Williamson will be one of New Zealand's greats

Sometimes players have something indefinable about them. You could call it an aura, but that's too grand a term for a thoroughly unglamorous batsman, but one who could end his career amongst his country's greats.

Some players get selected because of their stats, because they've got mountains of runs in domestic cricket; some because of their obvious talent, despite no great returns; and some because of a hunch. Graeme Hick was one of the former, making 50 First-class centuries before his Test début. Sachin Tendulkar made his Test début at 16, after precious few First-class games, because he had such obvious talent. Perhaps the most most well known examples of the hunch approach were Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan, both of whom were talented without ever looking exceptional, but were plucked out of county cricket into the England team, with tremendous success.

Kane Williamson is a mix of all three approaches. He's been around the New Zealand team for a couple of years now, so it's easy to forget that he's only 22. He made his Test debut at the age of 20, picked partly because of 1428 runs at 46.06 in his First-class career, and partly based on his talent and a hunch that he had the temperament for Test cricket.

He certainly started well, with 131 on début  in India, and 69 in his second Test. After that start, he averaged  68 from three innings, and since then he has 959 runs at 29.06 from 18 Tests. Yet, despite his début he hasn't missed a Test. That's probably because, in a rare piece of good thinking in New Zealand cricket, they've backed their hunch, recognised that they're dealing with a young player who will have ups and downs.

He's had a couple of significant ups recently. His century in Columbo was a crucial part of a rare New Zealand away Test win, and today he played an early contender for best ODI innings of the year, with a commanding and controlled 145* (136). Despite generally being thought of as mainly a Test player, his knock today took his average to 37.38 in ODIs, significantly higher than his Test average.

It's his composure and ability to hit the gaps that made Williamson's innings so good. He came in early after the loss of a wicket and accelerated through his innings, always knowing what sort of total to aim for, and finished with a six. In his knock, he scored 15 fours, all around the park, showing the intellgence to get low and pull du Plessis' skiddy leg breaks for a couple of fours, and whenever the bowlers erred too full he drove with timing and placement.

The Williamson hunch may take a while longer to pay off consistently in all formats, but when it does he's got a chance of taking almost all the New Zealand batting records. At 22, he may have fifteen more years at the top, and the chance to make himself one of New Zealand's all time greats. Stephen Felming's 7172 runs and Martin Crowe's 17 Test hundreds may be safe for now, but one man has a great shot of taking them. Just wait.

Five quick ways for New Zealand to improve

New Zealand are having a dismal time of it at the moment. All out for 45, and conceding a first innings lead of 302 is a Bangladesh-esque performance, and New Zealand are sinking that way. However, all is not lost, I've got five quick fixes to make them at least half competitive in Test cricket. Surely, if I can think of these, they must be able to?

Get rid of Mike Hesson

I don't know all of the ins and outs of the Taylor/Hesson spat, but it's clear that Hesson's position is untenable. When a similar thing happened in England with Peter Moores and Kevin Pietersen, both were stripped of their jobs. Taylor's lost his (unfairly) so Hesson should be gone.

Get Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder back into the team

A team with two of its best batsmen missing is never going to compete against the world number one away from home. Taylor's return should be eased by the sacking of Hesson, and a risk may need to be taken on Ryder, because of his talent, a sort of talent that doesn't come around that often for New Zealand.

Sort the batting order (and stick with it)

This isn't an original thought, I'm sticking entirely with the order that The Heavy Roller came up with: Guptill, McCullum, Williamson, Taylor, Ryder, Brownlie, Watling. If you look at that line-up, it may not be the best in the world, but there's a lot of talent, and if you give them all a run, surely they've got to make some runs eventually (wishful thinking I know).

Drop Chris Martin

I like the 'Phantom', he makes me look like a good batsman and is one of the least threatening looking bowlers to have a decent Test career. However, in the first Test against South Africa he's bowled military medium, his leap to the crease belying a speed of under 130kph most of the time. New Zealand have a decent number of young seamers in Southee, Boult, Bracewell, Milne, Wagner and, McClenaghan; at 38 Martin has out-served his purpose. Just let me see him bat once again, that's all I ask.

