Peter Siddle's in the league of 'bowling' bowlers

A keen cricket observer may have noticed how often Peter Siddle gets stumps flying. Just yesterday, he bowled out two well-set batsmen Flintoff and Prior just as the day's play was about to close. In an Australia-South Africa Test Match at the SCG recently, Siddle bowled out the last 4 wickets in the span of 5 overs, which was a great turnaround in the match.

Peter Siddle is one of the few bowlers now who has a good percentage of wickets bowled out. His express pace is not uncommon, but he keeps the ball within the stumps and so he has a good chance of getting batsmen out bowled or lbw.

I got some research done on some of the greatest fast bowlers as well as some modern fast bowlers to throw up a list of fast bowlers sorted according to the combined percentage of lbw and bowled dismissals in Tests.

Bowlers with most percentage bowled and lbw dismissals

Bowler	LBW (%)	Bowled (%)	Total (%)
Roy Gilchrist (WI)	10	49	59
Shoaib Akhtar (Pak)	20	36	56
Waqar Younis (Pak)	29	27	56
Wasim Akram (Pak)	29	25	54
Joel Garner (WI)	22	27	49
Imran Khan (Pak)	22	27	49
Aaqib Javed (Pak)	28	20	48
Michael Holding (WI)	14	33	47
Lasith Malinga (SL)	22	25	47
Charlie Griffith (WI)	13	33	46
Kapil Dev (India)	25	21	46
S Sreesanth (India)	28	16	44
Irfan Pathan (India)	29	14	43
Jerome Taylor (WI)	24	19	43
Wes Hall (WI)	8	34	42

The minimum criterion used in the above table is 50 Test wickets, which is why Roy Gilchrist makes it to the top, with 51 Test wickets. Bowlers who played in 1920s and 30s have been left out for the sake of relevance.

This list is dominated by West Indians and Pakistanis. It is heartening to see 3 Indians making the list. This list may or may not be accurate, because I may or may not have left out some very good bowlers. This is, however, no comment on other bowling greats like Hadlee and Lillee, who could not make it to this list. The greatness of a bowler does not depend just on the number of wickets he takes or his mode of dismissals.