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Much has been spoken about the amount of cricket current day players play in comparison to their counterparts of decades gone by. The cry is that the demands on players are too high and they are expected to play too much cricket.
Putting aside the fact that an top international cricketer is now a guaranteed millionaire I thought I would see if the claims stack up. I compared the top Australian players of the past 35 years to see how much cricket they really play.
Let’s start with the batsmen. Over the past 35 years Australia’s top batsmen have averaged between 40-53 innings per year. The reality is players today are playing no more innings than they ever have. The only difference is they are now playing a lot less red ball cricket and a lot more white ball cricket.
In fact with the arrival of T20 cricket they are actually spending less time in the middle than ever before.
In David Warner’s ten seasons of top flight cricket he has only averaged 14 red ball innings a season compared with 35 white ball innings. Steve Smith just 18 red ball innings compared to 26 white ball innings each year.
Going back just a few years to Ricky Ponting and it was closer to 50/50. In his 21 seasons Ponting averaged 24 red ball innings a year to 23 white ball innings. Matthew Hayden averaged 29 red ball innings to just 19 white ball innings.
If we go back another generation and you’ll find Mark Waugh averaged 31 red ball innings a year to 21 white ball. His brother Steve played 28 red ball innings a year and just 19 white ball and Allan Border 31 red ball innings to just 17 white ball innings.
I’m not suggesting we throw away 50 over or T20 cricket, but if you want to see why Australia is currently having struggles with Test match cricket look no further than this. For the bowlers it is even more alarming.
I compared all the quick bowlers who took 100+ Test wickets who have debuted since 1980. The decline in the number of overs these players are bowling at First class level is staggering.
In the 80s and 90s only two bowlers bowled less than 400 overs in first class cricket each year. The injury prone Bruce Reid and Paul Reiffel. Every other bowler churned through the overs and was better for it. Geoff Lawson, Terry Alderman, Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes, Glen McGrath, Michael Kasprowicz and Jason Gillespie all bowled over after over at First class level.
When you add in their short form cricket most bowled over 500 overs a year and Glen McGrath averaged a staggering 644 overs each year he played topline cricket.
In the last decade things have started to drop off. Brett Lee only managed 252 red ball overs each year and Mitchell Johnson 304 overs. The workhorse of this current generation Peter Siddle has average 386 overs per year which is still well short of the previous generation.
Today Mitchell Starce and Josh Hazlewood just scrape over 200 overs per year with 229 and 210 respectively. Even when you add the number of overs they bowl in white ball cricket, they barely get over 300 overs a year.
That’s 200 less than some of the best bowlers of the past 30 years and a staggering 300 less than our best quick Glen McGrath. Even the injury prone Bruce Reid bowled more than the current generation with an average of 289 overs per season.
We keep talking about the potential of a Pat Cummins but he has bowled a miserly 52 overs per year with the red ball throughout his career. McGrath would have bowled 52 overs in a single Test match!
People may suggest that today’s bowlers bowl fewer overs because they seem to be injured more. I would suggest they are injured more because they bowl fewer overs.
While current players may be spending more time in hotels, airports and the like they are spending far less time on the cricket field plying their trade. The idea that Steve Smith needs to be rested from a ODI series or that Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood need to skip a round of Shield cricket is laughable.
Our best players of the previous generations were the best because they played a lot of cricket. No one asked them to sit out a few ODIs and no one was counting the number of balls being bowled in the nets.
They trained hard, played for their club, state and country and they did it for a whole lot less coin than this current generation. If we want to return to the top our players need more tough cricket, not less.
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