Sir Richard Hadlee vs Malcolm Marshall vs Glenn Mcgrath. Who was the better bowler?

[ishtiaq_ctg]

Inferior? Lillee bowled at Sobers, Kanhai, Fredericks, Greenidge, Lloyd, Richards, Boycott, Amiss, Gavaskar, Vishwanath, Zaheer, Turner.

Lillee increased the test wicket record from 306 to 355, a big margin. That would have been 430 had the WSC matches been official. He played 70 tests which was a lot for a fast bowler of that era. so took five wickets per test which is very rare. His ratio of top five to bottom five players is very high. He took ten wickets in a match seven times, and had 23 fivefers. This despite playing nearly half his tests in those flat Aussie decks of the 1970s.

His partnership with Thomson changed cricket. Lloyd created the four prong pace attack to counter them.

McGrath had a similar proportion of wickets to Lillee against the top five. He took about 4.5 wickets per innings. Though they were different types I think they are roughly equal in stature.

Fact is DK Lillie wasnt proven in WI where he couldn't buy a wicket, He got smashed in Pakistan & Sri Lanka and he never toured India. He played 60 out of 70 tests in Australia & England, conditions suited to his style of bowling and yet he has an inferior average to Mcgrath.
Now if you claim those Aussie pitches were plain dead surfaces, then I would say the batsmen were more pathetic than I imagined who couldn't score runs even in those dead wickets.
A dead wicket with slower outfields and ridiculously large outfield where batsmen cant score and bowlers cant pick wickets. Perfect recipe for mediocre cricket.