These days it's rare for a bowler to notch up 1000 first-class wickets. In recent times, of the big names, only Warne, Murali and Kumble achieved this milestone but in modern times of central contracts and the shift from Tests to one-dayers, the landmark will become even harder to reach. A few years ago, the veteran Glamorgan spinner Robert Croft did it, since advancing to 1152, with more than the thousand in the County Championship alone. Today, a fellow slow bowler, Danish Kaneria became the second man still playing to join the 1000 Club.
For some reason he never really transferred domestic form into the international arena, but this has probably helped him accumulate even more victims. What undoubtedly made the real difference was his stints with Essex. For several seasons he was one of the most reliable wicket-takers in the County Championship, especially in the second half of the summer. Without seasons in the English sun, I don't think any player in recent history has got close to the 1000 mark. In days gone by, perennial contracts with Gloucestershire and Hampshire pushed Courtney Walsh and Malcolm Marshall way beyond even 1500 wickets. Mushtaq Ahmed ended his career on 1407. Sadly, Dominic Cork retired in 2011 just eleven short.
The current leading Test wicket-taker is Harbhajan Singh, with 406. However, he has only 279 in other first-class games to add to that tally. Zaheer Khan is on the verge of taking his 600th scalp while all those pre-England years on the county circuit have propelled Graeme Swann to 605. Such figures are well short of the totals amassed by other veterans of the English seasons. Lancashire's captain Glenn Chapple leads the way on 837, closely followed by Kaneria's successor at Essex, Charl Willoughby on 827. Another county stalwart Jon Lewis is on 798, and both Matthew Hoggard, Chaminda Vaas and Yasir Arafat have high hopes of nudging 800 next year.
However, it's not all about county cricket. True, the paucity of first-class domestic cricket means that Australians and South Africans rarely score huge volumes of first-class runs or take shedloads of wickets, at least not on home soil. India and Pakistan offer more opportunities, and it was playing for Habib Bank that Danish Kaneria captured his 1000th scalp. Indeed, I've had this article on ice for three weeks, when I spotted he was on 999. Having missed the last two fixtures I was relieved that Kaneria was back in the side, and Fahad Iqbal of PIA was clean bowled to give him that elusive number 1000. The leg-spinner has in the past few years suffered more than his fair share of injuries and fallen foul of match-fixing allegations (since dropped) and the Pakistan cricket board, but who hasn't?! However, at the age of 31 (almost), he must surely have time to take hundreds more. Nevertheless, it really is difficult to see where the next 1000-up first-class wicket-taker will come from.
Showing posts with label bowlers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bowlers. Show all posts
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Monday, 5 December 2011
The Top One-Day bowlers in history
We hear a lot about the most prolific wicket-takers in Test cricket, and the Warne-Muralitharan battle for supremacy made a great sporting soap opera in the last decade. However, who has taken more wickets in one-day (List A) cricket than anyone else?
As with first-class cricket, to get anywhere near the top of the list, it helps to have played many seasons in county cricket, regardless of whether you played for your country. 48 players have taken more than 400 in their careers. However, only seven were still plying their trade in the 40- or 50-over formats in 2011 and Murali and Jayasuriya have probably bowled their last in anything other than Twenty20, which isn't included here.
Perhaps surprisingly the list features many English stalwarts of the 1970s and 1980s. However, while ODIs were relatively rare in those days, the summers were chock full of domestic competitions: the 60-over Gillette/Nat West Trophy, 55-over B&H Cup and the 40-over Sunday League filled every spare day in the county calendar, even more than now, although the schedule didn't start before Easter as it sometimesn does now!
Fourth on the all-time list is Essex left-armer John Lever, a brilliant exponent of fast-medium swing. A blend of Malinga and McGrath but blonder with bigger sideburns, he never nailed down a place in the Test team for long but chalked up 674 one-day wickets in a 23-year career, just a few short of Murali and Allan Donald, and equal with Waqar Younis. John Emburey and Ian Botham each topped 600, too.
Courtney Walsh claimed an incredible 1,807 first-class wickets but in one-dayers, a mere 551, although still more than any other West Indian. Most came not for the national team but for Gloucestershire. At 18th and 23rd in the table stand two Englishmen who never represented their country but who toiled away for their respective counties - with some winters in the southern hemisphere - for more than two decades. Lancashire's 'Flat Jack' Simmons and all-rounder Stuart Turner of Essex each took more List A scalps than McGrath, Hadlee or Mushtaq Ahmed, and Turner had a better average (only 22.98) than even Marshall or Pollock.
So who is king of the one-day bowling chart? Step forward, Wasim Akram. With 881 wickets from almost 600 games, his total is almost 200 clear of runner-up Allan Donald. If that isn't impressive enough, the Pakistan legend also aggregated a touch shy of 7000 runs, too. The top five of Wasim, Donald, Murali, Lever and Waqar would make a frightening one-day attack!
