Blaze said:
Hadlee seems to be very underrated on this board.
Hadlee is up there but in my opinion his performances on unfriendly tracks were rather mediocre. He seemed to care too much about his records and stats as if they were those dainty shoes and the world a puddle. I am a big fan of his though. He took care of Desmond Haynes with a delivery that stopped the clock.
When one begins to rate these bowlers one overlooks the fact that in their greatness they are all one, are possessed by the same demons and have the same quests. Personal preferences add colour to the truth as it were but do not mean much at least in the course of this paragraph. Roberts was as much a threat as Lillee. Imran as difficult a prospect as Marshall. They all proved their worth against the master batsmen and on dead tracks to boot.
What is more interesting is the lot of might have beens and also rans. One wonders what Sylvester Clarke might have achieved had cricket been his only besetting sin. And who can say Croft was a lesser man in comparison? And that silly lad Sarfraz Nawaz who could show the mighty LLoyd the way to the pavillion in a matter of two deliveries is another under achiever.
Does anyone remember Rodney Hogg? He hit Viv on the face once.. with the ball for the sake of clarification. Garth le Roux...there were so many of them but the world gives the prize to a select few and leaves the rest for that prime scavenger that goes by the name of History. And history is ever a sad case of fiction before facts.
The fast bowlers of the 90s had to contend with stupid rules and graveyard dirt. They could not see the sense in working as hard as Lillee or Imran. One day cricket has demeaned the game to such an extent that the real thing lives half forgotten.
In the days of the genuine pacemen Viv, Richie Richardson, Greg Chappel, Sunil Gavaskar, Vishwanath. Wasim Raja, Majid Khan. Sadiq Mohammad and so many others graced the stage. In the modern game batting has been reduced to a farce. Bowlers have no motivation left. The sponsors want runs. Ball running to the boundary and benson and hedges written in font size 1024 makes more sense than the game of chess between Gavaskar and Roberts.
