A question of balance

During the course of the Ashes, have you found yourself wondering about the “balance” of England’s bowling attack?  If you have, then you are beset by one of cricket’s more pointless obsessions.  And here is the reason:

It doesn’t matter how balanced your bowling attack is if it is rubbish.

The doctrine of balance tells us that any bowling attack must be made up of different types of bowler.  Ideally, a bone-breaking quick, a swing bowler, a left-armer and a spinner.  A fifth bowler might be a reverse-swing expert or another spinner, who must not be the same type as the other one.  Failure to adhere to these rules will lead to a visit from the Men in White Coats (not the umpires, the other ones).

This is all utterly pointless if the bowlers chosen are less potent than non-alcoholic lager.  To illustrate, which of these two bowling attacks would you choose to have in your team:

Balanced: Martin McCague, Ed Giddins, Mike Smith, Richard Dawson

Unbalanced: Glenn McGrath, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Shane Warne

My difficult-to-assemble and criminally unbalanced bowling attack would win every single test match inside 3 days.  The balanced attack would probably just about manage to take a wicket every 3 days.

So the next time you read some hack chuntering on about England’s (or Australia’s) bowling attack being unbalanced, don’t sit there nodding sagely in agreement.  What they’re really trying to say is that the bowling attack is lousy.

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