This article is a follow up to the piece published earlier this week on England's batsmen, please check that out if you haven't already!
Here we replicate the analysis we ran on England's batsmen to take a look at the bowlers. There is generally less cause for concern with England's bowling, particularly if we are looking at the fast bowlers. They have generally struggled in the spin department, however, with several players having come and gone, failing to match the standards set by Graeme Swann a decade or so ago.
Unlike with our batting analysis, where we tried - largely in vain - to see if there were any solutions to England's batting struggles they might be overlooking, there is no particular goal for this analysis beyond providing a general overview of England's bowlers over the last few years and, hopefully, picking out a few interesting discussion points.
The bowling ratings are an output of the same model which generated the batting ratings we mentioned above. The data spans all England test matches from May 2016 up until the recently contested (June '21) series with New Zealand. The model we use, described in more detail here, uses regression modelling to provide ratings which take account for the quality of the opponent. In practice this means that the wicket of a high quality batsman, such as Steve Smith, Kane Williamson or Virat Kohli. is worth more in our model than the wicket of a tailender.
For this analysis we have imposed a minimum qualification criteria of having bowled at least 100 overs for England across our chosen timeframe. This is enough to give a reliable read on the performances of all the bowlers included, but does mean that more recent additions to the side, such as Ollie Robinson, are excluded.
Without further ado, let's take a look at the results:
In truth, there aren't too many surprises here, at least compared to some of what we saw in the batting analysis, but there are a few interesting points worth talking through as we go down the list.
First up is an obvious one, but it's worth reiterating how astonishingly good James Anderson continues to be, even as he approaches 40. Averaging under 21 over any five year period is impressive, but for Anderson to do it between the ages of 33 and 38, after an already long and successful career, is truly remarkable. It's not at all surprising to see him ranked first in this analysis.
Slotting in behind him are two more seam bowlers - Chris Woakes and Stuart Broad. Again, no real surprises here as they also hold the next best two bowling averages of the players we are looking at. Chris Woakes continues to be an excellent option for England, particularly in home conditions and Stuart Broad's longevity continues to impress as he maintains a high level of performance well into his 30s.
Behind those are two more seamers in Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer which, again, is more or less in line with what you would expect given their respective averages.
The only major outlier here in our list is Craig Overton, who ranks 6th despite a bowling average of nearly 45. A closer look at his short test career reveals that he has spent almost all of it bowling at very high quality batsmen - 23% of his test match bowling career has been spent bowling at Steve Smith, for example, and nearly half of his balls have been at batsmen who currently rank amongst the top ten in the world according to the ICC rankings.
With that in mind, he's actually done reasonably well to keep his average down below 50, given that most of the batsmen he's bowled at have averaged well over 50 in the matches we're looking at. Whilst we wouldn't say this suggests he deserves an immediate recall, it might indicate that the selectors shouldn't shy away from getting him back in the team should an opening become available.
Jack Leach is next in the list, and it feels like a good opportunity to assess England's spin bowling options as a whole. England opted to play without a spinner in the first test against India, deciding that in the absence of Ben Stokes they wanted four mainline fast bowlers. It looks as though Moeen Ali is set to come in for the second test, although as an all-rounder this looks likely to be a decision based on maintaining a balanced team rather than necessarily choosing the best spinner available.
Our model rates that as Jack Leach, which is in line with what you might expect given his superior bowling average. A little further down we find a cluster of the remaining spinners - Bess, Ali and Rashid - all of whom have been okay, but you wouldn't reasonably expect any of them to be selected over Leach on their bowling alone. Joe Root's off-spin is further down still, although his average of 42 isn't too bad for a part-timer.
Finally, it's worth rounding up by touching on the remaining seamers. There is little to choose between Mark Wood and Sam Curran, who sit 8th and 9th respectively. Both offer very different things with the ball, however, so the selectors' decision will often go down to who better suits the conditions, rather than from a direct comparison of quality. Steven Finn and Jake Ball bring up the rear here, and probably the less said about them the better.
And that about wraps up our review of England's bowling over the last few years. Whilst we probably didn't learn too much we already didn't know - Anderson is very good, the spin options aren't great, and so on - it was at least a more optimistic look at the team when compared with the batting analysis. There is both quality and depth in the seam bowling department in particular, especially when you consider the likes of Ollie Robinson and Olly Stone, who didn't qualify for inclusion here but have both made promising starts to their test careers.
Thanks for reading! This article is part of a series in which we apply our player ratings system to each major test playing nation in turn in order to gain more of an understanding of their batting and bowling options respectively - please check out the other articles if you haven't already:
England - Batting | Bowling
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