Pick a spinner (not Jeetan Patel) and stick with him

It's got to the point where a real replacement for Daniel Vettori is needed, and one who is young enough to spend many years in the team. Todd Astle seems like the best fit for that role, a leggie who could bat at seven or eight, and has talent with the ball, as well as age on his side, being six years younger than both Patel and Bruce Martin. Those are the only three real options, with Astle's batting and age giving him the edge.

Do all that and they'll start to look competitive at home, and not complete pushovers away. Not that I expect them to do anything other than bumble along like nothing's wrong.

Australia want the one they can't have

Nearly six years after Shane Warne retired from Test cricket, Australia are still desperately searching for his replacement. Just look at Fawad Ahmed, a Pakistani asylum seeker to Australia who, soon after gaining asylum had a BBL contract with the Melbourne Renegades. Why? Because he's a leg-spinner.

Never mind the fact that he's 33, and last played First-class cricket in 2009. Never mind the fact that he's never played a t20 match, and his First-class record is unremarkable. He's a leg-spinner, so three different BBL teams wanted him. Still, he does have a excellent record in grade cricket, with 167 wickets at 12.22, so who knows, he might do well.

Adelaide Strikers went back nearly ten years to find 39 year old slow left armer Brad Young, who played a couple of ODIs for Australia in the late 90s. He's also been doing well in grade cricket with 19 wickets at 14.11, but is that enough for someone who averages 44.71 in First-class cricket, and has never played a professional t20 match?

Add the likes of Warne continuing in t20 ad nauseum, and a comeback to the national team for Brad Hogg, and Australia has a serious lack of faith some of its spinners. This is also shown in the Sheffield Shield wicket charts. The highest placed spinner on the charts is Steve O'Keefe with 9 wickets at 34.55. He's been consistently one of the best performing spinners in the Shield for the last couple of years, yet the likes of Xavier Doherty and Michael Beer, with far inferior records have made it to the Test team ahead of him.

Australia's spin policy is flawed, both in domestic and international terms. Nathan Lyon may be doing well so far, but I'm liable to put his selection down to dumb luck. After Warne retired, Australia tried nine different spinners before settling on Lyon. To put that number in perspective, there are six state teams, and each of them tends to field one spinner at a time.

Lyon is doing okay at the moment, with a Test average hovering around 30, and his skills developing well. Yet there still seems to be pressure on him, both Warne and MacGill criticising him, with the former suggesting himself as a replacement. That can't do too much for the self-confidence.

The solution to all this is simple. Let Lyon play, stop nitpicking with him and if you want good enough spinners, prepare pitches that encourage them to attack. It can't be a coincidence that few spinners average under 30 in the Sheffield Shield, yet most have an economy rate under three. They're bowling defensively. You're not going to breed attacking Test spinners by making them have to bowl defensively in domestic cricket.

Lyon has already shown he's got a good head on his shoulders, and he'll know he has the support of his captain. He bowled well against South Africa, and while he isn't the finished product, the difference between him and Warne at the same stage of his career is six wickets and an average of 30.64 to 28.06. He's a good spinner, he's not Warne but he could become Graeme Swann. Let's face it, that's better than Nathan Hauritz, Beau Casson, Cameron White, Michael Beer, Xavier Doherty, Jason Kreizja, Steve Smith, Bryce McGain, or sodding Marcus North.

Piyush Chawla and the leg-rollers of doom

Spinners who don't rip the ball annoy me. Leg-spinners who fail to try to rip the ball anger me more than almost anything else in cricket. Be a fucking off-spinner if you don't want to spin the ball. For fucks sake Chawla, 43 year old arthritic Warne playing in the tinpot IPL clone still turns the ball more than you. You're 23, spin the damn ball.

Here follows a list of leg-rollers. I hate them all with a passion, please comment if I've forgotten someone, I'm sure I have.

