5 best bowling pairs in world cricket currently

Almost every team is blessed with great bowlers but not all teams are blessed with great bowling pairs. Great bowlers always hunt in pairs, making them a lot more lethal and dangerous. It ensures that there is pressure and menace from both ends. The world has seen many great pairs in the last few decades like Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie, Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble and probably the greatest of all, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.

Currently, there aren’t many legendary pairs going around. Teams keep chopping and changing their teams considering there are three formats of cricket and plenty of exhaustion sets in. Injury worries, competition and leagues mushrooming all around the world have ensured that very few pairs have sustained their partnership and menace consistently over any length of time. Some have managed to do it successfully to a certain extent.

Here, we take a look at five pairs of bowlers which are amongst the best partnerships going around.

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James Anderson and Stuart Broad (England)

Probably the most consistent pair of new-ball bowlers in world-cricket, Anderson and Broad have been phenomenal in the last half a decade, instrumental in England’s Test fortunes which saw them touch No.1 ranking at one point. Broad leads the Test wicket-taking chart in the last 5 years with 238 wickets at 25 in 106 innings with 12 5-wicket hauls, including the sensational 8/15 in the Ashes at home in 2015.

Around the same time, Anderson, who has played the same number of Tests, 57 with 110 innings, has picked up 236 wickets at 25.91 with 11 five-wicket hauls. The two bowlers remain neck and neck even when the time-frame taken is for the last couple of years. Broad has 108 at 20.87 in 23 Tests while Anderson has 105 at 24 in 26 Tests. Barring the Steyn/Morkel pair, none has come remotely close to challenging the consistency and menace of this pair, especially in English conditions.