Rank These 21st Century Pacers

[vcs]

Sehwag took him to the cleaners though.

 

[Teja.]

We all know if Anderson played for Sri Lanka or something he would be absolutely loved on here.

England play a ton of Tests again the best teams, home and away. Imagine if how good Anderson's record would be if he got to play an equal portion of his matches against Sri Lanka and West Indies and got to go home after a couple of Tests away to India and Australia like the New Zealand bowlers do.

I mean if you scale Anderson to play for Sri Lanka and correspondingly play less tests but have a similar career i.e. career as a pacer with high longevity while doing disproportionately better at home and allowing a couple of additional points of bowling average taking into account SL is not as friendly for pace bowling as England and add averaging 15+ runs more with the bat and being an OP ODI WC bowler to the package, you get Chaminda Vaas and Vaas is underrated/forgotten here more than anything.

To provide context, Vaas had even more longevity than Anderson and played for 16 years but could play 'only' 111 tests in that period and took 355 wickets @ 29 with a home/away split of 26/32.

I don't think your hypothetical holds up here tbh.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Yeah, I agree tbh. I consider Boult etc. 'greater' than him based on results but had no doubt that he was an elite quality bowler a few levels above when he was on the pitch based on watching him.

Akthar is an interesting case IMO because while he did play 46 games (178 wickets @ 25.9), he was nowhere near ready to control his abilities in his first few years of cricket which colour his stats negatively a tad bit.

In his first 13 tests which came between his debut in Nov 97 and the end of 1999, he took 34 wickets @ 40.4. He was mostly out on injury iirc for the next couple of years.

In the period between 2002-2007, for a long-ish period of 5-6 years, he was fairly consistently (for a guy who bowled 155 kph) on the park and played 30 tests for 132 wickets @ 21.9 which seperates him from the likes of Bond/Asif imo.

Shoaib was also reliably on the park at his absolute pomp for a decently lengthy two year period over the years 2002 and 2003 where he has historically absurd numbers: 72 wickets in 13 tests @ an average of 15.08 and SR of 30.4. A considerable portion of this was achieved on some incredibly flat batting friendly tracks which makes it even more remarkable. He didn't really discriminate depending on opposition either and if anything did even better against the best line-ups. He averaged 12 v. Australia and 16 v. SA against some extremely stacked batting line-ups for those sides in that period. It's up there with some of the most impressive fast bowling peaks in history and probably unparalleled considering the surfaces he was bowling on.

For that period in the mid-00s where he was both good and regularly playing test cricket, he was almost def. the consistently fastest bowler in history and somehow managed to have the best bouncer, slower ball and yorker in the world.

Even considering his entire career, despite playing 46 tests and having 178 wickets @ 25 along with a peak which blows away Thomsons etc. and being the best pacer of his 2002-2007 era after Mcgrath and ending up with a ATVG career, he has sort of unfairly been remembered by a lot of people as a flash in the pan what-could-have-been and grouped with others of a similar ilk due to the maverick dickhead personality halo he cultivated around him imo.

Shoaib padded his stats against hapless NZ tbf

 

[Line and Length]

Shoaib padded his stats against hapless NZ tbf

17 wickets @ 5.24 certainly boosted his stats but, as Teja points out, he had some impressive figures against Australia and South Africa when at his peak.

 

[trundler]

If you watch the highlights of the spells against NZ, you'd see that the 150+ swinging yorkers he was dishing up were basically unplayable.

 

[stephen]

The main thing in this thread is Anderson is never ranked any higher than 8th or 9th at best. Anyone who places him higher than that in this list suffers a cognitive deficit.

I always knew I probably overrated Anderson.

 

[stephen]

CW's collective ratings:

Steyn 4
Cummins 23
Bond 29
Anderson 34
Philander 47
Rabada 49
Wagner 51
Broad 53
Johnson 54
Starc 56
Boult 59
Morkel 63
Harris 65
Hazlewood 67
Shami 76
Roach 77
Bumrah 88
Siddle 91
Abbas 98
Hilfenhaus 99
Asif DNB

 

[harsh.ag]

Johnson missing from that list

 

[Daemon]

After debunking the Bond myth and proving definitively that Anderson is eh with the Kookaburra, it is now time to turn our attention to Ryan Harris.

Player Discrediting Checklist

1. Home/Away record - Pretty even, next.
2. Record against each opposition - Constantly beats up on a weak England. Averages 30 against India, WI and SA. Weak af.
3. Record in each country - Overly reliant on taking wickets with the Duke in cloudy English conditions.
4. Longevity check - 27 tests. Trash.
5. Season averages check - Lmao averaged 65 in 2015 which forced him into retirement.

Conclusion: Overrated

 

[stephen]

Johnson missing from that list

Fixed, he was 54.

 

[TheJediBrah]

After debunking the Bond myth and proving definitively that Anderson is eh with the Kookaburra, it is now time to turn our attention to Ryan Harris.

