Stats: Comparing Dale Steyn with the great West Indies quicks of the past

Dale Steyn is undoubtedly the greatest fast bowler of the modern era

Dale Steyn recently celebrated his 10 years in Test cricket with a six-wicket haul in the first Test against West Indies in Centurion. Conceding just 34 runs for the 6 wickets, Steyn has taken his tally of Test wickets to 389, just one short of equalling countryman Makhaya Ntini’s record for the highest number of wickets for South Africa.

Steyn is also on top of the ICC Test Bowling rankings, with Rangana Herath a distant second, 58 rating points behind. The question seems imminent and inevitable.

Is Steyn better than the likes of Andy Roberts & Co.? Let’s try and find out.

Long before there was a fire in Babylon, the West Indian brand of calypso cricket was associated more with flamboyance than with toughness. Something one of its greatest captains, Clive Llyod didn’t take too kindly of. The watershed moment came when after a humiliating 5-1 loss to the Australians,

Llyod, in only his second year of captaincy, decided that enough is enough. Knowing fully well that the West Indies batting could by itself pack a punch, the focus shifted on building a bowling war-machine, comprising of fast bowlers who would hunt like wolves, in packs. Andy Roberts was already around, spearheading an attack consisting of Vanburn Holder, Keith Boyce, and Bernard Julien.

But the story didn’t end there. In came Michael Holding, soon known to be as ‘Whispering Death’, followed by Joel Garner, Colin Croft and Malcolm Marshall. Out of these five, the four fielded in a Test XI could evoke serious fear in the minds of batsmen. Sometimes even before the first ball was bowled. They came to be known as the ‘quartet’.

A good dozen broken jaws, and hundreds of shattered stumps later, in 1984, debuted Courtney Walsh, who would eventually take West Indies fast bowling to never seen before heights.

It’s only apt that Steyn be pitted against these names, for a true measure of his greatness. But the most difficult bit in doing so, was in comparing players from two completely different time periods. Cricket, like every other sport, has evolved. When the West Indies pace battery prowled, there used to be uncovered wickets, lesser protection on batsmen, no curb on the number of bouncers in an over, so isn’t the potency almost expected?

Conversely, batsmen are more attacking these days, providing more opportunities to a bowler to get him out, there’s an entire army of support staff that helps professional cricketers to remain fit and in shape, leading to lesser injuries and more games, don’t forget the technology that’s there to assist in demystifying a batsman and what not. So factoring in all these variables almost became necessary, and an absolute comparison of the respective records of these bowlers had to be rejected.

I decided to handpick a few West Indies pacers to compare Steyn with, and the names that came to my mind included those who formed the quartet: Roberts, Holding, Garner, Croft and Marshall. They all played in era starting in 1974 with Roberts’ debut and ending in 1991 with Marshall’s retirement. For reference sake, I will call these 17 years as the Quartet Era.

In between 1984 and 1991, two very successful West Indian fast bowlers debuted, in the form of Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, in 1984 and 1988 respectively. While, the early bit of Walsh’s career coincides with the Quartet Era, I would like to place him in a separate time frame (along with Ambrose), starting with his debut in 1984 and his retirement in 2001.

This phase especially saw the fast-bowling boom of the 90s with McGrath, Lee and Donald all making an entry into international cricket. Herein, I will refer to these 17 years between 1984 and 2001, as the Walsh Era. Post 2004 and the coming of Dale Steyn, world cricket has just seen one era, the Steyn Era, going strong even after 10 long years.

My methodology revolves around comparing the relative performances (using metrics such as wickets, average and strike-rate) of each bowler in his respective era, and thereby measuring how good he was in his time. This allows one to factor in the then prevailing variables, and gives a clearer comparison albeit not fully perfect.

(Note: The ‘Overs’ in the tables have been expressed mathematically. So, if it is 3.2 overs, it implies 3 overs and 2 out of 6 balls, shown here as 3.33 overs. This has been done to assist in calculation)

Fast bowling performances over the years

During the Quartet Era, as many as 9043 wickets were claimed by fast bowlers alone, all over the world. As on expected lines, the most lethal of the lot were the West Indies, snapping 22.5% of those wickets at nearly 4.5 runs lesser per wicket than the second best Australia. The balls per wicket were also significantly lower for the West Indies than what was the average then. West Indies dismissed one batsman in every 54 deliveries, while the prevailing average was of 63 deliveries.

PACE BOWLER PERFORMANCE DURING QUARTET ERA
Team	Balls	Runs	Wickets	Average	SR
England	119068	57350	1834	31.27	64.92
Australia	120390	56311	1929	29.19	62.41
West Indies	110746	50523	2038	24.79	54.34
India	54355	27787	789	35.22	68.89
Pakistan	72560	32251	1093	29.51	66.39
New Zealand	72238	31761	1050	30.25	68.80
Sri Lanka	20517	10921	310	35.23	66.18
	569874	266904	9043	29.51	63.02

Things remained pretty much the same for the next 17 years, when Walsh wreaked havoc all over. While the wicket count of pace bowlers increased due to the entry of new teams like South Africa and Zimbabwe, the combined bowling average of all fast bowlers remained somewhat around what it was during the Quartet Era. The strike-rate in the Walsh Era, too, was similar to that during the Quartet Era. Apart from the 7 years that overlap, this consistency in numbers can be attributed to the fact that cricket was still in a transitional phase, the cricketing revolution of the 2000s was yet to arrive, and status quo was being maintained.

