‘I am free and happy': Daria Kasatkina has no regrets ahead of first grand slam as Australian
When Daria Kasatkina announced that she had officially switched allegiance from Russia to Australia, she picked up her phone soon after to be greeted with whoops of delight from another Australian player, Daria Saville.
'I was not telling anyone before it came out,' Kasatkina says to Guardian Australia on the eve of the 2025 French Open. 'Dasha called me straightaway and she was so excited. She was so happy for me and I felt so happy because she was super-happy for me.
'It was so natural and now we're real neighbours. I could not have a better neighbour. She's always happy, she's one of the happiest people, I've known her a long time, but it's special that she feels so happy for me. And now we're part of one team.'
Saville knows better than most what it is like to switch national and sporting allegiance, having done so in 2014 and going on to marry Australian tennis player Luke Saville and become a citizen. Long-time friends, Saville is now helping Kasatkina to find a place to live near her own home in Melbourne. 'Well, she's trying,' Kasatkina says. 'She's sending me locations, everything. I have to look deeper into it.'
Changing nationality was not a decision that came easy to Kasatkina, but one she felt she had to take. One of the few Russian-born players to publicly condemn the country's invasion of Ukraine, the fact that she is openly gay means she can't live the life she wants to in the nation of her birth. When the opportunity to become an Australian citizen, an idea first broached by her agent, John Morris, to Tennis Australia during this year's Australian Open, she jumped at the chance.
Official meetings followed and forms were completed, if not exactly by Kasatkina herself. 'I don't know the exact details because I was not doing the applications,' she says with a laugh. 'As a professional athlete, we're never doing this stuff.' Luckily, there were no awkward questions and the process was swift, with Kasatkina becoming a permanent resident of Australia on 29 March.
'Of course it's a big decision,' she says, adding that her family were happy as long as she is happy. 'It's never easy to do something like that. But I am very conscious when I am making this step that I know this is better for my future. I ended up in the situation where I have to make this choice. It's unfortunate, but I had to make it and I'm happy with the decision.
'Honestly, in the past couple of months, I have become a much happier person. I feel like a lot of weight has dropped off my shoulders. I am free and happy. For me this is the most important thing and … I feel this decision is right.'
Australia is happy too, with Kasatkina immediately boosting their credentials as a top-20 player. The 28-year-old's results have been up and down since the change, but she is a proven world-class performer, a former semi-finalist at Roland Garros and someone equally adept on grass. Totally comfortable with her decision, the only thing Kasatkina still finds a little strange is when the tournament MCs introduce her as being from Australia.
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'I'm still getting used to it,' she says. 'It's a great feeling to represent a country like Australia. It's just something to get used to, I guess. I'm very happy with how everyone welcomed me. The first couple of times it did feel a bit strange. Also to see this beautiful flag next to me, I'm getting more used to it, because at the beginning in the schedule I was a bit confused, but now it's becoming better.'
Being Australia's No 1, and suddenly having an entire new nation behind her, is a fresh experience and even for someone as experienced as Kasatkina, it's something extra to deal with. 'It's maybe a little bit of additional pressure, especially when I stepped on court for that first match,' she says. 'That was a lot of pressure. But I'm just going and playing every match like before. It's adding maybe a little pressure but we are facing pressure every single day.'
Kasatkina has not had the best of clay-court seasons; in fact she has won just two matches in three tournaments since her switch was announced. But as one of the most talented players on the WTA Tour, with more variety than most, she knows that it could take just one good performance to flick a switch.
'You're going to have ups and downs,' she says, ahead of a first-round match with the Czech, Katerina Siniakova. 'You can be super-ready and still not win many matches and then, next couple of weeks, you may not be feeling amazing, but still somehow you're there. That's normal. I just keep working, I keep pushing and sooner or later, the results will come. I'm very positive about that.'
