Dan Worrall: A very British Australian
Australians (who hold British passports, so watch this space) fit the template of British seamstresses. Even his arcing approach is old school, aiding in shoulder roll and a slight arm round that promotes an outswing that leads to bite after bite.
For all three of Surrey’s Championship hat-tricks, Worrell provided the key briefing for any team looking to keep winning throughout the summer – take wickets in the top order, as well as the side order in the tail demolition.
Watching him bowling reminds one of Glenn McGrath in his late days. Every delivery is a challenge but also part of a larger plan, moving the batsman across the crease, pulling him forward, pushing him back, all to elicit when doubt pricks the soul. A brief hesitation. If the timing is just a little off, or the bat isn’t quite in place, the ball will fall back into the hands of the second slider. In 11 Championship matches, Worrall took 52 wickets, paying just 16 runs per wicket. At 33, his early injury-plagued years are behind him and he knows his body and his technique. Worrell was at the peak of his power.
David Bedingham: A first-rate performance
Long gone are the days when the best players in the world played a full season of county cricket and then came back year after year for more games, but there is some throwback to that simpler time. Durham’s elegant South African may not be one of the first batsmen waiting to become part of the new ‘Big Four’, but less than a year into his late-starting international career he has already spent time in New Zealand Six times in a century the average test score exceeded 40 points. He also had an indefinable sense of belonging of the highest order.
He is better than any other batsman at Championship level and by distance his 1,331 runs are almost 200 runs better than the next best total and that too in just 11 of 14 matches . An average of 78 and 25 sixes also set him apart. His statistical highlight was a record-breaking 279 against a moribund Lancashire side, where 11 batsmen matched him twice in total but failed both times.
World class is a term of art rather than science, but if any semi-regular to regular player in our domestic top-tier game qualifies for this label, it’s Durham’s mid-level masters.
Jack Leach: Heart of a Lion
Nothing tests the moral mettle of a sports star more than late-career injuries and the rise of young talent who seize their opportunity.
Jack Leach, a veteran of 36 Tests, was given the opportunity to represent England in India last winter after his 20-year-old apprentice Shoaib Bashir at Somerset team position and retained it throughout the summer of testing. To make matters worse, in an era when England are looking for “types” of players to choose from, tall spinners with bounce and an attacking line are about as far away from left-arm players as they can get, more for controlling the game And be praised rather than run aside.
Leach didn’t play until May and barely picked up a wicket until the second half of the season – surely these doubts were eroding his confidence? Once he got going, wickets piled up and five five-a-side matches in the final five rounds of the Championship were enough to earn a call-up for England’s upcoming tour of Pakistan and give Somerset a sniff of that elusive No. 1 A pennant.
Leach has endured a lot of adversity during his remarkable career, so perhaps one should expect a comeback like this. But don’t question the confidence required. If he does make the England squad, a wave of goodwill, even from past critics like me, will bring him to the crease for the first ball.
John Simpson: perfect move
After 16 years at Middlesex, the temptation for an easy retirement in the familiar (and enjoyable) surroundings of Lord’s must have been strong for the wicketkeeper-batsman. But successful athletes have always been more willing than the rest of us to accept discomfort, enter unknown territory, and “try it.” Without this attitude, they would not be successful, so there is also a certain confirmation bias in memory.
Sussex were looking to gain some experience to stabilize their young talent last winter and Paul Fabrese gained plenty of experience in Simpson. He was soon asked to captain the Championship side for their first seven games. The new arrival is a wicketkeeper, a key middle-order batsman and a leader, with plenty of chances at slip in the high-pressure line.
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He didn’t. Playing in all 14 games, Simpson scored five centuries, including a double, and four half-centuries, finishing with a score of 75 to reach nearly 1,200 runs and being dismissed 44 times. What’s more, he guided Sussex to promotion and became Division Two champions, 41 points clear of his old friends at Middlesex in third place. Simpson passed the audition.
david payne: T20 bowling at its best
Of these five somewhat unremarkable cricketers in their 30s, the tall left-arm pacer is perhaps the least noticeable of them all. But when it comes to T20 cricket, the Gloucestershire bowler can, as the young man puts it, “get it done”, such is his mastery of the craft.
He took a tournament-leading 33 wickets in the blast, both in the powerplay and at death bowling, at an average of just under 13 and with an economy rate just a notch or two above that of the run-ball. This performance required not only wickets in his four overs but a few at the other end as well, as any batting side would need eight or more runs against almost every other bowler to be competitive. level score.
All his skill and cunning were on display on Grand Final day, making things a breeze for his team. In the semi-finals, he knocked out the dangerous Daniel Hughes 1-for-9 in the third round, a no-frills return from four rounds. By the final, Tom Kohler-Cadmore hit him with two sixes in the second over, but the other three took 3 for 12, with Paine bowling back-to-back deliveries before the Somerset innings began Two goals were scored to stop the Somerset attack.
It is sometimes said that a combination of interpretations of wide and no-ball laws, power hitting and short boundaries make T20 bowlers little more than human bowling machines, but Paine showed that there is a lot of room for skill, imagination and sanity Ball in hand.
