Robert Henderson

There has been a good deal of hyperbole about Jimmy Anderson recently with Michael Vaughan  going so far as to claim that he was the greatest ever England bowler on Test Match Special after the recent Test match at Trent Bridge where Anderson returned match figures of 10-158.  In making his case Vaughan was  adamant that Fred Trueman was an inferior bowler to Anderson.

There are severe objections to Vaughan’s claims.  To begin with the obvious many English pace  bowlers with substantial Test careers  have far superior Test averages to that of Anderson who has taken  his Test wickets at more than 30 runs apiece.  For example,  Trueman took 307 at less than 22 runs each, Brian Statham and Alec Bedser 252 and 228 respectively at an average of 24, SF Barnes 189 at 16 and George Lohman 112 at 10.

Even allowing for different playing conditions through the history of Test cricket  it is very difficult to explain why Anderson’s wickets should be so much more expensive than bowlers from previous eras if he is supposedly the best ever.  It is also noteworthy that the best Test  pace bowlers from the period 1980-2000 (when playing conditions and equipment were not startlingly different from today) – Marshall, Ambrose, Waqar Younis, Wazim Akram, McGrath and the best of  today, Steyn ,  all managed to take their wickets at under 25 runs with Marshall and Ambrose at less than  21 runs each.  It is also true that English bowlers operating since 1980  such as Botham, Willis, Dilley, Fraser and  Cork  all managed to take 100 or more Test wickets with an average of less than 30. If all these bowlers could manage to take their wickets at better averages than Anderson  what magical change has occurred in the past decade or so to make the supposedly “greatest ever England bowler” more expensive?  The only radical change has been DRS which aids rather than hinders bowlers.

When challenged on his claim Vaughan takes refuge in the idea that playing conditions in the past, even in the relatively recent past of the 1950s, were so much more in favour of the bowlers than they are now that this explained the much higher averages of  Anderson and most other modern pace bowlers.   Let us test this idea.

Uncovered pitches

In comparing Anderson with other English bowlers,  Vaughan  has made much of the fact that players such as Fred Trueman bowled on uncovered pitches and that this greatly assisted their averages. (Trueman’s Test career spanned the years 1952-1965).

This is a very odd idea for several reasons.  To begin with the fact that a pitch is or is not covered says little about the way it will play in most circumstances. If the weather is dry,  the uncovered pitch will last much the same way as a covered pitch will do. It is only when rain affects a pitch and it then dries  under the influence of sun or  wind that it  becomes really difficult. When that happens, guess what, the pace bowlers cannot bowl when it is really difficult because the run-ups are also wet (assuming the run-ups are not covered,  as was the case in the 1950s and 1960s. Nor  did run-ups dry quickly in the past because the drainage on most grounds was poor. But even when the run-ups became useable for the quick bowlers,  often  they did not get much opportunity to bowl when the rain damaged pitch still had some spite in it  because the spinners would have shot the side out when  the pitch  was at it its most difficult.  Trueman and his ilk were, on balance,  disadvantaged not advantaged by playing on uncovered pitches.

The number of draws

Another  awkward  fact facing  Vaughan is  the number of draws on uncovered pitches. If uncovered pitches were so much more helpful to bowlers,  how was it that draws were much more plentiful in the 1950s  and 1960s than they are now despite the much lower Test bowling averages then?  The  short answer is they were generally playing on good batting pitches which were rarely rain-damaged against Test  batsmen  who had (certainly amongst the stronger Test playing nations)  vastly better batting techniques and far more patience  then than now. More on that later.

The length of Tests before WW2

It was in the 1950s that five day Tests became the norm throughout the Test playing nations and matches  were all played on uncovered pitches.  Before then it was mixture of three day Tests (mainly  in England) 4 day Tests, 5 day Tests   and timeless Tests which were long the norm in Australia and which were only abandoned after 1945. However,  it should be remembered that bowling rates were at around  20 overs to the hour  before  WW2  compared with 15 overs now, so the actual play in a three day match would be equal to four days now and  a four day match equal to five and a third days and so on.   In the 1950s Test over rates were about 18 an hour  so those matches, if they went the full five days,  would contain the equivalent of another day’s play at present day  over rates.

It is instructive to look at how long timeless Tests took. Take the Bodyline series in 1932/33. It might be imagined that the matches were over quickly because of the onslaught of Larwood and Voce and their taming of Bradman.  Not a bit of it. The series had one Test extending to four days, two Tests to five days and two Tests to six days.

That Tests on uncovered pitches often lasted for a long time is unsurprising. Apart from the early years of Test cricket, groundsmen generally prepared pitches as they do today, namely, to last for as long as the matches were scheduled, or in the case of timeless Tests, for a seriously  extended game.  If a grass pitch was uncovered in Australia, South Africa or the West Indies  it was unlikely to seriously deteriorate quickly because there was little likelihood of rain. (Where matting pitches were used – mainly in South Africa –  the rain damaged pitch problem did not arise).

Bowlers’ skills

Another of Vaughan’s claims is that pace bowlers are more skilful these days because they have reverse swing. Why reverse swing should outweigh all the other weapons in the pace bowler’s armoury he has not made clear.   Modern bowlers may have reverse swing but often they do not do a great deal with the ball otherwise.  Seam bowling, that is, using the seam on the pitch  rather than in the air,  in particular seems a dying art.  Nor are modern bowlers  anything like as accurate as those in the past. This is not sentimentality on my part. Look at videos of any extended bowling by Test bowlers from fifty or sixty years ago and you will see that not only can they bowl to their field consistently – something modern bowlers are very poor at doing – but they attack the stumps far more. To those who think that bowling a consistent line and length get you nowhere in Test cricket I would say just two words: Glen McGrath.