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Telegraph
36 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Russia is just not very good at fighting wars
Recently, Russian casualties climbed through the one million mark after three and a half years of Putin's 'special military operation', originally expected to last three days. For an army of such size in manpower and equipment this seems a remarkable price to pay for less than a fifth of Ukrainian territory, fighting against an army which was minuscule in comparison on the day of the illegal invasion – 24 th Feb 22. What are the reasons for this ineptitude, and is this purely a problem of the modern Russian army – or a reflection of systemic failures across the centuries? A soldier and a historian will try to answer these questions today. When it comes down to it, the Russian military has always relied on mass and brutality. It has aspired historically to ambitious intellectual underpinnings for its military power but this has tended to falter on first contact with reality. In the case of the Red Army of the 1920s and 30s, much radical military thinking was lost in Stalin's purges. The only army which gained any valuable insights into the future of war from the experimental exercises conducted in the USSR during that time was the Wehrmacht. Today in the 2020s, the much vaunted 'Gerasimov Doctrine' (aka 'hybrid warfare') failed when confronted with a citizen army determined to resist a war of unprovoked aggression waged against its independent sovereign state. Over the last week or two we've been reconsidering the nature of the Soviet victory in World War II, but also the nature of the fighting during that conflict and, more broadly, Russia's history of warfare since the turn of the twentieth century. It's fair to say, the Second World War aside, Russia's wars make for pretty sorry reading – if you're Russian. Russia suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of Japan in 1905, one which in large part led to the 1905 Russian revolution. Imperial Russia's part in the subsequent First World War was a catastrophe which led to the loss of 5.5 million casualties, battlefield defeat and the overthrow of the Tsarist regime; the 1917 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk also saw Russia ceding large amounts of territory to Germany and its allies. There is a common theme here: the leadership seemingly unconcerned by huge casualties amongst the rank and file, and when you are not concerned with casualties the principles of war seem to go out of the window. Which leads to Ukraine. Despite having one of the largest militaries in the world, and despite the assumption that Ukraine could be overrun in a matter of days, over three years on Russian forces have taken barely 20 per cent of the country, Russia has been invaded in turn and losses have included not only the one million casualties – including over 500,000 dead – but more than 10,000 tanks, 21,500 armoured fighting vehicles, 41,000 other vehicles, 24,500 artillery pieces and 370 aircraft including a fair wedge of the strategic nuclear bomber fleet. To put this in some perspective, 10,000 tank losses is a figure greater than the most heavily produced German tank of the entire Second World War. Clearly, the key feature of almost all these wars is barely comprehensible levels of casualties. Anyone reading this catalogue of death and destruction – with the accompanying high proportion of defeats – could be forgiven for thinking that Russia is simply not very good at fighting wars. And bluntly, they'd be right. While the Western Allies have very sensibly harnessed technology, global reach, mechanization and logistical deftness to limit the number of men risking their lives at the coal face of war, the Red Army continued its policy of barely imaginable profligacy. The Allies adopted a policy of 'steel not flesh' as far as they possibly could; the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation, on the other hand, pursued steel in tandem with immense amounts of flesh and suffered terrible consequences. And this leads to the question of blood being spilled. It is absolutely the case that historically the Red Army lost considerably more lives than the Western Allies or even the Germans they were defeating, but this doesn't mean that the Red Army was taking on the greatest proportion of fighting. On the contrary, the Western Allies were fighting a truly global war on land, in the air and at sea, and overall taking on a far greater proportion of the Axis forces. Until the final months of the war against Japan, the Soviet Union was only fighting on the Eastern Front – and spectacularly inefficiently too. To be an effective fighting force able to manoeuvre and outpace the enemy you need to train and train hard. It takes over a year of individual and collective training to take a British tank regiment and weld it together with infantry, artillery and now drones and other things into a combined arms battle group which is able to deliver shock action against the enemy. New Russian conscripts are given just a few days training before being thrown into the meat grinder, and some cannot even clean their rifles. Even new tank crews are only afforded a few weeks training and no collective