Ordsall Quays Red wrote:
A brilliant bowler at times for England but never as good an all-rounder as some say. Figures and stat-wise you could very fairly argue that he fell a long-way short of greatness, in both spheres of the game. Batting average of 32ish and bowling average of 33 with just 5 centuries and 3x 5 wicket innings' are well short of true great all-rounders such as Sobers, Botham, Imran Khan and Kallis.
Absolutely no loss for Lancashire neither has he's hardly played 5 games for us over the past 5 years as it is.
Good luck to him though, he's made plenty of money and doesn't need to make any kind of playing comeback at all.
Agreed, his stats do not make him a great but that was largely due to his poor attitude early in his career, when he was only a mediocre all rounder at best. However the latter years propelled him into super stardom. He was arguably the most feared fast bowler on the planet when he was on his game and fit for a couple or three years. His presence and aura also made him something special.
Obviously he will be remembered for the greatest Ashes series of them all, and he certainly was Michael Vaughan's 'go to' man and Australia could not handle him. With that in mind, for my mind he does go down as a great and it's a real shame he was not in his prime for long enough
His stats could've been so much better.
