While not wanting to detract from Anderson’s bowling or achievements in any way, and maintaining that he was Very good…
The claim on him being Great (or the Greatest) is because of the number of wickets he’s taken as a fast bowler.
I’ll give this argument…Some…legitimacy as long as the people who make it also believe that Courtney Walsh deserves the same accolades, over and above his peers, because at the end of his career he had the most Test wickets by a fast bowler.
I honestly don’t think anyone will say that, though.
The bowlers I would classify as great are the ones you’d consider in your all time XI’s.
And personally I’d be going through…I reckon at Least three teams, maybe four, before I even started to think about Anderson.
Which obviously still puts him among the best bowlers to play the game!
In terms of modern quicks, it’s actually sad how little South Africa play test cricket because a guy like Kagiso Rabada on raw numbers is up there with as good as it gets - nearly 300 wickets at 22. Hard to know where to really place him though.
When Garner played for SA back in the 80’s I remember going and watching him in the Adelaide Oval nets and there would be crowds there watching practice. He wasn’t as sharp as his Windies counterparts and even some of his fellow SA bowlers were quicker but his size allowed him to get fierce lift off the deck and that was what did batters in
Anderson’s stats (average, strike rate, economy rate) are basically the same as Jason Gillespie’s, just over a longer period of time. Jason marginally shades him in those first 2 metrics but not worth talking about.
I loved Dizzy, but he isn’t in my first XI Aussie team, and probably not my 2nd.
Anderson had a wonderful career of extraordinary duration. Amazing. He might be in the top 10 or 20 fast bowlers ever. But certainly not the greatest.
In no order at all, McGrath, Steyn, Hadlee, Imran, Waqar, Marshall, Ambrose, Truman, Lillee, Lindwall, Garner, Holding, Cummins, Walsh, Akram… That’s 15 that I would struggle to select Anderson before and I’m sure there would be others.
Just to be clear, I posted the above mostly in jest and to be mischievous… but since it’s actually created a bit of discussion…
Anderson was an excellently skilled bowler, no doubt, and enjoyed great longevity because he didn’t impose the sort of stressors on his body that so many of the greats did through the sheer velocity with which they bowled.
But if the rest of the crop of his English contemporaries, Broad aside, weren’t all such thoroughly forgettable dross he mightn’t have played half as many tests as he did and his career statistics would look even more average.
I’d be putting John Snow in any list of great English quicks. Nasty piece of work on the field, and that’s what you want all good quicks to be.
And probably Bob Willis too. Not so nasty.
Broad was someone you just wanted to plant one on his chin.
I rate Dizzy Gillespie pretty high. Great fast bowlers are much better when they have a wingman with half a brain. Lee missed out on the half a brain bit, and I didn’t like his propensity for bowling “accidental” beamers…and a lot of them.
Graeme “Garth” McKenzie misses out on lot of Australian lists, but his main problem was that he was a one-man band for nearly all his career. I remember Ian Brayshaw (father of James and Mark, and grandfather of Angus and Andrew) taking all 10 Vic wickets at the WACA, and the Vics said they had to play shots against Brayshaw because they couldn’t hit McKenzie, and Brayshaw was that nagging, accurate bowler.
2nd Test between England and the West Indies at Trent Bridge starting shortly. Windies win the toss and decide to send the Poms in. Very negative move, one designed to ensure they don’t get castled before Tea today.
