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Sight Screen

Monday, October 03, 2005

Trouble in Oz land(-worma)

First story of the day..this article from Bob Simpson...on his coaching days with Aus team...and what ails them today. Some of it applies quite directly to the problems we face...even otherwise a very interesting read. One point that I specifically wanted to highlight...something which we also often discuss:

Dennis Lillee headed this programme for over a decade and his brief was to develop and prepare young promising new ball bowlers to replace injured or ageing Test and Sheffield Shield bowlers.
By the look of the bare cupboard around the states, Pace Australia has hardly been a raging success. In fact the very title "Pace Australia" may well have derailed the search for new ball bowlers before it began.
In those days pace was the only thing considered. With Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson and the West Indies, the ability to have new ball success any other way was virtually ignored. Dennis Lillee was a great fast bowler who had enormous success.
Unfortunately trying to copy a great cricketer's personal style is not always the best way. I think this is one of the reasons we don't have swing bowlers around today. I often wonder how many potential medium pacers have been destroyed/lost due to Australia's insane drive for pace alone.
Perhaps under Damien Fleming, a genuine swing bowler, we will see a more balanced new ball approach. While the Australian Cricket Academy has received credit for the development of young cricketers, how successful has it really been?

3 Comments:

  • keep_it_cool: I think its probably a mix of both reasons you give. Railways has been the champion because the other teams(like Mumbai, Karnataka etc) had their top players on national duty(or resting after it) and same happens now with the Irani game...but that does not mean that domestic system has gone for a toss...if you look at the top performers for railways..its been Karthik with the bat and ball(and he is almost a permanent member of our national test team..even if not in playing XI)...and also Parida and Harvinder Singh (who has already got his chances..and should get more soon)..if you look at the last season..the new test players all came from domestic circuit (Gambhir, Jadhav now)..

    By Blogger worma, at 09:36  

  • ..and continuing with same....in ODIs we do get new players whose domestic performances are not justifying their call-up fully...but thats only because we dont have a good domestic ODI setup...hence there is more scope for personal judgements (of selectors...coaches...captains etc..) while noting their performances in ad-hoc forums like U-19, A tours, Challenger, camps etc

    By Blogger worma, at 09:39  

  • v. interesting article, worma. An excerpt I thought was interesting:

    "One other area I would like Australian cricket to investigate is why youngsters of today are taking so long to come through the ranks. The teenager in State cricket is almost extinct and many youngsters are winning a position in the Australian Under-19 team before they have even played first grade for their clubs. My gut feeling is that emphasis being placed on youth cricket may well be backfiring and holding back the talented. At present, youngsters can win state and Australian selection at the under-15, 17 and 19 levels.

    The very talented invariably hold back in their age group rather than push the highly talented up to the group above their age or even into higher cricket. Remember I wrote in these pages some time ago that a series of interviews with Neil Harvey, Richie Benaud, Brian Booth, Peter Philpot, Alan Davidson and myself for the archives of the NSW Cricket Association revealed that all of us virtually played youth cricket at school. We all played men's cricket by the age of 12. And interestingly, we all played state cricket in our teens."

    Also interesting was the point you made on why NZ bowlers seem to break down a lot. Though I'm not sure if it was any less common in the past.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:20  

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