Best match winners - batsmen and bowlers

[Uppercut]

Absolutely- or, in other words, there are no individual match-winners. Only match-winning teams.

 

[GIMH]

Not sure about that; I can't recall anyone saying anything remotely along the lines of "once you take 20 wickets you win".

Mind I've often wondered how many Tests there tend to be where all 40 wickets are taken. I never seem to notice very many such things. That's completely irrelevant, BTW, to the "take 20 wickets to win" question but it's just an observation.

Yeah, I know nobody says that. But the fact is that if you take twenty wickets you still have to knock the runs off to win.

I would agree that an individual bowler is probably more important to a team than an individual batsman in that you have more batsmen than bowlers, but in general as has been pointed out, neither the batting or bowling is more important than the other.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

At Headingley in 1981 England won the match but only took 19 wickets to Australia's 20.
Ian Botham was rightly given the Man of the Match Award for his batting as without it Willis's bowling would never have taken place.

 

[zaremba]

Well if bowlers are the only ones who win games, then they are the only ones to lose games.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

I think a lot of statements made here are personal perception and erroneous. Cricket is a funny old game.It consists of eleven players on each side.There are batsmen to score runs, bowlers who try to get them "out" and fielders who try to restrict the runs.IMPO there is no ONE element of these fundamentals contributing to a"match winning" formula. All these elements of the game MUST come together to result in a win. Cricket is a TEAM game and as such all fundamentals of the game produce wins.

Agreed. I think everyone knows what is meant by a match winning batsman without the need for some of the daft observations in this thread. If you want to be really pedantic you could say that bowlers cannot win matches. If both teams are bowled out for 0 in both innings there's nothing any bowler on either side can do to win the match.

 

[honestbharani]

Lol. Is that supposed to be logical?

It is as logical as saying bowlers are more important for winning matches than batsmen...

 

[honestbharani]

Not really. Saying "batsmen are useless" or similar would do so. By putting batsmen in their proper place you're in fact doing full justice to the game in general. In my book someone claiming batsmen are equals of bowlers is wrong, because yes, bowlers are that bit more important.

No they are not.. You CANNOT win if you do not score any runs and you CANNOT win if you do not take any wickets.. That is the end of that......

 

[Sir Alex]

I nominate Anil Kumble and Sachin Tendulkar fr india

 

[Perm]

I think the meaning of this question is more like " Who is the best batsman/bowler to regularly have a significant impact in winning the Test for their side? "

Obviously one player can't win the match on their own, and Jim Laker's 19 wickets back in the 50's would be about the closest thing to it. It takes your team members contributions to win a Test match and a sole player, be he batsman or bowler, can not do it by themselves.

 

[Son Of Coco]

I'd say Gilchrist was a match-winner with the bat. Could turn a match on its head within a short amount of time and put the opposition on the back foot. Could also turn something which looked headed for a draw into a win for his team out of seemingly nowhere.

Always remember NZ cruising in Perth some years ago after a big first innings total only to see Gilchrist stride out in the second innings and start smashing them everywhere. All of a sudden there's men on the fence and Australia were in with a sniff until Waugh gets run out in unfortunate circumstances and they shut up shop.

Someone who can smash a lot of runs in a short amount of time, thus giving the bowlers more time to do their stuff, is a match-winning batsman. Scoring 100 in even time in a test is the equivalent of taking 5 for not many in terms of putting your team on the front foot in a winning effort in my books.

 

[Richard]

No they are not.. You CANNOT win if you do not score any runs and you CANNOT win if you do not take any wickets.. That is the end of that......

Yes. However, scoring 0 runs is not a realistic possibility; not taking 20 wickets very much is. Once a single run is scored - which will happen in any game of four-innings cricket - then if the side batting last is bowled-out there will be a result.