The Indian fast bowlers’ rise in the past few years has helped Team India to win games not only at home but also overseas. Like many, former West Indies fast bowler Ian Bishop praised the pace attack. He said he couldn’t have predicted that Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma have taken their game to a completely different level in the last couple of years.
“I couldn’t have predicted that. And (Mohammed) Shami has taken his game to another level. Ishant (Sharma) has also gone up another level, which I didn’t foresee,” Ian Bishop was quoted as saying by espncricinfo.com.
“I couldn’t have predicted that India’s fast bowlers would come to the Caribbean, for example, and do to us what we did to them so many decades ago! So, credit to Bharat Arun, the bowling coach, and the administrators and captains,” he added. “I couldn’t see this much (improvement), but I thought there was a great deal of promise in having guys who could bowl close to, or over, 90mph.”
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However, Bishop had rated the Indian fast bowling unit as the best he has ever seen.
“Let’s remember that this group of bowlers did not emanate right now. The foundation was laid – if you go back to Kapil (Dev) and down the line, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Sreesanth. And now it’s been built on with a captain who likes fast bowlers, who believes in them,” said the former fast bowler. “But also, the fact that you’ve found a generational talent in Jasprit Bumrah. Generational because he plays all formats of the game very well.”
However, he said that he doesn’t know how to compare them to the West Indian bowlers like Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Croft and Andy Roberts.
“Well, they have been performing that well that the comparisons are going to come. I would want to stay away from it, because I don’t know how you measure it,” Ian Bishop said. “When people talk about Holding and Garner and Marshall and Croft and Roberts – who bowled together for so many years – how do you compare with that?.”
