Dominant bowling in ODI matches

Time to look at instances where bowlers have put up commendable performances in the 50-over version of the game. Our expert analyses it all.

Since the numbers of overs for a bowler is limited in ODIs, it is not very easy for a bowler to dominate the bowling the same way that a batsman can do. We saw, in our last articles, instances where a batsman dominated the stay at the crease. Here, let us have a look at the forgotten species, the bowlers. Since we do not have specific information on bowling spells, I have done this analysis based on the complete bowling spell.

This time, the criterion is that the bowler should have captured 5 wickets or more. Otherwise there would be cases of pseudo-domination by bowlers who capture the only wickets to fall.

The formula used is given below.

             Bowling strike rate of the bowler (Balls / wkts)

Index =————————————————————————————

            Bowling strike rate of the rest of the bowlers

The table is ordered on this index value and the bowling spells in which the bowler performance is better than his compatriots’ performance by a factor of 7.5 or more are listed. Let us see the table now.

England scored 204/8 in 50 overs against Australia. Out of this reasonable total, Bichel captured 7 wickets in 10 overs, a BpW value of 8.57. The rest of the bowlers bowled 240 balls to capture a single wicket. The amazing strike rate ratio of 28.00 is the highest in ODI history.

In a rain-affected match, Zimbabwe scored 150/7 in 32 overs. Edwards captured 6 wickets in 7 overs for a BpW figure of 7.00. The other bowlers captured a single wicket in 150 balls for a very high ratio of 21.43.

This was a high scoring match. Sri Lanka scored 302/7 in 50 overs. Sohail Tanvir captured 5 wickets in 10 overs leading to a BpW value of 12.00. His teammates captured two wickets in 240 balls which leads to a ratio of 10.00.

There are seven other bowlers who have a strike ratio of 10.00.

The striking feature of this table is that great bowlers like Waqar Younis, Ambrose, Donald, Muralitharan, Kumble, Pollock and Bond are sharing the marquee space with average bowlers like Bichel, Edwards, Jayasuriya, Dillon, Nehra, de Mel, Maharoof et al and with part-timers like Robin Singh,  Aftab Ahmad, Srikkanth, Klusener, Sehwag et al.

A major surprise is that Waqar Younis appears twice, as do Jayasuriya and unbelievably, Srikkanth.