How in the world is Akthar ranked 8th best in the world????

[honestbharani]

your comparins akthar so marshall ?

maybe in peak form i would have akthar maybe 3rd or 4th on that list, disregarding all outside factors maximum 2nd or 3rd.

but on recent form, attitude, fitness i wouldn't have him anywhere near those blokes. but then india have a great battery of pacemen at the moment so it could sound/look a bit worse than it is

great is a step too far.. great potential yes.. but let us wait till they chalk up some performances..

 

[weldone]

Oops, I saw in this thread it's being argued that all Indian bowlers are better than Shoaib. The argument has no merit even if it's based on only form (and not entire career), because where is any proof of Shoaib being out of form?...And in case the argument is based on their entire careers then come on, I am an Indian fan too. And I am almost certain that Shoaib is a better bowler than any Indian bowler produced in the last 30 years barring Kapil Dev...Yes, Ishaant Sharma has potentials. But let him perform at the highest level for some years and let him take a handful of wickets in test cricket before even comparing him to Shoaib.

 

[Xuhaib]

Oops, I saw in this thread it's being argued that all Indian bowlers are better than Shoaib. The argument has no merit even if it's based on only form (and not entire career), because where is any proof of Shoaib being out of form?...And in case the argument is based on their entire careers then come on, I am an Indian fan too. And I am almost certain that Shoaib is a better bowler than any Indian bowler produced in the last 30 years barring Kapil Dev...Yes, Ishaant Sharma has potentials. But let him perform at the highest level for some years and let him take a handful of wickets in test cricket before even comparing him to Shoaib.

Agreed entirely.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

http://www.iccreliancerankings.com/

Bull ****.

Akthar is ranked presently 8th in the list of bowlers.

And to make it even sound ridiculous, he was ranked 9th in the last week.

Which means his rankings pushed up without him playing a single match in the entire year??

And here are the stats of his since 1-Jan-2004

60 wickets from 17 matches @ 30.18!! (Not one year, but a full 5 years!!!)

That puts him as the 20th best bowler (in terms of bowling average) for bowlers with 50+ wickets since 2004!!!

And last two years, he's taken just 13 wickets.

Is the ranking rewarding players for not playing????

Isn't it time ICC rankings were completely overhauled to avoid these types of anomalies??

Or am I missing something???

The wonders of statzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Rant0r]

I'm really not sure which Shoaib Akhtar you've been watching all career but he swings the ball every bit as much as Waqar Younis under comparable circumstances.

If Shoaib had been a bowler who depended entirely on pace and whose control of swing was poor then he'd just have been the sort of bowler Brett Lee was between 2001 and 2005 - ie, pretty useless.

lee swings the ball a fair bit, i don't feel that shoaib swings it much at all apart from the odd one.

great is a step too far.. great potential yes.. but let us wait till they chalk up some performances..

even on potential i'd take them over him, the guy's an idiot, in fact on raw potential i'd probably take asif over him, but there's an element of idiot factor there as well

 

[Chimpdaddy]

I'm really not sure which Shoaib Akhtar you've been watching all career but he swings the ball every bit as much as Waqar Younis under comparable circumstances.

If Shoaib had been a bowler who depended entirely on pace and whose control of swing was poor then he'd just have been the sort of bowler Brett Lee was between 2001 and 2005 - ie, pretty useless.

Shoaib has two balls, the yorker and the bouncer at raw pace. That is it. You'll never get him to bowl a 5 - 6 ball over of line and length when the ball is not swinging. So pretty much useless in tests. That, plus all the controversy surrounding him, he would not even come in my top 30 fast bowlers.

-Chimpdaddy-

 

[Rant0r]

you're even being pretty generous to him there

 

[Richard]

Shoaib has two balls, the yorker and the bouncer at raw pace. That is it. You'll never get him to bowl a 5 - 6 ball over of line and length when the ball is not swinging. So pretty much useless in tests. That, plus all the controversy surrounding him, he would not even come in my top 30 fast bowlers.

I don't really see how the controversy surrounding him has anything to do with his achievements as a bowler. As a cricketer, all the ridiculous sagas he's gone through undoubtedly do taint him, considerably, but as a bowler, he should be judged on the calibre of his bowling, nothing else.

Shoaib is indeed not much good at bowling long spells of line and length. But nor was Waqar Younis. When you can bowl as deadlily as those two very often did, you don't really need to be able to bowl long spells of line and length. New- and old-ball swing at 95mph with a good Yorker will get you lots of wickets, very quickly, very often.

Shoaib and Waqar were short-spell bowlers - strike bowlers. It was the responsibility of others to bowl long spells as stock bowlers.

The only area Shoaib fell down as a bowler was his inability to stay fit. If he could've stayed fit more often, he'd have been one of the best, there's no doubt about that. However, one could argue that bowling the way he bowled he had very small chance of staying fit. Bond and Flintoff in the same boat.

 

[Richard]

lee swings the ball a fair bit, i don't feel that shoaib swings it much at all apart from the odd one.

Yet Shoaib for most of his career was an infinitely better Test bowler than Lee was for most of his. That suggests that Shoaib's powers of swing were better than Lee's: even if Lee did swing it more, Shoaib made much better use of whatever swing he got.

 

[Xuhaib]

yeah i'm gonna have to agree to disagree with you, shoaib doesn't know the meaning of working hard, he'll fake a hammy at the first sight of trouble.

and in my opinion sharma > zaheer > rpsingh > sreesanth > pathan > munaf > shoaib

is this the worst cricket chat post of all time?

 

[GIMH]

Harry Harrison would have something to say about that

 

[Richard]

And SW\BLE (who this Harry Harrison clown resembles so much) as well.

 

[susudear]

Bet

That, plus all the controversy surrounding him, he would not even come in my top 30 fast bowlers.

Guess Dennis Lillee also won't be sleeping tonight for failing to make it to your list.

 

[HMas]

Shoaib has two balls, the yorker and the bouncer at raw pace. That is it. You'll never get him to bowl a 5 - 6 ball over of line and length when the ball is not swinging. So pretty much useless in tests. That, plus all the controversy surrounding him, he would not even come in my top 30 fast bowlers.

-Chimpdaddy-

You havent seen Akhtar bowling much then. He is a complete fast bowler.2005 series against Eng showed why he is the best fast bowler when completely fit.