Today, yes and it is unlikely that they'll all fire on a given day but having four of them means that you have four match winning forces with the ball and only two have to fire to have a large impact on the game.
But the fact remains that a standard compliment of say, Anderson, Broad and Harmison stood to be blamed for leaking 276 rather than praised for defending 275. The only serious damage was from Harmison, who had just the wickets of Smith and Duminy, while Broad and Flintoff only chimed in against the tail and lower order. Yes, I recognise that Harmison and Flintoff gave a miserly account, but I wouldn't consider it to be all that much of an impact. Fielding played a bigger part in this game, the South Africans were unusually sloppy at times and could have done better, while England were switched on. Plus, let's face it, in terms of batsmen 1-6, the two spinners had 3, to the four quicks' 2.
I'm not saying they should drop their esteemed pace attack, but if you dropped the slow bowling out of this equation, they would have been rooted. It was the sheer number of bowlers that got them there rather than the degree of pace. It was not the fact that they had the 4 quicks alone, but that they had 4 genuine pacemen, one seamer as back-up, one genuine slow bowler and a couple more handy slower men. They didn't have to rely on Anderson bowling without swing and they weren't even obliged to use Wright.
With Flintoff and Patel playing in the middle order, they might have achieved startling balance, especially with Collingwood also expected to return and Swann lurking. I suppose it is no matter for analysis because if they keep on going like this, chances are that there will be a game where the quicks take all the wickets and it will be silly to bring up the advantage of a long bowling lineup.
So in search of something worth discussing, the target drifts to something else to pick on. Let's discuss that old top order. Where are they going to find 3 decent top order guys? Is it ridiculous that England have not given Trott a serious *sigh* run? How long will this formation stand before they rejig it?
,thats what we r like
