Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Spear Heads and how they come now adays

Now consider this. A bowling spearhead, allegedly, runs in to bowl the first delivery of one of the most anticipated series in the world and looses it completely. No need to mention who the culprit was, but, have a butchers about these numbers.

In the last 15 test matches, away from home, the Spear Head, lets call him SH. averages 47 away from home, if you reduce the criteria to 12 tests, that is after 2004 test series against West Indies then the average goes up to 52.58 with a strike rate of 70 plus.
SH is widely regarded as one of the best bowlers in the world, how & why, is beyond me. SH has only taken tow 5 wicket halls, home or away, in the last 15 months. S.H has not taken any five wicket halls away from home since 2004, that is 25 innings without a 5 for. A five wicket hall is equated to a century by a batsman, generally. This means a premium batsman, who is supposed to carry the batting of the whole team and set the tempo for the team has gone 25 innings without scoring a century away from home. The most talked about run drought for a leader was that of Mark Taylor and he only went century less for 18 months and 22 test innings, but, he was too valuable as a captain to be dropped and his team was still winning. Our SH has gone for much longer then that, against all kinds of opposition. This is like Ricky Ponting, Mohammad Yousaf, Inzimama, Rahul Dravid or Jacque Kallis not scoring a century for two years and 25 innings and yet remains to be the lynch pin of his teams batting. Can it really happen in today's media.... how come no one is focusing on this.
Just to put things in perspective SH's figures are worse then those of Mohammad Sami, probably the biggest disappointment of modern cricket.... worse then Mohammad Sami.. with his built and with the team faith that is placed on him, is mind boggling. I mean we are talking about being worse then Sami, it hardly gets any worse then that.
Needless to say, SH also stand for Steve Harmison and I am sure no one will put Sami, Agarkar and Harmision in the same bracket of fast bowlers, but, whether you like it or not, Sami and Agarkar have better record then Harmison's record away from home. Both of them have better bowling records in Australia then Steve,he averages 77.80, none of them have, at least publicly, admitted to being " frozen" in the face of the biggest series of their careers. So is it really such a big surprise to see England suffer in Australia. May be some people need to get the recognition they deserve like Hoggard and some ether's position in the team needs to be questioned.

1 comment:

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