Australia's bowling: much worse than bad

There is no delicate way to put this. Australia's bowling in the UAE has been the team's worst ever in a series. That is not subjective hyperbole but measurable fact. And here are the numbers that confirm it.

Before this tour, Australia had played 210 Test series. Their worst collective bowling average for any one of those series came when India toured in 1985-86 and drew all three Tests. Allan Border's men claimed 26 victims at an average of 62.46 per wicket.

Pretty bad, huh? Well, get this.

In the UAE, the Australian bowlers have collectively picked up 20 wickets across the series at an average of 80.15 per wicket. Never in their 137-year Test history have Australia leaked so many runs per wicket in a series, including one-off Tests. Never have they even come close.

It is nearly twice as bad as when they were crushed 4-0 last year in India, where each breakthrough cost them 43.80 runs. It is worse than India's worst, than Pakistan's worst, than England's worst, than West Indies' worst, and much worse than South Africa's worst. They have been so toothless it is hard to imagine they ever had teeth at all.

Perhaps a caveat is required here, for the bowlers did create more than 20 chances. Australia's fielding throughout the two Tests has been poor. Half-chances have gone down and so have easy ones. On the fourth day in Abu Dhabi, Misbah-ul-Haq equalled the record for the fastest hundred in Test history, having been reprieved on 4 when Peter Siddle grassed a straightforward chance at cover.

Phillip Hughes fumbled another simple one at gully later on, to give Azhar Ali a life on 68. By then, such errors hardly mattered, other than to allow Azhar to register a century in each innings of a Test. But it was the continuation of a trend. Chances went down in Dubai, chances went down in Abu Dhabi.

Chris Rogers, Alex Doolan, Brad Haddin, David Warner, Steven Smith, Siddle, Hughes - they all missed catches, some easy, some hard. Warner also missed a stumping when filling in for Haddin behind the stumps. It would not quite be accurate to say Australia missed more chances than they took, but they weren't far off. It was quite an initiation for fielding coach Greg Blewett.

But so many runs were conceded that even five more wickets wouldn't have stopped this being Australia's worst bowling in a series. Siddle took two at 108.50. Nathan Lyon got three at 140.66. Mitchell Starc had two at 71.00. Steve O'Keefe claimed four at 54.75. Steven Smith winkled out three at 48.33. The only bowler who could boast figures considered acceptable was Mitchell Johnson, whose six wickets came at 29.50.

A sore left hip stopped him taking the field after lunch on the fourth day in Abu Dhabi. The team doctor and physio didn't seem too worried about Johnson, and you'd hardly have blamed him if he just gave up and said he wasn't going out there again. It was his birthday, after all. The series has been hard work on surfaces that offered little pace and bounce, but Johnson's speed meant he could still threaten.

Robbed of any appreciable swing or seam, Siddle's wicket column became as barren as the Arabian Desert. Starc has not played first-class cricket for 14 months, and looked like it. Mitchell Marsh went wicketless and failed to find the reverse swing that would likely have been a feature of Shane Watson's bowling, had he been fit. Who'd have thought Australia would miss Watson's bowling this much?

Pakistan's bowlers got the ball to reverse, and their spinners were also far more effective than Australia's slow bowlers. Part of that was down to Australia's woeful batting, and it is hard to separate the two aspects of Australia's game because of that. But Pakistan's two frontline spinners, Zulfiqar Babar and Yasir Shah, together took more wickets in the series than Australia's entire attack.

Lyon, turning the ball into Pakistan's exclusively right-handed batting line-up, needed to tempt the batsmen wide of off stump more often instead of using a straighter line. In Dubai, he went for 60 runs through the off side and 163 through leg. In Abu Dhabi it was 64 through off and 138 through leg. It has been a difficult 2014 for Lyon, but there has been no tougher month than this.

Of course, the bowlers are not the only ones at fault. David Warner is the only batsman certain to finish the series with a pass mark. The Argus report after the 2010-11 Ashes nadir found, more or less, that Australia couldn't bat, bowl or field. The same could be said of their efforts in the UAE. But taking their wickets at an average of 80 is not just bad, it is history-making bad.

"I want to take 20 wickets," Michael Clarke said before this series began. He meant in a Test, not a series.