Vaughan  also ventured the very odd idea that Trueman was a bowler without versatility.  The reverse is the case. In his twenties, a genuine express,  who swung the ball away late and had excellent control of line and length. In the latter part of his career, where appropriate,   he adapted to conditions by bowling fast-medium offcutters, most notably at Headingly in 1961 when he took 11-88 and won the match for England.

The quality of batting

Batting techniques and mentality are very different today to what they were when Trueman was playing in the 1950s and 1960s. Batsmen in Trueman’s time had only pads, still rudimentary gloves, an unconvincing box and, if they were lucky , a single inadequate thigh pad strapped to their leading leg.  This lack of protection meant that only those who were proficient hookers and pullers played the shots against anyone faster than military medium.  Even high-quality players like Bobbie Simpson and John Edrich simply did not hook.

The pitches English players played on in England  outside of Test matches  in Trueman’s day were prepared by each county as they saw fit without any interference from the then ruling body the MCC.  This meant, for example, that if a team travelled to Southend to play Essex they would be met by a greentop to suit Bailey, Preston and Knight while a trip to Bristol to play Gloucestershire would almost certainly mean a pitch turning sharply on the first morning to suit the spinners Mortimore, Allen, Wells and Cook. This variety of pitches – and there were few which were anodyne or  batting paradises – meant that county players had to become very proficient players of the ball, spinning, seaming and swinging.  Nor did they have the distraction of limited overs cricket to breed bad habits  of impatience and  reckless shot selection and invention.

Overseas batsmen played either on mainly fast bouncy pitches (Australia, West Indies, South Africa) or slow, low  pitches which nonetheless took a great amount of spin (India).  In addition, touring players from all countries gained considerable experience of conditions other than those of their native country  because tours were long and included a large number of  first class games in addition to Test matches. That included England teams on tour. Consequently, every Test playing nation had a reasonable  experience of different conditions for first class cricket  in the various Test playing countries, something which they do not get today – England are the only country to hinder their chances of success by allowing foreign players to take part in large numbers in a domestic first class competition.

The modern batsman plays only on covered pitches (which in English domestic cricket have to be  prepared in a way to ensure they do not offer much help to the bowler) and is both encumbered and protected by a remarkable array of equipment: bumper bras, armguards, large  thigh pads on both thighs, decent gloves  and most importantly helmets. Unlike their helmetless predecessors, the modern  batsman, whether proficient or not at the strokes, hooks and pulls with great frequency, often very incompetently.   Touring sides rarely play many first class  matches outside of Tests and limited over games  and so lack the extensive experience of different conditions in foreign countries which was once the norm for a touring side. Lastly, the introduction of limited overs cricket generally and T20 in particularly has bred loose batting habits and a disastrous lack of patience.

Vaughan also claimed that the heavier bats used by modern players make heavier scoring inevitable.  It is certainly true that shots which are not middle can go for six with heavy modern bats,  but against that these heavy bats reduce the deftness of shot. They also encourage reckless hitting because batsmen think they can get away with false strokes.

The present Australian batting shows the modern  defects of technique and mentality most dramatically, but no current Test side with the possible exception of South Africa could honestly be called a strong batting side.  This is of cardinal importance when judging bowlers. It  is one thing to be bowling at the present Australian side and quite another to be bowling against the 1930s and 1940s sides containing Bradman supported by  four or five of the following: Ponsford,  Woodfull, Mc Cabe, Kippax, Hassett, Morris, Harvey  Barnes, Brown, Fingleton and  Miller.  Ditto the present West Indian batting line-up compared to the 1950s cast of the three Ws, Sobers, Stollmeyer, Rae, Hunte, Kanhai and  Oggie Smith. Ditto the South African side of the 1960s with Richards, McGlew, Goddard,  Barlow, Graeme Pollock, Bland,  Lindsay and Proctor.

The lack of technique, especially against the moving ball, the reckless shot selection, especially the repeated flashing outside the offstump  and incompetently executed hooks and pulls, the introduction to Test cricket from limited overs cricket of wildly inappropriate shots such as the reverse sweep and scoop and a seemingly pathological inability to be patient generally and leave balls in particular make modern Test players easy meat for bowlers compared with their predecessors.

The weakness of lower batting orders in the past

Vaughan also maintained that lower order batsmen in Trueman’s era were only too glad to give their wickets away because they lacked the helmets and other batting protection which the modern batsman has, this is contrast to the lower orders today. This is a myth, both in Trueman’s day and really throughout Test cricket’s history.  For example, in the first full decade of Test cricket (the 1880s)  England regularly turned out sides  in England which batted right the way down with the likes of Briggs, Peel, Lohmann, Bates, Barnes, CT Studd, A Lyttleton, Tylecote, Barlow batting in the positions 7-11.

In the 1950s the majority of England’s bowling was done by Bailey, Bedser, Trueman, Statham, Tyson, Laker,  Lock and Wardle.  Bailey was  great allrounder and batted in various positions in the top six. The others generally occupied positions 8-11.  Bedser, Laker, Lock and Wardle all scored Test fifties. Bedser,  Trueman and Laker scored first class hundreds.  Tyson was a competent lower order player. Even Statham averaged over 10. The England tail in the 1950s was not a quivering collective wreck waiting to tread on the square leg umpire’s toes in their anxiety to get away from any bowler quicker than medium. In the 1960s England batted even deeper with players such as Titmus, Allen, Knight, Murray often batting at 8 or 9.

