Three horse race to be the best team in the world?

[Blaze 18]

Going on how Swanny has bowled the last couple of years and how Bhaji has bowled you'd have to say Swann has been the better bowler and to say Swann never really troubled Australia is being a bit dishonest, since he bowled England to victory in one test and lets be honest when your seamers are that on top, his role changes to suit the conditions and situation which he did very well. As well as in the Ashes in 2009 where he helped to bowl England to victory in 2 of the tests. It's also funny that you don't count his 21 wickets in SA, a success.
Bhaji, by his own standards, has been disappointing for some time, up until the SA series where he bowled very well. I don't know many people, that would say he's vastly superior to Bhaji, but just on their performances over that last couple of years, Swann has bowled a lot better, that's not saying Bhaji can't come back and make it close between the 2 of them.

Great post.

 

[juro]

Wow, just imagine how good the English team would be if they were allowed to pick players from other countries...

 

[tooextracool]

They have some very exciting spin bowling prospects in Mendis, Randiv and Herath.

No. SL might have a strong batting lineup, but I'd have more faith in my girlfriend's cooking than any of those above mentioned bowlers.

 

[Dissector]

Not that it's close overall on current bowling form, Swanneh certainly ahead and the best.

Swann is seriously overrated here on the basis of performances against a weak Pakistan batting lineup. Against Australia,SA and India he averages around 37. He is certainly not far ahead of Harbhajan who performed better than Swann did in SA despite having much less support from the other end. If you look at the two games with Zaheer, he performed much better.

 

[Spark]

Again, it's disingenuous to Swann to suggest that he bowled poorly here. Aside from Brisbane where he bowled a truckload of overs for an even bigger truckload of runs for not many wickets, he bowled extremely well. I mean 22 overs for 23 ffs.

 

[Dissector]

He bowled well enough but so did Bhajji in South Africa. I would rate them roughly the same but the consensus opinion here seems to be that Swann is a lot better I just don't see the evidence. You can argue that a player's figures don't reflect his bowling in one series but over 2-3 years these things even out and Swann's record against top sides just isn't that impressive.

Anyway I am a lot more worried about England's pace attack than Swann.

 

[Spark]

Depends, really. On home pitches Swann has bowled some staggering deliveries.

Even at Adelaide, it took some exceptional batting and a massive amount of luck to stop Swann running through us like a knife late on Day 4

 

[Howe_zat]

He bowled well enough but so did Bhajji in South Africa. I would rate them roughly the same but the consensus opinion here seems to be that Swann is a lot better I just don't see the evidence. You can argue that a player's figures don't reflect his bowling in one series but over 2-3 years these things even out and Swann's record against top sides just isn't that impressive.

Anyway I am a lot more worried about England's pace attack than Swann.

Over the last 2 and a half years, Harbhajan averages 39.3 and Swann averages 27.9. That's a huge difference and even taking into account lower pitches, there clearly hasn't been an even performance over that time.

Swann obviously has a better record against less top batsmen - I'm struggling to see how this is a criticism. If Swann's figures accurately reflect the batsman he is bowling to, surely that speaks volumes about his consistency?

It's not as though he only gets out rabbits - his career list of dismissals includes Ghambir, Dravid, Ponting, Gayle, Amla, De Villiers, all on multiple occasions.

Swann has had two decent-to-good series against Australia and was MOTS in South Africa. He has consistently taken wickets and has five-fors against every opponent in the time frame I mentioned.

Harbhajan is a good international bowler, has just had a very good series, and still and may yet have a resurgence in the near future, but the argument that he and Swann have performed to a similar level recently just isn't true.

 

[Howe_zat]

Depends, really. On home pitches Swann has bowled some staggering deliveries.

Even at Adelaide, it took some exceptional batting and a massive amount of luck to stop Swann running through us like a knife late on Day 4

It'd take a far better batsman than Imran Farhat to keep that out.

 

[Dissector]

Over the last two years Harbhajan averages 30.5 against South Africa and Australia with 36 wickets from 7 tests.

Over that period Swann averages 36.5 against those two sides with 50 wickets from 14 games. So not only does he average more he takes far fewer wickets per test.

Swann has performed very well against a Pakistani side in complete disarray and against West Indies and Bangladesh. Despite a few decent performances against top sides his overall record against them remains very average and quite a bit worse than Bhajji's.

I guess it depends on how much weight you put on performances against BD, West Indies and Pakistan. When it comes to judging the no.1 side I wouldn't put too much weight on them at all.

