King Pairs!
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.
Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis have a combined number of 787 wickets in test matches. That number is even higher at 918 in ODIs, giving them a collective amount of 1,705 wickets.
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?
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.
Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis have a combined number of 787 wickets in test matches. That number is even higher at 918 in ODIs, giving them a collective amount of 1,705 wickets.Instead of taking a look at the collective number of wickets of bowling pairs, I decided to take into account the combined wickets taken by bowlers in matches that they both played in.
I restricted this to test matches only.
I also excluded spinners for the initial analysis since I wanted to compare fast bowling pairs to the 2 Ws.
Plus, as always in my statistical posts, I restricted this to the last 20 years for thats as far back as my first hand knowledge of cricket goes.
This is what I found:
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?
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