Other Test playing nations also had tails which were capable of wagging vigorously. An Australian lower order in the 1950s would probably be any five from Benaud,  Mackay, Lindwall,  Archer, Davidson, Johnson, Tallon,  Langley,  Grout,  Johnston.  Only Johnston could not bat.   Benaud, Lindwall, Archer and Johnson scored Test hundreds.  The West Indies might have had two non-batsmen Rhamadin and Valentine at nos 9, 10 or 11, but they frequently had the likes of Gomez,   Alexander, Oggie Smith,  Goddard, Atkinson  at 7, 8 and sometimes even 9, all of whom were serious batsmen.   South Africa generally had competent batting down to number eight  and even their regular nine and ten,  Heine and Tayfield,  could both hold a bat.

The quality of Test playing nations

The original Test playing nations were England and Australia who played the first Test in 1976. South Africa were added in 1889. No other Test side emerged until 1928 when the West Indies played their first Test (against England in the West Indies). New Zealand arrived in 1930,  India in 1932, Pakistan in 1952, Sri Lanka in 1982, Zimbabwe in 1992 and Bangladesh in 2000.

Players before 1928 played most of their Test cricket in England/Australia matches. South Africa started to become a serious Test side in the early 20^th century and were a genuine force in their own country where they played on matting pitches and had an army of good googly bowlers shortly after Bosanquet unveiled the googly to exploit them.

Teams which toured, especially English ones, were often far from the strongest that could be put out if playing at home. Many of the best English amateurs, most notably FS Jackson,  never toured Australia because they could not afford it.  The English sides which toured South Africa were generally weaker than those which toured Australia.  It was not until the mid-1950s that a full English side toured Australia as a matter of course, and even then there were amateur absentees such as David Shepherd in 1954/55 and Pater May in 1962/3.  The first really representative English touring party went to South Africa in 1956/7, to the West Indies 1959/60, to India 1976/7, to Pakistan 1977/8 .  New Zealand faced stronger England sides in New Zealand from 1932/3 onwards because the matches were tacked on to the end of an Ashes series in Australia, although some players from the Australian part of the tour would miss the NZ trip.  Bangladesh and Zimbabwe have faced full England sides since the start of  their Tests careers.

The picture is complicated further by the use of  matches of the weaker Test playing nations as trial matches for players with no or little Test experience. In a very limited way this still happens, but in the past England have used Tests to try out large numbers of players. For example, in the home series against India in 1959 which England won 5-0, these players were given their first Test caps: Greenhough, Martin Horton, Ken Taylor, Pullar, Harold Rhodes and these players with a few caps were given a run-out: Milton, Barrington, Moss, Close, Illingworth, MJK Smith, Swetman and Subba Row.  Only Pullar, Illingworth ,  Barrington, Subba Row and MJK Smith had significant Test careers.

Australia toured less than England, and were sparing in their games, at both home and abroad, against sides other than England and South Africa until the 1950s. The sides they sent on tour were generally stronger than those of England. Other Test sides have tended to always select something near to their strongest side to tour.

All of this meant that until the late 1970s regular bowlers from the stronger Test playing nations generally played more of their Tests against other strong nations than has subsequently been the case.  The granting of Test status to Zimbabwe and Bangladesh also produced Test opponents who were weaker than any since the South Africans during the 1890s. Moreover, unlike the South Africans or any of the other Test playing nations in their early years who played few Tests, Zimbabwe  until their Test status was suspended played and Bangladesh played and continue to play many Tests.

The changing  laws of cricket

The laws  are not tablets set in stone. Since overarm bowling was legalised in 1864 (marking the beginning of the modern era) there have been some radical changes.  On the whole these have favoured  bowlers as time has moved on.

The ball was  reduced in size by over half an inch in diameter  in  1927 , which made it easier to grip ,  and the wicket was increased by an inch in height and an inch in width 1931.  Both changes unequivocally  aided the bowler.

Until the change in the LBW law in 1935 bowlers had to pitch a ball on the wicket and hit the batsman in front of the wicket. In 1935 the LBW was experimentally  changed to allow a ball pitching outside the offstump and hitting the batsman in front of the stumps to potentially qualify for an LBW. (The LBW law  was formally changed in 1937) IN 1972, after some trials in previous years, the LBW law was amended again to allow balls pitching outside the offstump which hit the pad when the pad was outside the offstump if it was judged that the batsman had offered no stroke and the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps.  All these changes aided bowlers, although complaints were made for a long time after 1935 that they penalised bowlers who moved the ball away from the bat.

The changes in the LBW law in 1935 brought complaints that it made for dull cricket because it favoured  pace bowlers who swung the ball in or cut it in from the pitch and offbreak bowlers.  There was certainly a cultural shift from leg spin to offspin in England, but it is difficult to attribute this to the new LBW law because it was noticeable that high-quality leg spinners who  learned their cricket  before the  1935 –  Wright, Hollies, Jenkins , Peter Smith, Mitchell, Freeman – all continued to be successful under the new law as did  slow left armers  whether or not they began their careers before 1935.