If Swann is such a top class bowler he needs to at least average below 30 in a series against a good batting side, something he has yet to do in his career.

 

[Teja.]

There is no doubt in my mind that Swann is the better bowler based on current performances than Harby. However, Shakib is extremely underrated in this conversation. Now It's not that I don't rate Swann murdering Pakistan, I just rate it with some context. It must be remembered that while Swann and Harby had similar series against SA in SA, Shakib averaged about 10 runs lower than either. He also has bowled very well to get awesome rewards against India including a 5-fer.(For a spinner to take 9 in 2 @ 32 against India on tracks which did not assist spin at all is no mean feat)

Now, Swann certainly has the best case for being the best spinner in the world, I think he is too, but pretending there is some sort of daylight between Shakib and Swann due to Swann having that one series which makes him statistically some 3-4 runs better is just not on, IMHO.

 

[vcs]

Swann had an excellent 2010, Harbhajan had a forgettable one (despite his batting exploits), apart from that I'd say they're pretty even. Obviously Harbhajan has been performing at about Swann's level for a good part of his career, save for a season here or there.

 

[Howe_zat]

Over the last two years Harbhajan averages 30.5 against South Africa and Australia with 36 wickets from 7 tests.

Over that period Swann averages 36.5 against those two sides with 50 wickets from 14 games. So not only does he average more he takes far fewer wickets per test.

Swann has performed very well against a Pakistani side in complete disarray and against West Indies and Bangladesh. Despite a few decent performances against top sides his overall record against them remains very average and quite a bit worse than Bhajji's.

I guess it depends on how much weight you put on performances against BD, West Indies and Pakistan. When it comes to judging the no.1 side I wouldn't put too much weight on them at all.

If Swann is such a top class bowler he needs to at least average below 30 in a series against a good batting side, something he has yet to do in his career.

Why are bowling figures that accurately measure the opposition a criticism? If Swann had failed against any of these teams it would be a good argument but he hasn't, he has been either good (vs Australia), very good (vs South Africa) or torn them a new one (vs Pakistan).

Yes Harbhajjan had a few very good series like the one in SA but has repeatedly failed in that time. This year, he averaged 105 vs New Zealand and 152 vs Sri Lanka. These are awful figures and also something Swann has yet to do in his career.

 

[vcs]

Why are bowling figures that accurately measure the opposition a criticism? If Swann had failed against any of these teams it would be a good argument but he hasn't, he has been either good (vs Australia), very good (vs South Africa) or torn them a new one (vs Pakistan).

Yes Harbhajjan had a few very good series like the one in SA but has repeatedly failed in that time. This year, he averaged 105 vs New Zealand and 152 vs Sri Lanka. These are awful figures and also something Swann has yet to do in his career.

42 vs. NZ TBH. Still awful, though there were a couple of roads. Anyway, his batting made up for it in that series.

 

[Teja.]

Swann had an excellent 2010, Harbhajan had a forgettable one (despite his batting exploits), apart from that I'd say they're pretty even. Obviously Harbhajan has been performing at about Swann's level for a good part of his career, save for a season here or there.

Yep, this.

 

[Teja.]

42 vs. NZ TBH. Still awful, though there were a couple of roads. Anyway, his batting made up for it in that series.

Nah, as long as the pitches are roads, averaging 40 these days is good it seems.

 

[Howe_zat]

42 vs. NZ TBH. Still awful, though there were a couple of roads. Anyway, his batting made up for it in that series.

Haha, 105 was his batting average. Okay, fine but still a poor-to-okay series with the ball. And that 152 is an absolute shocker.

 

[Howe_zat]

Nah, as long as the pitches are roads, averaging 40 these days is good it seems.

Unless you're not an Indian, because when Swann averaged less than 40 on roads in Australia, where off-spinners go to die (517-1, anyone) apparantly it wasn't good enough.

 

[vcs]

Haha, 105 was his batting average. Okay, fine but still a poor series with the ball. And that 152 is an absolute shocker.

Yeah, it beggars belief how we drew that series with the bowling "attack" we had available.

 

[vcs]

Unless you're not an Indian, because when Swann averaged less than 40 on roads in Australia, where off-spinners go to die (517-1, anyone) apparantly it wasn't good enough.

It also has to be said that Swann had a battery of pacers in his team putting up fabulous figures and giving him the opportunity to bowl at the middle-order, rather than coming in at 120/0 or thereabouts, like Hayden and Langer used to put up on a regular basis. Still you have to give him a lot of credit for helping to build that pressure and bowling England to victory at Adelaide.