Fast bowler survival - rank the best fast bowlers of all time

[stephen]

I have an idea - let's collectively rank the fast bowlers in history. I have a shortlist of 32 bowlers and I would be happy to add more (however, I'd probably like to keep the number to a multiple of 4 as that makes life a lot easier).

Rules:

The way that this will work is that each of the 32 bowlers will face off in a series of round robin votes. Each vote will have 4 bowlers that will be ranked 1 to 4. After each round, the bowler with the lowest score will get eliminated.

This will give us surviving at the end of each round:

0 - 32
1 - 24
2 - 18

After round 2, 14 bowlers will have been eliminated. A poll will decide which of these 14 was "most unlucky to have been eliminated". The top two will then reenter the competition and 4 groups of 5 will be formed.

Round 3 will see 4 bowlers eliminated. Half our bowlers will be left. The bowlers will then be seeded based on previous totals from 1 to 16.

Single header eliminations will then occur with 1v16, 2v15, 3v14 etc...

Then quarter finals, then semi finals, then a final. By the end, we should have a new cricketworld fast bowler ranking. In all this means seven rounds of voting. I will open one new thread per round and give 24 hours for each vote, until we hit the quarter finals, at which point I will give 48 hours per vote.

Fast Bowlers:

Lohmann
SF Barnes
Spofforth
Tyson
Larwood
Lindwall
Miller
Lillee
Roberts
Marshall
Holding
Garner
Imran
Waqar
Wasim
McGrath
Davidson
Ambrose
Walsh
Adcock
Trueman
Donald
S Pollock
Hadlee
P Pollock
Bedser
Mahmood
Willis
Statham
Hall
Akhtar
Bishop

Wild cards:

Reid
Bond
Dev
Botham
Steyn
M Tate
Snow
Gregory
Cowie
Nissar
Gillespie

Any new bowlers will be randomly added to a round 1 group (bringing the total to five bowlers in that group), from which two bowlers will be eliminated.

Players who end up with the same ranking will be ordered based on a countback of their voting records. An average position per round will be used for the countback. If two players have the same countback a tiebreaker vote will be called for those two players.

Suggestions? Comments?

 

[Teja.]

Botham at his peak was sensational, but tbf, he ended up with a Career average of 28.5, If he is to be included, bowlers like Kapil, Thomson, Akthar and Gillespee should also be included. My vote would be to exclude Botham.

 

[Faisal1985]

I would certainly add Akhtar to that.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

I have an idea - let's collectively rank the fast bowlers in history. I have a shortlist of 32 bowlers and I would be happy to add more (however, I'd probably like to keep the number to a multiple of 4 as that makes life a lot easier).

Rules:

The way that this will work is that each of the 32 bowlers will face off in a series of round robin votes. Each vote will have 4 bowlers that will be ranked 1 to 4. After each round, the bowler with the lowest score will get eliminated.

This will give us surviving at the end of each round:

0 - 32
1 - 24
2 - 18

After round 2, 14 bowlers will have been eliminated. A poll will decide which of these 14 was "most unlucky to have been eliminated". The top two will then reenter the competition and 4 groups of 5 will be formed.

Round 3 will see 4 bowlers eliminated. Half our bowlers will be left. The bowlers will then be seeded based on previous totals from 1 to 16.

Single header eliminations will then occur with 1v16, 2v15, 3v14 etc...

Then quarter finals, then semi finals, then a final. By the end, we should have a new cricketworld fast bowler ranking. In all this means seven rounds of voting. I will open one new thread per round and give 24 hours for each vote, until we hit the quarter finals, at which point I will give 48 hours per vote.

Fast Bowlers:

Lohmann
SF Barnes
Spofforth
Tyson
Larwood
Lindwall
Miller
Lillee
Roberts
Marshall
Holding
Garner
Imran
Waqar
Wasim
McGrath
Davidson
Ambrose
Walsh
Adcock
Trueman
Donald
S Pollock
Hadlee
P Pollock
Bedser
Botham
Willis
Statham
Hall
Reid
Bishop

Any new bowlers will be randomly added to a round 1 group (bringing the total to five bowlers in that group), from which two bowlers will be eliminated.

Suggestions? Comments?

Botham is miles behind of alltime greats.Fazal Mahmood deserves to be in that list.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

I would certainly add Akhtar to that.

An average of 25 is not bad but a good stamina& not being injury prone are one of the essentials of alltime greats.So, based on that,people like Akhtar & Bond are not alltime greats & hence should not be included in this battle.

 

[stephen]

An average of 25 is not bad but a good stamina& not being injury prone are one of the essentials of alltime greats.So, based on that,people like Akhtar & Bond are not alltime greats & hence should not be included in this battle.

Based on this, Reid also should be excluded.

Alright, I might include Dev over Reid, but then include Reid, Bond and Akhtar as round 1 wild cards, unless people have a problem with that.

 

[stephen]

Botham is miles behind of alltime greats.Fazal Mahmood deserves to be in that list.

Added and swapped Botham to "wild card" entry.

