Patrick Cummins is the future - Or not.

Patrick Cummins is the future.

No, hang on, maybe he's not. It's Josh Hazelwood. Tall, quick, can get it to wobble about a bit. Yes, definitely Josh Hazelwood.

Or perhaps it's James Pattinson. You know, English Darren's brother. Surely he's going to lead the Australian attack into the next decade, he's already played in the coloured clothing for us. I've changed my mind, we should embrace him as our spearhead.

But then where does that leave Peter George? And Mitch Starc? Or Nathan Coulter-Nile, Jayde Herrick, Trent Copeland and Burt Cockley?

Australia has a surfeit of youthful fast bowling talent at present. Not just young fast bowlers, but - on current evidence - good ones. This is a source of much-needed encouragement given recent events in the Baggy Green as defeats to pretty much everyone again conjure memories of all the West Indies lost in their regression from behemoth to basket-case.

Cricket in Australia is far from being completely turned around - in fact, it still may not even be going in the right direction. But CA's done everything it can - commissioning a report to put down in ink what any observer already knew. And the country has raw fast bowling talent to choose from - and it is that which is most crucial to a successful cricket side. The oldest of the fast bowlers named above are 25-year olds Copeland and Herrick.

Why so excited? Every successful postwar cricket team has had pace firepower in abundance. The Invincibles steamed through England behind Lindwall, Miller and Johnston; England of the fifties unleashed Statham, Trueman, Bedser and "Typhoon" Tyson; the West Indies speed vanguard often left their batsmen with little to do and Australia's dominant decades came as a result of the toil of Lillee, Thomson, McGrath and Gillespie.

Fast bowling talent wins games, not bowlers who send it down fast. And there's a difference between the two: Patrick Patterson was outrageously quick, had one of the great intimidatory attitudes, won a few of games for Jamaica and the West Indies, but never amounted to much. The same could be said for Brett Lee - you always felt he should have been better than he was.

There hasn't been this many exciting young Skippy flingers since the mid-eighties where from 1985-1988, Merv Hughes, Craig McDermott, Tony Dodemaide, Chris Matthews (!), Bruce Reid and Dave Gilbert were all young and clamoured for Test selection.

Both the West Indies and Australia have eloquently proved that when fast bowling talent makes way for people who bowl fast (*cough* Mitchell Johnson *cough*), teams quickly begin to lose matches. Most importantly, Pace talent means time not batting is spent attacking a position, rather than defending one. A quality pace platoon also excites onlookers and relieves pressure on their run-scorers. On a broader scale, it also infinitely strengthens batting on a national scale and means Moises Henriques will never play for Australia again.

England's transformation from also-ran to world champion came on the back of talented fast bowlers the ilk of Flintoff, Simon Jones, Bresnan, Finn, Tremlett and Anderson: each is/was able to combine discipline and an ability to make the ball "talk" with swing, seam or bounce. With a combination of some of the talent above, Aussie fans hope the same will happen in the Antipodes.

Australian punters (no, not that one) are excited about nascent fast bowling talent because since that fateful Sydney Test of 2007, the country's bowlers have lacked a leader. The plan was for Stuart Clark to hand over to "Notch" Johnson and Ben Hilfenhaus, which worked about as effectively as a a K-Tel nostril hair trimmer. The hierarchy hopes for a leader to whom they can turn when in trouble: a guy who gets the ball in the right spots to either restrict runs or take wickets.

Any of the current tyros may, in time, be that guy. But to expect Cummins - or anyone else, for that matter - to be a sort of proto-Mohammed Amir is unreasonable, unrealistic and more likely to produce a Lee than a McGrath.

The central board must keep two simple, everyday truths in mind: You almost never find what you're looking for until you stop searching and anointing young, unproven leaders rarely works. This is why Cummins, Copeland, Hazelwood or Pattinson shouldn't be anointed as the next leader of Australia's bowling attack until they have earned that position.

All of our past leaders have had to learn from experience: McDermott, while in his ostensible prime surrendered his Test berth to Dodemaide and Chris Matthews. McGrath emerged only after McDermott's injury - when absolutely noone saw it coming, least of all the West Indies lower order. The term "King-maker" is the epitome of a self-aggrandization, used only by the extraordinary vain and is based upon the flawed principal of anointing unproven "chosen ones" at an early age. Leaders emerge as circumstances allow.

More appropriately, leaders emerge when they conquer those circumstances. McDermott had to conquer immaturity and the stigma of being a ginger kid. Lillee overcame a crippling back injury - twice. Shane Warne fought an unlikely combination of playboy lifestyle and massive girth. McGrath had to rid himself of that horrible haircut.

