Short pitch: Sheffield Shield Efficiency

(c) Balanced Sports, click to enlarge

The chart above maps the combined batting/bowling prowess of each of last year's Sheffield Shield teams.  It forms a very rough guide to each state's efficiency by mapping the cumulative batting and bowling averages of each state's specialists against each other.  Please note the curious wording (batsmen/bowlers) - only recognised  batsmen and allrounders were used to calculate each state's cumulative batting average, while the same is true of bowling averages.  This means that the universal averages (used as axes to divide the graph into quadrants) are somewhat different.

With bowling average forming the X axis and a low number desired and a high Y value indicating a more efficient batting lineup, we can surmise that the top left-hand quadrant denotes the most efficient teams.  The opposite is therefore true of the inferior right quadrant.

Finally, the chart indicates that no matter how good a batting attack may be, it's much more beneficial to have butt-kicking bowlers - the most efficient bowlers came from Queensland, who won the Shield.  Tasmania had the next most efficient bowling outfit, who ended the season as runners-up.  Victoria managed third place.

My Favourite Cricketer: Stuart MacGill, by Kristian Gough of The Wrong 'Un

Snoop Doggy Nott my favourite...

As both a legspin fetishist and amateur practitioner, I would more likely pick Snoop Doggy Dogg as my favourite cricketer than a batsman or seamer and to me MacGill represents the leggie's leggie and my personal favorite.  

Warne was too freakishly accurate to be considered a 'real' leg spinner, real ones dish up at least one four-ball every few overs.  And he didn't even have a googly to speak of, relying instead on straight balls to surprise Ian Bell. Anil Kumble …don't get me started on him, he barely even spun it. 

No, MacGill is the leggie for me because he had all the traits of the club leg spinner - huge booze collection, poor fielder, genuine number 11 and ability to bowl one long hop every eight balls. He was a club pie-chucker given super powers after drinking a radioactive vintage bottle of Barossa Valley Shiraz. I swear there is a video of him on YouTube spinning a ball from square leg to point while glowing luminous green. 

He bowled the old fashioned leg spin style I love: tossing the ball up, moving the batsman across the crease toward the on side opening him up - then bang!  A googly, or if he thought it was expected, a big side-spun legbreak which often got slapped to cover point. Effective or not, this attacking style gives captains or selectors palpitations.

I like him as much for his unconformity and outsider status as his brilliant wrong ’un and massive-turning leg break. He never really fit the mold of an Aussie cricketer. A brooding, intense figure, he once fell out with the entire county of Devon while playing English minor counties cricket because they dared play for 'fun'. He was banned several times for discipline, read 24 novels on a tour of Pakistan barely speaking to team mates and famously has 3000 bottles wine in his cellar.  

It is of course impossible to even consider MacGill without the shadow of Warne, toasted cheese sandwich in hand, looming over him.  But try if you can. 

Close your eyes and imagine a world where Shane Keith Warne (MacGill's middle names are Charles Glyndwr) hadn't been born. A cricketing “It's a Wonderful Life” where Mike Gatting was remembered as a decent player of spin and Daryl Cullinan as the tenth best South African batsman to play Tests. In this fantasy world, Stuart MacGill takes 650 wickets and is remembered alongside Benauld, Grimmett and O'Reilly as one of Australia's greatest leggies.  

No really, he would have been. MacGill has a Test strike rate of 54, astonishing for a slow bowler and in fact the best in modern cricket. The myth that he was inaccurate and expensive are of course overstated - a Test economy rate of 3.2 is hardly cannon fodder.

Image courtesy: cricket.com.au

Even in his latest incarnation as a fortysomething Twenty20 gun-for-hire, he has reminded us of that skill. Even turning up rusty, in a batsman-friendly format bowling against teams containing slogger extraordinaires he has held his own, bamboozling the young ‘uns with his wrong ‘uns and going at 6 and half an over.

So all raise a glass of something complex to Stuart MacGill, an old fashioned leg spinner who refused to fit in.  While limited opportunities meant he never became what he could have been, he still notched up performances and a record that most of Aussie spinners can’t hope to match.

Here’s one of his finest.

 Kristian runs the excellent blog "The Wrong 'Un" and tweets at @iamthewrongun. We highly recommend you take a look at both.

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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.

My Favourite Cricketer: Wasim Akram by Blaise Murphet

In our series "My Favourite Cricketer", Balanced Sports and World Cricket Watch invite the best cricket writers and bloggers to contribute articles explaining what makes, for the, one player rise above the rest.  Today features Wasim Akram by World Cricket Watch's contributing editor, Blaise Murphet.

I think when you’re asked to consider your ‘favourite cricketer’ you don’t really think about statistics, you think of a players swagger, his style, and of amazing performances that you have witnessed either on television or first hand.

