The Sultans of Swing Trivia Quiz

One of Australia's finest batsmen at the turn of the twentieth century, Clem Hill, once said of Sydney Francis Barnes "he could swing the new ball in and out very late, could spin from the ground, pitch on the leg stump and miss the off". In short, Barnes' ability with the ball bordered on being freakish. To put a modern spin on it, he was a combination of Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, rolled up in a single package.

Sydney's international career began late, at the age of 28, and lasted only 27 Test matches. In that time he took 189 wickets at the remarkable average of 16.43. Even more astonishing is that he managed to secure 24 five wickets hauls in only 27 Tests. His legend was sealed on the first day of the second Test of the 1911-12 Ashes series at Melbourne. Before lunch on the first day, he'd dismissed four high calibre Australian batsmen in Warren Bardsley, Charlie Kelleway, Clem Hill and Warwick Armstrong. His figures at the long break were 9 (overs)-6 (maidens)-3 (runs)-4 (wickets). It would be fair to say that, during Barnes' stay in Test cricket, a bowler, for a change, not a batsman, was the greatest player in the world.

I used to listen to my uncle tell stories of Ray Lindwall and his voice never failed to carry a trace of awe. He described him as a well-toned welterweight, who delivered a big punch. Ashley Mallet once said of him that he could "slay you with thunder or defeat you with guile". Whilst Ray would glide to the crease, purist would argue that his arm was too low, but the upside for Lindwall was that, becuase of this, his bouncer skidded rather than jumped. Consequently, instead of sailing harmlessly over the batsman's head, it went straight for his throat... earning Lindwall the nickname "Killer".

Lindwall was an artist who bowled outswingers at high speed and constantly broke the batsman's rhythm with subtle variations in pace. Over the course of his career, he would play 61 Tests and claim 228 wickets at an average that was a little over 23. While his best haul was 7 for 38, his tour de force was a spell of 6 for 20 in the fifth Test at The Oval in 1948, which helped dismiss a powerful England batting line-up for a woeful 52 runs.

What Hanif Mohammad was to Pakistan's batting line-up in the 1950s, Fazal Mahmood was to its bowling attack. While Mohammad may have been the team's sheet anchor, Mahmood was the artillery that delivered numerous memorable victories for his country. To add to that Fazal was tall, fair and handsome, a man who didn't shy away from the spotlight. In a short space of time both he and Mohammad were the superstars of Pakistani cricket.

The great Australian batsman, Neil Harvey, once offered that Mahmood could "make the ball talk", as he managed to bring together pace, swing, accuracy and a lethal leg-cutter into a dangerous package for batsmen. Described as the best swing bowler of his era, with his only rival being the great Englishman Alec Bedser, his crowning achievement came at the Oval in 1954, against one of the greatest batting line-ups England had ever assembled. Protecting scores of 133 in the first innings and 164 in the second, Fazal stormed through the likes of Hutton, Compton, and Graveney, taking 12 for 99 and delivering a 24 run victory to his side.

Peter Pollock hailed from one of cricket's finest families. His brother Graeme has often been cited as one of the all-time great batsmen and his son Shaun was an opening bowler of the highest order, who could also have made his way into this quiz, had he debuted earlier.

As an opening bowler, Peter had speed to burn and, when South Africa took on England in England's summer of 1964-65, he endevoured to turn himself into a missile. He disregarded subtlety and variation in his quest for the holy grail of raw pace. Consequently, he returned a lukewarm result. The series, however, proved his making, as he learned from his mistakes. He practiced his control to the point where he was deadly accurate, reduced the number of bouncers he bowled and varied his pace, holding back his faster balls to use as sudden surprise weapons. With this new found rhythm, he was now able to move the ball through the air, creating a skill set that left the best batsmen floundering.

Against the Australians in 1970, he led South Africa to a 4-0 victory, snaring 15 wickets in the four Tests at a miserly average of 17.20. At this point he was 29 years old and at the peak of his powers, when South Africa was forced out of international cricket as the result of their apartheid policies.

Dennis Lillee's imposing statistics show that he took 355 Test wickets at an average of 23.92 over the course of 70 Test matches. Impressive as those figures are, they do not tell what the story that was Dennis Lillee the man. They don't reveal the strategic mind that he possessed and the way he stalked the batsman before putting them to the sword. Nor do they show the depth of his inner reserves that he called upon on numerous occasions or his unquenchable desire to succeed.

In many ways Lillee was the complete bowler, one who'd started his career as a fearsome tear-away, who relied on raw pace and late swing to gather his wickets but was then forced to remodel his action after a back injury had almost ended his career. He returned as a bowler on unerring accuracy and cunning guile, who could now swing the ball both ways and seam it off the pitch. Rather than focusing on a single performance to highlight his skill I would prefer to recall the battles he had with the legendary West Indies batsman, Sir Vivian Richards. Richards had demolished and demoralized all of the bowling line-ups across the globe but his confrontations with Lillee were the convergence of two irresistible and unrelenting forces, in a cauldron where no prisoners were to be taken. Richards still managed to make runs, however, they were hard won and he was dismissed by Lillee in Tests more times than any other bowler.