It's possible, perhaps even likely, that Cummins, Hazelwood, Pattinson and Copeland will all be top-draw seamers. Especially, calling wunderkind Cummins a saviour and future leader is placing remarkable expectations on young, still-developing shoulders. Let him learn. Let him grow into his frame, his profession and international cricket.

This post was originally published on The Sight Screen.

McGinnity and Petterd ask how far is too far

After young Eagle Patrick McGinnity's suspension and fine for allegedly threatening to "rape" Ricky Petterd's mother, it's perhaps time to examine how much we value winning and the extent to which we're prepared to go for victory.

To threaten sexual relations - especially rape - to someone's relatives is off limits and the AFL has made a statement by penalising the player alleged to have made the offending remark. That McGinnity's manager David Sierakowski effectively accused Petterd of having a "thin skin" is akin to a guilty plea. It also reflects poorly on Sierakowski as it legitimises McGinnity's choice of words. Agent or no, to attack the Melbourne player for not obeying the "code of silence" is undignified and of Sierakowski we can say, to paraphrase his own words "if he had his time over again, I think he'd do it differently."

The AFL has led the sporting world in racial vilification laws and now respect for women. Unfortunately it will take incidents where players are rightly made an example of to raise public awareness about those lines not to be crossed. 

courtesy: foxsports.com.au

In Australian sport, we have a proud history of letting what happens on the field stay on the field. The same phrase could be used to hang Ricky Petterd, saying these things happen in the name of healthy competition. But surely competition which some people believe so important that they threaten to rape an opposing player's Mum cannot be healthy? By saying such things as McGinnity has been suspended for - and Adam Selwood was accused of in 2007 - competition has ceased to be healthy and become pathological.

(Even though Selwood was proven not guilty, is it coincidence that both these incidents have come from the West Coast Eagles? He certainly said something to which Des Headland could take offence. Am I theorising too much on this? Perhaps.)

As the late Terry Jenner described "Cricket in the '70s", when he began playing sledging was something as simple as an finely-placed comment about a player's technique. Even defenders of the art suggest sport has always been full of sledging, they do so in ways highlighting the differences between eras: while W.G. Grace was renowned for gamesmanship and sledging, his most famous such utterance "They're here to watch me bat, not you bowl" still refers to on-field, rather than off-field habits. Over time, cricket sledging degenerated into the celebrated insults such as possibly-apocryphal-but-probably-not "What does Brian Lara's c**k taste like?" and it's inflammatory response "Ask your wife".

Feel free to blame Patrick McGinnity. But also look for reasons behind why he chose to use such a slur: it was to gain a competitive advantage. Rather than being a player willing to do "whatever it takes" to win, this player was prepared to - accidentally or deliberately - compromise his integrity to gain a small victory over an opponent.

So what leads such a player to this position?

Since being a second-rate sporting nation during the 1970s - a funk which came to a head with a haul of one bronze medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics - Australia has funded successful sportsmen through social, business and government means. This has produced a number of world-class athletes and some dominant sporting teams. Moreover, it's created the expectation for results. It's a simple matter of cause and effect: you stop performing, you don't get funded/sponsored.

That expectation of results is reflected in the basest terms in professional leagues across the country. Professionalism and athleticism are perhaps the most sought-after qualities in all the major football codes. It takes incredible discipline from a young age to "make it" in any sport and successful athletes generally put more pressure on themselves than any other outside force. They do so to get the best out of themselves and to help a team win.

This is not to say that Patrick McGinnity personally felt pressure to perform or to win (though it may be the case). It simply reflects that as the dollars and time invested in sport increase, those doing the spending expect some Return On Investment. The fans and coach expect their players to do their absolute best to win - and often, if that includes "mentally disintegrating" their opponents, that's OK. McGinnity undoubtedly understands that fans and a multitude of support staff have given of themselves to a cause he values (himself or his team), so wants to do his bit to repay that favour. He just miscalculated how to effect this repayment.

courtesy: in.com

It can, however, be a slippery road. As Stephanie Rice discovered last year, sport is a business: certain brands refuse to be associated with other corporate or social identities seen as damaged goods, no matter how much short term gain there may be. In time, a "just win, baby" philosophy can backfire. Perhaps the greatest Australian example of this occurred when the TAC pulled sponsorship from AFL clubs Richmond and Collingwood as a result of several traffic offences levied against players.

The league could take a lesson from the NBA, who suffered a partly self-inflicted black eye as a result of a late-80s "Bad Boys" publicity campaign built around then-champs the Detroit Pistons and their unsociable basketball. The AFL wants none of this. To ensure their brand integrity, prevent any recourse and hopefully, in the name of good common sense, they have censured Patrick McGinnity.

Competition has created great leagues for all of Australia's football codes. But as a sporting community, let's ban hackneyed journalistic phrases like "win at all costs" until we work out if that's actually what we want. Winning is great, but it isn't everything.

