Calm_profit
State Vice-Captain
If that's the metric, I believe Chandrasekhar is the most important player for India because he also won matches outside Asia when India was not fully developed cricket nation.
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The greatest cricketers from the subcontinent - how would you rank them?
- Thread starter subshakerz
- Start date
Slifer
International Captain
Chandra was before my time, which is why I used post Packer. But even then, India is a threat in any series outside Asia with the curious exception of NZ. Imo that's unprecedented in India's cricketing history.
How are batters supposed to do **** with the lack of support from their team (both batting and bowling)? Plus in Tests wickets > runs since you need wicket taking ability to actually win Tests while good batting can only at best give you draws/extremely conditional wins.
It's hardly weird to consider bowlers more important than batters.
Chrish
International Debutant
That’s exactly the point. Both discipline are equally important.
When people say bowlers are more important, they mean individuals. A whole team bats, typically only a few bowl. Murali picked up 38% of his teams wickets, and it's it's not uncommon for a bowler to get over 25%, which no bat has managed over a reasonable length career.
Prince EWS
Global Moderator
Yeah a single good bowler has more influence over his team than a single good batsman of equal skill IMO. It's not massive but it's true. Cricket isn't fair that way.
Chrish
International Debutant
My argument is in regard to bowlers being bigger match winners. Lanka wouldn’t have won that many games alone on a back of Murali’s performances if Sanga and Jaya weren’t piling up decent totals on a regular basis.
honestbharani
Whatever it takes!!!
The one thing about batting is that you can get better at it even if you are hopeless initially. Its not quite the same for bowling. Even in school and gully cricket where I have played, it always made a huge difference when we got a really good bowler into the side. An equally good batsman helps but not as much as the bowler.
Burgey
Request Your Custom Title Now!
Life isn't fair. Deal with it.
Prince EWS
Global Moderator
Haha I agree, I just think people sometimes assume cricket is fair to different roles in a way that it isn't.
Bowling as a whole isn't more important than batting but the nature of them is such that a single gun bowler will have more influence over the typical team's fortunes than an equally gun batsman.
Batting and bowling being such different beasts is part of what makes cricket great though, IMO.
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Slifer
International Captain
Two examples come to my mind on why this isn't true and bear with me.
WI played Australia at home in 1999 and at home again 2003 with two wildly different results. Wi drew the 1999 series and lost and should've been white washed in 2003. Lara essentially scored the same amount of runs in both series. As a matter of fact, the WI team on a whole scored more runs in 2003. Imo, the difference in results was down to one thing, the much much weaker WI bowling attack 2003.
Are great bowlers greater than their batting counterparts ? IMO that's a matter of opinion. It varies from individual to individual and team to team. For WI I'd rank our players thusly:
Sobers (obviously)
Marshall
Viv
Ambrose
Lara
Headley
Worrell
Etc.
Of course you need runs. But the fact that you are comparing 1 bowler to 2 bats gives a measure of impact. SL won a lot when one of those two didn't score much, but basically nothing if Murali wasnt taking a lot of wickets. Murali isn't exactly a typical example, but he took a higher proportion of wickets than both of them together scored runs. He's almost as high as Bradman + Jayawardene.
Victor Ian
International Coach
Anderson disagrees
duffer
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Climate change?
Not at all? Bowling is more important in Tests since taking 20 wickets is a must for winning Tests and to do that you need good bowling. Batting can only win you games if you get lucky with run chases, it won't save you all the time. Sorry but this is just ignoring how Tests work and what exactly made great Test teams win a lot of games.
subshakerz
Hall of Fame Member
Look how much difference Hadlee made in an average side. NZ in the 80s unbeaten at home and won series in Eng and Aus.
Marshall and McGrath would be easily averaging over 5 wickets a game if they played in minnows.
Migara
International Coach
Marshall or McGrath woul win more matches if they played for Bangladesh than Bradman or Tendulkar. FFS Tendulkar could not do a thing the way 1990s Indian team performed.