Test cricket is considered to be the game’s highest standard. It’s filled with grueling matches that test the physical and mental strength of a player over the course of five days. In order to excel in this format, one needs to be consistent and patient especially the bowlers.
With this in mind, former Australian skipper Ian Chappell picks his top five bowlers of the modern era who have excelled in the longest format. He chose the bowlers mostly on the basis of their performance in the recent World Test Championship.
Ian Chappell’s top five Test bowlers
In a recent interaction with ESPNCricinfo, Chappell named Australia’s Pat Cummins, South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada, and India’s Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishant Sharma, and Mohammed Shami in his list. When asked about the best of them all, he opined it would be Pat Cummins for him based on his performance against India at the Gabba.
“If you want me to pick one out of these five as the best then I think for everything that he contributes I have to go with Pat Cummins. The example I would cite is the last Test against India at the Gabba when Australia produced that ridiculous tactic of bowling bouncers for an hour,” he said.
“Mitchell Starc was shocked to pieces he had nothing to come up with but somehow or the other Cummins gave everything he had in the last hour. I have the good fortune to captain Dennis Lillee and Dennis was always the last guy in our team who thought victory was impossible and I put Pat Cummins in that same category,” Chappell continued.
Ishant’s record is extremely good since 2018
When asked why Ian Chappell picked Ishant Sharma over English swing bowler, James Anderson, he mostly put it down to injuries and missing cricket in the past couple of years.
“Ishant’s record if I see since looking at his stats since 2018, his record is extremely good. But if you narrow it down to best swing bowler and probably the best swing bowler of all time then I would say Jimmy Anderson as number one. But Jimmy hasn’t played a lot, he has a lot of injuries. When he is playing he is very good but he has missed a lot of cricket and that’s probably the only reason,” Ian Chappell added.