 

[King Pietersen]

DK Lillee > Malcolm Marshall > Everyone else AFAIC.

Also, do SF Barnes and GA Lohmann really count as fast bowlers? Not taking anything away from their achievements, as I rate them highly, but they're not strictly fast bowlers as such.

 

[stephen]

DK Lillee > Malcolm Marshall > Everyone else AFAIC.

Also, do SF Barnes and GA Lohmann really count as fast bowlers? Not taking anything away from their achievements, as I rate them highly, but they're not strictly fast bowlers as such.

For the purposes of this, I am counting them as fast bowlers - their cricinfo profile calls them both medium-fast, which is good enough for me.

I know that they were probably more akin to cutter/spin bowlers, but they played in a very different era and so it's difficult to categorise them.

 

[stephen]

Added Steyn as a wild card. He surely has played enough tests now to be in consideration.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Based on this, Reid also should be excluded.

Alright, I might include Dev over Reid, but then include Reid, Bond and Akhtar as round 1 wild cards, unless people have a problem with that.

Reid,Bond,Akhtar,Dev all don't deserve to be in the poll.IMO,you should have a criteria.I would suggest:

A bowling average of 25 or less and atleast 3.5 wickets per match.

 

[Teja.]

An average of 25 is not bad but a good stamina& not being injury prone are one of the essentials of alltime greats.So, based on that,people like Akhtar & Bond are not alltime greats & hence should not be included in this battle.

The length of Akthar's Career is often grossly underestimated, If Akthar (46 tests) doesn't belong to the debate, neither does Bishop.

 

[stephen]

Reid,Bond,Akhtar,Dev all don't deserve to be in the poll.IMO,you should have a criteria,for instance,I would suggest:

A bowling average of 25 or less and atleast 3.5 wickets per match.

Unfortunately this would cut out some people who genuinely deserve to be there, such as Hall and Miller.

This is why I am taking nominations for wild card entries and have opened this thread up for discussion before I start the votes.

Kapil Dev is vastly underrated on this forum... His average was as high as it was because he bowled on Indian wickets for the majority of his career. He also took a lot of wickets. Sure, he'll probably be eliminated in round 1, but IMO he deserves to be there (a least as a wild card, which if I am missing anyone obvious I will move him to).

 

[BhupinderSingh]

DK Lillee > Malcolm Marshall > Everyone else AFAIC.

Also, do SF Barnes and GA Lohmann really count as fast bowlers? Not taking anything away from their achievements, as I rate them highly, but they're not strictly fast bowlers as such.

You are insulting Marshall & several other alltime greats by saying Dennis "Greentop Bully" Lillee is a better bowler than them.

 

[stephen]

Due to popular demand, I have moved Dev down to the wild card entries and Akhtar into the starting 32.

The only difference between the two is that the wild cards will be in a draw of 5 bowlers in round 1, where two will be eliminated instead of 1.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Unfortunately this would cut out some people who genuinely deserve to be there, such as Hall and Miller.

This is why I am taking nominations for wild card entries and have opened this thread up for discussion before I start the votes.

Kapil Dev is vastly underrated on this forum... His average was as high as it was because he bowled on Indian wickets for the majority of his career. He also took a lot of wickets. Sure, he'll probably be eliminated in round 1, but IMO he deserves to be there (a least as a wild card, which if I am missing anyone obvious I will move him to).

Pakistani wickets have been as flat,if not more, than Indian wickets & Imran,Wasim,Waqar & Fazal have as good bowling averages as any other alltime great.
If you have a good average bu low wkts/match & bowled less as compared to others,it shows you lack stamina & hence don't deserve to be amongst those greats who did much better than you in those respective departments.Miller & Hall were very good bowlers but they are not alltime greats.You can't say someone is an alltime great by just looking at their average.You need to go through other variables as well.

 

[vcs]

Akhtar doesn't belong in the debate because his career is tainted due to taking banned substances. Don't get me wrong, he could have been great anyway because of his talent, but I have very little tolerance for that kind of thing.

 

[stephen]

You are insulting Marshall & several other alltime greats by saying Dennis "Greentop Bully" Lillee is a better bowler than them.

This is what this game is supposed to be all about - save the heated discussions for the finals where Marshall and Lillee are duking it out mano a mano.

 

[cbuts]

Hadlee. Done.

 

[stephen]

Pakistani wickets have been as flat,if not more, than Indian wickets & Imran,Wasim,Waqar & Fazal have as good bowling averages as any other alltime great.
If you have a good average bu low wkts/match & bowled less as compared to others,it shows you lack stamina & hence don't deserve to be amongst those greats who did much better than you in those respective departments.Miller & Hall were very good bowlers but they are not alltime greats.You can't say someone is an alltime great by just looking at their average.You need to go through other variables as well.

If you think that this is the case, then vote them down in the rounds that they are in. The point of this is to collectively rank the fast bowlers, and to do that some people will get rankings higher than what you or I would personally place them.

It's a bit of fun and should be taken as such