How do Cummins, Starc & Co stack up against McGrath, Warne & Co
The repeated success of Australia’s current crop of bowlers Cummins, Lyon, Hazlewood and Starc has led the group being compared to Australia’s most successful bowling combination of McGrath, Warne, Gillespie and Lee.
Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Jason Gillespie & Brett Lee M:16 | W: 10 | L: 2 | D: 4
Who on earth would like to face a bowling attack comprising Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Jason Gillespie and Brett Lee? The four played together in 16 matches out of which Australia won 10 while losing just two.
Lee and Gillespie played together in 22 matches and picked up as many as 243 wickets at an average of 28.47 and a strike rate of 55.51. Add Shane Warne to the mix and you have the perfect recipe to launch at the opposition batsmen.
Between 2001 and 2005, the legendary leg spinner Warne picked up 89 wickets while McGrath had 77 scalps. During this period, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie accounted for 52 and 47 victims respectively and were a nightmare for the opposition batsmen.
Just Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne combined together to pick up 980 wickets from 104 matches in which they bowled together and are the gold standard of test match bowling.
Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood & Mitchell Starc M: 16 | W: 11 | L: 4 | D: 1
The current Australian combination of Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc is not far behind. Starc, Cummins and Hazlewood have played together in 16 matches and have picked up 215 wickets at an average of 23.48 and a strike rate of 49.45.
On face value, these numbers are even better than the trio of McGrath, Gillespie and Lee. Although the three did it over a longer period of time.
Cummins has the best numbers of the four. In fact, after 31 matches, he has already picked up 150 wickets at an average of 21.27 and a strike rate of 46.33, which is way better than Glenn McGrath’s numbers after the same number of tests.
Nathan Lyon, too, is hovering around the 400-wicket mark in test cricket and has already become a great bowler. Although his average of over 31 is slightly on the higher side, Lyon has come of age as a test match bowler over the last few years.