Yesterday I did a post on the Aussies taking the IPL by storm. Shaun Marsh and Dominic Thornely were the latest signees to the league.

That wasn't the end of the Aussie signing spree though.

One of the commentators on that post mentioned that the dominance of Aussie coaches in the IPL has led a number of domestic players to join the IPL. Very true I think.

The latest Aussies to join the IPL are Micheal Buchanan and Matthew Mott. Micheal is the son of former Australia coach John Buchanan and he joins his father at the Kolkata Knight Riders as the teams strength trainer.

What in the world is a strength trainer? Is he going to train the likes of Saurav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting, and Chris Gayle to become stronger?

Matthew Mott is the New South Wales' coach and he also joins the Kolkata Knight Riders as John Buchanan's assistant.

And so the Aussie invasion of the IPL continues. There could yet be more though.

In a recent survey held by the Australian Cricketers' Association, 47% of the nationally contracted players said that they would consider early retirement to play in the IPL or the ICL. 49% of the players with state deals said the same.

I believe that this is going to have quite an impact on Australian cricket in the future. All the Aussies could well be thinking that this is India's plan to strip them of the world dominance that they have been on for over a decade.

Pakistan's domestic cricket is already suffering with the cream of domestic stars opting for the ICL. Even though this year the Aussies in the ICL were the ageing ones like Jason Gillespie, Damien Martyn, Jimmy Maher, and Micheal Kasprowicz, theres no reason why younger ones won't follow suit in the future.

A weakened domestic structure in Australia is bound to weaken the international team.

I say the ICL because in the same survey, 75% of the contracted players said that the ICL was good for the game. Now this is a surprise! I had thought otherwise since majority of the Aussie bloggers call it evil. The players obviously think otherwise.

Here is a further case for lifting the ban off the ICL and accepting it as an open competitor.

If the best players of cricket in the world feel that a league, labelled as rebel, is good for the game and that they would even consider early retirement to play there, the rebel label needs to go sooner rather than later.

The BCCI and the ICC need to wake up already.

No its not about batsmen who have been out of the first ball they have faced in both innings of a test match.

Nazhar recently did a post on Alan Davidson describing Wasim Akram as the best swing bowler - in the comments section Straight Point mentioned that Wasim & Waqar have more than a 1,000 wickets collectively. Thats when the idea for this post crossed my mind.


Walsh & Ambrose sure played a lot together. Had Wasim and Waqar played as many games, they would have picked up over a 100 more wickets than the 2 West Indians. The 2 Ws averaged more collective wickets per match than the Windies stars and also had a slightly better collective average.

There was no point looking at England or New Zealand. For the kiwis, the highest wicket taker, Richard Hadlee was before the era I am looking at and their next best fast bowler is Chris Cairns with 230 odd wickets. While for England, their leading pace bowlers of this era - Hoggard and Caddick have less than 500 collective wickets. I didn' bother checking their wickets in matches played together.

For India, 6 out of the top 10 wicket takers are spinners. The 4 pacers are from different eras. However, it will be interesting to see where the pairs out of Zaheer, Ishant, RP, Pathan, and Sreesanth are 10 years down the line.

Sri Lanka is absolutely intriguing. Apart from Murali and Vaas, there is no other bowler who has reached even a 100 test wickets. Jayasuriya has 98 and is 3rd on the list behind a 700+ and a 300+ wicket taker.

If we look at Murali & Vaas as a pair then they go beyond Walsh & Ambrose. In 87 matches that they have played together they have taken a total of 825 wickets at an average of 23.75 with 52 5WI and 18 10WM! That also gives them 9.5 wickets per match.

But there is a pair that betters them as well.


Glenn McGrath & Shane Warne. In 104 matches that these 2 played together, they picked up 1,001 wickets at 23.17 apiece. Thats a remarkable 9.6 wickets per match. Plus they took 51 5WI and 9 10WM.

They are definitely the King Pair for me. No one even comes close to their tally of over a 1,000 wickets.

However, if we're looking at fast bowlers only, I will go for Wasim & Waqar rather than Ambrose & Walsh. Had Waqar not missed a few years due to injury and strained relations with Wasim or had Wasim played more tests near the end of his career, the 2 Ws could have eached even greater heights. Yet, they remain the best exponents of swing ever.

Who is your king pair? Have I missed anyone out? Where do you think Murali and Vaas will finish? How about Ishant & RP Singh, how many will they get? Will anyone go beyond the 1000?