5 best bowling pairs in world cricket currently

Almost every team is blessed with great bowlers but not all teams are blessed with great bowling pairs. Great bowlers always hunt in pairs, making them a lot more lethal and dangerous. It ensures that there is pressure and menace from both ends. The world has seen many great pairs in the last few decades like Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie, Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble and probably the greatest of all, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.

Currently, there aren’t many legendary pairs going around. Teams keep chopping and changing their teams considering there are three formats of cricket and plenty of exhaustion sets in. Injury worries, competition and leagues mushrooming all around the world have ensured that very few pairs have sustained their partnership and menace consistently over any length of time. Some have managed to do it successfully to a certain extent.

Here, we take a look at five pairs of bowlers which are amongst the best partnerships going around.

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James Anderson and Stuart Broad (England)

Probably the most consistent pair of new-ball bowlers in world-cricket, Anderson and Broad have been phenomenal in the last half a decade, instrumental in England’s Test fortunes which saw them touch No.1 ranking at one point. Broad leads the Test wicket-taking chart in the last 5 years with 238 wickets at 25 in 106 innings with 12 5-wicket hauls, including the sensational 8/15 in the Ashes at home in 2015.

Around the same time, Anderson, who has played the same number of Tests, 57 with 110 innings, has picked up 236 wickets at 25.91 with 11 five-wicket hauls. The two bowlers remain neck and neck even when the time-frame taken is for the last couple of years. Broad has 108 at 20.87 in 23 Tests while Anderson has 105 at 24 in 26 Tests. Barring the Steyn/Morkel pair, none has come remotely close to challenging the consistency and menace of this pair, especially in English conditions.

Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel (South Africa)

Steyn and Morkel are a handful on any pitch. Steyn’s control combined with swing and pace off the pitch complements Morkel’s alarming bounce from good length making them a pair that most openers around the world dread. On South African pitches, Steyn and Morkel have hustled and bustled for the greater part of a decade. Steyn and Morkel have missed a few matches in recent times.

Steyn has played just 10 Tests in the last 2 years picking up 44 wickets at 18.56. Around the same time, Morkel has played 53 at 23.45. The pair has been split up once in a while, with Vernon Philander taking the other end whenever he is fit and rearing to go.

However, across formats, Steyn and Morkel still are a pair to reckon with. Over a 5 year time-frame, Steyn has 168 wickets in 36 Tests, with Anderson chasing him. Morkel has played 40 in the same time picking up 129 wickets at 28.55. While the future for this pair is uncertain, given Kagiso Rabada is growing in stature with every passing day, they are due for a few more crackling outings in conducive conditions.

Trent Boult and Tim Southee (New Zealand)

Boult has 147 wickets in 39 Tests at 29 in the last 5 years. Tim Southee has 131 in 35 Tests at 29.33 around the same time. In the last two years, they have been consistent and at the batsmen constantly, although some ranked flat tracks have hurt their numbers. In the last 24 months, Boult has picked 65 wickets in 17 Tests while Southee has played the same number of Tests and picked up 54 wickets.

While Southee is more a form bowler, swinging the ball and moving it off the seam on his day, Boult is couple of yards faster and more consistent. He swings it into the right-hander too and his left arm bowling complements Southee’s right arm pace perfectly.

The couple are a handful on New Zealand tracks where the ball swings in the air and moves off the track too. The duo have also been quite successful in the shorter formats of the game, instrumental in NZ’s best showing ever at the ODI World Cup, reaching the Final in 2015.

Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc (Australia)

For a country that produces so many sensational fast bowlers, Australia haven’t had a consistent fast bowling pair in a while. Injuries and retirements haven’t hurt them though, given their persistent battery of bowlers. Although they have lost Mitchell Johnson to retirement, they boast of another exciting pair in Hazlewood and Starc, the latter just back from an injury.

Hazlewood has a McGrath-like aura, although these are early days. In the last couple of years, he has impressed with 70 wickets in just 17 Tests at 25.77. Starc has blown hot and cold in the whites, although in coloured clothing, he is the world’s best bowler going around.

Starc has picked up 50 wickets in 13 Tests in the last two years at 28. He has grown leaps and bounds from the time when he was more an apprentice to the likes of Johnson and Ryan Harris, a pair that has hung up its boots not so long ago.

Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja (India)

This is an interesting pair, not as menacing as the remaining on the list, but effective nevertheless at home. While the pair is yet to prove themselves away from home or even play together much, given India fields only one spinner on foreign shores, they are absolutely sensational on the sub-continental tracks in India. Ravichandran Ashwin and Jadeja have different styles of bowling. Ashwin, the tall off-spinner has guile and variety.

Jadeja, the left-arm orthodox bowler has a deadly accuracy, bowling faster on spitting wickets and relying on natural variety. In the last 5 years, Ashwin has picked up 176 wickets in 32 Tests at 25.39, making him one of the fastest ever, all time, to 100 Test wickets.

In the last 2 years, Ashwin has 72 wickets in 13 Tests at close to 21 with as many as 7 5-wicket hauls. Jadeja during the same time has 32 wickets from 8 Tests, making an amazing comeback against South Africa at home, his wickets coming at 21, the same average as that of Ashwin.