Best ever medium pacer?

[sledger]

Adding to my earlier post...



I think that there are five distinct categories of bowlers, if we are to go by my eye interpretations of carry and batsman reaction rather than release speed.

Medium: Chris Harris, Robin Singh, Brian Strang, Darren Maddy, Dimitri Mascharanas, me ()
Medium fast: Collingwood, Ian Harvey, Scott Styris
Medium fast II (fast medium in speed gun, but medium fast by all else): Irfan Pathan, James Hopes, Bracken etc
Fast medium: Mcgrath, Hadlee, Pollock, Waqar, Wasim
Fast: Lee, Steyn, Imran Khan, Lillee, Thompson, Holding

tbh having mascheranas below collingwood and styris in terms of speed isnt accurate.

 

[Manee]

tbh having mascheranas below collingwood and styris in terms of speed isnt accurate.

You are right on that one. However, I always got the impression that Mascharanas was a tad slower than the other two based on my criteria. He should probably be in that medium fast I category though.

 

[Richard]

Adding to my earlier post...

I think speed guns add deception to what can be classified as medium pace. Remember that the important speed is the one in which it reaches the batsman and how long it takes to do so. James Hopes, for example, is most certainly a medium pace bowler, regardless of clocking 130kph. Gilchrist can stand up to him comfortably and batsmen can always move their feet in time to play a shot easily. Irfan Pathan is another example, he has clocked 140kph since his comeback, but anyone who says that he is anything more than medium pace is kidding themselves. Dhoni can stand up easily and I can't remember the last time a batsman played him with anything less than plenty of time.

I think that there are five distinct categories of bowlers, if we are to go by my eye interpretations of carry and batsman reaction rather than release speed.

Medium: Chris Harris, Robin Singh, Brian Strang, Darren Maddy, me ()
Medium fast: Collingwood, Ian Harvey, Scott Styris, Dimitri Mascharanas
Medium fast II (fast medium in speed gun, but medium fast by all else): Irfan Pathan, James Hopes, Bracken etc
Fast medium: Mcgrath, Hadlee, Pollock, Waqar, Wasim
Fast: Lee, Steyn, Imran Khan, Lillee, Thompson, Holding

Nah. Medium, medium-fast, fast-medium and fast, to my mind, are defined purely and simply by what speed the delivery is, not by what speed it looks like to the faulty human eye.

The trouble is, as I say, all the best bowlers vary their pace, both deliberately and accidentally, and both on a long-term and short-term scale.

Really, definitions of pace should be left to individual delivery. No bowler should ever have a simplistic classification dumped on him, less still to then attempt to be compared to other bowlers who have had this classification likewise dumped. Best ever bowler of X pace is a pointless question, IMO, as I mentioned earlier. The only thing of note that can come out of this thread is the famous chris.hinton post, I'm afraid, for me.

 

[Manee]

Nah. Medium, medium-fast, fast-medium and fast, to my mind, are defined purely and simply by what speed the delivery is, not by what speed it looks like to the faulty human eye.

Carry to the keeper and how the batsman plays a bowler are also used as criteria.

Could someone explain to me the chris.hinton post, why is 'h' so infamous?

 

[Richard]

Carry to the keeper and how the batsman plays a bowler are also used as criteria.

Amount of pace lost (and, more importantly, not lost) off the pitch is indeed very important, and that too can be measured easily (the speed of the ball is tracked all the way down, and can now even be shown easily with HawkEye graphics). It's always been a source of great irritation to me that this isn't shown together with speed out of hand.

However, judging a bowler on how the batsman plays him is most misguiding. The batsman has no control over the bowler (unlike the other way around). Just because the batsman thinks a bowler looks less threatening doesn't alter the speed he's actually bowling at. Speed, of course, is nothing more than something which contributes to a bowler's armoury. This is why I think it's so ludicrous. It would be exactly the same to ask "best bowler between 6"4' and 6"2'?" This question displays in full the madness of what is being asked.

Could someone explain to me the chris.hinton post, why is 'h' so infamous?

Well... you don't know chris.hinton terribly well I suppose, but he's something of a legend for posts roughly on that scale. However, h truly outdid any of his other efforts (such as "Zimbabwe cricket - it's really e" and "Mr Myrik gets my goat") and as such is one of the most legendary posts in CW yore.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

As there's no set distance that a keeper has to stand behind the stumps and no two keepers stand exactly the same distance judging a bowler by "carry" is not reliable.

