NZ's 2nd greatest test bowler.

[Lillian Thomson]

Just add Danny Morrison to the poll, then we can all go to bed.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Just add Danny Morrison to the poll, then we can all go to bed.

It won't let me edit it.

 

[Bolo.]

I don't hold Anderson's probably too early start against him at all. I'm far more critical of mid-career Anderson. Harris is the better bowler because he was noticeably the better bowler when they were contemporaries.

Likewise I don't rate Voges above various players because it is obvious his absolute quality was less than his statistics. It's a dubious comparison because I think we both know who wins very quickly if Bond bowls to Adam Voges.

I don't think Tim Southee himself would argue if Shane Bond were selected for a test match ahead of him. Southee is a fantastic bowler and his service has been so valuable, but Bond is the better bowler. When we're digging up the corpses for the ATG World Test Championship in year 2284, teams are going to pick the better bowlers for the test match that day, not pick based on who played the most games.

Did you ever watch Brett Shultz play? He was consistently pitching it up and made me genuinely afraid for the safety of the bats. Like he was going to break not just toes, Waqar style, but legs or something. Horrific levels of pace and late movement. His test average is 20. He played 9 tests. Care to extend this theory to him?

Like everyone else here, I dont rate him, except as a 'what could have been'.

 

[Flem274*]

Did you ever watch Brett Shultz play? He was consistently pitching it up and made me genuinely afraid for the safety of the bats. Like he was going to break not just toes, Waqar style, but legs or something. Horrific levels of pace and late movement. His test average is 20. He played 9 tests. Care to extend this theory to him?

Like everyone else here, I dont rate him, except as a 'what could have been'.

Everyone? I'm observing a pile of non-nz posters trying to convince the nz posters a very good bowler is better than our second or third best bowler in history because he played a lot of games.

We all know how good Bond was, hence the poll results (though I voted Cowie).

CW is the sort of place that would argue Alan Wyn-Jones is a greater player than Jonah.

 

[Flem274*]

Let's put this another way. It was only about a year ago a current world class player had roughly the same number of tests and wickets as Bond, and he still has less ODI games and wickets. He is slower and shorter than Bond, injury prone and sometimes inconsistent, and his career span in years is still notably shorter.

This player is the obvious first specialist quick in his atg side picked, beating out two members of the 300 wicket club despite one of them being the main reason his side became #1 ten years ago and the other enjoying a Southee or Anderson-esque turnaround after a dubious start.

Or are you really going to tell me Jasprit Bumrah is not, at absolute worst, India's second best quick ever behind Kapil?

No, you won't, because Bumrah is just better than everyone else. It isn't fair, but it is true.

 

[Athlai]

Southee > Bumrah

 

[Mike5181]

Did you ever watch Brett Shultz play? He was consistently pitching it up and made me genuinely afraid for the safety of the bats. Like he was going to break not just toes, Waqar style, but legs or something. Horrific levels of pace and late movement. His test average is 20. He played 9 tests. Care to extend this theory to him?

Like everyone else here, I dont rate him, except as a 'what could have been'.

Bond made 120 international appearances vs. Shultz's 10. That's a huge disparity in terms of watch-time for fans to assess quality.

Bond destroyed the best ODI team ever assembled multiple times. I don't care about CW's rule of exclusively focusing on achievements in one format, averaging half of ATG's like Pollock and Murali against Australia is a + to any player's credibility.

Bond was banned for a year and a half because of his association with the ICL. Though it was late in his career and he was injury-prone, NZ played 17 tests in that time.

 

[Bahnz]

Guess it depends on what you’re asking: who had the 2nd best career or who was the second best bowler?

If it's the later then the only real candidates are Cowie and Bond, and because of Bond's longer career and the general professionalism of his era, he's probably edging that contest. Tall, 145kmh+, hooping inswing with amazing accuracy. To be blunt there's never been another NZ bowler like him.

If you're asking who's had the 2nd best career then it's one of Wagner or Southee (240@26 vs 340@28). I'd back Wagner because of his amazing consistency across opponents, and just because he's a one of a kind freak.

 

[Line and Length]

Guess it depends on what you’re asking: who had the 2nd best career or who was the second best bowler?

If it's the later then the only real candidates are Cowie and Bond, and because of Bond's longer career and the general professionalism of his era, he's probably edging that contest. Tall, 145kmh+, hooping inswing with amazing accuracy. To be blunt there's never been another NZ bowler like him.

If you're asking who's had the 2nd best career then it's one of Wagner or Southee (240@26 vs 340@28). I'd back Wagner because of his amazing consistency across opponents, and just because he's a one of a kind freak.

Your question hits the nail on the head. I confess to looking at Test career.

 

[harsh.ag]

2nd best - Bond
2nd greatest - no way it's Bond

 

[Daemon]

We always have this argument and it's always subjective because there's no consensus on defining 'greatest'.

Bond was obviously the second best in terms of ability or whatever you want to call it - nobody would look at him next to southee or wagner and go yeah the latter are better.

On the flipside he didn't actually do all that much for NZ in Tests. His record is nothing special, just a glimpse of what could have been.

My own personal view is that 'greatest' involves some degree of achievement over a period of time as opposed to being a quick flash in the pan.

You can use Flem's metric and say you'd pick Bond in a game for tomorrow in a heartbeat, but what if it's a couple of tours, a few years, a whole career? Kyle Jamieson is like 20ft tall, swings it both ways, bowls fast and averages 18 after 14 tests. Is that enough too?

