Bumrah vs Barnes: A statistical deep dive into the best bowling averages of all time

Bumrah vs Barnes: A statistical deep dive into the best bowling averages of all time

With every match he plays, Jasprit Bumrah burnishes his legacy as one of the greatest fast-bowlers of this era.

In the most recent International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings, he consolidated his position at the top of the bowling charts, reached 904 Rating Points, the joint-highest an Indian bowler has ever reached.

His nine for 94 in Brisbane has taken his bowling average to 19.52, the best for any Indian bowler who has taken over 75 wickets. It is also the second best for any bowler with over 150 wickets, behind only Sydney Francis Barnes. But who is the man who just pips Bumrah to the best bowling average of all time?

Sydney Barnes was an English right-arm bowler who turned out for England, Warwickshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire, along with a host of club sides. He was known for his brisk pace and ability to move the ball sharply both ways. Barnes turned out 27 times for England, and took 189 wickets at an average of 16.43. He also possessed an equally impressive First-Class record, taking 719 wickets from 133 matches at an average of 17.09.

In the modern day, Barnes is the gold standard for fast bowlers. Besides having the best bowling average for any bowler with over 150 Test wickets, he also has the second best strike rate (41.6, behind only Kagiso Rabada), and the third best average at home for any bowler who has bowled in more than 10 innings (13.38, behind Bobby Peel and Charlie Blyth).

His numbers are those of an all-time great. The ICC once did a historical bowling ranking, assigning bowlers from the past a retrospective ranking, and placed Barnes at the top of their ranking.

Barnes was an atypical cricketer in many ways. For starters, there is a confusion regarding his bowling style. Most call him a right-arm fast-medium bowler, but there are multiple accounts of him referring to himself as someone who spun the ball instead. Several descriptions of his bowling style depict him as someone who bowled off-spin and leg-spin at speeds comparable to that of a medium pacer.

Additionally, Barnes did not follow the natural career path of coming through county cricket. Though he had spells in the county game at Warwickshire and Lancashire, these stints formed a relatively small part of his career. Instead, he would devote more of his energies to financially lucrative opportunities, which included playing for his minor county side, Staffordshire, and playing club cricket in different leagues.

He was also a notoriously tempestuous character, capable of striking fear in his teammates as much as opposition batters. An article by Rob Steen quotes Archie MacLaren, Barnes’ captain for England and Lancashire, who supposedly once said while travelling with the team by ship, “If we go down, at least that bugger Barnes goes down with us.”

Barnes made his debut for England in 1901 at the age of 28 against Australia. Although he made an instant impact, taking 26 wickets in his first four matches, he didn’t turn out for England again between 1902 and 1907 (possibly for financial reasons again). He returned in 1907 for an away Ashes series, aged 34, and impressed once again, taking 24 wickets in the series. He would turn out more regularly for England (albeit he only ever played against Australia and South Africa), and continued to take wickets aplenty. His career culminated with a series in South Africa, where he took 49 wickets in four Tests, which remains a record till date, before refusing to play the final match of the series over disagreements about his remuneration.

The onset of the First World War meant that he would not take the field for England again after his record-breaking exploits in South Africa. By the time the war was over, Barnes was nearly 50, and neither him nor England were especially keen to return to each other. Instead, he would return to club cricket, where he would keep playing until the age of 61. He finished his time with Staffordshire having taken 1,432 wickets for the club.

In many ways, Barnes is a character who would not be out of place in modern-day cricket. A bowler with plenty of variations, a healthy appetite for league cricket, a fierce professional fit enough to play till the age of 61, and an ever-growing legend about how difficult it was to face him, it is not difficult to imagine that he would have found plenty of fans in the cricketing ecosystem of 2024.

And while those who can corroborate the legend of Sydney Barnes are now few and far between, the numbers do say that he was one of the greatest bowlers of all time.