Yeah, tbh he's pretty much taken it prior to this poll. Imran has lost handily to Steyn and also to Ambrose (if I recall correctly)
And let me say now, I don't think there's much between these two. But I'm biased so you know which way I'll vote when this poll happens....
Mhm its interesting how perceptions have changed.
Is it a coincidence that guys like Kallis and Donald are getting rated higher now by posters? Because fewer ppl saw or remember how they were rated when they actually played. Therefore surface reading of stats wins the day.
What other players do you think are overrated? We need to expose them all.
On this board?
Unfortunately there is no solid measurement on how much a bowler impacted a series win. But without digging much stuff Imran probably impacted on test/series win more than Donald.
Yeah I agree. Impact in a sense is harder to measure and requires going into game by game to see when a bowler delivered the good and how it affected the course of a match. For example, Donald's only fifer in SC was in a game where SL still managed a decent score and it was drawn. But he gets pretty figures.
He bowled well but Pollock had the match changing spell in the 1st test.
You do realise that you can have a huge impact on the game without taking wickets... there is a reason for calling things bowling partnerships. Its the same with a batter that scores a brilliant run a ball century... you can't then ignore the guy on the other end that rotates the strike and allows the freedom to play.
Really do wish McDonald stayed in Australia a while longer, might’ve helped us win the ‘26 Ashes at least.
Sure. But taking wickets is obviously more directly impactful than not doing so.
Only if the pressure you exert from the other end is not causing wickets to be lost to other bowlers. In effect you can have a test match where you bowled better than any other bowler made a difference to the game and had a meaningful impact but did not take wickets. Hence why we start looking at statistics over a number of games. Because that will not last. But isolating single games or series and saying somebody did not/or did have an impact purely because of wickets taken does not truly put into context the actual impact that player did or did not have.
This is pretty twisted logic though. It basically means we can never claim a bowler or bat actually impacted a game or series by just looking at a scorecard, doesn't matter if they take 12 wickets a game or score a double ton upon double ton. Instead, we are supposed to look at raw averages and assume impact without ever citing an instance when impact actually happened unless we actually watch it