training with other tanks – let alone other arms. Hence the massive levels of attrition and the reason why watchers see so many tanks out of control with 'disco head' – where the commander becomes totally disorientated by all that is going on around him, typically a precursor to the tank's destruction. Russian military command structure tends to be rigid and heavily reliant on blind obedience. This has to be enforced by draconian discipline and tends to see senior officers getting involved in low-level battle drills which would in the British army be managed by junior leaders. Initiative is not just discouraged, it is punished. Routine use is made of brutal methods reminiscent of the 19th century and WWI - 'shtrafbatty' and 'zagranotryady'. This means junior officers and non-commissioned officers (equivalent to sergeants and warrant officers in our army) following up behind assault units to shoot would-be stragglers and deserters. The training culture is equally brutal, with 'dedovshchina' (the western equivalent term 'hazing' or just plain bullying doesn't even begin to capture the savagery of this) an intrinsic element of the system. The hatred this engenders between senior and junior Russian soldiers is intense. It should come as no great surprise that war crimes are so prevalent wherever the Russian army sets foot. Corruption is endemic and rampant even in peacetime. Petrol, ammunition, rations, weapons, uniforms and even armoured vehicles are sold off. Soldiers are used by officers (and the state) as slave labour – to build officers' private dachas or to bring in the harvest, just as they did in Tsarist and Soviet times. We have, in recent decades, been too respectful of the Red Army and its modern successor. The Russian victory in the Second World War was complete but it should not have been so expensive in lives. The Red Army was very much the product of the nation it was created to defend: one that was cruel and corrupt, and which cared not a jot for the lives of the men – and women – being flung into the fire. It was for the most part sickeningly incompetent, just as it still is to this day. Putin, so devoted to the legacy of the Great Patriotic War, has learned nothing. James Holland is a historian and founder of the Chalk History Festival. Colonel Hamish de Bretton Gordon served in the Royal Tank Regiment
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
At least six wounded in large-scale Russian air attack on Ukraine, Ukrainian authorities say
KYIV, June 29 (Reuters) - Russia used hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles to attack western, southern and central Ukraine overnight, damaging homes and infrastructure and injuring at least six people, local authorities said on Sunday. Ukraine lost its third F-16 fighter jet since the start of the war while repelling the attack, the military said. The sounds of explosions were heard in Lviv, Poltava, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy regions, regional governors said. The Ukrainian military said some 500 different types of aerial weapons were used during the attack, including drones, ballistic and cruise missiles. "To repel the massive attack, all available means of the defence forces that can operate on enemy air assets were deployed," the military said. The pilot of the Ukrainian F-16 jet did everything he could and flew the jet away from a settlement but did not have time to eject, the Ukrainian Air Force said. "The pilot used all of his onboard weapons and shot down seven air targets. While shooting down the last one, his aircraft was damaged and began to lose altitude," the Air Force said on the Telegram messenger. The military said Russia had launched 477 drones and 60 missiles of various types to Ukraine overnight while Ukrainian forces destroyed 211 drones and 38 missiles. It said 225 drones were lost - in reference to the Ukrainian military using electronic warfare to redirect them - or they were drone simulators that did not carry warheads. It said air strikes were recorded in six locations. Six people, including one child, were injured in the central Cherkasy region, the governor Ihor Taburets said on the Telegram messenger. Three multi-storey buildings and a college were damaged in the attack, he said. Industrial facilities were hit in the southern Ukrainian Mykolaiv and central Dnipropetrovsk regions, officials say. Local authorities published photos of multi-storey houses with charred walls and broken windows and rescuers evacuating residents. The governor of the Lviv region in the west of the country said the attack targeted critical infrastructure. However, he did not report on the aftermath.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Ranked: The 30 greatest fast bowlers in Test history
