Derek Pringle on Joel Garner

[pie_chucker]

Nice article on cricinfo about "Big Bird"

Cricinfo - Big bounce, big laughs, Big Bird

IMO one of the most underrated bowlers ever, who was as good as the likes of McGrath but never gets mentioned in the same breath.

Noting the following:

....the Barbados attack had been even more fierce: Bird, Marshall, Sylvester Clarke and Wayne Daniel. With Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes to open the batting it was probably the best club side there has ever been. They should have been sponsored by Carlsberg.

That attack must have been awesome!

[jrwb]

Originally Posted by pie_chucker

C

IMO one of the most underrated bowlers ever, who was as good as the likes of McGrath but never gets mentioned in the same breath.

I don't know what you mean exactly - Joel Garner's career test figures are actually better than McGrath's, and I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in the West Indies, he's a legend.

[pie_chucker]

Originally Posted by jrwb

I don't know what you mean exactly - Joel Garner's career test figures are actually better than McGrath's, and I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in the West Indies, he's a legend.

But whenever all time great fast bowlers get mentioned the likes of Garner and Holding (unfairly) never get a mention....

[jrwb]

I am really surprised to hear such a statement - can you expand on that a bit - I'm really curious about this...

[pie_chucker]

We had a dicussion on here a while back on all all time great XI.

When the fast bowlers were mentioned Garner never got a mention and Holding was hardly mentioned. I suppose a lot of it stems from the fact they played such a long time ago and were part of a quartet rather than 1 or 2 star bowlers in a team

I think that was a bit unfair as to my mind the WI attack of the early 80's had to be the best ever.

[jrwb]

I was going to say that because Garner was a first-change bowler, he may have been overlooked, but Holding was an opening bowler, so I can't understand this at all, especially where Holding is now a well-known commentator. I wonder if his comments have engendered some form of prejudice - he seems to be an expert on batting as well as bowling, and I remember he wasn't much of a batsman.

With all due respect to forum members, I put the whole thing down to sheer forgetfulness mixed with a little ignorance.

[Rachael]

I don't think anyone disputes that Garner and Holding deserve recognition as legends of the game: if they were around today they would tower over the ODI and Test game. The only sense in which they were "overlooked" is in relation to such giants as Lindwall, Lillee and Marshall... compared with whom, pretty much everyone (including such legends as McGrath, Wasim Akram and the co) were a little one-dimensional.

[jrwb]

I still think that anyone who forgets a man like Joel Garner in a discussion of great fast bowlers is either forgetful or pitifully ignorant:

Balls Average SR Econ

Wasim Akram 22627 23.62 54.65 2.59
Glenn Mcgrath 29248 21.64 51.95 2.50
Joel Garner 13175 20.98 2.47
S F Barnes 7873 16.43 41.66 2.37

Barnes was not a true fast bowler, yet see how Garners figures are closest to his...

[jrwb]

Sorry about that last post - caught hell with that and it won't keep the columns, and I'm no typist...

[Aurelius]

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he didn't take heaps of 5-fors. From memory, in over 50 Tests he only took 7 or 8, whereas Roberts took 11 in 47, Holding 13 from 60, and Marshall 22 from 81.

Not that any of that's Garner's fault, mind you!