NO good bowlers or what?

Michael Clerk has scored 3 double
centuries and 1 triple century in this
year alone. 

Having seen so many double centuries scored by batsman during last 5 years or so, I am wondering what the reason for such a trend is. Sometimes, I feel that the current bowlers are not as good as the bowlers existed in the past. At the same time, I feel that the current batsmen may be better than the batsmen the were in the past. I am finding it very difficult to find a proper answer for that question. But I tend to lean towards the fact that there are not many good bowlers playing international cricket at the moment. Therefore, I have to rule out the fact that current batsmen are better than past batsmen were. If you look at the batting records of last 10 years or so, you can certainly see that there is a huge increase in the number of double centuries scored in test cricket whereas in the past, scoring a double century was regarded as an intricate thing to do.

In the past, most of the test teams had threatening bowling line-ups. By contrast, nowadays, there are only few bowling line-ups that fall into that category. I can only talk about the teams that I have seen. To be honest, I don’t know how good the bowlers who played before 90s were. In the 90s and early 2000s, Pakistan had bowlers such as Wasim Akram, Shoaib Akthar, Waqar Younis and Saqlain Mushtaq. Once, all those bowlers played together in the same team. So, I don’t need to stress how good they were. And Australia had bowlers like Glen McGrath, Shane Warne, Jason Gillepsie, Brett Lee in late 90s and early 2000s. They were simply unplayable at the time. West Indies also had great bowlers such as Courtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop and Otis Gibson. South Africa had Shaun Pollock, Alan Donald, Makaya Ntini. Sri Lanka mostly relied on Muralidaran and Chaminda Vass particularly in test matches. But they had built a good bowling attack around those two bowlers for almost a decade. I see neither a decline nor an improvement of India’s and Newzeland’s bowlers up to now. 

Once, most of the teams had decent bowling attacks against which batting was very difficult. No team could go to Australia and dominate Australians like South Africa and England did in recent series. Actually, in my opinion, South Africa is the only team that haven’t lost their fast-bowling power since they got the test status for the second time in the early 90s. Even current bowling attack is just as good as the ones they had before. That is why they have become the No.1 test team by today. England’s bowling have improved a lot during last 7 or 8 years or so. In the past, they had weak bowling line-ups and it was one of the reasons why they hadn’t won the ashes for a long time until they won it in 2005. England current bowling line-up is probably the best English bowling attack I have seen so far without a doubt.

Getting back to the topic, I think the lack of good international bowlers could be the main reason for the increase in the number of big scores scored by batsmen very often these days. I couldn’t think of any other reason for that kind of a tendency.

The number of double centuries scored in test matches from 1990 – 2011

Year	Number of double centuries	Year	Number of double centuries
1990	2	2001	9
1991	3	2002	12
1992	2	2003	14
1993	4	2004	14
1994	4	2005	10
1995	3	2006	9
1996	3	2007	6
1997	7	2008	7
1998	4	2009	8
1999	10	2010	12
2000	5	2011	7

During the period between 1990 and 2000, batsmen have scored double 40 double centuries whereas from 2000 to 2013, 113 double centuries have been scored in test matches. We can clearly see that there is a huge turnaround is the nature of test cricket.

Perhaps, the fearless cricket played by modern batsmen may also have been a reason for such a trend. In the 90s, batsmen were too cautious in test matches and as a result, bowlers could dominate them very easily. But nowadays, batsmen look to be aggressive even in test matches in order to upset the bowlers’ tactics and rhythm. About 20 years ago, I didn’t see such approaches being used by batsmen and they were always respecting the bowlers who bowled well. Perhaps, the way test cricket is played has changed because of the dominance of limited over cricket.