limitations make bowlers great

[trundler]

The one he bowled Hope(?) with was fitting of early 90s Waqar. Just unplayable magic.

 

[stephen]

Brett Lee probably had the most pure bowling action. He never seemed to get injured and bowled at 150kph basically until he retired.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that he had nothing between the ears.

 

[Starfighter]

eh what is this wahhh?

the best quicks of all time in no particular order are mcgrath, marshall, hadlee and steyn. they each had some pretty solid limitations. the best raw talents i've ever seen would be starc, shoiab, tait and lee yet they never achieved greatness. i thought it was interesting the very talented yet slightly more limited bowlers made it to the top but guys with everything going for them did not or have not.

if this elicits such a strong negative reaction from you then cool bro.

More fully, hardly a wahhh. I simply think your thesis and examples are poor and you contradicted yourself. By rejecting accuracy as being somehow different to other skills (it requires a repeatable action with a consistent release for starters) you miss the main differentiating factor. When you bought up Starc/Tait/Lee/Shoaib I simply thought that you'd picked a bunch of bowlers who were very quick but weren't very accurate (due to all having off-vertical actions, common in quick, wild, 'raw talents'), some (Tait in particular) didn't move it much or consistently and none were really thinkers. I don't really see how they're more talented or less limited than the others, Marshall in particular.

 

[Starfighter]

BTW if you wanna know what pace Ambrose bowled at I saw him recorded at 140 against SA in 1992/93 and IIRC he was mainly 128-134 sort of pace against England in 2000. I'd suggest high 130's poking into 140s slowing down to low 130s would be a good estimate.


Of course hard to know. I've asked for enough pace guesstimates for bowlers I know people on here have actually watched when they were playing, or at very least seen enough of, because they bang on about them at opportune moments. Don't think I've had a single one answered you lazy pack of ****s.

 

[Engle]

Many athletes had what may seem like limitations, but did not allow that to hinder their performances.
- Ali did not possess power punching pugilistics
- Usain Bolt was too tall to be breaking speed records
- Sir Edmund Hillary looked clumsy for a climber
- Gretzky was gawky for a hard-hitting sport

So too with fast bowlers like Marshall and McGrath...

 

[Red Hill]

Pat Cummins might be the modern example of this.

 

[GoodAreasShane]

I absolutely unequivocally consider lack of pace to be a major limitation to a bowler, that doesn't however mean slower bowlers can't be considered highly talented, just that they need to be a cut above in pretty much everything else to compensate for what they are missing in speed.

In a way you could argue every single bowler to have ever lived is limited in some form

 

[TheJediBrah]

Starfighter on point ITT

reckon this is just an elaborate troll by flem

 

[Daemon]

this is all right, but i'm not talking about skills, im talking natural attributes. someone can practice their accuracy, they can't practice growing taller. guys can improve speed, but the vast majority of bowlers will never be capable of 150kph.

So are you essentially saying if McGrath could bowl quicker or if Steyn added 4 inches to his height they wouldn't be as good?

 

[honestbharani]

I get the crux of Flem's point here. There is such a thing as too much talent or ability. For me, an example in Indian cricket is Dinesh Karthik. He does not really struggle with swing or pace or bounce or spin or anything. He can cut and pull and play off the backfoot all day, but can also go forward and drive, sweep and use his feet AFTER the ball has been let go by the bowler. But he never really worked out what kind of batsman he wanted to be and what his actual game plan was and ended up never really succeeding to the level he could have had he figured out his game plan.

I am assuming Flem is trying to make a similar case but perhaps used some unfortunate examples. When there is stuff you know you absolutely are not good at, it makes it easier for you to be consistent and concentrate on the stuff you actually are good at and in time, get so good at it to be among the best.

 

[Flem274*]

So are you essentially saying if McGrath could bowl quicker or if Steyn added 4 inches to his height they wouldn't be as good?

not at all.

it's not worse to be the most talented, but i find it an interesting trend bowlers who have a strong natural (not skill based) limitation or two to go with their incredible ability in other areas are the only bowlers in the conversation for being the goat.

it's not a rule that to be great in the test spam era you must have some sort of limitation, as the likes of wasim and others show, but it's a trend for the very very best and wasim isn't in the coversation for goat imo.

ive been on this forum long enough to remember people predicting steyn would struggle in australia because he's too short and skiddy, and people who used the same attributes to be skeptical in general. i think even pews was sucked in. they sound stupid now, but it's a reasonable prediction given australia suits tall guys who hit the deck hard.

my spitballing guess is incredibly talented bowlers who have some sort of limitation that makes people skeptical realise they have to wring everything out of themselves and a special few now occupy the top 3-5 spots.

a young, unknown glenn mcgrath wouldn't get a game in the lehmann regime. ian chappell would still find a way to drop him and is on record as being initially skeptical of malcolm marshall because he was short for a quick in that nsw v barbados article.

overall it's something i've observed in my personal top few quicks of all time and i think it's interesting to spitball about. it seems to have really wound up a couple of australians as well which is an added bonus i didn't expect.

 

[vcs]

McGrath in the '90s was easily quick enough to get picked for the current Australia side. He'd basically be a quicker and slightly better Hazlewood.

 

[vcs]

Also, Hadlee, Holding etc. were pretty much perfect fast bowler prototypes in every way, right? Not sure about their reverse swing skills, but apart from that, if you had to build a fast bowler in a factory, you would probably end up with Holding.

 

[Flem274*]

McGrath in the '90s was easily quick enough to get picked for the current Australia side. He'd basically be a quicker and slightly better Hazlewood.

footage required

 

[vcs]

footage required

I don't know, and have never really cared enough to track speeds very closely, but he looks sharp enough here. Just one example.

 

[honestbharani]

I don't think McGrath was rapid at any time.. Hazlewood hits 145 relatively often. I remember even in 1999 when McGrath was pretty young, he was timed at 87 mph for his quickest. Srinath had one at 93 that WC and McGrath's usual pace was 82-83 mph. Ambrose was comfortaby quicker even then, hitting 85-87 most of the time.

But one thing about the way bowling speeds are measured in cricket, it uses the same formula as baseball and therefore does not take in the vertical component. IT is why the fuller balls are ALWAYS recorded much faster than the shorter balls.

 

[vcs]

Well, can't argue with the actual data then. Always thought Hazlewood generally operated around late-era McGrath speeds, turns out I was wrong.

 

[TheJediBrah]

I don't think McGrath was rapid at any time.. Hazlewood hits 145 relatively often. I remember even in 1999 when McGrath was pretty young, he was timed at 87 mph for his quickest. Srinath had one at 93 that WC and McGrath's usual pace was 82-83 mph. Ambrose was comfortaby quicker even then, hitting 85-87 most of the time.

But one thing about the way bowling speeds are measured in cricket, it uses the same formula as baseball and therefore does not take in the vertical component. IT is why the fuller balls are ALWAYS recorded much faster than the shorter balls.

McGrath had well and truly slowed down by '99. Apparently he was quicker (~140kph) when he started out, like pre-1995 but I never saw it.

I don't blame vcs for mis-remembering Hazlewood's speeds either, he seems like he bowls a lot slower than he actually does

 

[stephen]

McGrath was in the 140s at the start of his career. Dropped to 130-135 for most of it though. Was bowling at 125 by his retirement.

 

[Kirkut]

McGrath was one dimensional but he perfected what he did. Then there was Allan Donald who also was one dimensional but he was as good as the pace he bowled at.