Best Bowling Unit of All Time

[watson]

Here's some excellent stats on the great West Indian fast bowlers of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Blogs: Eight genial giants: a pictorial view across 28 years | Cricket Blogs | ESPN Cricinfo

For example: only on 30 occasions in 28 years did the WI field 4 of their great fast bowlers at the same time - and they weren't all that successful.

There are two surprises. The first is that West Indies played 4 pace bowlers, out of these 8, in only 30 of these during these 27 years. Of course they played other pace bowlers to come to four. The second surprise is that in tests in which West Indies had fielded 4 pace bowlers, out of the selected 8, their win percentage is below 50. This indicates that the best combination was three top pace bowlers and one bowler of different type, a spinner or even a medium pace swing bowler, to maintain balance.

Bowler combination Roberts/Holding/Garner/Croft Roberts/Holding/Garner/Marshall Holding/Garner/Croft/Marshall Holding/Garner/Marshall/Walsh Marshall/Walsh/Ambrose/Bishop Total

Matches 11 6 3 4 6 30

Wins 5 3 0 2 4 14

1. West Indian pace bowling saga of 28 years is comprised of two clear periods. The first one between 1974 and 1987 during which Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft held sway. Then the second period between 1988 and 2001 during which Walsh, Ambrose and Bishop held forte.
2. Ha!!! I can hear knives being sharpened. I can clearly see a mail saying that I have gone senile and missed, arguably, the greatest of all these bowlers, Marshall. No I have not forgotten the genial "giant". He is the connecting player across the two eras. Note the following.
- He is the only one to have straddled both periods almost completely.
- He has played with all the other 7 bowlers, at their peak. That is truly amazing. 14 years at the top, 376 wickets at 20.95, arguably, Marshall is the greatest amongst this collection of greats.
- He is the one bowler who defines clearly the West Indian pace supremacy. No wonder he is held in such high esteem.
3. Croft's career was a sub-set of Garner's career. Marshall's arrival hastened Croft's departure.
4. Roberts handed over the baton to Walsh.
5. Holding and Garner retired almost simultaneously and Ambrose took over from them.
6. Bishop had to retire quite early. Severe back injuries meant he had long breaks in his career twice. Just extend his career by another 5 years, at least until 2001, when Walsh retired. Think of the impact this would have had on West Indian cricket.

 

[watson]

Bedi, Chandra, Prasanna and Venkat - shame they only ever played together once

Here is a statistical comparison of the Indian quartet. I think that you'll enjoy it Fred,

Stats from the past: The era of India's spinners | Highlights | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo

The overall stats for three of those four spinners are pretty similar: Bedi led in terms of matches played, wickets taken and bowling averages, but Chandrasekhar and Prasanna weren't far behind. Venkat's stats suffered in comparison to the other three - he averaged less than three wickets per Test - but his career economy rate of 2.27 shows he was tough to score off.

Chandrasekhar's average was slightly higher than Bedi's, but his strike rate was easily the best among them all. At his best he was probably the most unplayable of them, and he was the only one among the four who averaged more than four wickets per Test. India didn't win too many overseas Tests during that time, but when they did, Chandrasekhar had a significant role to play in each: in five overseas wins he took six in an innings five times, and averaged 17.14.

 

[kyear2]

Marshall, Holding, Garner, Walsh then?

 

[Red]

As good as the WIs attacks were, the lack of a spinner means I cannot consider them the greatest.

 

[Jassy]

Depends on what you mean by 'best'. McGrath-Warne was better 'rounded' than the great WI attacks. Not sure if that makes them better or not. Imran+Wasim+Waqar+Qadir is a bit of a red herring. Imran was at the fag end of his career, as was Qadir I think. Waqar and Wasim were newbies (although admittedly very good).

 

[fredfertang]

As good as the WIs attacks were, the lack of a spinner means I cannot consider them the greatest.

This is true - for me its difficult to look beyond Harold Larwood, Bill Voce, Gubby Allen and Hedley Verity, backed up by Wally Hammond - and it was a top class Australian batting line up they put to the sword on the three occasions they played together

 

[Adders]

As good as the WIs attacks were, the lack of a spinner means I cannot consider them the greatest.

Whilst I agree a quality spinner gives an attack balance, it all comes down to winning test matches. I guess you've got to weigh up if Marshall, Holding, Garner, Walsh's win/loss ratio was better than McGrath, Warne, Dizzy and Lee for eg and then factor in the quality of opposition faced and the conditions they played on.

If you can win 100% of your matches without a spinner then you clearly don't need one and your attack is balanced just fine.

 

[Red]

Whilst I agree a quality spinner gives an attack balance, it all comes down to winning test matches. I guess you've got to weigh up if Marshall, Holding, Garner, Walsh's win/loss ratio was better than McGrath, Warne, Dizzy and Lee for eg and then factor in the quality of opposition faced and the conditions they played on.

If you can win 100% of your matches without a spinner then you clearly don't need one and your attack is balanced just fine.

Absolutely. I love watching good spinner though, so it's more a personal thing for me.

 

[Slifer]

...And to think that the WI had all those great fast bowlers and the arguably two of the greatest of all time (Sylvester Clarke and Wayne Daniel) for one reason or another are not prominently featured.

