Under the Fort I
Three Big Things from Galle after day one of the test ‘summer’
Sri Lanka 302-7 (Kamindu Mendis 114, Kusal Mendis 50; Will O’Rourke 3-54)
Spin Cycle
This Galle wicket is showing all the signs of breaking up and becoming a raging turner. It already is out of the footmarks, as we saw with the dismissal of Kamindu just before stumps, but it has so far remained playable off the straight.
I suspect when Prabath Jayasuriya gets into his work, we’re going to see the difference between spinners raised in subcontinental conditions and those who are more commonly used to try to buy a wicket on Hagley Oval.
That’s not what I want to focus on in this little segment though. While I don’t think either of New Zealand’s two left-arm orthodox options bowled well enough for long enough in helpful conditions, you can hardly blame them for taking a while to acclimatise, especially having lost an entire test last week.
Rather than home in on their hot-and-cold starts, let’s take a helicopter view of New Zealand’s spin stocks and ask a simple question: what exactly is our high-performance, spin-bowling development strategy?
It’s something that has been bugging me for a while, but I haven’t really been able to put my finger on why. I think it’s this: the Black Caps have become effective at turning bits-and-pieces cricketers into international spin options, but hopeless at developing and promoting genuine spinners.
I look at that squad picked for this tour and there are 199 test wickets (after day one) of spin in the squad, which, if divided among two players, would suggest consistent selection and a high-degree of proficiency. That number is divisible by six, however — Michael Bracewell (24), Ajaz Patel (63), Mitchell Santner (53), Rachin Ravindra (10), Glenn Phillips (19) and Kane Williamson (30).
Gary Stead might like to look at that and say they are creating depth, but I would counter by saying that multiple players doing relatively shallow things is still shallow.
Even that is not really the point. What baffles me is that the spinners who have thrived and been favoured in recent times are ones who are self-taught converts, like Bracewell and Phillips.
The latter in particular looks New Zealand’s biggest wicket-taking threat and I look at his rapid rise and place that against the red-ball regression/ stagnation of the likes of Patel, Santner, Ish Sodhi and Aditya Ashok and ask myself this: Does NZC really have any idea how to develop spinners, or do they just chuck a whole bunch of stuff at a wall and hope that one sticks?
Which is kind of the approach I’m taking to writing about it. I have yet to develop fully-formed thought about our spinners, other than to throw a couple of thoughts at this particular wall. But my overriding feeling is that while our home conditions don’t help the development of slow bowlers, neither do scattergun selections.