Nonetheless, during the mid-1950s it was decided not to change the LBW law, but to deal with the perceived problem of inswing and offbreak bowlers by restricting the number of fielders behind the popping crease on the onside to two.  Whether this radically disadvantaged inswing and offspin bowlers is debatable because , as with legspinners after the 1935 revision,  the high quality offspin bowlers who established themselves before the change in the law – Laker, Titmus, Tattersall, Illingworth, Allen, Mortimore – continued to be successful once the two fielder restriction was introduced.  Nonetheless,  in principle it was a change which disadvantaged  many bowlers.  It also set a very bad precedent because it is  the only change to the laws made to reduce the effectiveness of bowlers for reasons other than safety.

In 1962  the no ball law was changed from part of the back foot being behind the bowling crease to part of the front foot (whether grounded or not)  being behind the popping crease.   Under the back foot law bowlers (essentially quick bowlers) who dragged the back foot could deliver a ball perhaps two feet or even a yard closer to the batsman than they could under the front foot law.  However,  many pace bowlers did not drag significantly so the effect of the law change is debatable. Nonetheless, it must go down as a disadvantage to the pace bowler.

The introduction of DRS is still very young (made legal in 2009) and it is not used in all Tests. Nonetheless,  it undoubtedly assists bowlers more than it hinders them. That is particularly true of spinners.  Would Swann have had such an outstanding Test career without it? I doubt it.  It is also true that even before the introduction of  DRS that umpires were influenced by the use of technology such as Hawkeye by broadcasters to give more LBWs.

The careers of bowlers have to be put in the context of the laws during their time. Those bowling before 1927 undoubtedly had the toughest regime. With DRS and the changes in the LBW law since 1935 (undoubtedly  the two most influential law changes) arguably  those playing now have the easiest regime.

Spinners cannot be ignored

If Vaughan wishes to hail  Anderson as  the greatest English Test bowler,  spinners cannot be left out of consideration, the likes of Bobbie Peel, Johnny Briggs, Wilfred Rhodes, Colin Blythe,  Hedley Verity and Jim Laker and Derek Underwood.   Peel, Briggs and Blythe (all slow left armers) have with Lohmann and Barnes the distinction of being the only five English Test bowlers to have taken 100 Test wickets at less than 20 runs apiece.  Hedley Verity on the unforgiving  Test pitches of the 1930s  had an average of less than  25.

Who was the best English spin bowler ? Some players with good Test records  have uneven careers. For example, Jim Laker has the lowest Test average  (21) of any spinner taking 100 or more Test wickets for any country since 1945.  Good as his record he only had one outstanding series, that against Australia in 1956 when he took 46 wickets for 9.60 each.   Because of this I would rule him out as best English spinner.  The same applies to Verity who only rarely  ran through a side in Test (his  15 wickets at Lords against Australia in 1934 was on a rain damaged pitch). Swann’s record although good has him taking his wickets at around 29 and he is greatly assisted by DRS and the general lack of experience and expertise against spin of most modern Test players.  So who is the best English spinner?  Based purely on accomplishment that title has to go to Bobby Peel who played in the 1880s and 1889s. .

He  took all his 102  (ave 16.81) wickets against Australia in only 20 matches, so there were no cheap wickets against 19^th century South Africa to lessen his bowling average as it did with Johnny Briggs.   Peel was consistently successful in both England and Australia  over a period of 10 years. 64 of his wickets were taken in Australia  where rain damaged pitches do not often come into play and where scoring was generally higher than in England,  both because of the climate and Tests not being restricted to three days. Peel took  21 wickets in the 1884/5 series (5 matches) , 9 in 1887/8, (1 match), 24 in 1888 (3 matches), 6 in 1890 (1 match),  16 1891/2 (3 matches) 0 in 1893 (1 match), 27 in 1894/5 (five matches), 8 in 1896 (1 match).   It is rare for any English spinner to take 20 wickets in a series and even rarer to do so against Australia. Peel managed to do it twice in Australia and once in England despite never playing more than three matches in a series in England.

But no English spinner can match the performance of certainly Lohmann and SF Barnes and arguably Bedser and  Trueman.   I shall deal with Lohmann separately, but  the other three have strong claims both in terms of extended  excellence in varied conditions.

Barnes’ average (16.43) is  the lowest of any Test bowler beginning their career after 1900  -Colin Blythe is with an average of 18.63 is his nearest challenger.  All of Barnes’ wickets were taken against Australia (106) and South Africa (83). Of his 106 wickets (average 21) against Australia  79 were taken in 13 matches in Australia and 27 in England in 7 matches.  His 83 wickets against South Africa were taken in 7 matches.  Vaughan tried to shrug off Barnes’ Test record by sneering at the fact that he  had taken wickets on matting pitches in SA. In fact, Barnes only played 4 matches on matting pitches (in 1913/14).  Nor is there any reason to believe matting pitches are generally bowler friendly. Barnes took 49 wickets in his four Tests on matting. The other bowlers – who included Woolley, Rhodes and Johnny Douglas – managed 31 wickets between them in these Tests with no bowler other than Barnes taking more than 8 wickets (Douglas).

Trueman took some time to establish himself in the England side but from 1957 to 1963  he reached 20 or more wickets in a series twice against  Australia (1961 and 1962/3), once against South Africa (196)) three times against  the West Indies (1957, 1959/60, 1963), twice against India (1952, 1959) and Pakistan (1962).   His best series was the 1963 one against the West Indies (a very strong batting side) when he took 34 wickets at 17.   No other English fast bowler has ever been so consistent for so long.  His bowling average of 21.57 is also the third  lowest in Test cricket for those taking 100 wickets or more, being beaten only by Ambrose and Marshall who averaged under 21.

