I don't mind the logic being applied to bowlers but it is more easy to apply it to batsmen.
However again the thing is, someone like Joel garner did rely on constantly bowling that bouncer to get wickets something he wouldn't be able to do today.
Just like wasim akram kept relying on reverse swing over and over at the back end of the innings, something that would be less lethal today.
Reason I believe wasim akram or Glenn mcgrath are still better is because just watching them bowl, wasim has swung the new ball in a way that's yet to be replicated by others, Kohli who struggles with that outswing a bit early on and rohit who struggles with that inswing would be playing a 100x more lethal version against wasim.
As for Glenn mcgrath his line and length is unmatched, but these 2 and other bowlers of the old era would still have their wicket counts dramatically reduced if they were bowling today then they were in the previous era.
One thing people don’t realize is that bowlers of the past got away with a lot in terms of tampering with the ball.
Shaheen, Naseem, Rauf etc. will wreak havoc with the types of balls Imran, Wasim and Waqar bowled with to batting lineups that ended with the number 6 batsman because the bowlers were all complete mugs with the bat and few teams had keepers who could be classified as batsmen.
Every era comes with different challenges. There is no such as thing as easier or harder, these are blanket statements that can be easily negated with a bit of critical thinking.
It’s just like people making convenient statements like Test cricket is harder than T20 cricket.
If that was true, every good Test cricketer would have found T20s easy, but you can ask Pujara, Azhar Ali, Cook, Younis etc. how easy T20s are and similarly, the reverse applies too.
You can ask Pollard and Russell how difficult Test cricket can be.
Your era doesn’t determine whether you are better or worse than someone. That is a very ignorant thing to say. What matters are your individual skills.
Cricket fans and sports fans in general live too much in the past and the more time passes, the more your legend grows because the stories and memories get exaggerated with the passage of time.
People talk too much about how the quality of cricket in 70s and 80s was better than today but you watch footage of that era and there is nothing special about that period that you won’t find today.
The game has evolved a lot and also improved in so many aspects. Sure, certain skills were lost but there are plenty of other skills that were gained too. It is the natural evolution of sport.
Great players are great players. It doesn’t matter if they are playing in 1973 or 2023 or 2053.
If only there can be a simulation where you could pit teams from today with teams from the past. So many myths will be destroyed.
For example, Clive’s West Indies, widely regarded as the GOAT Test team, would 100% get rinsed by Kohli’s India in India.
Similarly, there is no doubt that team would absolutely pummel so many teams of today especially at home (if not all).
McGrath would be almost impossible to dominate in any era because his line and length were impeccable and such line and length will always trouble batsmen.