When averages strike out

“If he’d played in a sandpit, he’d have got wickets.” Thus proclaimed Jimmy Adams during a documentary on Malcolm Marshall screened by Sky Sports on Saturday. It was an occasion for awe: Sir Garry and Sir Viv, Mikey, Curtly, Desi and Lance all queued up to pay homage to the man all agreed was the brainiest fast bowler they’d ever known, the finest bowler ever to pull on the maroon cap. Sir Ian chimed in too. It was also a tale of shock – that shockingly premature death from cancer. You could see the lump in Viv’s throat, the tears in Curtly’s eyes.

Marshall was a walking mockery of virtually every rule in the textbook. Here was a fast bowler of 5ft 10in with an open-chested action who nevertheless contrived to swing the ball both ways and bowl bouncers at nerve-shredding pace. Name another world-beating sportsman who has defied orthodoxy so conspicuously.

Which is why, if nobody ever strutted a cricket field quite like Sir Viv, no one swaggered across one quite like Marshall. Not for him the celebratory whoop or the finger-pointing send-off; all you saw, virtually without exception, was the smile of a man reasonably satisfied by the inevitable outcome of sound strategy and bottomless self-belief.

Received wisdom has it that he and Dennis Lillee are the all-time greatest of their breed, the very best in show. And the fact that the latter never played in India, had one abysmal Test in the Caribbean and three largely fruitless ones in Pakistan leaves him lagging as a handful in all conditions. Which begs a question: where does that leave Waqar Younis?

Only six men with more than 100 Test wickets have recorded a higher career strike rate than Marshall’s 46.77. Of those, four - George Lohmann (34.12), Colin Blythe (44.38), Johnny Briggs (45.19) and the purported nonpareil SF Barnes (41.66) - plied their trade before the first world war, on pitches renowned as batsman-spiteful. Of the other two, both are modern Pakistanis, Waqar (43.50) and Shoaib Akhtar (44.71), while Allan Donald (47.03) is only a smidge behind Marshall.

Waqar, in fact, is Marshall’s sole superior in terms of consistent success over time, having taken three wickets fewer (373 to 376) in six more Tests (87 to 81) off 230 fewer overs, with the same number of five-wicket hauls (22) and one more of 10 or more (5 to 4). Of the other five leading strike-raters, only Barnes (189) managed half as many scalps.

(Intriguingly, if we lower the qualification to 50 victims, the man immediately above Marshall is Jermaine Lawson, who lies 14th at 46.35. The bottom quarter of the Top 20, meanwhile, includes James Franklin, Lasith Malinga and Simon Jones, which is a few more in the eye for those adamant that this is a bronze age for quicks.)

The one time Marshall and Waqar crossed catapults in a Test series, in Pakistan in late 1990, the unofficial world heavyweight crown was on the line and they were at opposite ends of the experience graph: when hostilities commenced in Karachi, Marshall was winning his 69th cap, Waqar his 10th. The first words all went to the young pretender (though neither term seemed all that apposite, given that a) nobody was quite sure exactly how young he was and b) he was certainly not pretending to be as good as he was). Waqar grabbed 14-166 in his first three innings of the series, putting Pakistan one-up. And those were the days when turnarounds in three-match rubbers were about as common as watchable TV programmes starring Mr Blobby and/or Noel Edmonds.

In Faisalabad, Pakistan were 145 for four, 120 ahead in helpful bowling conditions, whereupon Marshall, whose previous 37 overs in the rubber had yielded just two wickets, broke through four times in 13 balls. The last six went for the addition of nine runs, West Indies strolled home on day three by seven wickets (Waqar 0-41) and only Imran Khan’s obduracy with the bat prevented a come-from-behind clincher in Lahore. The old Superman still knew how to change into his talismanic cape.

Crunch the numbers and the waters get murkier. Marshall had more middle-order victims (Nos 4-7, a whopping 40.40%), Waqar more from top and tail (35.4% and 29.20% respectively). Waqar had the superior strike-rate when Pakistan bowled first, Marshall the better when West Indies bowled second. Armed with probably the best inswinging yorker the game has ever seen, Waqar clean-bowled close to half as many opponents again (27.3% to 19.4%) and had almost 50% more lbw victims (29.5% to 20.2%; among those with 100 wickets, only Terry Alderman, 34.12%, has had a greater share). The movement Marshall generated may readily be gleaned from his ratio of catches – 38.30%.

All of which leaves us – where, precisely? Marshall as the more versatile? Yes. Waqar as the more lethal solo act? Indubitably. Who’s better? I like the look of that fence. Not allowed? Well, where their paths most obviously and tellingly diverge is in adaptability. Waqar wasn’t fond of Australia (strike rate 81.43) or Australians (62.77), or Indians for that matter (80.25). Marshall’s strike rate against all-comers deviated almost imperceptibly – ranging from 44.34 (v Pakistan) to 49.83 (v Australia). Only in New Zealand (where he played just three Tests) did it exceed 55. Pick an opponent, pick a country, pick a day: he was your man, THE man. And that, for many, is where the bottom line lies.

What was that? Did someone mention averages? Well, for the record, Marshall has the edge, 20.95 to 23.56, but whether this supplements the above and adds to our appreciation, tells us something we really need to know or enables us to make a definitive judgment, is doubtful.

Strike rates tell us how often a bowler achieves his aim; averages tell us the price he has to pay for every success. Put it this way, when we assess a painter’s worth, do we wonder how many hours he spent at the easel, or the price of paint and brushes? Do we fret about the zillion overdubs required to complete a record such as Good Vibrations? Does it bother us how many 55th takes it took for Marilyn Monroe to get her lines right in Some Like It Hot?

Conventional averages tell us plenty about a batsman, considerably less about a bowler. Friends, Romans, Bearded Wonders - lend me your ears: let’s give strike rates their due.