After watching Vernon Philander decimate the New Zealand top order in the Cape Town test, I wondered where Philander stood in the career strike rate rankings among bowlers. A strike rate represents the number of balls a bowler has to bowl on average to capture a wicket. It represents the true wicket taking efficiency of a bowler. Philander has been a revelation since his debut and already has 67 Test wickets in 12 matches. Sure enough Philander is second only to the legendary Englishman GA Lohmann on this list.
As I browsed through this list of 126 bowlers, I started looking for Indians and was astonished not to find an Indian in the top 50. All the usual suspects from the great Test teams are on this list - the Windies of the 80s, the Aussies from the 90s and 2000s, the great Pakistani pace bowlers of the 80s & 90s. Marshall, Holding, Roberts, Garner, Walsh, Thomson, Lillee, McGrath, Gillespie, Clark, Willis, Botham, Waqar, Akram, Imran are all in there.
The full list is here...Best career bowling strike rates
The first Indian to appear on this list is at number 87, and that name is the much maligned Chetan Sharma! Chetan Sharma has the best strike rate ever for an Indian bowler in Test match history! The only other Indians in this list are Irfan Pathan, and Zaheer Khan. Amazingly spinners like Warne, McGill, Murali, and Swann are in this list, but no India spinner is in the top 126!
No wonder India has never been a dominant force in Test cricket. A great batting line up without strike bowlers will give you a lot of draws, but not regular wins. Spinners usually bowl a lot of overs for their wickets, and are seldom match winners outside the sub-continent. However what you need to win consistently world wide are aggressive wicket taking pace bowlers. And we have hardly ever had them except for Zaheer Khan recently. That is why India rose to the number one ranking in Tests briefly. India's decline has coincided neatly with Zaheer's decline in wicket taking ability.
So what do we need to do to become a force in Test cricket? Cultivate a culture of fast bowling, nurture these bowlers, and make them feel like heroes. To win consistently we don't need as many Dravids, Tendulkars, Laxmans, and Gavaskars. We need more Zaheers. We need to create conditions favourable for fast bowlers all over the country, particularly in the North where we have more of the athletic and aggressive bowlers. And then take care of them.
Otherwise we will keep wondering where the next Dravid or Tendulkar is going to come from instead of worrying about the next Zaheer Khan or Chetan Sharma. We will continue to throw our occasional wicket taking fast bowler into ODI and T20 cricket and burn them out. And always remain an average Test side that is unable to live up to its potential.
4 comments:
Are we too lazy to match up to the rigors needed to become fast bowler?? - it must be so much easier, physical fitness wise, to become a batsman or a spin bowler.
Nitin. Very interesting piece and the stats you provide did indeed surprise me as I thought names like Kapil Dev, Chandrashekhar, Bedi etc would feature higher than the likes of Chetan Sharma. Having been an observer of Indian Cricket for many years, I would say that mentality has a big part in producing aggressive match winning bowlers. Other than Ganguly I can't recall an Indian Captain willing to meet 'fire with fire' and more importantly employ aggressive fields to intimidate the opposition and inspire Indian bowlers to take wickets. What would be interesting to look at is the runs conceded per over of the bowlers with the best current strike rates. Is it better for a bowler to take 6-90 off 15 overs and bundle a side out for less than 200 or take 5-96 off 50 overs whilst the opposition accumulate 500 plus. Over to you
Good point Vivek! I think you answered your own question. A 5-96 off 50 overs will produce a strike rate of 60, while a 6-90 off 15 overs will produce a strike rate of 15. My point is that the latter is better because it gives your team more time to beat the opposition. Looking at economy rates makes a lot of sense for limited overs games, but I think strike rates are the real key to winning Test matches.
Srike rates and aggressive Captaincy are the key these days for winning games. A bowler will always repsond to 4 slips and a Gully with the encouragement to attack and not worry too much about the boundary down to third man or the batsman executing a quality stroke. If Dhoni had attacked more against England and Australia recently, then India may not have lost all 8 tests or at least the contests would have been more even.
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