You should tell that to many of the great fast bowlers themselves who'd disagree with you. The fact that a spinner was the highest rated bowler in ESPN's vote, with so many fast bowlers themselves in the panel, or in Wisden's vote...or the fact that the very player you consider the greatest bowler of all time considers a spinner the greatest of all time...
Neither of those lists were about great bowlers - they were about great cricketers, which allows so many other factors into the equation.
Seamers and spinners are both bowlers. The job of a bowler is to take as many wickets conceding as few a runs as possible. There's nothing else to it.
And if a seamer could come on at the same time and do a better job, that means the seamer is the better bowler.
No, they are judging different things. Most people consider proper leg spin the hardest skill to master (and they are probably right), and doing it like Warne has (relying on simplicity and absolute accuracy) is astounding. It deserves admiration and respect. That does not make him as effective as Malcolm Marshall though in terms of actual match winning ability.
LMAO, how did you decipher how much match-winning ability Malcolm Marshall had? Statsguru?
I've actually watched about 50 of his Tests now. But its hard getting hands on the footage of him in the subcontinent. Suffice it to say, while I haven't watched as much of him as I have of Warne, he was most definitely a huge match winner.
I don't think I am doing this at all. Having a great spinner means quite a bit. Having any great bowler means quite a lot in terms of winning matches. What we're comparing is not if Warne was a great bowler, but whether he was a better bowler (in terms of consistently wining games) then the top tier pace bowlers such as Malcolm Marshall.
But its much rarer seeing a great spinner compared to a great fast bowler, and I think its a bit naive to think that doesn't play a huge part. Warne is credited with reviving Leg Spin in cricket (and he did), so he has that going for him too when people rate him. I've no problem with rating him as a Wisden Cricketer - I understand and appreciate the reasons. But a bowler comparable with the top couple of quicks? Not a chance in my mind.
You don't decipher how much match-winning ability anyone had. It can only ever be guessed at, and people call players "match-winners" in plain wrong-headed ways more regularly than cricket matches are played.
Don't doubt he was, but I think to say that great seamers are superior to great spinners in every case based on a vague quantity like "match-winning ability" is kinda fishy. If you had some elaborate statistics on hand that showed that Marshall/Lillee/Hadlee et al contributed more frequently to innings where the batting side was bowled out below the target or which led to a fairly easy target for their own team than compareable spinners that would be an entirely different thing.
Yes, but the question: how did you decipher that Malcolm Marshall is a better match-winner than Warne?
Listen, we're talking about people judging their colleagues in ways we cannot understand because we are just not that knowledgeable with regards to the sport. I think you do a panel like that in ESPN, with that many good fast bowlers (many whom are up for the title themselves), and Warne, a disservice by making such simplistic reasoning as to why they rated him better.
Yeah, but which matches and which scenarios? You cannot figure this out through Statsguru and even reading ball-by-ball match comments won't give you the same appreciation.
He helped his team more than Warne helped his.
I don't think so at all - if anything, I'm saying its not as simplistic as you make it sound (he was simply a better or equal bowler to Marshall).
Sometimes they are, Bradman rated O'Reilly higher than Warne. Are you going to say he doesn't know about cricket? It doesn't mean he was right about everything, but a lot of players have a different ways of looking at things, which is fine. It's not as clear cut as some people make it out to be. Warne is fresh in our memory - I wonder where he'll be rated twenty years from now.
Lillee was needed much more by Australia than Marshall was needed by the West Indies. The question is if you put Lillee in the West Indies team, and Marshall in the Australian team, would they be different? I'd say most people would admire Marshall as they do Lillee for the same reasons, while Lillee would still rightly be considered one of the best quicks.
What you are saying doesn't make much sense and I can sense an obvious bias against the spinners because by simply watching Marshall bowl it is simply impossible to say that he was a much better match winner than Warne/Murali etc.
You are saying if you had (for example):
You (I don't know how) are always
, what? And how did you come to that conclusion? I won't even comment to whether I agree or disagree, but how did you judge the above? Stats? Face value stats are flawed. Two 3/40s are not the same. Game scenarios are not the same. Opposition strength, not the same. Bowling help, not the same.Correct me if I'm wrong, you said Warne is not close to Marshall/a top tier spinner is not close to a top tier paceman. If anything, you're the one making it sound simplistic. What I argued is the opposite, that there are many reasons and yours, as I know them, do not make all that much sense. When comparing your opinion on bowlers and the opinions of those who are the greatest bowlers of all time it is a no contest on who knows more on the subject. And this isn't a side argument that testimonies should be taken as fact, not so. But when many of the greatest pace bowlers of all time rate a spinner as the highest...then you're really struggling to make your argument IMO.
Wrong comparison. If Bradman says it, it doesn't make it right. If most batsmen say it, then it's a hard to bring in the bias or the one-offs. Warne, himself, was very close to making the team and just missed out. Unfortunately, Bradman missed Warne's better years.
Again, we are talking about a panel that contains Hadlee, Botham, Holding, Akram and Proctor - there are more names you can add onto there talking in general. We are not talking about just one of them. It's a consensus between a lot of cricketers and particularly pace bowlers. You cannot put it down to one-offs and bias.
On a spinning track in India pedestrian spinners used to outbowl/outperform some of the great fast bowlers of all time. In 2001 series Harbhajan singh alone won more matches than the famous pace attack of Australia.
