10 Greatest Bowling Performances of All Time in a Test Series

#5 Imran Khan: 40 wickets at 13.95 vs India (1982/83)

Imran Khan

From 1982 through to 1986 Imran Khan experienced one of the finest patches of form a bowler has ever had. In these four years he took 138 wickets at just 14.31. Around the same time, Khan managed a bowling average under 20 in eight consecutive series, and the best of those was against India.

Khan's figures in the six-match series are impressive on the surface, but the more it contextualized, the better it appears. Most remarkable is that it was a tour dominated by the batsmen. There were quality bowlers in both teams, with the likes of Kapil Dev, Sarfraz Nawaz, Abdul Qadir and Dilip Doshi all taking part. Yet despite players of this quality, only Khan averaged under 30. Perhaps even more indicative of how the batters dominated the series was that five bowlers averaged over 100.

It's unsurprising then that three of the six matches in the series were drawn, with Pakistan winning the other three. In the three Pakistan won, Khan had match figures of 11/79, 11/180 and 8/80, accounting for exactly half of the Indian wickets that fell in these games. This means that even though all three of India's losses were resounding defeats, the outcome of these games could have been very different without Khan. Pakistan may have won the series with seeming ease, but Khan was the decisive factor.

Khan tended to take big wickets too. He dismissed Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath five times, and Dilip Vengsarkar six times. Despite this, all three of these batters had a good series, suggesting that if Khan hadn't been present they might have had a great one.

While so many statistically-impressive performances have had bowlers play in favorable conditions against weak opposition, Khan's 1982/83 series against India was the opposite. He bowled to good batsmen in conditions that no other bowler could master and still managed one of the most statistically-impressive series a bowler has had.