My Favourite Cricketer: Glenn McGrath by Gary Naylor

In our continuing series "My Favourite Cricketer", SPIN Cricket and 99.94's Gary Naylor examines Glenn McGrath.

The more one looks at cricket, the less one sees. This strange, cooperative competition (played on a big field, between stumps set 22 yards apart; by eleven men on each team, but just two at a time; using ancient materials like wood and leather, and 21^st century technology like high-speed cameras and computer tracking) reveals a little, only to show you how much more it keeps hidden. And cricket is at its most coyly contrary whenever superlatives hove into view – the best, the fastest, the most graceful, the, in this case, favourite are all questions likely to generate more heat than light. Even if I limit myself to players I have seen (and I am doing so) I could make a case for the South African England man who batted for a few glorious years like a West Indian – KP; the sublime VVS Laxman, my admiration for whom I wrote of here; the terrible beauty of Michael Holding, especially when hunting in that fearsome pack, the subject of my favourite sporting photograph; the wholehearted local hero Ian “Bully” Austin, the last of the lads who looked like us, talked like us but happened to be international quality cricketers (okay, only just in Bully's case).

But I'm picking none of them, as I'm looking elsewhere in the landscape of our wonderful game to a place where resides a tribe of players from which every successful team needs one or two. I'm looking to a man who stood out even amongst a team of such men (some would say a nation) largely drawn from that tribe. To a man who played for Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting and was head and shoulders over even them in the wiles of the tribe – ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Bastards' Bastard, Mr Glenn McGrath.

courtesy: telegraph.co.uk

Oh, but he was good though wasn't he?

Let's start with the numbers. There he is atop the list of Test wicket takers among the faster men with 563, clear by 44 of his nearest challenger, the indefatigable Courtney Walsh. Pidge ran in for over 13 years, slowing a little in later on, but tight to the stumps at delivery, always thinking, never letting the bastardness drop for a second. He paid just 21.64 runs for those wickets, bettered only amongst those with more than 300 wickets by the bowler who most resembled him in method, Curtly Ambrose, the bowler who resembled him most in thinking about cricket, Malcolm Marshall and the bowler who most resembled him in his unashamed willingness to express bastardness, Fred Trueman. He sent back 377 top six batsmen, 17 more than Anil Kumble one step above him on the all-time list and only three fewer than SK Warne. The key to winning Test matches is the taking of 20 wickets and the hardest to take are those at the top of the order – Glenn McGrath did the hardest job in the game better than anyone else.

bbc.co.uk

And never better or more bastardly than at Lord's in 2005. Having been whipped out for 190 on the opening day of The Ashes by England's adrenaline-fueled pace attack, Ricky Ponting turned to two metres of bastard at the Pavilion End and told him to get on with it. What he got was the McGrath method at its deceptively simple best – bowl a length that gives them nothing to hit and a line that means they have to play every ball, push them back in the crease, then pitch one up that does enough to move half a bat's width and the scoreboard was suddenly showing 21-5. Years and years of practice and experience went into that spell and it was driven by a competitive spirit that was always dialled up to ten and sometimes, as Ronnie Sarwan and a few others found out, could go to eleven.

That competitive spirit did not just manifest itself in a thirst for top order wickets that no opening bowler has matched, but in a willingness to challenge himself to (wait for it) step outside his comfort zone. He was never a batsman, but he knew he had to contribute, so he turned himself into a reliable late order blocker who once made a fifty (vs New Zealand) of which he was inordinately, and, for those of us who batted 11 because there was no 12, touchingly proud. He was never a fielder either, but took one of the best catches I'll ever see, this time diving out of his comfort zone.

Glenn McGrath was on the winning side in 84 of his 124 Tests and lost only one Ashes series (and the moment that turned that series England's way was the moment his ankle turned on a runaway cricket ball, an injury that kept McGrath out of the two Tests England won). Home or 

away, it hardly mattered to him – he paid less than 30 per wicket everywhere, except in his five Tests in Pakistan, where he still only went at 31. He was every bit as much of a bastard in ODI cricket as he was in Test cricket, never letting up. He played in four World Cup finals, winning three and going for less than four an over in the one he lost. Did the grind of English county cricket wear him down? Not a bit of it – his 2000 season playing for Worcestershire brought him 80 first class wickets at less than 14 and 34 one day wickets at less than 10. Truly, the bastardness was never turned off.

Except when he crossed the boundary rope on the way off the field. We then saw the man behind the bastard, the country kid who lived in a caravan to get a start in pro cricket, the loving husband nursing a terminally ill wife, the doting father, the eloquent speaker, the magnaminous victor, the gallant loser. And now the charity campaigner.