 

[Richard]

Carry to the keeper is indeed a potentially misguiding thing to attempt to judge.

Bounce, however, can of course be measured, whether as an angle or a straightforward height as the ball passes the batsman (which would obviously depend on using identical length deliveries to compare). Even that, though, depends massively on the pitch, and amount of bounce and speed out of the hand are not the same thing.

 

[neville cardus]

He played cricket outside of Pakistan too,didn't he?

Rhetorical questions really are annoying, aren't they?

It ought to be clear that I was responding to the part of your post which championed his claims on Pakistani wickets.

His test average is special when you consider he had to play on the flattest tracks of the world for most of his career.

Matting wickets are, essentially, flat by definition, but that does not mean that they make for easy run-scoring. Just ask the Saffas who met Barnes on them.

 

[luckyeddie]

I'm not going to dig back through the thread because I'm supposed to be working (if writing DD's blog is work as opposed to a labour of love), but the best medium-pacer I ever saw in English conditions was Tom Cartwright, who on his day was as near to unplayable as dammit is to swearing.

Now that might just be down to the fact that he played in the era of uncovered pitches.

 

[PhoenixFire]

Adding to my earlier post...



I think that there are five distinct categories of bowlers, if we are to go by my eye interpretations of carry and batsman reaction rather than release speed.

Medium: Chris Harris, Robin Singh, Brian Strang, Darren Maddy, me ()
Medium fast: Collingwood, Ian Harvey, Scott Styris, Dimitri Mascharanas
Medium fast II (fast medium in speed gun, but medium fast by all else): Irfan Pathan, James Hopes, Bracken etc
Fast medium: Mcgrath, Hadlee, Pollock, Waqar, Wasim
Fast: Lee, Steyn, Imran Khan, Lillee, Thompson, Holding

Waqar was definitely faster than McGrath, Pollock, Wasim, Steyn and Lillee IMO.

 

[Manee]

Waqar was definitely faster than McGrath, Pollock, Wasim, Steyn and Lillee IMO.

Probably another error by me, he was probably much quicker in his early career than 1997 onwards, when I saw him bowl. But the categories were just examples.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Adding to my earlier post...



I think that there are five distinct categories of bowlers, if we are to go by my eye interpretations of carry and batsman reaction rather than release speed.

Medium: Chris Harris, Robin Singh, Brian Strang, Darren Maddy, me ()
Medium fast: Collingwood, Ian Harvey, Scott Styris, Dimitri Mascharanas
Medium fast II (fast medium in speed gun, but medium fast by all else): Irfan Pathan, James Hopes, Bracken etc
Fast medium: Mcgrath, Hadlee, Pollock, Waqar, Wasim
Fast: Lee, Steyn, Imran Khan, Lillee, Thompson, Holding

Waqar and Wasim were genuine fast bowlers.

 

[Goughy]

Waqar and Wasim were genuine fast bowlers.

Yeah, agree.

Though personally Id have an additional 'express' category for the likes of Shoaib, Thomson, Pat Pat, Tyson and Lee

 

[BhupinderSingh]

Yeah, agree.

Though personally Id have an additional 'express' category for the likes of Shoaib, Thomson, Pat Pat, Tyson and Lee

Imran Khan deserves to be in that express category too.

 

[Goughy]

Imran Khan deserves to be in that express category too.

As much as I know you like Imran, he wasnt up there in terms of pace as the fastest.

 

[BhupinderSingh]

As much as I know you like Imran, he wasnt up there in terms of pace as the fastest.

Wasn't he the 2nd fastest when world's fastest bowlers were called to bowl an over each?He was definitely quicker than 2 Ws & prior to Shoaib,he was the quickest bowler ever produced by Pakistan.

 

[Goughy]

Wasn't he the 2nd fastest when world's fastest bowlers were called to bowl an over each?

3rd IIRC, and that comp showed little apart from how much quicker Thomson was than the rest.

 

[thierry henry]

I think Wasim and Waqar were both 140s bowlers at best....and for a long time both bowled in the 130s, with Waqar being less effective, but Wasim just as effective as ever

btw, Mascarenhas most definitely is a LOT slower than Styris and Collingwood. I've had to re-evaluate my opinion of my own pace after seeing Mascarenhas bowl live...if that's 115kph then I must at least be bowling at near that pace.

 

[Richard]

Dimitri > you Martin.

 

[thierry henry]

hey...i'm also accurate, with a decent slower ball....