To be a spinner is to be hit

Hello and welcome back to my blog

Some of the best advice I ever heard was from Shane Warne who suggested that spinners and coaches not get down if the batsman hits you for a six or four. The batsman has but one wicket where as the bowler, particularly spinners, can bowl all day at them. Forget the runs scored and used the boundary to your advantage by tempting the batsman again. In other words a spinner must absorb the punishment they are likely to receive. Good spinners and great do this very well - after all Warne has the record for most times a bowler has conceded 100 runs in an innings!

After some discussion on my last entry I feel the need for such humility. I realise that the tone of my commentary on Daniel Vettori was misunderstood by some and perhaps I failed to convey what I really meant. In no way do I think little of Vettori as a spinner, I respect him as a bowling genius and he is one of my favourite bowlers to watch. However I don't think this prevents me from illuminating some short falls that prevent him from being considered a Great of the art.

Statistically speaking his average of 35 against Australia seems fine but he averages more than 50 in the last two series played against them. The 35 relies on the 14 wickets @ 14 he picked up in 2000 not the 14 @ 50+ he has taken since 2004. As for context it is true that particularly when playing South Africa, Vettori has been negated by no real support from his fellow bowlers but one might argue that the SA players' deficiencies against spin bowling would help Vettori - at least enough to prevent an average of almost 70.

To expand on that point, the lack of support from quality fast bowlers means that teams can sit on the quality spinner. My argument is that if the spinner is one of the greats this shouldn't be a problem; Warne proved in 2005 how successful a great spinner can be when a team attempts to sit on him while hitting the support (Lee, Gillespie etc).

Of course this brings up the difference between wrist spinners like Warne and finger spinners like Vettori - the greater turn that the former can extract. This is a valid point and does make comparison difficult. The point I make is that Vettori suffers from NO turn. Over his career his action has changed so that he gets virtually no turn any more as eluded to by Martin Crowe in the Napier Test. Patel and Singh got plenty of turn throughout the test series in New Zealand recently while Vettori extracted none.

Vettori's change of action has given him greater control at the sacrifice of turn and consequently his test effectiveness has decreased while his ODI results have greatly improved. Great spinners do not need to make such sacrifices. I don't blame Vettori for this, New Zealand required a good ODI spinner and he has stepped up. He is still the best spinner produced by NZ and I think that's not a bad effort.

I hope that helps clear up any misunderstanding in my last posting

Well that's it from here and I hope you join me again.
It's good bye for now