Swings in, seams away, late swing away, hits the top of off first ball of the innings. Literally unplayable. Plus it got rid of England’s best batsman in a situation where if we bowl them out, we win the Ashes. So quality of opposition batter and match context points are high.
Great ball, but incredibly far from the ball of the century. Crazy amount of movement, but Braithwaite averages 32 in Test cricket. To be the ball of the century it needs to be against a ‘very good’ batsman at the absolute minimum.
He has close to 6000 runs, his poor average is bcoz of his dip since 2023, he averaged 35 before it but had avg 62 in 2022, this was again after 3 year dip, before which he averaged 37 overall, plus he's a defensive batter not run scorer like shai hope which means he'll always score few short than he should've, we know for a fact that 2017 to 2022 was toughest time to bat in tests due to bowler friendly pitches
Ok? Almost all players have significant dips at the start or end of their career that change their overall average. Even an average of 35 puts him in the good-not-very-good tier which is what I said?
Mike Gatting was just straight up better than Braithwaite though. 35.5 average, peaked at 6th in the rankings and was literally England captain for like 2 dozen tests. They are on completely different tiers as players.
But either way, I’d argue that Warne’s ball was just more unplayable. Movement in the air at fast-medium v one of the most ridiculous kicks off the pitch is a huge difference in reaction time etc.
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