I don't want to name names but there's a certain poster here in this thread who shall remain unnamed whose first letter is "H" and whose last letter is "n" who has been saying that Imran outperformed Hadlee bowling-wise in NZ. As in kicked Hadlee's hiney. Stuff like "He was goodish in NZ(clearly outperformed Hadlee)", "Also Imran's average is good for NZ. He outperformed Hadlee by far in those tests.", "goodish in NZ(far better than Hadlee)", "outperformed someone like Richard Hadlee in NZ by far", "goodish in Ind, NZ (only 4 matches, but he outperformed Hadlee by a lot)", "Ditto Nz, where his stats aren’t as great, but where he outperformed Richard Hadlee by a significant margin." and "NZ, I took cause he severely outperformed Richard Hadlee in the same tests". I don't want to name and shame this fellow and try to embarrass him simply because he has made one or two (or seven, at last count) apparently outlandish statements. Instead of sinking this low, I thought I would look into the stats to see if there's any truth in these grotesque utterances. I went to ESPN Statsguru of which I am not a master as I principally reside in a quagmire, and this is what I found:
Hadlee (in common tests in NZ):
4 matches 6 innings 15 wickets 29.20 Ave Econ 2.56 SR 68.4 5WI 1
Imran (in common tests in NZ):
4 matches 7 innings 17 wickets 26.64 Ave Econ 2.11 SR 75.4 5WI 1
Imran's average is better by about 10%. Hadlee's SR is better by about 10%. Consequently, Imran's economy rate is better by about 20%.
Imran took two more wickets so has a better WPM of 4.25 cf. Hadlee's 3.75 but he had one more bowling innings so working out WPI instead, we have Hadlee at 2.50 and Imran at 2.43: very similar.
I thought a more comprehensive sleuthing routine was in order so I looked at the individual scoreboards:
1979 second test: PAK 360 & 234/3d, NZ 402
1979 third test: PAK 359 & 8/0, NZ 254 & 281/8d
(Imran did not play in the first test of the 1979 series but Hadlee performed very well in that test: 5/62 and 3/83; eight-ball overs were used in this test series which might have reduced SR a bit)
1989 second test: PAK 438/7d, NZ 447 & 186/8
1989 third test: PAK 616/5d, NZ 403 & 99/3
(the first test was abandoned without a ball being bowled)
Hadlee took 15 of the 35 PAK wickets to fall so 42.9% cf. test career % of 34.2%.
Imran took 17 of the 59 NZ wickets to fall so 28.8% cf. test career % of 26.8%.
Hadlee did about 50% "better" here but I'm not sure how much this really means. Maybe that NZ really needed another penetrative bowler to partner Hadlee as they found the Pakistani wickets hard to come by.
Now a breakdown of the wickets taken by batting order:
Hadlee: 1-6: 9 so 60%, 1-7: 10 so 67%
Imran: 1-6: 9 so 53%, 1-7: 11 so 65%
Hadlee took a slightly larger % of higher-order wickets but I don't think this means much.
Overall, I think their bowling stats are similar in quality: neither dominated the other. The sample size is small so it's hard to draw any definite conclusions. I have not taken TFGF into account though so that might tilt things towards Imran (TFGF = The Fred Goodall Factor).
P.S.: I've done some of this manually so it might be wise to check out some of my numbers for yourself.