 

[BeeGee]

Whilst I agree a quality spinner gives an attack balance, it all comes down to winning test matches.

The problem I have with using matches won to rate bowling attacks is that you're now not only rating the bowling attack, you're also rating the batting lineup. You can have an awesome bowling performance and still lose a game.

 

[vic_orthdox]

My memory is that the McGrath, Gillespie, Kaspa and Warne attack was more effective than replacing Lee for Kaspa. Just that the Lee one looks ***ier.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

My memory is that the McGrath, Gillespie, Kaspa and Warne attack was more effective than replacing Lee for Kaspa. Just that the Lee one looks ***ier.

Stuart Clark was pretty useful with McGrath and Warne in 5-0 ashes as well

 

[viriya]

I was thinking of implementing something like this in cricrate.. The top batting/bowling line-ups of all-time based on current form.. didn't do it because it's debatable how many bowlers can be part of the line-up - minimum 2 maximum 5? if you fix it at 3 then it's unfair on line-ups with a great 4th/5th options, and vice versa. Still would be something interesting to add to this discussion so might do it eventually..

 

[watson]

The following study looks at successful bowling trios where each bowler contributes about equally, thus eliminating 'passengers';

Blogs: The best bowling trios in Test cricket | Cricket Blogs | ESPN Cricinfo

The most successful trio of all time is the one of Warne, McGrath and Lee, even if the other trio of Warne, McGrath and Gillespie gathered more wickets. Probably the next best bowling trio honour should be given to the current English trio of Anderson, Broad and Swann. I would rate Holding, Garner and Marshall next. Wasim, Waqar and Mushtaq would also be competing for these two places.

Incidently the WIN% of Warne-McGrath-Lee at home was a whopping 81.0%. Away from home it was 76.5%.

I'm not sure why Anderson-Broad-Swann get mentioned as a top 3 or 4 trio despite their WIN% at home being an excellent 66.7%. This is because their WIN% away from home is only 18.8%.

Incidently, the obvious flaw in using WIN% as a key criteria is that it also depends on the team's batsman to score competitive totals. Trios like Walsh-Ambrose-Bishop would be negatively impacted by the decline in the batting quality of their team.

 

[Adders]

My memory is that the McGrath, Gillespie, Kaspa and Warne attack was more effective than replacing Lee for Kaspa. Just that the Lee one looks ***ier.

I agree, it's easy to forget that Kaspa and Dizzy kept Lee out of the side for a long time because they were both so ****ing good.

 

[viriya]

The following study looks at successful bowling trios where each bowler contributes about equally, thus eliminating 'passengers';

Blogs: The best bowling trios in Test cricket | Cricket Blogs | ESPN Cricinfo

That guy does some interesting articles..

 

[Adders]

The problem I have with using matches won to rate bowling attacks is that you're now not only rating the bowling attack, you're also rating the batting lineup. You can have an awesome bowling performance and still lose a game.

That is very true, how would the best way be to rate an attack?? Combined averages and strike rates for the games they played together? That will not keep the anti spreadsheet guys happy.

I'm interested in this as the great West Indies attacks do seem to get marked down because of having no quality spinner and I don't think that's necessarily fair. If you can still blast a side out with pace on a turning wicket and a lack of a spinner doesn't stop you taking 20 wickets then it is not an issue.

Take Swann for eg, he was integral to the success England had over the last few years and gave our attack the balance it lacked previously. But in all seriousness, if he was born a West Indian in the 80's........which quick would you want to leave out to accommodate him for the sake of "balance"?? Only Warne or Murali would make their team and I can't accept that unless you've got one of those names on the team sheet you are excluded from consideration for the greatest bowling unit of all time.

 

[the big bambino]

I think Anantha is a bore and his arguments sometimes so convoluted as to be misleading.

BeeGee's comment about matches won is fair. I don't think even the WI pace men had a series as good as Hogg's 1st ashes yet we got well and truly snotted in that one.

 

[watson]

I think Anantha is a bore and his arguments sometimes so convoluted as to be misleading.

BeeGee's comment about matches won is fair. I don't think even the WI pace men had a series as good as Hogg's 1st ashes yet we got well and truly snotted in that one.

Hogg was a Loan Ranger in that series and carried the other 3 bowlers who were mere passengers. A really great bowling trio or quartet should have no obvious passengers - as Anand has indicated.

 

[Days of Grace]

I have downloaded the innings figures for all bowling combinations in test history and have been gradually measuring how good each combination was based on their career stats, and their team's bowling performance at that time (calculated based series performance, home/away and overall over a period of 5 years with a stronger emphasis on performances closer in time to the given series, if that makes sense).

Anyway, to cut it short, one of the best is the Garner/Holding/Croft/Roberts combo from Boxing Day 1981 (when Hughes scored his ton). They are 0.77 below the overall average of bowling combinations. I'll search for lower ones or you can give me some suggestions.


EDIT: The Lindwall/Johnston/Toshack/Johnson combo from Lord's in 1948 are 0.73 below the overall average.

I want to add that this is an innings-by-innings calculation that is also affected by the amount of overs each bowler bowls. Therefore, the above combination would be at its strongest if Lindwall or Toshack bowled the most overs than if Johnson had the heaviest workload.