Respect for disciplined medium pace - PK and Copeland

[Outswinger@Pace]

/* Warning: This is going to be slightly long OP */


It's been my feeling (and I know I am not alone in this) that bowlers of modest pace are sometimes written off sooner than they ought to be.

Praveen Kumar made his test debut in the West Indies and looked to be a genuine wicket-taker to my subjective eyes. His stats seem to bear it out too. Those performances were somewhat rubbished in certain cricketing factions - citing a weak West Indian batting line-up as the main reason.

The implication was that when the modestly blessed 'trundler' would come to England, his lack of pace would cause him to be carted around the park. Now the England tour has finished and by popular perception, the only Indian bowler to hold his chin up has been this medium-pacer. Flashier colleagues with more eye-catching resumes, visibly greater pace and reputations have been pedestrian while the supposed weak link has managed to hold his own.


When I saw some comments about young Trent Copeland during the second test, it came flooding back to me. The lad has a very encouraging f/c record (just like PK, by the way ), has made his debut in vastly foreign conditions and hasn't embarrassed himself at all so far. Yet one feels that this kid with his lack of pace isn't looked at kindly by many folks.

What is also worth noting is that there is a man of genuine pace in the side, who is also supposed to be the attack leader. But somehow he isn't the first one to be critically mentioned when you talk about this attack not being incisive enough in the 2nd innings of the 2nd test.


Why is such an obvious bias being so blatantly held? Ask yourselves, what is the ONE thing that a skipper needs from his bowler - an ability to trust him with the ball in hand. Trust that a run-leaking Sreesanth, Mohd. Sami, Daren Powell or Mitch Johnson would never give to a skipper.

These two modestly-talented folks know their limitations, provide some sort of control and basically don't allow the game to slip away. Additionally, the basics look pretty good to me.

PK is a genuine swinger of the ball, an astute user of the crease depth and width and seems to read batsmen and situations pretty well to make good breakthroughs. Copeland is a tall, young lad with a nice high arm, hits the seam well, generally bowls one side of the wicket (I cannot overestimate the importance of that virtue) and keeps them honest.

Doesn't look like too much is wrong to me. Shouldn't they just be allowed to go ahead and bowl without us holding their lack of pace against them? Let them swim or sink, based on what their performance merits.

 

[Furball]

I only hope Praveen doesn't do the patented Indian quick "look absolutely awesome for your first 6 months before turning to absolute ****" routine that the likes of Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, RP Singh and Ishant Sharma have all done. He's a cricketer I really enjoyed watching this summer.

The only thing that strikes me about Praveen (haven't watched enough of Copeland to form an opinion, although he looks very good) is that I don't think he'll ever be a major wicket taking weapon unless he faces either a prank batting lineup or gets conditions massively in his favour. He's a mostly containing bowler that will properly examine a batsman's technique, picking up his wickets when he finds that weak spot, but I doubt he's going to find many conditions where he's going to regularly annihilate opposition lineups. That said, he is the man that India must, absolutely must, build their bowling attack round.

 

[Howe_zat]

To be fair to the Indian seamers, or as fair as I think I can be, Ishant's gone around the Wheel a few times and has on occasion looked the business. More importantly, he hasn't lost all attempts at pace like Munaf, Sree, RP or Irfan. It's a faint chance, but he's still young and I think he's got a much better chance than those others you mentioned of making it.

 

[Furball]

To be fair to the Indian seamers, or as fair as I think I can be, Ishant's gone around the Wheel a few times and has on occasion looked the business. More importantly, he hasn't lost all attempts at pace like Munaf, Sree, RP or Irfan. It's a faint chance, but he's still young and I think he's got a much better chance than those others you mentioned of making it.

Yeah, I basically gave Ishant a 4/10 for the series because there were times where he looked like he knew what he was doing. He just needs to string it together more.

Sreesanth on the other hand was absolute garbage. Munaf's a joke cricketer, pretty much the only exertion you see from him is his run up and even then he looks like he can't be bothered. A corpse would probably be sharper and more athletic in the field as well.

 

[Cevno]

Yeah, Ishant is a pretty decent/good bowler in India and in some other conditions too.His problem though is he is still largely a one length bowler and is dependant on the conditions being suited to his style of bowling and ideally the bowl reversing.

 

[Flem274*]

Outswinger@Pace is a champ.

 

[OMM!]

England has the likes of David Masters, Mark Davies and Alan Richardson who are all of a similar standard to Copeland and Kumar, but they aren't even close to selection.

Pace and movement is the key to fast bowling.

 

[Furball]

England has the likes of David Masters, Mark Davies and Alan Richardson who are all of a similar standard to Copeland and Kumar, but they aren't even close to selection.

Accuracy and movement is the key to fast bowling.

Fixed.

 

[Cevno]

Had a similar thread in the past IIRC too where i had a big debate about Irfan and how Praveen would do well in England.

Edit - Here -

http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/52132-not-enough-pace-level.html

 

[OMM!]

Fixed.

I'm not talking express pace. But 75mph ain't getting the job done.

And was Kumar that good in England? 15 wickets at 30 in bowler friendly conditions, against an England team missing the ICC cricketer of the year?

 

[Furball]

Had a similar thread in the past IIRC too where i had a big debate about Irfan and how Praveen would do well in England.

Edit - Here -

http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/52132-not-enough-pace-level.html

 

[Furball]

I'm not talking express pace. But 75mph ain't getting the job done.

And was Kumar that good in England? 15 wickets at 30 in bowler friendly conditions, against an England team missing the ICC cricketer of the year?

Yes he was.

Kumar suffered from having no support from the other end; I said before the series that I didn't think he'd cause the English batsmen major headaches but he certainly wasn't helped by Ishant (most of the time)/Sreesanth/Harbhajan/Mishra giving away free runs at the other end.