Kaushal Lokuarachchi
Previously subject to a scout report on this very blog, I wrote that the ball ambles out of his hand, and even though he got decent figures for a T20 when I watched him (2-30) he bowls rolled, flat, fast filth. Also on his Cricinfo profile he says that he prefers to play one day cricket to Test cricket. It shows - 5 wickets at 59 in 4 Tests.

Faf du Plessis
The fourth rule of leg-spin (after rip it hard, rip it harder, rip it until your fingers are sore) is, all part time bowlers must bowl at least two boundary balls an over, through trying to rip it too hard. David Warner has this down to a fine art – until he started bowling medium pace in an ODI – but Faf is too South African to ever understand this, so he bowls reasonable leg-rollers that take a few wickets, give away a few runs but annoy me.

Piyush Chawla
Where do I start? Apparently he has a decent googly, not that it really matters since it and all his leg breaks go straight on. He's a big fan of Warne's slider, but has misunderstood it's purpose and is now using it as his stock ball. His action may look energetic, but not much of that transfers to the ball, which rolls out like a sponge, gently rotating through the air. He did get the wicket of Ian Bell today, but then, even I could do that.

Samuel Bardree
Yes, he can keep the runs down in T20 cricket, but has he got any penetration at all? Of course not, he's just another roller who varies his rolling enough to get away with it in T20, but hasn't played a First-class match since 2009. He's an international bowler, who's 31, and hasn't played a First-class match in three years, and only 14 overall. If that isn't an indictment of his style of bowling, I don't know what is.

Tarun Nethula
Okay, so I don't really know who he is, but he's a Kiwi leggie, who's only played ODIs for his country. He's probably shit, and probably bowls ODI run containing filth. 

So, most of the leggies these days are shit, and even the only international one I like got spanked for the worst ever match figures, and bowls no balls almost as much as Morne Morkel. Plus he's technically a Saffer now. I'm going for a long lie down, then an hour long Warne YouTube video session.

Who writes Ponting's scripts?

The title says it all. When everything else is said and done, why do I watch cricket? For the narrative. In that narrative there are heroes and villains, and as an Englishman, one regular villain was that beady eyed squinting little man who pulled like no other and would never let himself be beaten.

Yet, in recent years, the runs turned from a flood into the occasional spurt, and Ricky Ponting began to look like a rather sorry figure. When he was injured for the final Ashes Test nearly two years ago, Michael Clarke took over the captaincy and Usman Khawaja seemed to be the man who would lock Pontings spot down, after the most talked about 37 in Test history.

Yet Ponting bounced back, and struggled through for another two years, with one huge series against India and several more middling ones. Then his story comes to an end, playing one last Test, against South Africa, for the number one status.

Graham Gooch once said of Ian Botham: "Who writes your scripts?" Well, Ricky's scripts were never like Botham's. He's scored the second most Test runs of anyone, has the most Test wins, yet at crucial times his script has wavered. He took over the best team in the world, and lost three Ashes series with it, and left it a long way off the top.

Maybe his storyline will have one "Who writes your scripts" moment. As an Englishman I have no love for Ponting, but I am a sucker for a storyline, and a 4th innings match-winning hundred to go back to number one, that would be a fitting way for a great player to go out.

A suggestion for Tahir, and a look back at the googly bowlers

Back in the early 20th century, Bernard Bosanquet invented the googly, to, in his own words: “ridicule, abuse, contempt, incredulity .” Since then, it's become an almost vital part of leg-spin bowling. I say almost vital, because perhaps the greatest leg-spinner of all time – Shane Warne – rarely bowled one after his shoulder surgery, and still did pretty well. Also, the inverse sometimes applies, the googly isn't a leggie's be all and end all.

Imran Tahir has a pretty good googly. He turns it more than his leg-break, and it's not easy to pick, yet he's just been absolutely smashed by Australia (match figures: 37-1-260-0). He's not s bad leg-spinner, and he has a big weapon in that googly. So maybe he needs to start thinking in the opposite way.

Returning to the early 20th century, Bosanquet started the googly, and taught it to Reggie Schwartz, who emigrated to South Africa. Schwartz became one of a number of googly bowlers in South Africa, which seems extraordinary in today's spin starved country. During the 1905/06 home series against England, they played four googly bowlers in a match several times, in Schwarz, Aubrey Faulkner, Ernie Vogler and Gordon White.