Player Discrediting Checklist

1. Home/Away record - Pretty even, next.
2. Record against each opposition - Constantly beats up on a weak England. Averages 30 against India, WI and SA. Weak af.
3. Record in each country - Overly reliant on taking wickets with the Duke in cloudy English conditions.
4. Longevity check - 27 tests. Trash.
5. Season averages check - Lmao averaged 65 in 2015 which forced him into retirement.

Conclusion: Overrated

and you were doing so well

 

[stephen]

After debunking the Bond myth and proving definitively that Anderson is eh with the Kookaburra, it is now time to turn our attention to Ryan Harris.

Player Discrediting Checklist

1. Home/Away record - Pretty even, next.
2. Record against each opposition - Constantly beats up on a weak England. Averages 30 against India, WI and SA. Weak af.
3. Record in each country - Overly reliant on taking wickets with the Duke in cloudy English conditions.
4. Longevity check - 27 tests. Trash.
5. Season averages check - Lmao averaged 65 in 2015 which forced him into retirement.

Conclusion: Overrated

Never feasted on a minnow.

Averaged under 15 in Asia as a quick.

Key bowler in a 5-0 whitewash against an England side that had pasted Australia 6 months earlier.

Made the best drunken PSA tweets.

GOAT.

 

[Prince EWS]

1. Dale Steyn
2. James Anderson
3. Vernon Philander
4. Pat Cummins
5. Mitchell Johnson
6. Mohammad Asif
7. Kagiso Rabada
8. Ryan Harris
9. Neil Wagner
10. Jasprit Bumrah
11. Stuart Broad
12. Shane Bond

 

[Burgey]

10 of the 12 posters who have voted place him above 8 with an average position of 4.3 - to say all have a "cognitive deficit" says more about you than it does about those who post here.

No, they have a cognitive deficit. It doesn't have to be the same cognitive deficit in all of them, but they all have one. Particularly when it comes to cricket.

 

[vcs]

Swap Broad and Asif about and that's about right.

 

[Teja.]

After debunking the Bond myth and proving definitively that Anderson is eh with the Kookaburra, it is now time to turn our attention to Ryan Harris.

Player Discrediting Checklist

1. Home/Away record - Pretty even, next.
2. Record against each opposition - Constantly beats up on a weak England. Averages 30 against India, WI and SA. Weak af.
3. Record in each country - Overly reliant on taking wickets with the Duke in cloudy English conditions.
4. Longevity check - 27 tests. Trash.
5. Season averages check - Lmao averaged 65 in 2015 which forced him into retirement.

Conclusion: Overrated

The obvious Ryan Harris critique is that he was on the verge of being dropped by SA in 2007 and only decided to git gud and crack the test team when he was around 30 in 09-10 even though he was playing FC cricket for a decade prior. That on top of the injuries restricting the tests he did play in that small 30-35 age window made the value he added pretty limited even though he was very high quality when he did play.

I’d rate a hypothetical pickyourname Australian pacer who cracked the test side at 24 and gave 10 years of service in rotation averaging 28 with the ball without as many injuries over Ryan Harris averaging 24 playing 27 tests in a 5 year period while being injured half the time. In terms of utility/value if not quality at least.

 

[Burgey]

No it isn't vcs. I know Cribb rates longevity very highly, which in this instance is his cognitive deficit (that and libertarianism, obviously), but Anderson does not belong above eight in this list. He's a one trick pony. Sure he does that trick well, but my dog does his one trick of licking his balls really well too. He's an incredibly limited bowler. Wouldn't have got out of first grade in Australia.

 

[trundler]

Yeah but the ball to Cook was fast bowling porn equivalent of Angela and Manuel

 

[ankitj]

Yeah, unlike Bond, Harris missed out on a long test career because he was not good enough for majority of his cricketing career to play tests.

 

[Prince EWS]

The obvious Ryan Harris critique is that he was on the verge of being dropped by SA in 2007 and only decided to git gud and crack the test team when he was around 30 in 09-10 even though he was playing FC cricket for a decade prior. That on top of the injuries restricting the tests he did play in that small 30-35 age window made the value he added pretty limited even though he was very high quality when he did play.

I’d rate a hypothetical pickyourname Australian pacer who cracked the test side at 24 and gave 10 years of service in rotation averaging 28 with the ball without as many injuries over Ryan Harris averaging 24 playing 27 tests in a 5 year period while being injured half the time. In terms of utility/value if not quality at least.

Yeah, it's not that he had a short career because the selectors were dumb or Australia had heaps of depth. If he had a normal length career his average would be significantly higher given the fact that he was bowling pies as a grade cricket allrounder for a decade or so.

Alternatively we could rate Ishant Sharma by a Ryan Harris-sized career and say he was awesome because if he was Australian he'd have just played grade cricket in Adelaide when he was a **** ****, and include him on the list with his average of 20 or whatever it has been lately.