Cardiff Local Guide A guide to all Things Cardiff
“Pitches are also an issue. If 14 or 15 wickets fall to seam bowlers on the
first day of a championship match we accept that as being normal in English
conditions, but if a ball turns before lunch on the first day or wickets
fall to spinners we deem it a poor pitch. That shouldn’t be the case.
“Northamptonshire produced Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar by producing pitches
that turned to help encourage them.
“If you go to the Indian subcontinent it’s not unusual to play on dry and bare
pitches which turn from an early stage of a match. It doesn’t mean that,
just because that happens, they are necessarily poor pitches.”
The England and Wales Cricket Board attempted to encourage spin bowling by
allowing counties to use the heavy roller again last season after three
years in which only the light roller was permitted after the toss had been
made. But pitches did not break up and batsmen, not spinners, prospered in a
dry summer.
“The ECB thought that it would turn more with the heavy roller back but we
didn’t see much evidence of pitches breaking up,” said Graeme Welch,
Warwickshire’s bowling coach. At grounds like Old Trafford and Cardiff they
tried to encourage the spinners as Northamptonshire used to do, but at most
grounds there was very little in the surfaces for the spinners.”
Smith believes off-spinners Jigar Naik (Leicestershire), Arron Lilley
(Lancashire), Andrew Salter (Glamorgan), Adam Riley (Kent) and Azeem Rafiq
(Yorkshire) plus Derbyshire slow left-armer David Wainwright and Yorkshire
leg-spinner Adil Rashid have potential.
But Welch is less optimistic about England’s spin bowling talent and believes
that Twenty20 cricket has changed the mentality of spinners.
“In Twenty20 cricket you are not trying to get people out, you are trying to
stop scoring runs by taking the pace off the ball and that means that people
are not turning the ball as much as they might,” Welch said.
“If you are looking at spinners to replace Graeme Swann I think that there is
a bit of shortage. The best off-spinner in the country last season was
easily Jeetan Patel, our overseas player at Warwickshire. Ollie Rayner got
wickets for Middlesex but when he played against us at Uxbridge he didn’t
spin the ball that much.”