My editors tasked me, having seen more than 500 Test matches, with whittling down the finest 30 fast bowlers who ever drew breath. It is an almost impossible task, but I gave myself a helping hand with the chief criterion that the bowlers in this list must have bowled at more than 80mph. Therefore there is no place for greats such as Alec Bedser, Maurice Tate, Syd Barnes or George Lohmann of yore, and towards the end of his career Kapil Dev was in the medium-pace category. Here goes... 30. Jack Gregory 24 Tests, 85 wickets at an average of 31, and a strike rate of 65 balls per wicket 'Never before have English batsmen been so demoralised by great pace,' Wisden stated about the Australian fast bowler Jack Gregory in 1921. This sounds as if it is where bowling above 80mph begins. In his authoritative new book on the history of the game, my Telegraph Sport colleague Tim Wigmore cites the evidence that Gregory hit England batsmen 20 times above the waist in his 21 Ashes Tests, which is a rare strike-rate. He scored the fastest Test century and kept playing as an all-rounder even when his knees let him down so his overall bowling record does not look great. 29. Mike Procter 7 Tests, 41 wickets at 15 each, and 37 balls per wicket Before South Africa were banned, Proctor's statistics, as far as they went, were better than anyone's. He hurtled to the crease and whirled his right arm, a bit like Jasprit Bumrah, giving the false impression that he bowled off the wrong foot. His inswinger was so vicious that against right-handed batsmen he averaged 11. 28. Wes Hall 48 Tests, 192 wickets at 26, and 54 balls per wicket Similar in height, method and leap at the crease to Jack Gregory, he was the first fast bowler to reign in Asia: in the West Indies' 1958-59 series in India he took 30 wickets at 17 each, and 16 at 17 each in Pakistan, figures that have yet to be surpassed by any fast bowler touring Asia. His name was then writ large in the imagination of Australia, where he bowled the final over of the tied Test, and in England in 1963, where he bowled a spell of three-and-a-half hours in the Lord's Test. 27. Joel Garner 58 Tests, 259 wickets at 20, and 51 balls per wicket Using his experiences of one-day competitions at Somerset, Garner became the foremost bowler in limited-overs cricket – as when winning the 1979 World Cup for West Indies – and revived the yorker's popularity, the delivery having fallen out of fashion (it is so-called because Yorkshire bowlers of the 19th century used it). In one-day internationals he conceded only 3.09 runs per over. In Tests too he was always economical, with old ball and new. Whatever he bowled, the threat was accentuated by his 6ft 8in height – and when Garner kicked up his knees, the batsman realised he was facing an unprecedented form of danger. 26. Mitchell Starc 97 Tests, 387 wickets at 27, and 48 balls per wicket While Trent Boult took 600 wickets in all formats for New Zealand, Starc went one better. When pitching the new ball on a full length he has been driven for runs but has also swung it to devastating effect (as Rory Burns's leg stump can vouch). Only Wasim Akram, of left-arm pace bowlers, has taken more Test wickets with 414, and Starc could overtake him during the next Ashes. The variety he offers has been a key component in Australia winning medals in all formats over the past decade. 25. Courtney Walsh 132 Tests, 519 wickets at 24, and 58 balls per wicket Never mind the best Test match figures of any bowler when captain – 13 wickets for 55 against New Zealand – his immense stamina enabled him to bowl more than 30,000 balls in Tests alone, and eventually to reach the top of the pile with 519 wickets. Having bowled heaps for Gloucestershire too, he could vary his length more than his contemporary Curtly Ambrose. Spare a thought too for Walsh and the late David Lawrence being perhaps the quickest pair of opening bowlers that county cricket has seen, alongside Sussex's Garth Le Roux and Imran Khan when in the mood. 24. Andy Roberts 47 Tests, 202 wickets at 26, and 55 balls per wicket He was probably as fast as anyone there has ever been in his first couple of years of Test and county cricket (when he hit Colin Cowdrey on the head while taking 111 wickets at 13 each for Hampshire in 1974). And he took 32 wickets at 18 each in the West Indies series in India that winter. Then he evolved into a wise technician who schooled the great West Indian cohort of fast bowlers, teaching them how to build stamina without any academies by running on the beach, use cross-seam to bowl bouncers and – the hardest of all bowling tricks – to flick the shiny side over in the delivery stride to deceive the batsman. 23. Fred Trueman 67 Tests, 307 wickets at 22, and 49 balls per wicket He has to be given a bonus point for the most handsome bowling action of anyone in this list: it was a perfect marriage of power, speed and aesthetic grace in his delivery stride (bowlers do not bowl side-on any more to reduce injury). He set a world record by reaching 307 Test wickets but how many more would he have taken had he had been selected for more than four tours? He was often deemed unselectable for non-cricket reasons, but that did help feed into his personality as 'Fiery Fred'. From a tearaway he evolved into a fast-medium outswing bowler who could bowl cutters. 22. Sir James Anderson 188 Tests, 704 wickets at 26, and 57 balls per wicket He does not rate highly for strike rate (almost nine-and-a-half overs to take a wicket) but he comes top for longevity – more than 40,000 balls spanning a Test career of 21 years – and arguably for craftsmanship too: he could do everything with the seam of a cricket ball, and accurately too. Always effective in England with a Dukes ball, he also found a way for England to win their series of 2010-11 in Australia and 2012-13 in India. 