Curtly Ambrose vs Dale Steyn

[Pap Finn Keighl]

Steyn ?

Ambrose - too low WPM for a top tier ATG.

 

[Shady Slim]

I doubt little, if any of it. Over time I've become convinced that the averages of your support bowlers don't matter so much if they're not bleeding runs all over the place.

nah this is wrong imho

ceteris paribus it’s easier to bowl to new batsmen than set batsmen so if the burden of dismissal falls entirely on you, unless you’re some wicked wango bowler who magically dismisses set batsmen with ease and then turns into a lemon when going at fresh meat, ceteris paribus it helps to have bowlers who take wickets on your team

 

[h_hurricane]

Interestingly, if you take out just India from Ambrose's career, his WPM improves significantly to 4.38, pretty much ATG territory. This brings up the point, what exactly in India's batting that made Ambrose irrelevant in those matches ? I see nearly nothing.

He was fairly new in 1988-89 and yet had only one poor innings in the whole series (0-84 in Barbados) .

1996-97,which I saw, he was routinely coming up with spells like 0-30 off 20 overs in matches that never really went the full distance. In one match though that mattered, in Barbados, he saw to it that we are creamed. Those unplayable deliveries against Ganguly and Azhar come to my mind.

Overall, he wasn't a success against India, but hardly a failure either. Nothing to suggest that it was a gaping hole in his resume. Tendulkar and Dravid played him reasonably well, but they didn't boss him.

WPM is the last reason to not call him a top tier ATG, especially since he didn't bowl much deliveries per match against some of the weaker teams of his era.

NZ - 33 overs per match
India - 27 overs per match
SL - 21 overs per match

He bowled 40 overs per match against Eng and saw to it that they are annihilated on numerous occasions.

Ambrose vs Steyn is close for me. I would rate Curtly a smidgeon ahead.

 

[Coronis]

While I agree that Steyn did well on tough pitches in his time, I think this point gets overdone considering that for over half his career he played at home on the best pace bowling pitches in the world. His away average is nearly 25, and many posters here penalized Imran Khan for having the same difference in home/away averages that Steyn does.

The places where it flattened the most compared a decade earlier in late 2000s were NZ, Eng and Australia and lo and behold, he averages notably higher in those countries.

It would only make sense to give Steyn extra credit for performing on flatter pitches if he actually could pull together the same kind of worldclass <25 figures despite the era, but he didn't.

Steyn definitely gets credit for his reverse swing mastery of the subcontinent though, where it has always been tough for outside pacers.

I’m sorry, but in what universe is Steyn’s H/A difference (21.62/24.91) the same as Imran’s (19.20/25.76)? Its literally half the difference….

 

[_00_deathscar]

Steyn is the best bowler I’ve seen. Eras people, eras.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I don't know the answer to the question, but I do know any argument using WPM as a serious measure is not one to be taken seriously

 

[OverratedSanity]

I don't know the answer to the question, but I do know any argument using WPM as a serious measure is not one to be taken seriously

Would you change your mind if you found out this is the exact reason Anderson wasn't actually that good in the recent Australia tour despite a good average ?

 

[Xix2565]

Don't get why WPM gets slagged more than SR.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Don't get why WPM gets slagged more than SR.

lol wut

SR is a very valuable measurement. It tells you how good a bowler was at getting wickets.

 

[Starfighter]

SR is a very valuable measurement. It tells you how good a bowler was at getting wickets.

It's very context dependent and has as much to do with the batsmen as the bowlers.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

There's surely nothing more context driven than WPM. You might get a wicket where Joe Root takes 6 for 9 and the seamers don't get a bowl.

 

[Starfighter]

Oh no doubt but I cringe when I see someone trying to claim bowler X from recent is better than bowler Y from decades ago because they have the better strike rate. The pace of batting has changed over the years.

 

[trundler]

My gut feel says Steyn because he stood out more in his era and was more penetrative for longer but there are a couple of things to note here:

Steyn has a vastly superior strike rate and hence WPM but he did play with 2 other blokes with comparable SRs (Philander and Rabada). Obviously Steyn is much better because he could go God mode anywhere on any pitch and that's a very, very rare claim but my point is friendly home pitches and a fast scoring era do widen the gulf here.

Similarly, Steyn's away average has to be non argument because he played on some of the roadiest tracks away. His average in England isn't pretty but I remember Anderson averaged about 46 and Broad 50+ in those games. Steyn had incredible performances just about everywhere which is more useful than picking up 3 wickets a match at a prettier average.

 

[a massive zebra]

There's surely nothing more context driven than WPM. You might get a wicket where Joe Root takes 6 for 9 and the seamers don't get a bowl.

WPM is context dependent but that is not a very good example. Something like Root taking 6 for 9 is a freak occurrence that might happen once in a career. As it's so rare, it has virtually no impact on the WPM of a seamer over a long career.

A much more important context related factor impacting WPM is the quality of bowlers you play with. There are only 20 wickets to go around per match, so bowlers in a great attack like Marshall, Holding, Garner, Roberts etc couldn't realistically end up with huge WPMs because there were competing for the 20 wickets with many other great bowlers. Conversely, great bowlers in moderate attacks like Hadlee and Murali will end up with higher WPMs because their colleagues aren't taking many.

 

[honestbharani]

Its hard to judge but my usual top 3 fast bowlers are Ambrose, Steyn and McGrath. Usually that order is fluid enoough to change depending on the day, but if I HAD to rank them, that is how I would. So going with Ambrose here.

 

[a massive zebra]

Its hard to judge but my usual top 3 fast bowlers are Ambrose, Steyn and McGrath. Usually that order is fluid enoough to change depending on the day, but if I HAD to rank them, that is how I would. So going with Ambrose here.

Did you forget Marshall?

 

[TheJediBrah]

It's very context dependent and has as much to do with the batsmen as the bowlers.

Everything is context dependent to some extent. SR nowhere near as much so as WPM. Sometimes people use WPM in a comparison because they have no idea what they're talking about, but more often they're searching for stats to support what they've already decided they want to be true (which as we all know, happens here all the time)

 

[Starfighter]

My gut feel says Steyn because he stood out more in his era

That shouldn't come into it. Everyone else being crap doesn't mean you're better in absolute terms.

SR nowhere near as much so as WPM.

You see I'd dispute that. Chuck Steyn in an era where batting was more defensive and I think his SR would go up.

 

[OverratedSanity]

A much more important context related factor impacting WPM is the quality of bowlers you play with. There are only 20 wickets to go around per match, so bowlers in a great attack like Marshall, Holding, Garner, Roberts etc couldn't realistically end up with huge WPMs because there were competing for the 20 wickets with many other great bowlers. Conversely, great bowlers in moderate attacks like Hadlee and Murali will end up with higher WPMs because their colleagues aren't taking many.

I think that's kind of why Steyn having a high WPM is great because he did have some good bowlers alongside him throughout his career unlike hadlee for example.

Marshall an even better example of this. Despite playing in a battery of ATG quicks, he was taking almost 6 WPM (!) at his peak. GOAT

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPNcricinfo.com

stats.espncricinfo.com

 

[OverratedSanity]

That shouldn't come into it. Everyone else being crap doesn't mean you're better in absolute terms.

This depends on why you think everyone else had crap numbers. Because they just sucked or bowling conditions were tougher.