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Originally Posted by Collyisamackem  Again, too dubious for me. I refuse to cherry pick and a series average of 40+ means you've contributed for me, and besides those performances all came when it mattered. |
It's not really cherry-picking. I think that if you have only one substantial score in six, then it's fair to say that they haven't really had a consistently good series. If we take it to the extreme and say that batsman x scored 250, followed by five ducks, and finished with an average of 41, would you say that that batsman had a good series with the bat?
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So for my money, and I'd argue that of any reasonable judge (no insult intended, this is purely my opinion), Panesar and Broad cannot be judged not to have contributed well and 'decent' is pretty harsh on that score.
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I'll concede that maybe I'm being a little harsh on the bowlers here. But in a away, it's almost the same problem as the batsmen. Panesar took half of his wickets in one innings, and if you look at the match threads quite a few people thought that for the first two Tests he was really pretty ineffective (ironically I was one of the minority defending him on that tour). Broad did make a good contribution, yes, but without Sidebottom's haul of 24 wickets, would that average of 30 be a
match-winning contribution? I doubt it.