As for today's cricketers, can anyone ever get near Wasim Akram's total? Well, with T20 threatening to topple the 50-over game at international level (a shameful prospect), I suspect not. The highest ranking bowler still playing such formats is another left-arm seamer, Sri Lankan veteran Chaminda Vaas, with 504 wickets. He still looked a dangerous player for Northants last summer even if his international days are behind him. Next up is Shahid Afridi. Still probably best known as a big hitter, his leg breaks have netted him 437 victims in 423 matches, predominantly for Pakistan. Had he played more in England, that total would have been inflated further but the modern international schedule rules out a decent run for county cricket beyond a few T20 cameos. Glamorgan's Robert Croft has amassed 410 but is in his twilight years now but there is still life in a few other pacemen with little or no English county experience. Brett Lee and Agit Agarkar limit their one-day appearances these days but each are members of the '400 club',but with little hope of reaching 500. Unlike Afridi, provided he maintains recent form and keeps in with the notoriously fickle Pakistani board. However, I doubt if anyone else will ever take 500 wickets in this type of cricket, and Wasim Akram will stand tall and proud for the rest of time.
As with first-class cricket, to get anywhere near the top of the list, it helps to have played many seasons in county cricket, regardless of whether you played for your country. 48 players have taken more than 400 in their careers. However, only seven were still plying their trade in the 40- or 50-over formats in 2011 and Murali and Jayasuriya have probably bowled their last in anything other than Twenty20, which isn't included here.
Perhaps surprisingly the list features many English stalwarts of the 1970s and 1980s. However, while ODIs were relatively rare in those days, the summers were chock full of domestic competitions: the 60-over Gillette/Nat West Trophy, 55-over B&H Cup and the 40-over Sunday League filled every spare day in the county calendar, even more than now, although the schedule didn't start before Easter as it sometimesn does now!
Fourth on the all-time list is Essex left-armer John Lever, a brilliant exponent of fast-medium swing. A blend of Malinga and McGrath but blonder with bigger sideburns, he never nailed down a place in the Test team for long but chalked up 674 one-day wickets in a 23-year career, just a few short of Murali and Allan Donald, and equal with Waqar Younis. John Emburey and Ian Botham each topped 600, too.
Courtney Walsh claimed an incredible 1,807 first-class wickets but in one-dayers, a mere 551, although still more than any other West Indian. Most came not for the national team but for Gloucestershire. At 18th and 23rd in the table stand two Englishmen who never represented their country but who toiled away for their respective counties - with some winters in the southern hemisphere - for more than two decades. Lancashire's 'Flat Jack' Simmons and all-rounder Stuart Turner of Essex each took more List A scalps than McGrath, Hadlee or Mushtaq Ahmed, and Turner had a better average (only 22.98) than even Marshall or Pollock.
So who is king of the one-day bowling chart? Step forward, Wasim Akram. With 881 wickets from almost 600 games, his total is almost 200 clear of runner-up Allan Donald. If that isn't impressive enough, the Pakistan legend also aggregated a touch shy of 7000 runs, too. The top five of Wasim, Donald, Murali, Lever and Waqar would make a frightening one-day attack!
As for today's cricketers, can anyone ever get near Wasim Akram's total? Well, with T20 threatening to topple the 50-over game at international level (a shameful prospect), I suspect not. The highest ranking bowler still playing such formats is another left-arm seamer, Sri Lankan veteran Chaminda Vaas, with 504 wickets. He still looked a dangerous player for Northants last summer even if his international days are behind him. Next up is Shahid Afridi. Still probably best known as a big hitter, his leg breaks have netted him 437 victims in 423 matches, predominantly for Pakistan. Had he played more in England, that total would have been inflated further but the modern international schedule rules out a decent run for county cricket beyond a few T20 cameos. Glamorgan's Robert Croft has amassed 410 but is in his twilight years now but there is still life in a few other pacemen with little or no English county experience. Brett Lee and Agit Agarkar limit their one-day appearances these days but each are members of the '400 club',but with little hope of reaching 500. Unlike Afridi, provided he maintains recent form and keeps in with the notoriously fickle Pakistani board. However, I doubt if anyone else will ever take 500 wickets in this type of cricket, and Wasim Akram will stand tall and proud for the rest of time.
Saturday, 3 December 2011
How much experience do Test bowlers need?
It has been well documented how Australia have struggled since the retirement of so many top stars, from Hayden and Langer to Gilchrist and the Waugh brothers, but it is the loss of McGrath, Gillespie, Warne and Lee from Tests which must have been felt the hardest.
Mitch Johnson has developed into a very useful fast bowler, but injury is beginning to affect his ability to perform consistently at his best. Shaun Tait long ago opted to bowl occasional four-over stints rather than be a full-time cricketer. Harris, Hilfenhaus, Siddle and others have failed to nail down a regular place and of course every Aussie who can spin a ball in the Sheffield Shield has been tried. Teen star Pat Cummins looks the real deal but it is still early days. So what is going on with Cricket Australia in picking for the First Test against New Zealand a front line attack with a collective career of just ninety first-class matches. Not Tests, first-class matches!
