I agree with your general narrative, one of his key point was administrative taking bowlers out of the game. Bowlers aggression(In Misbah's era, we had traded lambs for tigers, because of that mindset) is suppressed by ever increasing disciplinary rules, playing conditions (ground sizes, bat sizes, pitches ) are favoring batsmen more with passage of time. Which needs to be addressed, balance has to be restored.
WIs bowlers back in 70s/80s were not all about pace. Garner and Ambrose were not that pacy at all, but they were very tall and hence more successful in countries like AUS. Ambrose had 7/1 in Perth, its hard for 5'9-11" guy doing that even at 150 clicks. No Asian team has taken 3/4 6'-5" plus bowlers to AUS, to see how effective they were. Ishant Sharma was more successful than Waqar/Shoiab in AUS. So it was not always about pace for them.
What has happen between 70s/80s and now is that role of batsmen and bowlers are kind of reversed. Batsmen are more fearless (because of better protection, playing conditions favoring them) and bowlers are more defensive(defensive lengths, defensive fielding, drying up run was main focus of Misbah era), people care about lower eco. In T20, its dot balls are so vital(that variety balls have become a norm), lot like baseball, where whole focus is not getting hit. But high quality bowlers and batsmen still would have been relevant. Like back in those days, there were very few aggressive batsmen aka Viv, now pool of quality bowlers has been reduced and batsmen has increased. Not all aggressive batsmen of today would have thrived in that (70s/80s) era, same is true for fast bowlers from that era, few of them would have survived today...Making bowling not attractive or difficult is a bad strategic move by administrators, because its already a tough task(it not only requires skills, but strength and endurance), you want to make it easier not harder. As I said earlier it has lot to do with Indian cricket culture not able to produce quality fast bowlers. Most of the administrative steering in Cricket in last decade and half is done by same fan base and culture it creates... For administrators its about time to bring bowlers back into the game more, like they did in 90s, bringing back batsmen into the game, you always strive of bring balance between the two.
At the end of the day, most important thing in LOIs is winning tournaments. Even with playing conditions not favoring bowlers, still most tournaments are won at the back of bowlers. Last WC was won by Strac, this CT by Hasan, WT20 when SL won was at the back of Milanga, Pakistan won at the back of Gul, list goes on. I would not be surprise if 2019 WC is won by bowlers as well...Test Cricket is pre-dominantly bowlers game anyway, because you have to take wickets to win. India, went to extreme measure of doctoring pitches, like we saw in last 2/3 seasons, they go for two completely different conditions in test Vs LOIs/IPL, rank turners to roads
- it's easily explainable now.