 

[karan_fromthestands]

I am going with Shane Bond because I am biased. And also because I have seen each and every game that he has played and I don't think I'll ever get to see that kind of bowling again. Bond's bowling was just something else.

 

[_00_deathscar]

Let's put this another way. It was only about a year ago a current world class player had roughly the same number of tests and wickets as Bond, and he still has less ODI games and wickets. He is slower and shorter than Bond, injury prone and sometimes inconsistent, and his career span in years is still notably shorter.

This player is the obvious first specialist quick in his atg side picked, beating out two members of the 300 wicket club despite one of them being the main reason his side became #1 ten years ago and the other enjoying a Southee or Anderson-esque turnaround after a dubious start.

Or are you really going to tell me Jasprit Bumrah is not, at absolute worst, India's second best quick ever behind Kapil?

No, you won't, because Bumrah is just better than everyone else. It isn't fair, but it is true.

Thought someone would bring this up. It's not a great comparison. We don't have bowlers of the quality of Southee and Boult after a Hadlee. If we did, Bumrah wouldn't get into the discussion until he had more tests under his belt and more wickets. Bumrah's a fantastic bowler, but the reason he gets into the Indian All Time XI already isn't solely because of that, but also because of the lack of quality the Indian ATXI possess. Not including much older players, his closest competition is Zaheer Khan and Javagal Srinath, along with Shami (will wait until career is over to rate him) - and seeing as they play side by side, he's clearly better than Shami.

Bond was fantastic (but also had a skewed/holes in his record), but he also played even less tests than Bumrah did.

So yea, if the question is 'who was the best'? Then sure, Bond. If the question is who was the greatest? Then no, IMO, it shouldn't be Bond.

If the question is 'whom would you pick to play in a test tomorrow?' - that's a tricky one. Because heart says Bond but head says he'll probably be injured so you'd prefer the safer option of someone who wouldn't break down before/during the match.

If you can guarantee he'd be fit the whole way through, great, pick Bond. But there's no way to do that.

I see some people were also rating Bond over Rabada in the pace bowlers thread - that might just have been a meme/vote for the NZer thing, but surely not ACTUALLY?

 

[srbhkshk]

To me there's another factor, which is probably not very quantifiable but I don't see it as impossible that someone like a Southee or Boult could probably bowl much better than they normally do by giving their absolute 200% in 10-15 matches and completely wrecking their bodies in the process which is pretty much Bond's career.

 

[Flem274*]

Thought someone would bring this up. It's not a great comparison. We don't have bowlers of the quality of Southee and Boult after a Hadlee. If we did, Bumrah wouldn't get into the discussion until he had more tests under his belt and more wickets. Bumrah's a fantastic bowler, but the reason he gets into the Indian All Time XI already isn't solely because of that, but also because of the lack of quality the Indian ATXI possess. Not including much older players, his closest competition is Zaheer Khan and Javagal Srinath, along with Shami (will wait until career is over to rate him) - and seeing as they play side by side, he's clearly better than Shami.

Bond was fantastic (but also had a skewed/holes in his record), but he also played even less tests than Bumrah did.

Zaheer's good patch(es) was about the length (in tests) of Bumrah's entire career once he started making Indian ATG sides (and Bumrah was on about 15-20 tests when that happened) plus he has 300 wickets to his name. Likewise Ishant since getting gud was keeping pace statistically with Southee for a fair bit there (I'm unsure what injury and loss of form has done since 2020).

Srinath and Shami also exist, and together with Ishant and Zaheer they are easily in the Boult league once you adjust for era. Zaheer would love a bowl today.

If you combined the sides, picking bowlers for a SENA hosted series after Hadlee and Kapil gets hard (I'm assuming a series based in India will just pick two or even three spinners to partner them, instead of one more quick).

 

[Flem274*]

To me there's another factor, which is probably not very quantifiable but I don't see it as impossible that someone like a Southee or Boult could probably bowl much better than they normally do by giving their absolute 200% in 10-15 matches and completely wrecking their bodies in the process which is pretty much Bond's career.

Bond has actually spoken about this when asked if he would slow down to extend his career. He said no, because NZ need the bowler he is a lot more than they need another 135kph guy.

 

[Athlai]

Southee > Bumrah > Zaheer

 

[Fuller Pilch]

Combined side playing in SENA:

Gavaskar
Turner
Dravid
Tendulkar
Crowe
Watling
Jadeja
Kapil
Hadlee
Wagner
Bond/Cowie

Combined side playing in India:
Gavaskar
Sehwag
Dravid
Tendulkar
Kohli
Watling
Kapil
Hadlee
Ashwin
Bedi
Chandrasekar/Gupte/Kumble

Both teams bat deep with 5 bowlers.

 

[mr_mister]

Quote from Cricinfo regarding Cowie:

The passage in Wisden most frequently quoted in New Zealand is a sentence by editor Wilfrid Brookes from the 1938 edition: 'Had he been an Australian, he might have been termed a wonder of the age.' This refers to Jack Cowie's efforts on the 1937 tour of England, when he took 114 wickets at 19.95.



I just think this is so illuminating and on the money. First time I read it Cowie jumped in my mind to the pace equivalent of Grimmett if he hadn't moved here.


So, it's Cowie for me

 

[srbhkshk]

Bond has actually spoken about this when asked if he would slow down to extend his career. He said no, because NZ need the bowler he is a lot more than they need another 135kph guy.

Would it still be true now though? I'd say current NZ would benefit more from a Southee than a Bond.