Shane Bond - The Greatest bowler that could never be

One of cricket’s most prolific bowlers

There are many kind of players in the field of sports. Some change the way the game is played, some become its greatest ever exponents, some become known for their persona and aura more than their abilities as a player, some for their relentless hard work to make up for the lack of natural talent and while some others for ruining their boundless potential.

Every sport in the world has players who fill each of the criteria stated above. However, there remains another one which frustrates the fans the most as they linger in the hypothetical world of what could have been.

The player with the potential and temperament to be the best, someone who has talent and the determination to do justice to it, but fails to because of a fragile body. It’s this type of player who cause the greatest pains to the enthusiasts.

In football, players like Mario Balotelli and Antonio Cassano are renowned for squandering their talent because of poor ethic. People don’t, on the large scale and long run, sympathise with them. The reason being simple: if you had the talent and took it for granted, you are a criminal and nobody sympathises with a criminal.

However, when you throw someone like Kaka or Marco Reus, people will give away pity-filled expressions.

In cricket, the one player that is the epitome of this category is Shane Bond.

In my lifetime, I have had the privilege of watching both Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, along with the likes of Glenn McGrath, Allan Donald, Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee, Dale Steyn and so on throw the bowl in the most glorious of fashions.

However, to me, none of them came close to Shane Bond as the most lethal bowler to have played the game.

In a career marred with injuries, he showed things that no-one else could. When someone like Matthew Hayden wears a toe-guard over his boots to protect them from Bond’s swinging yorkers, you realize the amount of fear that he could instill in the hearts of batsmen.

Bond enjoyed playing against Australia like nobody else

At first, it was a problematic back. In the end, it was every part of his body. Shane Bond couldn’t enjoy a prolonged period of play because of his porcelain frame. In the limited time that he did, though, he devastated every batting line-up that stood in his way.

He started his professional career late, earning his first first-class cap at the age of 21. His incredible talent meant that he rose within the ranks quickly and established himself as one of the most revered bowlers in the world.

For New Zealand, he was their new Richard Hadlee. For the world, he was Bond. Shane Bond.

If his stats could be described in just one word, it would be ‘insane’. In the 18 Tests that he could feature, he took an astonishing 87 wickets with an average of an even more mind-boggling 22.09. And as if this alone wasn’t enough, his ODI numbers are even better.

He bowled in 80 of the 82 ODI games that he featured in and took 147 with an average of 20.88. There probably isn’t another bowler who could boast such figures and there definitely isn’t another one who could intimidate the batsmen like he could.

With a deceivingly short run up, he could bowl at speeds that consistently clocked in the mid-150s. It was not just pace, it was the control with which he bowled. Shoaib Akthar had a lot of pace as well, but what made Bond special was his ability to bowl tight line-and-length at any given situation. Add a bit of late swing to that, then you have a bowler that is unplayable.

Throughout his career, he spend more time recovering than playing. His story could be labelled as one of the cricket’s most tragic ones because the world were robbed of a player who bowled quick with utter grace and divinity - like playing death metal with peace and tranquility of a monk.

He was an artist. A pure one at that. With his hand as a painting brush and deliveries reminiscing different colours, he weaved some of the most beautiful tapestries one could possibly imagine. Be it his hat-trick against Australia or the comeback 6 wickets haul to desecrate India, he was magical.

Perhaps way too much to be real. Perhaps.