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

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: