This is an Article from www.pwcratings.com.
Author seems to think that quality of bowling is going down.I somehow tend to agree with him.If you look at the youngesters ,there are hardly any exciting bowlers except Shoaib and Brett Lee .But then they also have problem with consistancy or Fitness.
Here is the article..
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When a bowler like Matthew Hoggard gets to number 5 in the PwC Ratings, people sit up. Yes, he’s bowling well, but “fifth best in the world??” (That emotive word “best” always crops up).
However, attention should not be on Hoggard’s position, but on his current points - he has a Rating of 715 at present. 700 points is usually just enough to get a bowler into the world top ten. Yet just two years ago, 715 points would only have put Hoggard 11th in the world list. Since then, Test cricket has lost three greats - Ambrose, Donald and Walsh - while others like Wasim Akram are reaching the end of their careers.
Four bowlers currently dominate Test cricket - Murali, McGrath, Pollock and Warne. But after that…who? Gough has barely played a game for a year. Caddick continues to blow hot, cold and injured. Harbhajan has had a good if not great year, but didn’t even make the XI at Lord’s. Vaas’ good run came to an end as England’s batsmen took control in the series in May. Gillespie and Cairns would be well up there but have been set back by excessive injury.
Our conclusion is that after a golden era of over ten years of great bowlers (Ambrose, Waqar, Warne and the rest), Test cricket is going through one of those occasional periods where there is a dearth of bowling at the highest class, until the next generation comes through.
We reckon that the last time that there were only five bowlers above 700 points was 1989, at the end of a lean bowling period in the late 1980s (when Marshall, Hadlee and Imran dominated).
World batting, on the other hand, has never looked collectively stronger than it does at present. On 700 points, Graham Thorpe ranks only 18th instead of the 10th-or-higher position such a rating would historically have given him.