PACE BOWLERS’ PERFORMANCE DURING WALSH ERA
Team	Overs	Runs	Wickets	Average	SR
West Indies	18262.83	49964	1984	25.18	55.23
Australia	17923.33	50729	1786	28.40	60.21
England	19637.33	58795	1779	33.05	66.23
New Zealand	15066.33	42463	1287	32.99	70.24
Pakistan	12142	34794	1278	27.23	57.00
South Africa	11354.16	28689	1147	25.01	59.39
India	9100	26357	772	34.14	70.73
Sri Lanka	8364.5	24911	667	37.35	75.24
Zimbabwe	5605.33	15152	451	33.60	74.57
Bangladesh	161	534	11	48.55	87.82
	117616.8	332388	11162	29.78	63.22

However, the first significant change in these statistics came in the period succeeding Steyn’s debut. The impact of the popular limited overs cricket, aided with the new found aggressive mindset of posting totals at a faster rate and attempting to chase down targets, pioneered by the Australian team of the Waugh-Ponting regime, saw the runs per wicket average for fast bowlers increase. However, an attempt to score quicker and score more, resulted in the fall in the average strike-rate of the world’s fast bowlers.

PACE BOWLERS’ PERFORMANCE IN DALE STEYN ERA
Team	Overs	Runs	Wickets	Average	SR
England	14834.16	46951	1497	31.36	59.46
Australia	13032	39421	1365	28.88	57.28
South Africa	11726.16	36752	1328	27.67	52.98
New Zealand	8668.67	27471	842	32.63	61.77
India	8559.67	29625	813	36.44	63.17
West Indies	9041.33	29993	803	37.35	67.56
Pakistan	7015	23860	678	35.19	62.08
Sri Lanka	6656.67	22674	557	40.71	71.71
Bangladesh	3548.16	13153	239	55.03	89.08
Zimbabwe	2286.83	7029	203	34.63	67.59
World XI	74.5	246	12	20.50	37.25
	85443.15	277175	8337	33.25	61.49

The Asian connect

It’s no hidden secret that fast bowlers who’ve been brought up in the subcontinent have had a considerable advantage over their foreign counterparts. While a workhorse like Kapil Dev could trouble anyone with his energy and guile, the Pakistanis mastered the art of reverse swing and passed it down generations.

Sarfaraz, Imran, Wasim, Waqar, Shoaib, and even Gul – everyone knew how to use the old ball as a weapon. So it was quite natural to evaluate a non-Asian fast bowler by seeing how he fared in countries that either had flat run-scoring pitches or dusty, cracked surfaces, assisting spin at an exponential level.

My objective was to see whether any of the West Indian names cropped up in an era wise study of performances in Asia, alongside Stey's of course. So I revisited the three, already classified time periods and selected the top 5 non-Asian wicket takers (only fast bowlers) in Asia and compared their Asia records with the records of their performances in non-Asian countries. Here’s what I got:

Three of the names that we were comparing Steyn to, cropped up in the list and what was surprising is that out of the three, only Marshall was the one who showed improvement while bowling outside the subcontinent. Someone like Walsh (who also figured in the stats of this period because of the 7 overlapping years), showed significant deterioration when bowling in non-Asian countries. These numbers tend towards telling us that fast bowlers, who conventionally did well all over the world, did better in Asia, despite the conditions not favouring them, because perhaps the Asian batsmen weren’t very comfortable playing against fast bowling.

As we moved towards the 90s, and with the onset of the Walsh Era, we saw that the non-Asian fast bowlers started to struggle in subcontinental conditions. This could very well be attributed to the lack of express pace that those in the 70s and 80s had that allowed the extra something off the pitch, in unhelpful conditions.

Someone even as great as Glenn McGrath had problems bowling in the subcontinent, indicated by a significant dip in his bowling average when he moved from a non-Asian country to an Asian country, to play.

The most interesting bit though comes when we see the statistics of 2004 to present. Dale Steyn is often subjected to comparisons with his bowling partner Morne Morkel, and Australian speedster, Mitchell Johnson. And it’s remarkable, how by the sheer dint of his consistency in the subcontinent, Dale Steyn stakes claim to the best of his time.

Unlike all the names that we observed here, across 40 years, barring Hadlee, not a single one had the attribute of being as good in Asian countries as in non-Asian ones. Steyn not only is comfortably ahead in terms of average but is phenomenally better than the 2nd best when it comes to wickets and the number of balls he takes to take them. Someone like Johnson, who is often heralded as the next biggest fast-bowling threat after the quartet, fares poorly in the subcontinent.

It’s fair to say that Steyn’s potency in all kinds of conditions and against all opposition (shown by the consistency in average), puts him ahead of many of the West Indies bowling greats, barring Marshall maybe, who always favoured one condition or kind of opposition, over others.

The Verdict

To say that Steyn is the better than the West Indies’ fearsome attack, in their heydays, would be bold and inviting of criticism from those who are still nostalgic about the ‘70s and the ‘80s. But the fact remains that Steyn does indeed fare much better than those in his generation, than the likes of Roberts, Marshall and Garner did from their own. A valid question would be to challenge the quality of those who follow Steyn (making him look relatively better), but, unfortunately, that remains to be one of the anomalies of an inter-era comparison.

A summary of how the bowlers mentioned in this article fared as compared to everyone else who played alongside them can be seen below: