Comparing Stuart Clark with Glenn McGrath

The fact that Clark is good enough to merit such a comparison is, in itself, no small achievement. He is accurate, can move the ball both ways, is patient and seems able to bowl long spells. Indeed, these were some of the hallmarks of McGrath himself.

However, there was a lot more to McGrath. Srivaths pointed out that Clark’s natural length is a bit fuller than McGrath’s and consequently he is unable to generate the same bounce that McGrath did. Now, this is not a difference to be glossed over lightly! Accuracy and movement are great, but when allied with bounce, they become doubly potent. Just compare, in your mind’s eye, Curtly Ambrose as we know him and a Curtly Ambrose without the bounce that he generated. The case is made.

Apart from natural bounce, McGrath had an extremely effective bouncer that would invariably pitch on middle-and-off and hone in on the batsman’s head off the pitch. He was also a master of the short ball outside off that would tempt a batsman to hook thereby increasing the chances of a top-edge. Added to that was a perfect yorker that could be called upon at will (not in the Wasim-Waqar-Shoaib class but as good as anyone could bowl at 135 kph). With the old ball, he could generate occasional reverse swing and make the ball dip in late. There was also the split-finger slower ball that he employed profitably at times in Test cricket. Thus far, I have not seen these qualities in Clark.

Besides, McGrath’s pace was just about perfect for his kind of bowling (~ 135 kph). Clark’s average pace seems about 5 kph slower than ideal. During the Boxing Day Test, Gilchrist even stood up to Clark to keep the batsmen in their crease. He has filled the role of the third seamer beautifully. However, it’s hard to imagine him leading an Australian pace attack with the new ball in the manner in which McGrath did.

Clark is a very, very good bowler. If he wasn’t, he would not have had as impressive a Test record as he does so far (against good opposition too). But he is not great, at least not yet. Great bowlers perform in all conditions and in all forms of the game. Clark has been unable to come to terms with limited overs cricket and we haven’t seen him bowl in subcontinental conditions. His success so far has come in Australia and South Africa. He still has to undergo the test of bowling in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Aside: In a purely aesthetic sense, McGrath’s bowling action and follow-through were silken smooth and a pleasure to watch. Personally, Clark’s seems a bit clumsy. He also does something disturbing with his fingers just before he delivers the ball. Strangely, he brings his third and fourth fingers close to the seam and pushes the ball inside the back of the hand as he gets into his delivery stride. Although it doesn’t seem to affect his final release, it does look awkward. Fast bowlers are supposed to keep only their first two fingers behind the seam and not push the ball into the palm (especially in their delivery strides!).

[Update: This picture illustrates this point to some extent]

Glenn McGrath is the most accomplished fast bowler I have seen. Clark does not come close to challenging that status.

The Yuvraj conundrum – II

And now the crux of the matter: is Yuvraj a worthy test batsman? On pure talent alone, we haven’t had a batting talent like him since Tendulkar and Laxman (I do wonder about Badani). But he is a different sort of beast from all of them. Unlike most Indian batsmen, he is a power player in the Flintoff-Hayden mould. Before you choke on your awful American Latte, let me add that he combines that power with silky wristwork and mesmerising flourish. I have attempted to profile his batting identity because I cannot think of a suitable past or present batsman to compare him with. Michael Clarke comes to mind but I’ll try to develop that comparison in just a bit.

I will have to move into the very shaky ground of cricket technique to identify his weaknesses. His problem with spin is well documented and he does not seem to have the Indian ability of picking it out of the hand. I remember a home test against Sri Lanka in ‘05 when he made a quick 70 odd in the second innings as we were going for a declaration. He didn’t seem to have a clue of what Murali (and Bandara) were doing and was either sweeping powerfully or driving expansively everything in sight. It was as good hit-or-miss batting as you’re every likely to see. I also wonder if his propensity to go at everything with hard hands – particularly in defence – will make him a sitting duck for good seam bowling especially early in his innings.