Those googly bowlers helped instigate the first 'golden age' of South African cricket, beating England 4-1 at home, and... Maybe Tahir can take a lessson from them now. All the four were heavy users of the googly, and Schwartz even used it as his stock ball. Your best ball should be your stock ball, no? So why shouldn't Tahir reverse his thinking and use his googly as his stock ball and his leg-break as the change up? He couldn't do much worse could he?

Cook, Bell and how long it takes perceptions to change

Before the tour to the UAE earlier in the year, who was England's best batsman against spin? A lot of people would have said Ian Bell. Yet, where did the perception that Bell was a good player against spin come from? In the same vein where did the perception Cook was a bad one come from?

In Cook's first Test, in India nearly seven years ago, Bell made 9 and 1, getting out pushing forward at Harbhajan Singh in the first innings. Cook made 60 and an unbeaten 104, a century on Test debut. Whilst Cook made few more runs in the series, only playing the first two Tests, missing the third with a stomach bug, Bell only made one fifty in six innings on the tour, averaging 21.83.

That remains his best tour of India and his overall average there after the first Test of this series is 18.36 with one fifty and no hundreds. Given his poor record coming into this series in India, as well as Sri Lanka and the UAE His summer wasn't great either, scoring five fifties in the six Tests, but not making a single one into a hundred, and the bulk of his runs coming against the West Indies. After he goes back home for the birth of his child, there must be a huge question mark over his place in the team when he comes back.

But, back to the relative merits of Cook and Bell against spin, I think Lawrence Booth in the Mail put it best:

“When the pre-series form was doing the rounds – Sunil Gavaskar calls it 'hype', as if we are wrong to feel excited about Test cricket – Cook rarely featured in lists detailing England’s best players of spin. 

While Kevin Pietersen was bestowed with the capacity to take an attack apart, as he did in Colombo, Ian Bell was light on his feet (even if he couldn’t pick the doosra), and Jonathan Trott had shown the way ahead with his century in Galle. Samit Patel had muscled his way into the frame as well.”

Everyone but Cook was given a fair chance against the spinners, and they all failed. Pietersen can be a match winner against spinners, but just as often he gets out to stupid shots against them, Trott seems to prop forward and hope for the best, and Patel's reputation is built on playing Mendis (the Sri Lankan Chris Harris) well in a T20 that was already lost. As for Bell, where did his reputation ever come from?

In his first taste of high quality spin, in the 2005 Ashes, he fell victim to Warne three times in ten innings, and looked very uncomfortable against him. Still, this was the best spinner in the world, early in his career. After that he averaged over fifty in Pakistan, but fell to spin four times in six innings, including criminally Shohaib Malik twice.

So far, so average. Then came his first tour of India and a home series where he thrashed Pakistan for 375 runs in four Tests. Still there was no career defining innings against spin. While his tour of Sri Lanka in 2007 got him 261 runs at 43.50, he succumbed to Murali five times in six innings, the other dismissal a run out.

That was his last tour of the subcontinent - bar one series where he thrashed Bangladesh - until the UAE earlier in the year, and if you look at his whole career in the subcontinent bar Bangladesh, he has an average of 28.43 and only one hundred in 17 matches. So where did his reputation as a good player of spin come from, two decent tours, Pakistan in 05/06 and Sri Lanka in 07, plus butchering poor spinners on English pitches.

That's what he is, a good player of poor and average spin on flat pitches. Of course when he does that he looks inordinately good, unlike Cook who never looks aesthetically pleasing. Cook however has the will to tough it out, and has worked very hard with Graham Gooch to turn what might have been a weakness at one point into a strength.

Compare both their averages in Asia (including Bangladesh this time) and Cook has five centuries and an average of 53.96 and Bell has two and an average of 34.44. Take Bangladesh out of the equation and Cook's average drops to 46.45, whilst Bell's goes down to 28.43. The evidence is there, and the perceptions will change soon too.