Pakistan’s Test bowling attack in the late 1990s should have been illegal. They had Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq, Shoaib Akhtar and Shahid Afridi. The talent level of those bowlers made for probably one of the best attacks we have ever seen.
But that isn’t even the most special thing about that attack. Akram was left-arm and could swing the ball. Waqar was right-arm and could swing the ball. Akhtar was right-arm and very, very, very fast. Saqlain started as an offspinner and ended up as a mystery spinner. And Afridi was a legspinner. That is five different kinds of bowlers, all at the same time. Of course, if both Akhtar and Waqar played at their peaks, were a little bit more similar.
But essentially, Pakistan had was one of the most skilled bowling attacks in the world, which was also one of the most diverse.
There was something for everyone. It was always sexy and incredible, and the next bowler was better than the last. It was so much fun. You didn’t want to miss a moment of them bowling, because if you did, you might miss a new delivery being invented or a legstump being chopped into 34 different pieces. You just had to watch them bowl.
Purely as an entertainment product, I don’t think we’ve ever had anything better than this attack.
Let’s look at the opposite of that, and a bowler called Michael Yardy. He started as a first-class batter who bowled very, very occasionally. And then when T20 came along, this guy thought to himself, “Well, I can actually bowl a little bit. Maybe occasionally I’ll bowl the left-arm finger spin I bowl in the nets.”
Over time, he sort of developed this method that was muscular and strong, and about angles and lengths… and he became one of the best spoiler bowlers in the world.
It was very, very hard to score off Yardy at his best. His batting, which was originally why he was a professional cricketer, had almost nothing to do with the fact that England were picking him in their sides. They really just wanted that kind of spoiler bowler, and he was the absolute epitome of it. He was also every bit as boring to watch as Pakistan’s Test bowling attack was exciting to watch.
But that also makes sense because in Test cricket, you won’t always get units like that Pakistan one. The ultimate aim in Test cricket is to get 20 wickets. You’re not always going for a wicket every ball, but you’re always trying to plan or set up a trap.
But in T20 cricket, especially in that Yardy era, you were primarily trying to make sure that no one could score. If you got wickets on the back of that, fine. But spoiling the ability to hit boundaries, or even twos, was a big part of it.
So even if you love T20 cricket, it would be hard to watch it and think, “This is a much more interesting game of bowling than Test cricket.”
But if you’ve been watching over the last couple of years, these two things have kind of switched up on us.
T20 bowlers are now going for wickets and have these wildly diverse bowling attacks. And the Test guys, well, they’re pretty much all bowling the wobble-ball.