Alec Bedser’s career falls into two halves. The first is the immediate post-war years when he had little support in the England side and had to deal with two seasons of Bradman.  The second half dates from his second tour of Australia in 1950/51. On that tour he took 30 wickets. In the following summer against South Africa he took another 30 wickets. In 1952 Bedser harvested  20 wickets in four Tests against India. This was followed by a Herculean effort in the 1953 Ashes series  when he ended up with a then record for Ashes Tests of 39 wickets. Between the beginning of the 1950/51 tour of Australia and the 1953 Ashes  series Bedser took 119 wickets at 16 in 19 Tests. Taking into the quality of the opposition and the bowling support Bedser had (not very strong ) that is arguably the best run of extended form any Test bowler has had.

Who has the best claim to the title of best  English Test bowler?

Barnes, Peel, Trueman and Bedser were all great bowlers but there is one English bowler who has an objective claim to be not only the greatest English Test bowler but the greatest bowler from any country in the history of Test cricket. He is George Lohmann who played for Surrey in the 1880s and 1890s before dying of TB in 1901 at the tragically early age of 36.  His career lasted less than ten full English seasons.

With SF Barnes, Maurice Tate and Alec Bedser, Lohmann forms a  quartet of classic  English fast medium bowlers.  He was also a dangerous attacking late middle order batsman and one of the great slip fielders of his day.

Cricketers can be judged in two ways: against their contemporaries and against players from any period.  If they are the best of their time and the best or any time then it makes a strong  case possible for saying that they are the best ever.  If they are the best of their time and are better than their contemporaries by a greater margin than the best of other periods are superior to their contemporaries, then the case becomes virtually indestructible.  Lohmann ticks all these boxes at both Test and overall first class level.

Lohmann’s Test and career first class statistics are so good it is difficult to credit them:

Matches     Wickets     Average    5WI     10WM

Test                        18                112            10.75          9            5

First class            293                1841           13.73       176         57

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players/0/92/f_Bowling_by_Opponent.html

Lohmann’s Test average is by far the lowest of those bowlers (from all Test playing nations) who have taken more than 100 or more Test wickets, beating the next by more than five runs per wicket – the closest  to him are SF Barnes with 189 wickets @  16.43, CTB Turner 101 @ 16.53 and Bobbie Peel 102  @ 16.81.

Taking 100 Test wickets at less than 20 runs each might seem to the ahistorical modern mind to be  no great feat before the Great War when they  erroneously imagine pitches were much friendlier to bowlers.   But not only  is  it rare for English bowlers (just five of them),  but it was even rarer for bowlers from other Test playing nations.  On one non-English player has managed to take 100 Test wickets at an average of less than 20, the late Victorian medium pacer CTB Turner.

It is true that Lohmann’s Test figures include a three match series against South Africa in South  Africa  on matting pitches before South Africa were a serious Test playing nation.  In those three games he turned the startling figures of 35 wickets for 203 runs, an average  per wicket of 5.80, but even if those are subtracted from his record he still comes out with the extraordinary figures of 77 wickets in a mere 15 Tests against Australia at an average of 13.01. This is by far the lowest average for a bowler in Ashes Tests taking 50 or more wickets. The nearest to him is the great Nottinghamshire pace-bowling allrounder of the 1880s  Billy Barnes with 51 @ 15.54.

Lohmann’s overall  first class record is also record breaking. His career average of 13.73 is the lowest of any bowler starting his career after 1879  and taking 1,000 or more first class wickets.

The woeful  lack of historical knowledge of many commentators

The problem with Vaughan and some other cricket commentators and summarisers is that they so often have no understanding of the history of the game before their own time, either in terms of the players or the playing conditions.   Because so many of the new broadcasters, the  summarisers in particular, are youngish, they do not even have a decent understanding of the cricketers and cricket over the past half century through their direct experience of cricket.  This would not be an insuperable problem if they simply restricted themselves to commentating and summarising the play they are watching. Sadly they do not.

Robert Henderson

The idea that fielding in first class cricket is vastly superior to what it was even a generation ago has attained the status of a truism amongst sporting journalists and the idea is probably shared by the overwhelming majority of cricket followers today.  It is not hard to see why as fielders  throw themselves about the field and even statuesque fast bowlers are expected to perform the sliding manoeuvre to stop a ball.   This ostentatious athleticism overshadows other aspects of fielding and is increasingly the touchstone by which fielding is judged.  But more athletic does not mean necessarily mean better because it begs the questions of the accuracy of bowlers and expertise in field-setting . It could be that all this throwing around of bodies  counts for little in terms of restricting overall run-getting.  It would be interesting to see some serious research on where runs are scored today compared with the 1950s and 1960s. It could be that modern field settings are more conducive to run scoring, for example, the modern common failure to set a Third Man to pace bowlers  results in  inordinate amounts of boundaries which would otherwise be singles.

In the absence of such statistics I shall give my impressions of the difference between fielding now and in the past based   on my watching of first class cricket since the 1950s. Bowlers  today I judge to be  much less accurate both in length and direction  than they were forty or fifty  years ago.  In particular bowlers used to bowl much straighter.  Some idea of this can be g gleaned from recordings of bowlers which give an extended  passage of play with particular bowlers.  A lack of control over length and direction  makes it difficult to set a  field to which the bowler can bowl . If fielders in the past were not so generally mobile they did not have to be because the ball came more directly to them because bowlers could bowl to their fields.