All said and done, his extraordinary talent suggests that at the least, he be given a decent run. If things turn out predictably, he will make runs against mediocre bowling on dead pitches and might struggle against good attacks in Australia, England or South Africa. In an ideal world, he would be dropped at this stage and will go back to first class cricket to sort out his issues and come back a more complete and secure batsman like Michael Clarke, another talented but flawed bat, has. But then again, this is India. If they so much as think of dropping him after he makes a couple of 100s, Chandigarh will erupt in flames, the Chairman of Selectors and the poor white coach will have their effigies burnt and Sharad Pawar will have to convince the Akali Dal in Parliament that there is indeed no anti-Punjab conspiracy in the BCCI. God help us.

The Yuvraj conundrum – I

Mukul Kesavan makes some irrefutable points on the team selected for the MCG test. I’m coming round to the view that it may be best for Dravid to move down the order to sort himself out although I believe 5 might be a more suitable position for him than 6. Isn’t it better to be sandwiched between two in-form batsmen (Tendulkar and Ganguly in this case) than being put in a position to have to shore up the innings with the lower order in the case of a collapse?

But Kesavan’s dismissal of Yuvraj as a mere pretender at test level deserves another look. Firstly, I thought it will be interesting to trace how and why the case for including him in the test XI has grown so loud and persistent. This is more or less down to the suffocating stability wrought by the Dravid-Tendulkar-Laxman-Ganguly axis. Of course it was great to finally have a decent middle order after the wretched ’90s but beyond a point the urge to see a new face becomes irresistable. The all of them might retire at the same time and we’ll be in deep shit then argument provides the logically acceptable alibi to give vent to this need. So if we were to proceed on the basis that atleast one new guy must be blooded, 2005 provided the ideal opportunity with Ganguly woefully out of form and a ballsy Chairman of Selectors and Coach willing to make the move (although this need to see a new batsman had not yet found its fullest expression among the moronic band of former players, talk show hosts and public ka kapthaans that ultimately decides how Indian cricket is run).

Yuvraj was an easy choice to fulfill the ‘young batsman’ role because he was in magical form and more importantly bats with the necessary flourish to titillate the salivating masses. At one point, it even looked like he was going to be given an extended run what with Laxman being made to sit out instead of Yuvraj for one of the home tests against England in ‘06 when we went in with 5 batsmen. But after that, Kiran More went, we lost a bunch of one-dayers and as Jerry Seinfeld might put it, it was like we were thrown in a car accident and didn’t know which side we were facing.

With the successful Ganguly comeback and the focus on the World Cup, the youngster fetish disappeared only to resurface after the World Cup disaster. It was doubly ironic because there was now wide acceptance of the Chappell doctrine after he had been hounded out. After more hotch-potch selecting that has come to be the hallmark of Vengsarkar’s tenure, we have found ourselves in a situation where a dazzling Yuvraj hundred (off a Tendulkar injury) against a poor attack forces us to rearrange our top-order furniture for an Australia away series. All for the aforementioned need to ‘blood a youngster’. All of this is common and recent knowledge of course, but I thought it might be worth it to contextualize. If you want a young middle-order batsman in the team, it is better to do it by sacrificing another middle-order bat, even one of ‘stature’, and stick with it rather than muck around like this for a year and a half. This is Kesavan’s point and it bears repeating.

On Tendulkar

An extract from this article by Peter Roebuck:

“There has been a purity about his batting, a simplicity of construction, a correctness of execution, a sense of everything being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. At the crease, he has offered the glory of the completed cathedral.”

Almost the perfect description of Tendulkar’s batting.

P.S. What were the odds on my first post being inspired by a man as unlikely as Roebuck. I guess everyone has their moments!

Atherton on Warne

When I said anything goes on this blog, that included mere links to other articles so long as they are appended with a brief comment. So why not kick off things with a link to this appreciation by Michael Atherton in the 2007 Almanack of Shane Warne. It’s the sort of piece that might well come to be regarded as the gold standard of modern cricket writing. Yes I am prone to exaggeration but not this time.

Finally

It took this long to get this started because I couldn’t come up with a suitably clever yet non-corny title. Anyway Long stop came through on a cold London night and the deed is done. Hopefully the lazy friend in California will join the party and we can have some fun. As for content, officially anything goes but given the depth of (especially my, dare I say our) intellectual curiousity we will mostly stick to sport.