Fast bowlers are the Formula One engines of a cricket team: purring and powerful when they want to be, painfully vulnerable when bits fall off. When a partnership works, and sticks – Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis – they carry the team on their shoulders. When that partnership fades, teams often falter, losing their identity.
It is nearly 17 years ago that Michael Vaughan and Peter Moores informed Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison that they were to be dropped for the second Test against New Zealand at Wellington, replaced by Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad. Harmison played only six more Tests and Hoggard never played for England again, while Anderson and Broad went on to be the most successful bowling pair in Test history.
