Bowling Depth
Two charts about bowling depth in Test Cricket
In part, this is a argument about what Mr. Bhogle says above. I think he has it exactly backwards. This is more precarious time to be a dominant team than 20 or 10 years ago, because there are many more teams who have bowling attacks good enough to win Test matches than at any other time. Its not clear why he thinks many of those teams from 20 years ago were better (nostalgia, it seems to me, plays a big role in general in these types of takes). But mostly, this post uses two charts to describe the landscape of Test cricket in the modern era. For a longer version of Mr. Bhogle’s summary, listen to this episode of the excellent The Final Word Cricket Podcast.
The chart below gives the bowling depth available to each Test team (these are organized by Test captain), and the bowling depth for other teams in the period of that captain’s tenure. Note, this latter bowling depth considers all Tests played by other teams in the period of that captain’s tenure, not just Tests against that captain’s team.
The bowling depth is given in terms of the opening bowler’s average (1,2), the first change bowler’s average (3), the 2nd change bowler’s average (4), and the average of the 3rd change bowler or later. Note that a bowler’s bowling position is listed according to the first time that the bowler appeared at the bowling crease in the innings.
The first set of averages by position represent the bowling quality available to each captain. The second set of average by position represent the bowling quality of the average opponent during that period. One or two or these periods are dubious - Bobby Simpson did not captain Australia for 14 years, and Viv Richards didn’t captain West Indies for eleven years. But I expect that readers who are generally familiar with the history of the Test match game will find it
I’ll leave readers to study the table at leisure. If anything strikes you as interesting or noteworthy, please discuss it in a comment below.
In particular, note the Australian team under Mark Taylor and the Indian side under Virat Kohli. Both teams have comparable bowling depth (note the effect of Kohli and Shastri’s obsession with playing a 5th bowler), and the average bowling they faced in their era is of comparable depth. See also England under Peter May in the 1950s (the 2nd entry in the table). Finally, consider New Zealand under Kane Williamson.
Compare these four entries to other four entries in the top 8 - the teams captained by Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. The average opponent in those eras didn’t have the same bowling depth, while those four teams did. Consequently, it was a lop-sided contest, and those four teams, by common consensus are considered the four greatest teams in the modern era.
In Test cricket, once the bowling average moves north of about 33-34 runs per wicket, it becomes difficult for those attacks to compete for victories in Tests, simply because, it takes too long - nearly 8 sessions - to take 20 wickets at that rate, and all too often, teams run out of time, and if the opposition has a top attack, run out of room.
Consider the chart below. This gives two bowling averages - opening bowlers, first & second change bowlers - for each bowling side over each 10 year period. Typically, the opening bowlers tend to be fast bowlers, while the first and second change bowlers tend to be a combination of pace and spin. This is a different view of the same information in the chart above. It is designed to show the drop-off (or not) in the wicket taking capability from the new ball bowling to the change bowling. For a team like Sri Lanka for example, you can see the colossal footprint of Muttiah Muralitharan in the figures for the change bowlers.
The Test match world in each decade is organized into 16 sets of bowlers in this chart. If we consider the number of sets taking wickets at better than 33 apiece (thus, giving themselves a chance of being competitive), then
1985-1994: 4 teams - AUS, SA, WI and PAK have new ball and change bowling which meets out threshold, while 2 - IND and NZ - have 1. 10/16 bowling groups offer this threat.
1995-2004: Only AUS meeting this threshold for both new ball and change bowlers. ENG nearly meet it for both. SA, WI, PAK, ENG and SL meet it once each. 7/16 bowling groups offer threat.
2005-14: ENG and AUS meet this threshold fully. SA terrific new ball attack (Steyn and partner) does so as well, as does SL change bowling (Muralitharan, and then Herath). 7/16 bowling groups offer threat.
2015-22: 13/17 bowling groups offer threat. SL have their best new ball bowling threat yet. Sadly, they have not found a successor to Herath or Murali. IND, AUS and SA have had phenomenal attacks. WI offer a renewed new ball threat. NZ have their deepest attack yet. ENG have had their most prolific new ball pair yet, and even though Broad and Anderson are ageing now, they still offer plenty of threat in ENG.
Its not the case that today’s Test batters are worse than their counterparts from the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s. Its that today’s Test batters get to face very little average bowling anywhere. When they do get to face it (or when they find the occasional featherbed), they make plenty of runs, just as their predecessors did.
What this means, with reference to Mr. Bhogle’s point, is that Test cricket is more precarious, not less now. Every team faces a greater threat of losing a Test match. There’s nothing to suggest that the batters from 15-20 years ago would have done better than today’s batters against today’s bowlers. They didn’t do too well against McGrath or Steyn or Muralitharan or Herath or Kumble did they? The point however, if that back then, once they survived, they got to face bowlers who were a class below in terms of the wicket taking threat they offered. This respite is rarely available today.
When it comes to IND, 15-20 years ago, IND played a lot more Test cricket against teams at the bottom end of the table. Sourav Ganguly, for instance, captained IND 11 times against BAN or ZIM (out of a total of 49), and won 9 out of those (IND won 21 Tests in all under Sourav Ganguly). By contrast, Virat Kohli has captains IND 13 times against SL and BAN (and never against ZIM) out of his 67 Tests in charge. In some of those Tests against SL, they still had Sangakkara, Herath and co. And in any case, both those teams are far superior to the BAN or ZIM sides of the early 2000s.
From any team’s point of view, this is a more precarious era of competition in Test cricket, simply because today, there are more teams who can realistically expect to win Test matches than there have ever been in any one era. If the quality of a Test team is decided by its ability to threaten to actually win Test matches (this involves being table to take 20 wickets quickly enough, as Ravi Shastri makes plain in this surprisingly excellent interview with Shoaib Akhtar) , then…
Comments welcome as usual.
Great analysis as usual sir. One possible modification I could think of was a weighted difference calculation based on the number of overs bowled by the bowlers at that position. The teams under Waugh and Richards for instance are losing out based on the 5th bowlers average. It's unlikely the 5th bowler would bowl much under these captains in particular and also in general. A weighted difference might help in these teams' net difference going up and will bring out your point more visibly.
A comparison of the average pitch rating during these decades can also help in illustrating why the batters from previous era scored more runs.