I might be wrong, but in my little experience playing this game, bowlers' form seem to be judged purely by the number of wickets they take. If so, it's certainly a wrong way to go, especially in limited formats...
I.e., I have a medium pace all-rounder whom I only give 5-6 overs per game (using him mostly as a batsman who can bowl part-time). He's reasonably economical and almost always gets a wicket. So, in last 5 innings he had figures of 1-13, 1-34, 1-21, 2-14, 0-10, which is a pretty good record for a part-timer - not giving away many runs and getting breakthroughs. I mean, for anyone, bowling average of 18 is to dream of! But his bowling form is half-star at the moment.
In shorter formats, that's even more outlandish, as sometimes you simply need a very economical bowler, and don't really care about wickets as much.
Another issue is when the wickets are getting distributed among many bowlers. I have recently completed a long format game, bowling out opposition twice for <200 scores, where each of my main 4 bowlers got 1-2 wickets in each innings, and some of all-rounders and part-timers chirped in as well. Now I observe that the form of all of these guys have dropped. Well, it's not their fault that they had only that many batsmen to bowl to and they got out so quickly.
Am I right in my observations?
I.e., I have a medium pace all-rounder whom I only give 5-6 overs per game (using him mostly as a batsman who can bowl part-time). He's reasonably economical and almost always gets a wicket. So, in last 5 innings he had figures of 1-13, 1-34, 1-21, 2-14, 0-10, which is a pretty good record for a part-timer - not giving away many runs and getting breakthroughs. I mean, for anyone, bowling average of 18 is to dream of! But his bowling form is half-star at the moment.
In shorter formats, that's even more outlandish, as sometimes you simply need a very economical bowler, and don't really care about wickets as much.
Another issue is when the wickets are getting distributed among many bowlers. I have recently completed a long format game, bowling out opposition twice for <200 scores, where each of my main 4 bowlers got 1-2 wickets in each innings, and some of all-rounders and part-timers chirped in as well. Now I observe that the form of all of these guys have dropped. Well, it's not their fault that they had only that many batsmen to bowl to and they got out so quickly.
Am I right in my observations?
Comment