I suppose it's good to blood new talent against relatively weak opposition but can just a handful of four-day games prepare any bowler for a stressful five-day game in front of big crowds? It must be particularly tough for seamers, who surely need time in the middle working out strategies against contrasting batting styles, how to make the most from different types of pitch in a range of conditions. I know that injuries have played their part this week, but Peter Siddle has played only 51 first-class fixtures in his career, and this is well above the total played by Pattinson, Starc and Lyon between them! The Aussies will probably win the match because NZ's talented bunch of batsmen play too many silly shots, probably because they are too used to playing ODIs or T20, at which they are extremely good. But will it vindicate the selectors' decisions to go with such inexperienced bowlers?
When the Baggy Greens were dominant in the late '80s and '90s it was said that they were helped by having so few domestic first-class games which apparently wear cricketers out. Ahh, poor darlings! So why have Australia sunk so low in the world rankings now? England and India have risen to the top in recent years by developing young talent in domestic competitions so they can deal with all the problems which may face them in the biggest pressure-cooker occasions. I really think that unless Australia unearth several truly awesome talents very quickly they will not recover. Even in the batting line-up, while Hughes and Khawaja have potential, will David Warner curb his world-class T20 instincts sufficiently to make it at Test level? At 25, he is a veteran of more than 100 T20 games but only 11 first-class contests. At least he has scored three hundreds this year, suggesting he may make the transition, but he hadn't a clue against 22 year-old Tim Southee (38 first-class games) yesterday, and lasted only three balls.
I feel that Pakistan will bounce back from current woes because their domestic competitions do at least allow young players, especially bowlers, to learn their craft. The County Championship does the same job in England where, although I don't regard Anderson, Broad, Bresnan, Tremlett and co to be brilliant natural pacemen, they have grown into the role by practice and experience and are now lauded as the best Test attack in world cricket. In Australia, of course they can only select the top players from what they see on the pitch, little as it is, but I reckon they should give the slightly older bowlers more chance to gel before giving the green baggy to such 'green' youngsters. Give them a chance to develop or they could come a cropper against top batsmen and be scarred for life!
Mitch Johnson has developed into a very useful fast bowler, but injury is beginning to affect his ability to perform consistently at his best. Shaun Tait long ago opted to bowl occasional four-over stints rather than be a full-time cricketer. Harris, Hilfenhaus, Siddle and others have failed to nail down a regular place and of course every Aussie who can spin a ball in the Sheffield Shield has been tried. Teen star Pat Cummins looks the real deal but it is still early days. So what is going on with Cricket Australia in picking for the First Test against New Zealand a front line attack with a collective career of just ninety first-class matches. Not Tests, first-class matches!
I suppose it's good to blood new talent against relatively weak opposition but can just a handful of four-day games prepare any bowler for a stressful five-day game in front of big crowds? It must be particularly tough for seamers, who surely need time in the middle working out strategies against contrasting batting styles, how to make the most from different types of pitch in a range of conditions. I know that injuries have played their part this week, but Peter Siddle has played only 51 first-class fixtures in his career, and this is well above the total played by Pattinson, Starc and Lyon between them! The Aussies will probably win the match because NZ's talented bunch of batsmen play too many silly shots, probably because they are too used to playing ODIs or T20, at which they are extremely good. But will it vindicate the selectors' decisions to go with such inexperienced bowlers?
When the Baggy Greens were dominant in the late '80s and '90s it was said that they were helped by having so few domestic first-class games which apparently wear cricketers out. Ahh, poor darlings! So why have Australia sunk so low in the world rankings now? England and India have risen to the top in recent years by developing young talent in domestic competitions so they can deal with all the problems which may face them in the biggest pressure-cooker occasions. I really think that unless Australia unearth several truly awesome talents very quickly they will not recover. Even in the batting line-up, while Hughes and Khawaja have potential, will David Warner curb his world-class T20 instincts sufficiently to make it at Test level? At 25, he is a veteran of more than 100 T20 games but only 11 first-class contests. At least he has scored three hundreds this year, suggesting he may make the transition, but he hadn't a clue against 22 year-old Tim Southee (38 first-class games) yesterday, and lasted only three balls.
I feel that Pakistan will bounce back from current woes because their domestic competitions do at least allow young players, especially bowlers, to learn their craft. The County Championship does the same job in England where, although I don't regard Anderson, Broad, Bresnan, Tremlett and co to be brilliant natural pacemen, they have grown into the role by practice and experience and are now lauded as the best Test attack in world cricket. In Australia, of course they can only select the top players from what they see on the pitch, little as it is, but I reckon they should give the slightly older bowlers more chance to gel before giving the green baggy to such 'green' youngsters. Give them a chance to develop or they could come a cropper against top batsmen and be scarred for life!
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