Glenn McGrath did two of the hardest things in cricket – knock the top off Test match batting line-ups and play like a total bastard on the field while being a decent bloke (more than that, really) off the field. For this double whammy, Glenn McGrath is my favourite cricketer.

Gary Naylor, whom you can tweet at @garynaylor999 and find writing for 99.94, Spin Cricket and Cricket on Five and talking at Testmatchsofa.com.

A contest within a contest

By Ben Roberts

Recently, during the Melbourne winter, I have taken to following the Major League Baseball from the USA. The sport has three big plus sides for my following it. The first two are that the sheer volume of games played mean that you are guaranteed to be able to follow the scores in a game every day, and the severe time difference between the USA and Melbourne make it perfect for having the tick over in the background while I am going about my day's work.

The third reason however is the simplicity in which one can follow the game without needing to invest in actually watching the games or listening to the calls. So heavy is the statistical analysis of every facet of baseball that one can obtain a clear picture of the state of the game from looking at what is provided on any number of websites that provide live scores.

A particular statistic, or group of statistics, from baseball grabbed my attention and led me to wonder about the possibility and worthiness of applying a similar analysis to cricket. Every time a batter steps up in baseball the follower is provided with a host of statistics on how well they have fared previously when facing the particular pitcher from the opposition. Now we often as followers of cricket feel that certain bowlers have the 'wood' over a batsman, or even vice versa, but I wondered whether we could actually find solid statistics that identified who was in fact the bowler who caused any particular batsman the most trouble.

Courtesy: niharsworld.com

Taking the undoubted greatest modern era batsman Sachin Tendulkar as my target I set about trying to identify what bowler he has his best and worst records against. Running the statistics I found that of all bowlers Muttiah Muralidaran has captured the wicket of Tendulkar on the most occasions. However of course Murali has faced Tendulkar the most times of any bowler. As well Murali was by far the best bowler for the Sri Lankan team, no risk therefore that others would usurp him for the wicket. The more I examined the list the more I realised how many more abnormalities exist with looking at a direct statistical analysis between a batsman and bowler, in particular the following led me to widen my analysis.

In baseball the vast majority of innings that a batter has he will only face one pitcher at a time, therefore despite there being other influences (state of the game for example) it truly is a one on one contest between bat and ball. Increasingly bowlers have stopped being seen as individual performers and started identifying themselves as partners or teams. Such identification now simply names a phenomenon that has occurred in cricket for many years. That against the better bowlers a batsman may survive, but the release of pressure in facing a bowler at the end or even the pressure to score when not facing as higher quality bowler can realise a wicket.

Therefore rather than view a head to head contest I sought to understand whether there was something about the influence a bowler could have over the performance of a batsman. In this analysis it is potentially open that a bowler may not in fact capture the wicket of the batsman at all. Again using Tendulkar as the subject the following statistics show the influence the three best bowlers of his era had on his statistics; the three bowlers being Murali, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath:

	Matches	Batting Average	Strike Rate
Career	177	56.94	54.08
McGrath	9	36.77	55.02
Difference		-20.17	0.94
Warne	12	60.45	64.65
Difference		3.51	10.57
Muralidaran	19	48.64	51.28
Difference		-8.3	-2.8

The above statistics come from querying what Tendulkar's record was against a team containing each of the above bowlers. Immediately it becomes clear that McGrath's presence caused Tendulkar the most difficulty as his average drops 20 runs from his overall career while his strike rate only rises slightly. Despite being the bowler to have taken the little master's wicket the most, Murali hasn't affected Tendulkar's statistics dramatically. Both average and strike rate fall slightly from career, however the resulting figures are still strong. Finally Warne, and it may surprise to see that his presence in the opposition has only strengthened the resulting statistics.

Being a bit cheeky with the statistics I decided to remove the first test match played between Warne and Tendulkar. History shows this test, Warne's first ever, as being the scene of Ravi Shastri and the very youthful Tendulkar dominating Australia's bowlers and Warne being blasted for figures of 1/150. Warne was nowhere near the dominant bowler he was to come, so what was his affect post this match? Tendulkar's average drops to near his career mark, but his strike rate remains well in excess of his career rate.

What is the learning? Well firstly statistics can mask the true value of a player. For a bowler, he may not be taking many wickets yet his influence can extend beyond this standard statistic of choice. Secondly cricket remains very much a team game. McGrath dismissed Tendulkar 6 times in 9 tests. This is less than once per test. In all tests against McGrath he batted twice therefore only a third of the time was dismissed by him. Still his output with the bat was so severely reduced when playing against the Australian quick. This is a moral lesson too that must be learned in all walks of life, it is not about individual's achieving but being part of a greater whole. McGrath's career, although stellar in its own right, was one of a player always focussed on team success. Challenges are always better faced as a team.