Not much of a day for spinners today. Devendra Bishoo got a bit of tap in the Second Test between West Indies and Sri Lanka, bowling 11 wicketless overs for 58. As usual, I was struck by the lack of variation. Bishoo really has nothing other than his leg-break, I didn’t see a single googly or any kind of variation out of the front of the hand. With little turn out of the pitch in Gros Islet, he’s probably done with his bowling in the match. Roston Chase looked a little more dangerous, but no wickets for him either.
Not much of note from a few spinners bowling in the tied T20i between Scotland and Ireland. I’m interested to get a look at Hamza Tahir, a new name bowling left-arm finger-spin in the Scotland team (and a cousin of Majid Haq, good spin bowling genes in the family).
India A begun their tour of England, with a limited overs warm-up against an ECB XI. Krunal Pandya and Axar Patel are the spinners on the limited-overs leg of the tour, and they took a wicket each as India A won easily.
Brett D’Oliveira bowled a handy spell for defeated Worcestershire in their Royal London Cup semi-final. Whenever I see him play I like the action, but he bowls pretty slowly and doesn’t match that with much turn. I expect he’ll continue to develop into more of a batsman who bowls a bit.
Links
An interesting bit of statistical analysis from Michael Wagener at the CricketGeek blog, on how Afghanistan’s spinners might do in their country’s first ever Test. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems like the worst case scenario was even worse. Interesting to see that the figures have Rashid Khan turning out to be a very decent Test bowler in the long term.
Aakash Chopra for ESPNCricinfo comes up with a few convincing reasons why Rashid Khan failed in his first Test match. I didn’t see a lot of Rashid’s bowling in his early spells, but later on, he seemed to have corrected some of the issues. If Afghanistan play a fair amount of Test cricket he’ll learn quickly. I wonder whether there’s a chance he might play a County Championship game or two whilst he’s at Sussex; he could learn a great deal that way.
A little bit of news from a couple of days ago, Will Somerville moving back to New Zealand to play for Auckland. CricBuzz have the detail that the off-spinner was recommended to them by Dan Vettori. He had a very good Sheffield Shield season for New South Wales in 2016-17, then barely played a game last season. New Zealand’s spin stocks aren’t particularly deep, so a good season could put him in the frame for international recognition.
Finally, a nice little piece from the Sri Lankan Sunday Observer, about a young off-spinner who just made her debut for Sri Lanka women.
Dip and Drift 