Those fast bowlers.. they hunt in pairs

Anant Gaundalkar

Fast bowlers, like opening batsmen, work in pairs. They seem to get inspired and perform better in the company of their partners, then going from strength to strength.

At this juncture, there are two great and established pairs of pace bowlers who seems to have struck a perfect formula as far as their wicket-taking ability is concerned. West Indian legends Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh and their Pakistani peers, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.

The Indian pair of Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad are doing well, though they started their partnership only last year.

In the history of Test cricket, there are eight pairs of elite fast bowlers who have accounted for over 500 Test wickets together. Apart from Ambrose and Walsh and Akram and Younis, the pacemen who feature on this list are England's Ian Botham and Bob Willis 'Fiery' Fred Trueman and Brian Statham; Australia's Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, Craig McDermott and Merv Hughes; India's Kapil Dev and Manoj Prabhakar; New Zealand's Sir Richard Hadlee and Ewan Chatfield.

Of these awesome performers, the celebrated pair of Botham and Willis have claimed the most Test wickets in tandem -- 708 from 192 matches. However, the feat of registering the highest combined strike-rate goes to Akram and Younis whose 538 victims from 116 Tests gives them a strike rate of 4.64 wickets per match.

Presenting the stats for this genre:

Combined total