I actually agree with Bishop's inclusion. It's not about how much he ended up playing. It's that after his first back injury he just wasn't the same player. He was initially in a projectory to be the best great WI Pacer and certainly better than Ambrose. He could have been the best of them all, that's how special and quick he was.
agree that injury curtailed his career. but 43 tests is good enough to call it a full career and it lasted 10 years. less that 20/25 tests and under four years would be more apt for this list. for example, allan donald's career also ended with an injury. can we include him on this list? I am saying 150+ wickets is a lot. more than o'reilley's career haul. tiger is never included in these lists and he played less matches than headley!
I mean why not include Shane Bond as well as a guy who had a full career. He played 18 tests over 8 years, that's in the Headley ballpark(lets discount the ridiculous post war career for Headley)
Based on strike rate and average he is. But yes we all know that there's much more to effectiveness than just average and strike rate...
Bishop pre and post injury are night and day. And yeah he played 40+ tests but for most of those, he was no where near the bowler he used to be. So the stats he ended up with, are very good but don't imo accurately reflect the bowler most of us thinks/knows he should have been. Oh and Donald's injuries came mostly at the end of his career. We all saw the body of work that came b4. Bishop's injury came in the beginning, huge difference....
i would take bishop's career as a whole including his injuries - and treat that as what it is meant to be... how good akram would've been without his diabetes? we don't know... and we can't speculate... such reasonably long careers with or without the player's inherent strengths and weaknesses are to be taken as a whole... no point in trying to reimagine a different career arc when you already have a large enough sample size... 43 is still 16 tests more than sid barnes' and o'reilley's in bishop's case! it is an injury ridden career, but a whole career nevertheless
I never knew Bishop was expected to be that good.
Jermaine Lawson*
Frank Tyson, Brett Schutz.
Mark Cameron
Chop any ARs record into cherry picked timeframes of small enough sizes and they all qualify.
With his career ending injuries his numbers were very good. Without them , no doubt he would've done much better. Most who saw Bishop pre injury agree he was better than Ambrose. And he was. 43 might be long enough for a career but Bishop's numbers in those 43 tests donot accurately reflect what he most likely should have been. Don't believe me/us that's fine but ask any cricket pundit about pre injury Bishop, you'll get the same sentiment.
