Re: SUPER ENGLAND ASHES TOUR : Sat Dec 18, 2010 5:23 pm
Prince of Denmark wrote:
I guess you're right. It's easy to visualise Wasim Akram or John Lever bowling like that, it was the notion of Johnson bowling with accuracy and consistency that made me sceptical.
Johnson does tend to be round armed and slingy but it does mean he releases the ball from close to the stumps, so when he pitches up the ball is likely to be going wicket to wicket. Terry Alderman was the same after his shoulder injury which lowered his arm, he used to release the ball from about level with middle and off, so the ball wasn't angling in like it usually does.
Prince of Denmark wrote:
Your mention of Mark Ilott prompted me to look him up on cricinfo.com. He made his debut at Trent Bridge against Australia in 1993, a match in which Martin McCague, Mark Lathwell and Graham Thorpe also made their debuts. (The match finished as a draw, as we discovered one new talent while the other three pretty much sank without trace.) The thought of four players making their debut in the same Test for England seems insane these days, but the Aussie selection policy for the current series hasn't been a million miles away from that of England in the early nineties.
Out of those three who sank, Ilott was the one who I thought had some potential. Him and Peter Martin swung the ball well in South Africa in 1995/96 but when the English summer came around Alan Mullally got called up and he was the left armer of choice for the next few years. I never saw much in Mullally, he didn't swing it, he used to waste the new ball by bowling outside off stump so the batsman just left it alone till the shine had come off it, he'd finish his opening spell with 0-15 in 7 overs and everybody said yeah Mullally keeps it tight!
McCague was crap, not fast enough to bowl the short balls he did and was cannon fodder to good batsmen. Lathwell was a strange case, he could play some great shots. I remember seeing him open for Somerset once, he came in, smashed four boundaries in the first couple of overs and then played a crap upper cut and got caught in the gully for 16 or so. He walked off happy as larry, normally when openers are out early they come off cursing and ranting. Lathwell just shrugged his shoulders and sauntered back with a smile on his face then appeared at the pavilion balcony eating his breakfast and reading the paper a few minutes later, he was like a club cricketer who just likes to play his shots and doesn't really give that much of a toss. He retired from cricket pretty early, I don't think he could be bothered with the modern era of running miles, spending hours in the gym and having dieticians monitor what you eat....
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