Then there is the ability of captains and bowlers to set fields   which stifle runs.  I have already mentioned the runs leaked in the modern game through an unattended Third Man.  To that can be added the  much commoner  use today of deep-set defensive fielders , even to fast bowlers, for example, the sweeper on the cover boundary.   In the past it would be rare to see pace bowlers with such fielders. A pace bowler in the 1950s and 1960s would have a Third Man and a long leg  or square leg out and that would be it for deep fielders.   Having more deep fielders makes run scoring easier because a bowler can be milked for ones and twos with little risk. Why  do modern pace bowlers have more deep fielders? Probably because of their inferior control of line and length, although once something becomes a fielding fashion it tends to be copied by captains and bowlers without regard to the ability of a bowler to bowl to his field.

It is true that the ground fielding away from the wicket  is not merely more spectacular today than it once was and the stops which are made are, when  considered in isolation,  frequently  superior to what would have been seen.  But the key phrase here is “considered in isolation”.  If the bowlers today are less accurate and the fields less efficiently set, the need for many  of the spectacular saves may  occur only because of the deficiencies of the modern bowler and field setter compared with what obtained in the past.

It is also important to understand that fielders in  the past were not all laughably immobile. There  are there no   fielders  in county cricket today as hilariously immobile as the late lamented Bomber Wells , a man  who was the nearest thing to a beachball in human form when he plied his offbreaks for Gloucestershire  and then Notts  in the 1950s and Sixties.  But Bomber was amusing to watch simply because he was abnormal. Most fielders in first class cricket in his time were  at least competent  and many such as Tony Lock and Micky Stewart were outstanding fielders virtually anywhere; many more were top class specialists in important positions such as  slip (Cowdrey, Phil Sharpe)  or  the covers (Neil Harvey, Norman O’Neill , Ken Taylor).  It is worth adding that although modern field in on average much more athletic, there are still quite a few mediocre fielders, especially in first class cricket.

The part of fielding which I am sure has deteriorated substantially  is close catching.  This is probably largely  down to the fact that fielders have become generalists rather than specialists.  It is not an easy thing to be fielding in radically different positions and  attain or maintain the same level of expertise in them all.  The importance of having a specialist position was vividly shown when the fine Sussex opening John Langridge took 69 catches fielding at slip in 1955 at the age of 45, one of the most astonishing achievements in cricket.

Surrey built their seven successive Championships on ferociously efficient close catching, with Stewart Surridge, Barrington, Mickey Stewart and Lock all exceeding 50 catches in a season at least once.  They did this on uncovered pitches which could be prepared as a county choose – the Oval pitches of the 1950s were a batsman’s nightmare – and with vicious spinners of the ball in Laker and Lock and a master seamer in Alec Bedser  whose leg cutters reared nastily.  Modern English pitches by comparison are tame and the close catches which come are on average much less spiteful or unpredictable than they were when pitches were uncovered and prepared without fear of points being deducted by pitch inspectors.

Then there are  the effect of changes in equipment. Has  modern batting been changed by protective equipment in the sense that batsmen play shots differentially today than they did before helmets, bumper bras, arm shields and thigh pads on both legs?  The playing of the hook or pull  against quick bowlers has become routine today because of helmets.  Before helmets arrived it was very much a shot which was only played by those expert at it. Now  every Tom, Dick and Harry of a batsman, including tailenders will have a go. That probably means a greater use of  deep fielders  on the leg side.  Modern bats with their much greater power and often greater weight than those used in the past favour the drive over subtler shots such as the late cut.  However, I doubt whether that has had much effect on  field settings, although the greater power may be partly responsible for the use of more deep fielders in the modern game.  Nor can I see that the reverse sweep has caused a fundamental shift in field settings.

There is also the intriguing question of whether the considerable encumbrances donned by modern cricketers makes some shots easier than others simply because  batsmen are restricted in their movement by the load of protective armour they carry. Someone with the full monty of helmet, bumper bra, arm shield, double thigh pads as well as gloves and pads, may find it difficult to the more subtle shots.  The existence of such protection may also produce a sense of invulnerability  which could lead to the favouring of big shots.

Finally, there is the effect of limited overs cricket.  The defensive fields which have evolved for limited overs cricket may be partially responsible for the greater  use of deeper field settings  now.  Captains and bowlers use them routinely  in limited overs and T20 and it is easy to see the temptation to carry the practice into first class cricket.  It has also encouraged batsmen to attack, especially with big hitting which will have changed the general shape of run getting.

The other side of the fielding coin is the effect that batting and fielding changes  plus limited overs cricket have had on the bowlers.  Limited overs cricket has  taught them to vary their bowling massively, something which was not a feature of early times.  The limited overs mentality has been to a degree carried in first class cricket which is part of the reason for the decline in accuracy seen in present day bowlers.

Is modern fielding superior?   Probably not taken overall and judged not merely by the abilities of individual  fieldsmen but  the team as a unit with bowling accuracy and field setting thrown into the judgement mix.

Robert Henderson

The relative speeds of fast bowlers today and in the past is a perennial subject to which England batsman Alastair Cook recently gave fresh legs.  He claimed that pace bowlers playing now every bit as fearsome as those in the  early 1990s when the likes of Waqur Younis, Wazim Akram,   Walsh and Ambrose, Bishop and Donald  were around (http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/test-matches/england-v-west-indies-england-845223).  Cook also contends that the bowlers of today must be quicker because in all other sports athletes have become fitter and faster  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9306922/England-v-West-Indies-Jonny-Bairstow-is-not-alone-in-the-pace-battle.html)

As someone who has been watching first class cricket since the mid 1950s I would profoundly disagree with the contention  that modern bowlers are bowlers are faster than those in the past and would go further and say that there is no Test bowler today who is of extreme pace. That is arguably a unique situation because until now every decade of Test cricket has been able to furnish examples of such bowlers.