21. Kagiso Rabada 71 Tests, 336 wickets at 22, and 39 balls per wicket The South African has the best strike rate of any pace bowler who has taken more than 100 wickets in Tests, largely by pitching the new ball up on the line of the stumps. Anyone can start an outswinger on or outside off stump, precious few on leg and middle. Mean bouncer too. Bowling outside England with a Kookaburra ball makes it an even finer record, although it is probably an advantage to play only two-Test series. 20. John Snow 49 Tests, 202 wickets at 27, and 60 balls per wicket Fast bowlers traditionally bowled full and straight with the odd bouncer thrown in, aside from the Bodyline series. Snow evolved the process by innovating the back-of-a-length ball that kicked into a batsman's ribs. He therefore had the fine haul of 32 wickets at 22 in the 1970-71 Ashes series. He analysed his craft like nobody in England before him. Might have performed even better if paid slightly more than a pittance. 19. Frank Tyson 17 Tests, 76 wickets at 19, and 45 balls per wicket If one man commands a place in this list on the basis of one series then it is Frank Tyson, almost unknown when he went to Australia in 1954-55 under Len Hutton. He blew the Australians away with his full length and almost certainly the fastest bowling seen till then, verging on 90 miles an hour if not exceeding. When he returned four years later, there was nothing left in the tank, only the massive shoulders which had powered him. 18. Michael Holding 60 Tests, 249 wickets at 24, and 51 balls per wicket The most graceful run-up of anyone in this list, which is not surprising given that he came from Jamaica, a land of great runners. His finest feat was his demolition of England at the Oval in 1976: 14 wickets for 149 runs on a featherbed. Arguably it was the final fanfare of traditional fast bowling, before helmets appeared, in that he aimed full and straight. He bowled the very high proportion of one-third of his victims, which suggests how far from the ball some of them were at the time. 17. Harold Larwood 21 Tests, 78 wickets at 28, and 64 balls per wicket The first fast bowler of whom there is good film footage, and we can see from it that in the Bodyline series of 1932-3 he was essentially half a century ahead of his time. The keeper is starting to take the ball with his fingers pointing skywards as batsmen hop and hope. He took 33 wickets at 19 in that Bodyline series. It was the only answer to Don Bradman and the blandest pitches there have been in England and Australia around 1930. 16. Richard Hadlee 86 Tests, 431 wickets at 22, and 51 balls per wicket Arguably the most efficient of all fast-medium bowlers on a pitch which offered something. The New Zealander married an accountant's mind, inherited from his father Walter, to all his physical attributes, and maximised his assets. Not having a partner of anything like equal calibre was a hindrance and an advantage in that the biggest slice of pie was always going to be his. Took the world record for Test wickets at one stage, before being knighted. 15. Ray Lindwall 61 Tests, 228 wickets at 23, and 60 balls per wicket One of the most graceful actions, and one of the most graceful, gentle personalities in cricket, he nonetheless had a bouncer that could take unhelmeted heads off and gave Len Hutton nightmares. Only one person has taken more Test wickets hit-wicket than Lindwall's three, which suggests there was not much wriggle room. His stock delivery was the quick outswinger. 14. Alan Davidson 44 Tests, 186 wickets at 21, and 62 balls per wicket Not an outright scary left-arm pace bowler, he was nevertheless more versatile than any apart from Sir Garfield Sobers because he could also bowl spin in Asia. His main suit, though, was fast-medium new-ball swing into the right-handed batsman. He played in the slow-scoring era of the late 1950s but it was still some feat to concede fewer than two runs per over. 13. Dennis Lillee 70 Tests, 355 wickets at 24, and 52 balls per wicket Choreography does play a role in a fast bowler's impact, though Chris Woakes has said otherwise, and nobody can have played the role of alpha-male fast bowler more dauntingly than Lillee. He bowled fast outswing, precision bouncers, and could muster a leg-cutter though never an off-cutter. Without reverse swing in his armoury, he took only six wickets in his four Tests in Asia. 12. Allan Donald 72 Tests, 330 wickets at 22, and 47 balls per wicket Primed by Warwickshire, Allan Donald led South Africa's charge on their return to international cricket after isolation. And charge he did, and leapt, like a lion going for a gazelle's throat. Strangely, many have swung the ball more before pitching but perhaps nobody has swung the ball more after pitching, in bizarre parabolas, than 'AD' at Edgbaston. The heart of a lion too. 11. Pat Cummins 68 Tests, 301 wickets at 22, and 46 balls per wicket A perfect exponent of the new school of wobble seam, he runs in and delivers with unerring accuracy. In his early years, thanks to the speed of his rotation, he was as quick as anybody but once he had finally recovered from all his back injuries he settled down into the late 80s miles per hour. Remarkably, he is almost as effective when he has to captain. 