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England in the 90s revisited and oh, for backup bowlers!

So its come to this finally. As the cliche goes, the wheel comes full circle. Australian selection policies these days resemble that of England from the 1990s :-) Took a quick look at the last two years and over 37 Test matches since 1 Jan 2008, Australia have used 36 different players. That's an average of roughly one additional/new player every 1.48 matches! Talk about instability. When compared to India (a new player every 1.94 matches), South Africa (2.14), England (2.24) it shows how things have changed in the last two years with regards to the power balance in Test cricket.

What the overall stat also does not show directly is that most of these new players have been bowlers. With the exception of replacing Hayden and Symonds the batting line-up has been quite stable but the bowling has been the exact opposite. Indian spinners like Amit Mishra, Piyush Chawla, Ashwin, and Murali Kartik must be ruing the fact that they don't have an Australian passport! The latter in particular since his India playing days seem over. This isn't a uniquely Australian problem though. Bowling the world over has been pretty poor in the last two years, with most teams struggling to produce any Test class back-up bowlers. The over-reliance that each team has on one or two bowlers really shows them up when these guys get injured. Whether that's Zaheer for India, Steyn for South Africa, Anderson and Swann for England, most teams really lack depth in their bowling stocks. Hell, Sri Lanka was finding it difficult to bowl out the West Indies on their own soil just recently. And if Asif and Aamer get life bans the average quality will go plummeting further. Hopefully there will be a turnaround soon!

Comments

AS said…
Is there a correlation between the rate of change of players and the success of the team? I guess the analysis to answer this question will have to be slightly more complex, but interesting?
December 27, 2010 at 1:10 PM
Buttax said…
In the normal course, not really because turnover is pretty steady. But every so often a team goes through a phase where they lose a clutch of good players at the same time. That usually has a big effect (like Australia are seeing now after Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist, Hayden, Langer, and Martyn all retired in 2006/7). I think the reason the effect is magnified is also driven by the fact that when you have a clutch of really good players, they were probably driving better results than average :)
January 5, 2011 at 8:26 PM
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