Yeah, pretty ridiculous how a bowler who averages above fifty and had one good spell of bowling where he picked up a couple is better than a proven test bowler who won India her first test in SA and was looking like nabbing another win there. Also, His 5-fer in the game Sehwag scored 293 on a ridiculously fat pitch against a stellar batting line-up was for the gods.
I mean, I'm in no way trying to suggest that Sreesanth
isn't all the things people criticise him for. He seems to be a bit mentally unstable, his cricket is very erratic and his attitude to practice seems to be pretty poor as well. However, I think this cloud's people's judgement of his bowling a little - despite all the above, he does manage to take cheap wickets regularly enough to be a very useful bowler. He's neither consistent nor reliable but he
does get the job done often enough to be a Test bowler. He's taken 58 wickets in 17 Tests against top-eight Test teams at an average of less than 32; that puts him in a different league to the Sharmas and Prassads of the world, regarldess of whether his weaknesses seem more obvious and regardless of whether he reminds you of another bowler when he bowls (lol).
Regarding his inconistency, too, these are his series averages:
Code:
England in India 9 25.66
India in West Indies 10 33.50
India in South Afria 18 21.94
India in England 9 37.55
South Africa in India 4 68.50
Sri Lanka in India 8 30.00
He's had one shocker of a series and one pretty poor one - the rest of them have actually very pretty consistent, and his last series contained his best innings of bowling to date (which I incidently think was one of the best innings of bowling of the decade if you look at the context - if it was anyone other than Sree people would speak a lot more highly of it). He may seem inconsistent in his accuracy and his plans but he's consistent enough in his contribution from series to series.
World beater he isn't - yet - but he's a got a lot more to him than Sharma, Mithun, Prassad and various other bowlers that he's been compared to in this thread and despite what people say he actually does get results.