Bowling in England.  From: wasimakramlive.net

So, when thinking of the ultimate fast bowler, a natural checklist emerges in one’s mind. Does he have searing pace? Can he make the ball ‘talk’? Does he have long hair that flows in the wind? What about the maniacal smile that is the trademark of all the greats? Well, in my mind there is only one man who fits the bill and that is the greatest Pakistani player of all time, Wasim Akram.

In an international career that spanned almost twenty years, Akram tormented batsmen right across the globe. But, before I talk more about the unbelievable greatness of the man, let’s cast a quick eye over his outstanding career statistics.

Currently placed ninth on the all-time test wicket list, Wasim’s 414 test wickets obviously rank him right up there with the greats. These wickets, I might add, came at an average of 23, and I’d confidently suggest that his almost 3000 test runs at 22 would be far better than any others at the top of the bowling lists. If he’s test record isn’t enough, then just consider his ODI record. World Cup winner, 502 wickets at 23 and a powerful lower-order batsman, Wasim had it all. However, as I’ve argued before, averages and statistics only tell a very small part of a cricketer’s story, and in the case of Wasim Akram, this couldn’t be more true.

If you will allow me then to return to the checklist I mentioned earlier, we can further consider the greatness of Wasim.

There is no doubt that Wasim’s partners in crime, Imran Kahn and Waqar Younis, had more pace, however Wasim just appeared quick. Batsmen often talk of a bowler seeming quicker than they are, and Wasim always seemed to rush even the best. Wasim also had amazing long flowing hair, which some might argue has nothing to do with bowling ability. I beg to differ. Fast bowling is as much about style and presence as it is skill and precision. You just knew certain bowlers had batsmen beaten before a ball was bowled. For Curtly Ambrose his height and gold pendants positioned him as a higher being. Dennis Lillee had the flowing hair, bushy moustache and chest hair/revealing shirt combination which made him seem like a wild man. Glenn McGrath on the other hand, always appeared symmetrical, precise and well groomed, which conveyed his meticulous bowling prowess. 

Wasim had whippy jet black hair that suited his bowling action and a maniacal smile which gave him incredible presence. He always seemed very personable, but could switch in an instant, meaning that batsmen never knew when he would blow up. He also had an amazing approach to the crease which seemed slow, but exploded at the crease so Wasim could send down thunderbolts.

Courtesy: icc-cricket.yahoo.net

His pace and presence aside though, Wasim’s greatest asset was his ability to make the ball ‘talk’. I’ve actually heard it said that Wasim could make the one delivery swing both ways before arriving at the batsman and although I never saw this, I can say with certainty that I’ve never seen a bowler who could swing the ball so dramatically late. There really is something special about left-arm swing bowlers and Wasim was able to not only push the ball across right-handers, but swing it even further away and of course produce inswingers banned by the Geneva convention. This was perhaps most in evidence in Pakistan’s famous 1992 World Cup victory when Wasim was probably at his peak. Granted, his time as captain wasn’t greatly successful, but even later in his career, once he had shortened his run-up, Wasim still had the guile and intellect to dismiss even the best.

So, Wasim was a bowler of great skill, but there’s another important reason why I have chosen him to be my favourite cricketer. As a kid growing up I remember Pakistan as a very talented and successful cricketing nation. Players such as Wasim, Imran, Waqar, Aamir Sohail, Saqlain Mushtaq and Moin Kahn were standout players and - most importantly - played the game in the right spirit. Teams toured and played in fantastic cricketing cathedrals at Lahore and Karachi; whilst touring the sub-continent is always a challenging experience for teams, it was so because of the passion of the crowd and the talent of the home teams.

Things are very different now. No international teams have toured there since the Sri Lankan debacle and it seems highly unlikely we’ll see anything like Mark Taylor’s extraordinary 334* in 1998, or the thrilling series between England and Pakistan in 2000 where England knocked the winning runs in virtual darkness much to the chagrin of Pakistan's captain, Moin Kahn. The state of Pakstani cricket - and, more generally the country - is an absolute shame, as has been evidenced by continual player and administration corruption.

As such, it is with great pleasure that I look back to Wasim as a player who represents a great era for not only Pakistan’s cricket team, but also the country itself. Even if he was from a country that hadn’t had these terrible troubles I’d still judge him as one of the greatest ever; but to me he represents a shining light in a situation filled with darkness, a truly memorable figure. When I think of Pakistani cricket, I don’t want to think of corrupt managers, crooked players, and terrorist attacks. I want to think of searing pace, swinging Yorkers, fiery passion, and most of all the long swinging hair and dangerous smile of my favourite cricketer, Wasim Akram. 

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