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Debate thread for 2024 ranking of bowlers poll

smash84

The Tiger King
More wickets, better average, better economy, better strike rate etc.
Warne has a slightly better average but Murali is still in the same ballpark. I wouldn't say he is very clearly ahead.


 

Coronis

International Coach
Warne has a slightly better average but Murali is still in the same ballpark. I wouldn't say he is very clearly ahead.


You could say the same thing about Kumble. (and yes I’ve already looked at all the stats)
 

smash84

The Tiger King
You could say the same thing about Kumble. (and yes I’ve already looked at all the stats)
Exactly, for most of the 90s there was a bunch of good spinners going around. So Warne making one of the 5 cricketers of the century didn't make a lot of sense.
 

shortpitched713

International Captain
It does though. Keeping runs down can be important for a lot of reasons. It's the reverse of the "high strike rate batting has intrinsic value".

A player like Sehwag is more valuable than his average alone suggests because of the affect it has on the game. Field placings, bowlers, his batting partner, morale etc. A low ER bowler has intrinsic value for the opposite reason. You can keep tighter fields, gives you more freedom from the other end, pressure on the batsmen. The list goes on.

"High SR is better because you need to take wickets" is overly simplified
You're right. Low ER does have intrinsic value. But I don't think that's valid in the context of the conversation. It has more value for bowlers 4, 5.

In the poll this thread is supposed to be discussing we're talking almost exclusively about bowler 1, maybe 2 (with the odd West Indian 3). In those circumstances, I think low SR is basically always preferable to low ER.

The elephant in the room is of course, spinners vs seamers. There's probably an implicit gripe in the minds of most who would want to reflexively "balance" spinner vs seamer value that low SR supremacy unfairly dings those spinners.

On the one hand, my reaction is "I don't care", because I want to evaluate the best bowlers, regardless of style, not hand out some pity points. But on the other hand I do think seam vs spin wrt low SR value merits a deeper look.

I don't think that great spinners are immune to this implication. In fact I think, the very best ones were aware of this and made a concerted effort to have an attacking approach to give more value to their team. It's apparent fron the names that ended up at the very top among spinners. Murali, Warne, O'Reilly have 3 of the lowest SRs for spin bowlers in history (Grimmet the other low SR spin bro).

But still even these names ended up with an SR usually a tad higher than those of the great seamers, and especially so the great strike specialists among them (i.e. Marshall, Donald, Waqar, Steyn). There's no doubt in my mind that seamers like this are the highest leverage players in the game.

But spinners have a way to mitigate this with a tool unavailable to most seamers, and that is through sheer volume. A candidate spinner (i.e. low average) or any candidate bowler for that matter, can make up for a higher SR, just by bowling more overs, and leveraging their value that way. Stats like WPM, match 7fer/10fer frequency, can give us a good indication of how successful they were in that.

Ultimately that's up to us to decide to what extent those spinners were successful in leveraging their value compared to a seamer, but the basic nature of the calculation remains the same.

Actually, what you'd ultimately want from an ideal "maximum value" bowler, (one with an adequately low average) would be low SR AND high volume. The big 5 seamers + Murali all show out as the pinnacle of that sort of statistical measure, in various mixes. And conversely it might show us which of those with "pretty averages" might be a bit fraudulent, through mixture of relatively high SR and/or low workload impact (*cough* *cough* Keith Miller).
 

smash84

The Tiger King
I never said it did. Just that he was clearly ahead or Murali
How was he clearly ahead though? I did post their averages..it's not even a 2 run difference and that too because murali had the added disadvantage of bowling to an ATG Australia.
 

shortpitched713

International Captain
I didn't vote for bumrah, but he's not that far off at this point. He's already at 159 wickets, which is about what Ian bishop managed in his whole career, post injury phase included. He's clearly shown his effectiveness barely changes no matter which conditions he bowls in. Even if he falls off massively , he'll end up with 200+ wickets at a low 20s average.
Agreed on all counts, Bumrah's an absolute gun.

My current agenda is only as a single issue voter, which is "rent is too damn high" "Philander needs to get on this list asap"!
 

ma1978

International Debutant
I think Warne's selection by Wisden in 99 over any of Imran, Hadlee, or Marshall at that point, was a dead giveaway of the shortsightedly parochial (and hence ultimately invalid) nature of the voting.
Is it really? Not everyone approaches cricket with the singleminded focus on stats as people on this board does, and they’re not wrong.

Even by 1999, you could make an argument that there was no one like Warne, ever, in cricket history (yes yes O’Reilly but he didn’t have Warnes body of work or star power). Warne was a legend even then.

There are other Imran’s and Hadlees and Marshalls. But then, only one Warne.
 

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