0Best bowling attack in the world?

Aus­trali­an coach Mickey Arthur has giv­en an inter­view in which he said that he thinks the cur­rent Aus­trali­an bowl­ing attack is the best in the world!  I’m tak­ing this in the spir­it of the tra­di­tion­al “Glenn McGrath” pre-ashes wind up speech, but Arthur did­n’t say they were just bet­ter than the Eng­land bowl­ing attack (dubi­ous enough in itself) but bet­ter than all the oth­ers in the world too.  So should Eng­land really be quak­ing in their boots?

Lets start with cur­rent test world #1 side South Africa and com­pare their bowl­ing tal­ent with the cur­rent Aus­sie line-up

Ver­non Phil­ander: 16 Tests, 89 wick­ets @ 17.13
Morne Morkel: 49 Tests, 175 wick­ets @ 29.97
Dale Steyn: 65 Tests, 332 wick­ets @ 22.65
Jacques Kal­lis: 162 Tests, 288 wick­ets @ 32.43

Over­all: 292 Tests, 884 wick­ets @ 26.74

James Pattin­son: 10 Tests, 40 wick­ets @ 23.37
Peter Siddle: 41 Tests, 150 wick­ets @ 28.84
Nath­an Lyon: 22 Tests, 76 wick­ets @ 33.18
Mitchell Starc: 9 Tests, 30 wick­ets @ 34.03
Ryan Har­ris: 12 Tests, 47 wick­ets @ 23.63

Over­all: 94 Tests, 343 wick­ets @ 28.91

So — the South Afric­an attack have played 3 times as many tests between them (des­pite com­par­ing 4 play­ers to 5) and have taken many more wick­ets at a lower aver­age.  They’re also cur­rently world num­ber 1 and you don’t get there unless your bowl­ing attack is in form.  As far as I’m con­cerened there is no fur­ther debate needed.  But lets just see how Eng­land fit in…

James Ander­son: 82 Tests, 307 wick­ets @ 30.14
Stu­art Broad: 57 Tests, 195 wick­ets @ 30.93
Steven Finn: 22 Tests, 88 wick­ets @ 28.73
Graeme Swann: 52 Tests, 222 wick­ets @ 28.50

Over­all: 213 Tests, 812 wick­ets @ 29.73

The Eng­land attack has played more than twice as many Tests and taken more than twice as many wick­ets.  The Aus­sie’s have a slight edge in the aver­ages but there’s very little in it (0.8 runs per wick­et, or 16 runs per match).  The Aus­sie line-up is also less ver­sat­ile (i.e. Swann is a much bet­ter spin­ner than any­thing the Aus­sies have to offer).  Arthur also talked about strength in depth, but with the exper­i­enced Bresnan avail­able, and oth­er top bowl­ers also avail­able Eng­land also have con­sid­er­able strength in depth.  In Eng­lish con­di­tions the Eng­land bowl­ers can reas­on­ably expec­ted to have the advant­age — espe­cially with Graeme Swann being so effect­ive against left-handers (The Aus­sies have 5 left-handed bats­men in their 16-man squad — Hughes, Warner, Cow­an, Khawaja and Wade)

Of course, the Aus­sies want to talk about bowl­ing attacks because they have major con­cerns about their bat­ting line up.  I would do a com­par­is­on, but it’s not even clear what the Aus­sie line-up will be.  In my opin­ion the only Aus­sie bats­man who would get into the Eng­land side is their injured cap­tain Michael Clarke.  Cook, Trott, KP and Root are all rock sol­id and Matt Pri­or is prob­ably the best keep­er-bats­man in the world at the moment.

In con­clu­sion: the bowl­ing line-ups may be reas­on­ably evenly matched, but over­all there is no con­test — Eng­land are strong favour­ites and rightly so.  Of course Aus­tralia have a decent chance — but they’ll need some luck on their side from injur­ies, the toss, or the Eng­lish sum­mer weath­er.  Giv­en no injur­ies and an even break of weath­er and the toss I expect Eng­land to win as com­fort­ably as they did in Aus­tralia last time round — by at least 2 matches.  Call it 3–1 or better.