I was talking about Philander in that post and why people seem so eager for him to come back to Earth.
Wasn't McGrath averaging about a billion after his first few tests or have I mixed him up with someone else? Anyway what I was trying to say was when McGrath first started gunning it I suspect there would have been a lot of "he doesn't bowl 150kph and swing it around corners? He'll come back to Earth!" from opposition fans on the net had we had a forum in those days. Bowlers are prone to being judged by how much they fit the fast bowler archetype early on rather than by how effective they are, and Philander and McGrath, in different ways except for the speed gun, don't really fit the mould. There would have been so many "just another tall fast medium bowler, will do ok but nothing special" posts about McGrath I reckon. Bit cynical of me, but there you go.
Except McGrath early in his career was considered rapid and had steepling bounce. You ask good batsman what they're most worried about - swing, seam or bounce - they'll all say bounce. McGrath with his whippy (some say illegal) high arm action and his height as a player meant he was always capable of extracting good bounce from fuller lengths. He was also capable of the 140kmh delivery for much of his career at a time where outside of Pakistan, not many players were hitting those speeds.
It took McGrath 15 tests to break under 30 as an average and about another 15 tests to get himself down to under 25 where he spent the rest of his career. He was a few years older than Southee on debut and more established as a first class cricketer at that stage (mostly due to how exceptional Australia was back then where you didn't hear of 18 year olds making their squad)
McGrath is heavily under-rated in my view and deserves to be thought of in the Marshall/Hadlee/Lillee discussions, as does Ambrose and Akram.
Southee is starting to show some performances over the last two years that are McGrath'esque in terms of amount of wickets and average per game - however, McGrath did that for a decade and got around 450 of his wickets while his average was 25 or less. Southee's first 13 tests weren't great at all, it's taken him to 31 tests to get his average to 30 and you'd imagine in the next couple of test series, he should probably bring that under 30
But interestingly, if you look at his last 18 games - he's averaged 25.31, taken his wickets at better than two per innings bowled at a world class strike rate of 51 (McGrath's career strike rate) - if he continues this line of progression, he'll easily be NZ's second best bowler ever.
Hadlee is out of this world in terms of wickets per innings though.
