't follow that these people are right, but in the face of such consistent opinion, to rate Lillee as a green top bully is just meh.
Likewise, you say McGrath had the help of other fine bowlers and use that as a point to detract from his efforts, yet blatantly ignore in your musings that Marshall was part of what's regarded as the best pace attack of all time. Consistency? I'd say that Marshall's support cast of Holding Garner & Walsh/ Clarke, etc was every bit as good as a support cast of Warne, Gillespie & say, Kaspa or Lee or Fleming (though perhaps not as versatile, I grant you). Both were certainly better than Lillee's support casts, which is often overlooked because of the great partnership he formed with Thommo, but which only lasted two or three years at the most. Thommo aside, Lillee bowled with Walker, Pascoe, Lawson (later years) and the mighty spin of Skull, TJ or Ashley Mallett. Hardly inspirational stuff there.
Look, they are both great players, and who is best is open to opinion. But when you take a pot shot at a bloke like Lillee, you really need something to back it up.
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