You are making the assumption here that the footmarks produced are more useful for short batsmen than tall. And there are a lot of players over 6 foot (most fast bowlers for a start). In any case, there is a lot of difference between 5 foot 4 and 5 foot 10 as well.
No, I am makiing the assumption that most batsmen fall in the under 6 foot category and therefore the length of the rough is roughly the same for all of them... pun unintended..
And presumably that the Australian fast bowlers placed the rough at exactly the right spot for these batsmen. I think we will have to disagree here. I think it more likely that Warne aimed at the rough than the rough was at the spot where he liked to land the ball.
Yes it is. But the difference in the length won't matter much if the rough is on a good length or just short of it. If the balls pitching on the rough are half volleys, there is less problems.
Now how does this make any connection with the rough? Warne and Murali bowled to similar batsmen (only difference is Warne bowled to shorter batsmen of SL, while Murali bowled to taller batsmen of AUS, but the other teams does not change).
Disagree. If Warne was bowling for SL, he wouldn't had much rough to work with. I've never seen Warne aiming for the distant rough spots created by shorter bowlers. He always aimed at ones created by his seamers (of course the difference blurs when Aus played ENG, SAF, NZ and WI, where there fast men also creates rough in similar lengths). But I've never seen Warne aim for rough created by Indians or Pakistanis (Lankan bowlers his day were more left armers).
But how would it help him when most of the rough would be outside the RH's leg stump and he's an offie? If he wanted to hit it a lot, you either know its a doosra, as nothing else is a threat, or if its an offie you let it go down leg (if you're RH) or a mile outside off (if you're LH).
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Now, Aussie line up of bowlers in Warne's time would never create useful rough for Murali. That is understandable. Murali was in a team where there were 2 - 3 left arm seamers were bowling, but because they were short never created useful rough. If Murali was in current AUS side where Bollinger and Johnson are frequent members he would have run havoc with the rough created by them, because they create it at suitable length for a spinner our side off of RHB.
It makes a huge difference. Length change of a foot means a lot to a spinner. Additionally 5' 10" Vaas will create less rough than a 6' 4" Johnson because of the difference of the weight.
It is annoyingly hard to find weights for players. I assume you have a references for player weights somewhere. Anyway, Murali spent much of his time bowling on pitches where there was no need for rough.
And Warne spent most of his time bowling at batsmen against whom there was no need of rough either...
Not at all... Warney was a genius in that he adapted his bowling style enough to do amazing things off the rough outside leg for RHBs...
There's a thing called BMI. (Body Mass Index). All sportsmen should main tain it somewhere between 20 - 24 to be fit. When you know two out of three of BMI, weight or height, missing parameter can be calculated very easily.
Nah, you can't rely on one of the parameters being a reference range in order to derive weights. The very fact that normal BMI is referenced as a range means that you could have people with their heights as much as three quarters of a foot apart falling within the same BMI category.
Of course it is. A BMI of 20 is the value for an individual of 45kg and 1.5m as well as 80kg and 2.0m. The point is that you will not find many sportsman where BMI is less than 20 or more than 24. At least in cricket. A median average BMI of 22 should work well for the comparison.
Nah, what you're doing is establishing BMI as a constant,so that it that implies that the other two variables (height and weight) enjoy a directly proportional relationship in all cases. And that's not a given at all. It's more likely to be so, yes, but not necessary. Its a range for a reason.
I'd think there were plenty of other factors that went into it too, like length of stride, vector of final delivery stride impact ( eg: greater vertical component in Zaheer's final jump vs lesser so in Wasim Akram's skiddy approach), pivoting off the front foot after delivery (none at all vs some pivoting vs deliberate pivoting to create the rough) etc etc.
Well, you can see it for yourself this season when England arrives. Johnson and Bollinger will create some rough for Swann and he'll be bowling in to it in the last two days. After seeing how Aussies handle it we could discuss what Murali would have done with such rough.
