Bowling strike rates

Karl emailed me today with a statistical analysis of New Zealand bowlers' wicket-taking ability:

I've taken the bowling figures for New Zealand bowlers in all ODIs to see who our most effective bowlers have been, in terms of taking wickets. I've done a spreadsheet of every bowler who's taken 10 or more ODI wickets in their career (46 New Zealanders have done this). On this, I've divided the number of wickets per match to have a wicket-taking ratio for every bowler. New Zealand's top-10 bowlers, in terms of wickets per match are:

Bowler - Ratio - Wkts - Matches
SE Bond - 1.89 - 51 - 27
DR Hadlee - 1.82 - 20 - 11
GI Allott - 1.68 - 52 - 31
C Pringle - 1.61 - 103 - 64
GB Troup - 1.45 - 32 - 22
AR Adams - 1.42 - 44 - 31
RJ Hadlee - 1.37 - 158 - 115
BJ McKechnie - 1.36 - 19 - 14
DK Morrison - 1.31 - 126 - 96
EJ Chatfield - 1.23 - 140 - 114

What surprises me are: Pringle at no.4, and Adams being in the top 10 (given my opinion he's a pie-chucker). Of the team over in the UK, the current ratios are:

Bowler - Ratio - Wkts - Matches
DR Tuffey - 1.21 - 87 - 72
JDP Oram - 1.20 - 79 - 66
KD Mills - 1.16 - 37 - 32
SB Styris - 0.94 - 83 - 88
IG Butler - 0.93 - 13 - 14
CL Cairns - 0.92 - 176 - 191
DL Vettori - 0.89 - 123 - 138
CZ Harris - 0.82 - 201 - 245
NJ Astle - 0.52 - 95 - 181
CD McMillan - 0.24 - 37 - 153

Of the bowlers on that list the top 3 in terms of economy rate are: Harris, Vettori and Oram, the worst four are Butler (5.5 per over), McMillan (5.29) Styris (4.86) and Cairns (4.74). You can forgive McMillan those stats - he's a part-time bowler. But Cairns? Shows just how much we miss Bond. Jacob Oram is clearly the NZ team's future key to success.

Of the current Aussie bowlers, their wickets per match ratio is:
Lee: - 1.75
Kasprowicz: - 1.70
Gillespie: - 1.57
Warne: - 1.51
McGrath: - 1.50

Their top five bowlers account for 8 wickets per match. Our top five account for 5.4.
Now Mike - why are we ranked no.2 or 3?

I would say that the reason we are ranked as high as no. 2 or 3 in the world is because we can put a team on the park with a pile of batsmen capable of backing up the strike bowlers with a wicket or two. Compare our top and middle order to the Australians - and ask yourself whether Astle, Fleming, McMillan, Styris, Oram and Cairns present a better wicket-taking prospect than Hayden, Gilchrist, Ponting, Martyn, Lehmann and Symonds. The reason we are not ranked higher is because the strike bowlers (Bond apart) are not up to the job and we need those back-up dobbers.