The improvement of athletic disciplines argument does not stand scrutiny. It may be true that in pure athletic activities such as running and jumping improvements occur simply through more efficient training routines, although even there the qualification of improved tracks and running equipment is responsible for a significant part of it. There is also the shadow of performance  enhancing drugs which probably were and are widely used. Moreover, athletics was amateur until a generation ago. It would be expected that full-time professionals would substantially improve on their amateur predecessors. The British Olympic  sprinter Peter Radford , who won a bronze medal in the 1960 100 metres,   has written interestingly on the standard of  athletic performance before organised amateur athletics arose in the 19^th century.  He makes a persuasive case that the athletic feats  of the 18^th century –  invariably achieved by professional athletes – may well  have exceeded the performances of the organised amateur era  until well into the twentieth century (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2004/may/02/athletics.comment1). It is also debatable whether faster is always better in the case of ball games.  For example, Premier League football is very fast but is it better football than the slower football of the past when there was more dribbling and the ball was given away far less?

It is also debatable whether faster is always better in the case of ball games.  For example, Premier League football is very fast but is it better football than the slower football of the past when there was more dribbling and the ball was given away far less?

Where bowling is concerned there is no improved equipment involved and  full-time professionalism  in cricket has been established for  over a century and a half.   Despite extensive testing in recent years drugs have rarely been discovered amongst first class cricketers. Nor is it easy to see how drugs would enhance a bowler’s speed. It is true that a steroids might build muscle, but bowling  fast is not a matter of strength. Fast bowlers come in all shapes and sizes from the pint-sized Aborigine  Eddie Gilbert  in the 1930s – probably the man who bowled genuinely fast with the least physical resources – to giants such as Ambrose.   Not only that but fast bowling methods  vary enormously. Fast bowlers fall into two broad categories, the sprinters who get their pace from a fast, often long  runup  such as, Larwood or Hall and the strength bowlers such as Sylvester Clarke or Wayne Daniel.  Actions can be divided into the side-on and the chest-on but there is far more variation than that. Get on YouTube and compare the difference between two side-on bowlers such as Jeff Thompson and Fred Trueman or two front-on bowlers,  for example Bob Willis and Brian Statham. In short, fast bowling is such an individual matter that it cannot be meaningfully taught and attempts to “improve” actions can easily ruin a bowler vide James Anderson’s travails after the England coaching staff changed his action.

As for my personal witness of many bowlers over more than half a century, the obvious objection is that until the past twenty years or so there was little attempt to objectively  measure the pace of bowlers.   The advent of systems such as the radar gun and Hawk-eye then made measurement routine in international matches.  Interestingly,   the measurement of fast bowling over the past twenty years supports the idea that fast bowlers of today are certainly no  faster than they were twenty years ago – which supports the idea that pace has not improved over  a generation – and may suggest that present day fast bowlers have gone back on the pace scale because there is no one as today recorded as  fast, either on individual balls or generally  as Shoaib Akhtar  or Allan Donald.

There are really two classes of fast bowler, fast and express.  The fast bowler is someone like Finn or Statham: the express bowler  a Tyson or  a Holding.  There are no bowlers currently playing whom I would class as express,  but quite  a few who would fall into the classification of fast.   It is of course important to remember that fast bowlers  do not maintain their pace throughout their careers or even  for much of their careers.  A good example is Dennis Lillee who was a genuine express when he visited England in 1972 but significantly slower afterwards as injury took its toll.

Before I was 15 I had seen Tyson, Trueman, Statham, Adcock,  Lindwall, Miller, Davidson,  Gilchrist,  in action.   I will not offer a certain judgement on their pace because a child, even in  his early teens, is not a reliable witness to a bowler’s  speed.  However, I can offer an impressionistic memory of these players.  Trueman, Adcock and Gilchrist struck me as magically  quick,  but Tyson was something else. I saw him bowl often and he  invariably  produced a response from the crowd I have heard no other bowler ever do: a  regular shocked astonished gasp.  I suspect he was the fastest bowler I have ever seen. Lindwall and Miller were of course near the end of their careers.

By 15 someone is in a position to make an adult judgement. I reached that age in 1963. Since then  I would place these Test  bowlers as  fast at some time in their careers:

Trueman (bear in mind he was past 30 then), David Larter, Jeff Jones, John Snow, Statham (he maintained his pace well into his thirties) Ken Shuttleworth,  Peter Lever,  Bob Willis, Graham Dilley, David Lawrence,  Darren Gough, Andrew Flintoff,   Steve Harmison,   Alan Pascoe, Rodney Hogg, Alan Hurst, Geoff Lawson, Craig McDermot,  Merv Hughes, Jason Gillespie,  Mike Procter, Dale Stein,  Joel Garner, Colin Croft,  Curtley Ambrose,  Courtney Walsh, Kemar Roach, Dick Motz, Richard Hadlee,  Wazim Akram.

and these as express in at least part of their careers:

Alan Ward, Devon Malcolm,  Jeff Thompson, Dennis Lillee, Brett Lee, Wes Hall,  Charlie Griffith,  Andy Roberts, Wayne Daniel, Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Marshall, Patrick Paterson,  Ian Bishop, Peter Pollock,  Allan Donald, Shane Bond, Imran Khan, Waqar Younis,  Shoaib Akhtar.