10. Waqar Younis 87 Tests, 373 wickets at 24, and 44 balls per wicket For a couple of years, until his back played up in 1991-92, he merited a couple of superlatives: the longest run-up and the fastest reverse-swinging yorker, having learnt it from his captain Imran Khan. More than half of his Test wickets, 212, were either bowled or leg-before: the only possible response was to bat left-handed. In 1991 he took 113 wickets at 14 for Surrey: he would not be allowed to do that now – which might have extended his peak. 9. Dale Steyn 93 Tests, 439 wickets at 23, and 42 balls per wicket Nobody has looked so menacing on a cricket field as Steyn after taking a wicket, as he simulated thrusting a bayonet or spear into a fallen victim, eyes bulging. His two weapons were the fast outswinger, which had 109 batsmen caught-behind by the keeper, and the bouncer. Not much in between but then there was seldom a need for anything else. His strike rate is almost the same as Bumrah's. 8. Shaun Pollock 108 Tests, 421 wickets at 23, and 58 balls per wicket He had it all in his time. At the outset he was long-limbed gangly-fast and as threatening as Allan Donald at the other end, and struck helmets for a pastime (too soon for concussion subs). He slowed down, but not by much, into another Curtly Ambrose, never giving the batsman anything except a bouncer for old times' sake. And the best batsman out of everyone in this list bar Mike Procter and Imran Khan. 7. Mitchell Johnson 73 Tests, 313 wickets at 28, and 51 balls per wicket Sometimes too short and inaccurate, Johnson at his peak in 2013-14 was surely the most lethal fast bowler that has ever been. A left-armer, he could explode from little short of a length into a batsman's ribs or face. England held the Ashes and some top batsmen including Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen but they were blown away 5-0, and South Africa followed: in those eight Tests Johnson took 59 wickets at only 15 each. 6. Wasim Akram 104 Tests, 414 wickets at 23, and 54 runs per wicket Tutored by Imran Khan, he had the same range of skills with new ball and old but was left-handed. He could therefore run through a side by going round the wicket and reversing the ball into the batsman's toes which made for a unique angle, like being thrown out from extra cover. In placing him above Johnson, we should factor in that he played his home Tests on pitches devoid of seam movement. 5. Glenn McGrath 104 Tests, 414 wickets at 23, and 54 runs per wicket Unlike Curtly Ambrose he could very occasionally be rattled and hit off his length, but otherwise he did what he did immaculately, by bowling on or just outside off stump and usually with some steepling bounce. He made Shane Warne's life a lot simpler by knocking over top orders. Throw in ODIs and he took almost a thousand international wickets… but what if an opening batsman had gone after him a la Ben Duckett? 4. Imran Khan 88 Tests, 362 wickets at 23, and 54 balls per wicket Not being content with mere inswing at Oxford, he acquired the conventional skills in county cricket then added reverse-swing as taught by Sarfraz Nawaz, so that he conquered inside and outside Asia. He was the first great bowler to bowl reverse swing not by soaking one side of the ball with sweat but by roughing up the leather on one side to make it lighter – before umpires began to inspect. In Pakistan he took 163 wickets at 19. Has anyone moved the ball more in the air than Imran's boomerangs in the early 1980s before his back injury? 3. Curtly Ambrose 98 Tests, 405 wickets at 21, and a wicket every 54 balls The only modern bowler who was never taken apart, not least because he might slip in a beamer if he was hit (before high full tosses were called no-balls). Nobody has maintained such an unwavering back of a length, so his economy rate was outstanding although he might have taken more wickets if he had pitched fuller. He conceded 2.3 per over when limited-overs hitting was kicking into Tests. His spell of seven wickets for one run against Australia in Perth can hardly be surpassed. 2. Malcolm Marshall 81 Tests, 376 wickets at 21, and a wicket every 47 balls He just missed out on the two World Cup victories by West Indies in 1975 and 1979 but he had the skills to succeed in every format. He could not only swing the ball both ways but cut it both ways and bowl the meanest bouncer because he was not too tall. He almost sprinted on tip-toe to the crease: as Mike Selvey wrote, like a sidewinder on the attack. 1. Jasprit Bumrah 46 Tests, 210 wickets at 20, and a wicket every 42 balls Deserves to be recognised as the finest Test fast bowler, and the finest white-ball fast bowler, there has been. Nobody has delivered the ball closer to the batsman since the front-foot no-ball was introduced, thanks to his extended right elbow. By anecdotal evidence, no pace bowler has ever been so difficult to read as he flicks his fingers in addition to the snap of his wrist; and by statistical evidence he is unsurpassed too, as the only Test bowler of any kind to have taken more than 200 wickets at an average below 20 (19.60). And one more stat: he averages 17 in Australia and India. Bumrah has raised the bar as the all-format fast bowler.
