Yeah you could be right, but I'd be more convinced had he not bowled similarly superhuman spells in each of his previous two games (one of which, the spell to Colly, was on a similarly lifeless pitch). I think he really is just insanely good at the moment. It's just a matter of how long he can keep it up.
In an attack as a whole yes, however IMO in an ODI side there's always room for a strike bowler like Waqar who might occasionally leak runs but who is also capable of destroying a batting line up.
How much of that is to do with captains setting their spinners utterly crap fields though?
Of course it is. But such spells are, by nature, rare in ODIs. It's much easier to produce the sort of spell that will return something like 7-10-1 than the sort that will return something like 7-37-4.
I'd agree that they do it too often but if the bowler in question is a standard fingerspinner and the pitch is one with decent pace and bounce and no real turn then the batsman can easily use his feet and take the attack to said spinner if the field's up. Standard fingerspinners don't have the repetoire to contain to either deep-set or close-set fields.
That last sentence is really what worries me, the last thing I want is him becoming blown out by an injury that would result in drastic changes in action etc and him losing his effectiveness.
I'm not questioning your logic, just stating that IMO, if you've got a good economical attack, you can afford one loose cannon.
I watched the game and i personally feel that, given the conditions of the pitch and the good form of Indian batsmen he probably did bowl the spell of his life ....to get the ball move of the pitch the way he did simply sets the bar very high for all the bowlers who cry about dead pitches in subcontinent...Steyn pretty much showed that their is always something in the pitch for the fast bowlers....Its almost like, the subcontinental bowlers give up before even the game starts after hearing its a "flat track".....Even the balls that Sehwag smacked to cover region were only flawed in their length, they were still moving and had a good line....
In terms of you're probably going to manage to keep your oppo to a manageable total, yeah - because the chances are your attack is better than theirs.
No, ODIs are contrived as you well know. I enjoy them greatly sometimes, but in small doses.huh: Accurate bowling is contrived?
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Saqlain is widely believed to have suffered ODI burnout, killing his flight and guile.
I don't think ODIs are neccessarily contrived, any more than any cricket is, TBH. I also enjoy them in smaller doses than Tests, but a ODI is always preferable to, for instance, watching the grass grow or being subjected to racing from Ascot.
Gayle is a more talented bowler than I think some give him credit for. Collingwood and Yuvraj Singh have hardly had sustained success in ODIs really have they?
Oh I certainly don't and never have found good ODI cricket to be more interesting than good Test cricket. No siree. Just pointing-out that both are eminently watchable.
And yet... that flight and guile was much of what made him so good at ODI bowling for a fair while.
Yeah but anything beats horse racing to be fair.
Collingwood has over 100 wickets, Tendulka has over 150, Jaysuirya who despite his accuracy was never an all-rounder in tests has over 300. It kind of devalues it all a bit.
I always though ODIs and the style he adopted fo them distracted him from being a world class test bowler. IMO
OP owned.
Why can't I read any threads in CC any longer without losing huge numbers of brain cells?
Jeez you get some amateur psychologists around here.
It does - that's the only point I was making.
Numbers of wickets are fairly irrelevant; those are a consequence of having played lots of games rather than having actually bowled well. The career figures of the likes of Collingwood and Tendulkar are very poor indeed; Jayasuriya is essentially an all-rounder in ODIs in that he's always been perfectly capable of bowling 10 overs when needed. He played the first 5-6 years of his ODI career as a bowling-all-rounder, indeed.
Saqlain? Nah, was never going to be a World-class Test bowler IMO, he's a fingerspinner, and fingerspinners just cannot be that any more because fingerspinners need favourable conditions to be effective and such conditions are not widespread enough any more for fingerspinners to achieve sustained success.
Said it before and I'll say it again and again (was actually perusing his record just the other day, searching for some clue of his apparent downfall) but Saqlain never really had a "downfall". I mean, his downfall was basically from most effective ODI spinner ever to good ODI spinner (for about 20-odd games), while his test downfall was, ermmmm, one game.
I don't have a massive belief in finger-spinners myself, I am actually waiting with dread for Swann to be found out and his honeymoon to be over, but I don't like to write off an entire bowling style in one swoop either.