One other thing needs  to be taken into account. Until the reform of the no-ball law in the 1960s which replaced the back-foot law with the front-foot law, pace bowlers could quite legitimately bowl from significantly closer to the batsman. Any pace bowler  could easily gain 18 inches beyond what is permitted today and some bowlers by the practice of dragging gained three feet.   A yard closer to the batsman makes a significant difference to the reaction time available to the batsman.

Genuine  fast bowlers like elephants are difficult to describe but you know when you have seen one. Perhaps the most telling sign is a top class batsman playing much more deliberately than usual. I am constantly reading or hearing that X or Y bowls at 90+ yet when I see them in the flesh they do not strike me as express.  I have not seen a bowler new to first class cricket who struck me as extreme in pace in the past  ten years. Finn is the  probably the fastest bowler regularly playing county cricket, but his pace at best  is no more than that of David Larter of Northants and England from the 1960s, a bowler Finn  much resembles in physique and method.

As for the claim that the average pace of bowling is faster today because players are fitter and can sustain their pace for longer I have my doubts on that score.     Of those modern bowlers who are claimed to be fast such as Stuart Meaker, when I have seen them they bowl the odd fast ball but for the most part are fast medium. The modern pace bowler’s proneness to injury also argues against a higher average speed because they so often  carry an injury.

Johnny Bairstow displayed some uncertainty against Kemar Roach’s fast bowling in the recent Tests against the West Indies.  This has been ascribed to a lack of genuine fast – and the extinction of express –  bowling in county cricket these days.   There may be something in this because there are few bowlers in county cricket even of Finn’s pace.  This was not so in the past. For example, in the 1960s there were many bowlers who  played little or no Test cricket who were at least as fast  as Finn.  In 1965 county batsmen Harold Rhodes, Jeff Jones, Butch White, Bob Cottam (fast when he first appeared), Alan Brown, David Sayer,  Ken Shuttleworth, Peter Lever, John Price,   David Larter, John Cotton, Fred Rumsey and  Geoff Hall They were in addition to Snow, Statham and  Trueman, the latter two being still able to bowl a fast opening spell – I saw Trueman knock Mickey Stewart’s bat out of his hands twice in an opening spell very late in Trueman’s career – if unable to sustain their pace throughout the day.

Steve James writing in the Telegraph lists the current bowlers who have clocked 90 mph or better  “at the  National Cricket Performance Centre in Loughborough, using their own testing equipment, there is a list of current fast bowlers who have been clocked at 90mph (not that Roach was bowling at that pace; he was only at about 87mph at best). It includes those who have been picked by England, such as Broad, James Anderson, Graham Onions, Stuart Meaker, Steven Finn, Chris Tremlett, Jade Dernbach, Ajmal Shahzad, Liam Plunkett, Sajid Mahmood, Steve Harmison, Simon Jones and Amjad Khan, as well as others such as Mills, James Anyon (Sussex), Mark Footitt (Derbyshire), Boyd Rankin, Chris Wright (both Warwickshire), David Griffiths (Hampshire) and Matthew Dunn (Surrey). Another Surrey youngster, George Edwards, is close, as is Kent’s Matt Coles.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9306922/England-v-West-Indies-Jonny-Bairstow-is-not-alone-in-the-pace-battle.html). It is one thing to achieve such a pace occasionally in practice, quite another to do it in match conditions and do it consistently.  I would also question 90 mph as the benchmark for fast bowlers and the measurement of pace by modern methods. If the likes of Meaker and Finn  are bowling at 92 04 93 mph, the likes of Hall, Holding and Marshall must have regularly bowled at  97-100 mph  because the difference in their speed compared with Meaker and Finn is the difference between a regulation fast medium bowler delivering at around 80 mph and Meaker and Finn at their fastest.

Why have fast bowlers largely gone out of fashion and genuine expresses giving a good impression of an extinct species? A case might  be made for modern pitches, especially Test pitches, being  on average  much slower and less bouncy than those of yesteryear,   the ever increasing protective equipment and the tighter restrictions on short pitched bowling. But probably the most likely explanation is the introduction of central contracts and the ever swelling international calendar.  In terms of overs, bowlers  do not play more than they did fifty years ago and in most cases less even if all the limited overs cricket is added to the first class cricket, but they do have a travel burden much greater than previous generations of professional cricketers.    The increasingly harum scarum fixture list has the effect of fast bowlers being not overbowled  but underbowled . This, together with injuries resulting from fast bowlers being asked to throw themselves around in the field in a manner which would have been deemed unseemly by earlier generations of quick bowlers,  makes them generally less fit to bowl than previous generations.  Note that I don’t say  less fit in the athletic sense but fit to bowl. There is a difference. Bowlers get fit to bowl by bowling not running for miles or lifting weights.

Can it ever be shown objectively what the speeds of bowlers in the past were? It might be possible to calculate speeds from pre-Hawkeye era footage (from 1990 onwards) and then use the same technique for footage from the Hawyeye-era where a speed has been calculated using modern methods. That would both serve as a check on the accuracy
of modern methods and give a reference point for bowlers from all
periods for which film  exists of sufficient speed to give a realistic
representation of the action.  All that needs to be done to be done is
to measure the time of the ball in the air  from, say, leaving the
hand to pitching and the distance covered – its line of  trajectory not the distance down the pitch –  to the ball pitching. Taking the measurement at pitching might remove biases from short and fuller length balls and short and taller bowlers.