Richard Hadlee's rhythmic approach to the wicket, his smooth, easy action, exceptional accuracy and total mastery of seam and swing made bowling look like an art form rather than a sporting exhibition. Like his role model, Dennis Lillee, Hadlee, early in his career, relied on bowling with extreme pace to garner his wickets but this attack on the batsman proved to be erratic and only moderately successful.

To his credit, in the craft of bowling, Hadlee was also an academic, and it didn't take him long to realize that he needed to change his ways and, in the manner of Fazal Mahmood and Lillee before him, he remodelled his action and introduced guile into his armoury.

The second half of his career was a whirlwind of wicket taking wizardry, taking scalps at a phenomenal rate and at a miserly average. He would end his career with 431 wickets (at the time a world record) from only 86 Tests, at an average of 22.29. He efforts with the ball brought New Zealand their first Test match victories against England in 1978 and the mighty West Indies in 1984, however, his crowning achievement was against Australia in 1981. In the first Test against their rivals "across the ditch", Hadlee took 9 for 52 in the first innings and finished with 15 for 123, to help deliver his country to their first Test victory against Australia.

Kapil Dev was India's first genuine fast bowler. In a country that was so well known for its production line of seriously good spinners and technically correct batsmen, Dev's lethal swing bowling, durability and, ultimately, his charismatic leadership, would revolutionize the way the game was played in India.

Aggressive and fearless, he was the ultimate workhorse for his country, toiling away on the unresponsive sub-continent pitches and finding ways to maintain swing in situations that were not conducive to it. In all, Kapil took 434 Test wickets from 131 matches, but his crowning achievement came against the West Indies powerhouse at Ahmedabad in November of 1983. As a testament to his stamina and strength, in the West Indies second innings, Dev bowled unchanged for a little over 30 overs to, almost, singlehandedly remove the entire opposition line-up. His final figures that day were 9 wickets for 83 runs.

In the late 1970s and all through the 1980s, the West Indies kept producing a barrage of tremendous fast bowlers that terrorized batsmen across the globe... yet the shortest one on this production line, Malcolm Marshall at 5 foot 11 inches (180 cms), rose above them to be the greatest of all of them.

Alongside the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (Holding, Garner, Roberts and Croft), Marshall looked like a jockey but, rather than compete against them, he drew from each of them to become the most complete fast bowler in the game, one that would rival (some say surpass) the great Dennis Lillee. From Holding he developed a long, smooth and graceful run-up, though he would later change this to a shorter bustling approach, that would prove more economical. He learned from Roberts' guile and variety to develop ways to dismiss batsmen, from Colin Croft he manifested aggression and, from Joel Garner, he gathered determination and a never-say-die attitude. The latter was never more evident than during the third Test against England, at Headingley in 1984. He batted with a broken thumb, remaining at the crease long enough to enable Larry Gomes to reach a well earned century. Marshall returned to the bowling crease with his left arm in a cast and proceeded to take seven wickets in England's second innings and guide his team to victory.

Wasim Akram was blessed with, and lived up to, the sobriquet "The Sultan of Swing", making him the most apt inductee to this quiz. With a style that was uniquely his own he'd shuffle up to the crease and then, with the aid of an incredibly fast arm action, he'd unleash searing bouncers and late in-swinging yorkers or deceive batsmen with subtle variations of pace.

Wasim made his international presence felt in only his second Test match. Playing against New Zealand in Dunedin in 1985, he took five wickets in each innings, almost bowling his side to a memorable victory. He became the master of the reverse swinging delivery, and he had an uncanny knack of being able to extract life from even the deadest of pitches. Whilst Australia's Mitchell Starc managed to surpass his tally of 414 Test wickets during the 2025/26 Ashes series, most still consider Akram the finest left arm paceman that the game has seen.

In an article for "Cricket Web" (18 August, 2009) Richard Dickinson described Sri Lanka's Chaminda Vaas as "one of the great under-rewarded players in cricket history". He explains that this is because he was "impossibly innocuous" and that "he tended to do his job quietly and only rarely crept out of the shadow of the ubiquitous Muttiah Muralitharan."

Yet experts still rate him as one of the best left arm bowlers the game has witnessed, placing only the incredibly gifted Wasim Akram and Australia's "Mr. Reliable", Allan Davidson, ahead of him. Known as the "Silent Destroyer", Chaminda had beautiful rhythm, bowled with laser-like accuracy and could conjure more magic from a cricket ball than a magician with a hat. Despite playing most of his cricket on the bland and lifeless pitches on the sub-continent, that provided little assistance to fast bowlers, he still managed to take 355 Test wickets. Vaas' finest moment arrived at the 2003 World One-Day Cup, where he was the competition's leading wicket-taker, ahead of the likes of Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath.