The greatest bowlers of the modern era

8. Curtly Ambrose

Unlike his new ball bowling partner, Curtly Ambrose was very much the opposite of gentle. His verbal duels are as famous as the ones with bat and ball, and batsmen preferred walking away rather than getting involved in a war of words with the 6 foot 7 inch giant. If 405 wickets in just 98 tests isn’t amazing enough, an average of 20.99 per wicket is simply spectacular.

Ambrose had the knack of bowling a very tight line, and his height helped him extract more bounce than was usually possible. As a result, not only was he difficult to score against, it was sometimes difficult for batsmen to get bat to ball when Ambrose was in full flow.

Some of his best performances have been against Australia in Australia, where the wickets were favourable to his bowling. 7 wickets for 1 run is scarcely believable, but those were his figures in a 32 ball spell described by Wisden as “one of the most devastating spells of fast bowling”.

7. Saqlain Mushtaq

The man credited as being the first bowler to produce the doosra, Saqlain Mushtaq was part of possibly the best bowling attack in the early 90s. Mushtaq was a wily bowler with plenty of variations in his armoury, and used his doosra to a great effect throughout his career.

The doosra is the opposite of an off spinner’s traditional delivery, it has the same trajectory as the standard ball but spins the opposite way and is extremely difficult to pick. 208 wickets in 49 tests may not make for great numbers as compared to others on this list, but he was just as feared by the batsmen as the others.