Statistical comparison: Pace v Spin bowling over the last 5 years
In the game of cricket, there are two fundamental types of bowling: fast and spin bowling. While fast bowlers rely on a combination of speed and movement in the air to get the better of batsmen, spin bowlers use the flight and guile and rely on turn off the pitch to deceive batsmen.Having bowlers of both types in a team is of absolute necessity in order to be successful, as the variety that they offer makes it that much more difficult for batsmen to negotiate. With pitches around the world all behaving differently from each other, having a balanced attack ensures that you are prepared for all possibilities in regards to the playing surface.As far as comparing pace and spin bowling is concerned, there has been an interesting change over the last 2-3 decades. The presence of the likes of Dennis Lillee, Imran Khan and the fearsome pace quartet from West Indies meant that pace bowlers ruled the roost in the 1970s and 80s. The entry of Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan at the start of the 1990s, you could argue, made the next decade and more very much their era.With that being the case, below is a statistical comparison of pace v spin bowling over the last 5 years across all the three formats of the game to ascertain in whose favour the balance has tilted towards in recent times, if at all.
#1 Test cricket
Fast bowlers have taken approximately 1500 more wickets than spinners in the 206 Tests that have been played over the last 5 years, which is expected considering the fact that a side, in general, consists of 3 fast bowlers as opposed to just a single spinner.
While fast bowlers have an average and strike-rate of 32.55 and 61.5 respectively, spinners have an average and strike-rate of 36.46 and 73.1 respectively, by which we can safely conclude that the slower bowlers concede a few more runs and also take a bit longer to strike, in terms of number of deliveries, than fast bowlers.
| Type | Matches | Overs | Wickets | Average | Strike-rate | BBI | BBM |
| Pace | 206 | 40840.5 | 3982 | 32.55 | 61.5 | 7/29 | 12/127 |
| Spin | 206 | 28608.0 | 2345 | 36.46 | 73.1 | 9/127 | 14/184 |