 

[Cevno]

 

[Furball]

The problem with you guys is you see one absolutely gun performance, whether it's Irfan Pathan's performance at Perth, RP Singh's hat-trick against Pakistan and decent performance in England in 2007, or Sreesanth's debut year in Test cricket and put your bowlers on a ridiculously high pedestal whilst ignoring about 20-30 absolutely shocking performances from them.

RP Singh has been rubbish in domestic cricket for years and hadn't played any first class cricket for months when he got called up. Suprise suprise, he was rubbish when he waddled onto the field at the Oval.

Irfan Pathan hasn't played First Class cricket for over a year, and was pretty rubbish when he did play Test cricket. The idea that he'd have done well in England is utterly laughable.

 

[Howe_zat]

Before I begin, Outswinger is indeed a champ.

Why is such an obvious bias being so blatantly held? Ask yourselves, what is the ONE thing that a skipper needs from his bowler - an ability to trust him with the ball in hand. Trust that a run-leaking Sreesanth, Mohd. Sami, Daren Powell or Mitch Johnson would never give to a skipper.

These two modestly-talented folks know their limitations, provide some sort of control and basically don't allow the game to slip away. Additionally, the basics look pretty good to me.

The problem comes from this. It's not rational, but when it becomes obvious what said limitations are, the fan gets rather dispirited in what the man they're putting their faith in.

A lot of reasons why we pick players is not because of what they typically do. It's because of what they're capable of. Is it really a rational idea to get excited when Shahid Afridi comes out to bat in an ODI? Not really, but we do it anyway because we know the ridiculous heights he just might manage that day. Shaun Pollock never hit a hundred in 60 balls, but he's got a solid 50 a lot more often, and ended with better figures in the end. Who's the better batsman?

Players with limitiations - and limitations we can see, and know that is actually limiting them near every time they play - rub us the wrong way. So we end up thinking how good it would be if we have a player that might just wow us that bit more, in this case, with pace.

To a certain extent it's just an easy way of hoping for a better player. "If only Copeland was quicker" is more or less like hoping "If only Harris was fitter" or "If only Johnson was more accurate". It seems more like the former should be the first priority, because the impression we get of bowlers is that they have a set pace - but fitness, accuracy, ability to move the ball, etc - all come with practise or coaching (or even more irrationally in the case of someone like Mitch, that it just might happen one day). It's not really the case, but it has its roots in reality.

I think that to be a successful bowler you need three of those four key traits. I'm yet to put them in order, but I'm sure that if you've only got one or two there are too many holes in your game.

The thing is that people are prepared to give the "pace" trait a lot more patience than any other. If a bowler just gets one effort ball past 90, then he's going to be looked at as a bowler with pace. But if he strays one down the legside, it puts people off thinking he's accurate.

This was said a lot about Kumar in the recent series. He relies on movement, accuracy, and fitness, but not pace. When his accuracy deserts him for a ball, it jars you because you wonder what he has got. His bad balls look terrible, and ironically enough, the fact that they're fewer makes them stand out more.

I think, subconciously or otherwise, most of us don't want to have to settle for a Praveen Kumar taking 6-120 when they might, just might get a Shoaib Akhtar blasting away the Australians in Colombo. I think we want to be wowed.

 

[Furball]

The problem comes from this. It's not rational, but when it becomes obvious what said limitations are, the fan gets rather dispirited in what the man they're putting their faith in.

A lot of reasons why we pick players is not because of what they typically do. It's because of what they're capable of. Is it really a rational idea to get excited when Shahid Afridi comes out to bat in an ODI? Not really, but we do it anyway because we know the ridiculous heights he just might manage that day. Shaun Pollock never hit a hundred in 60 balls, but he's got a solid 50 a lot more often, and ended with better figures in the end. Who's the better batsman?

Players with limitiations - and limitations we can see, and know that is actually limiting them near every time they play - rub us the wrong way. So we end up thinking how good it would be if we have a player that might just wow us that bit more, in this case, with pace.

To a certain extent it's just an easy way of hoping for a better player. "If only Copeland was quicker" is more or less like hoping "If only Harris was fitter" or "If only Johnson was more accurate". It seems more like the former should be the first priority, because the impression we get of bowlers is that they have a set pace - but fitness, accuracy, ability to move the ball, etc - all come with practise or coaching (or even more irrationally in the case of someone like Mitch, that it just might happen one day). It's not really the case, but it has its roots in reality.

I think that to be a successful bowler you need three of those four key traits. I'm yet to put them in order, but I'm sure that if you've only got one or two there are too many holes in your game.

The thing is that people are prepared to give the "pace" trait a lot more patience than any other. If a bowler just gets one effort ball past 90, then he's going to be looked at as a bowler with pace. But if he strays one down the legside, it puts people off thinking he's accurate.

This was said a lot about Kumar in the recent series. He relies on movement, accuracy, and fitness, but not pace. When his accuracy deserts him for a ball, it jars you because you wonder what he has got. His bad balls look terrible, and ironically enough, the fact that they're fewer makes them stand out more.

I think, subconciously or otherwise, most of us don't want to have to settle for a Praveen Kumar taking 6-120 when they might, just might get a Shoaib Akhtar blasting away the Australians in Colombo. I think we want to be wowed.

 

[Cevno]

The problem with you guys is you see one absolutely gun performance, whether it's Irfan Pathan's performance at Perth, RP Singh's hat-trick against Pakistan and decent performance in England in 2007, or Sreesanth's debut year in Test cricket and put your bowlers on a ridiculously high pedestal whilst ignoring about 20-30 absolutely shocking performances from them.

RP Singh has been rubbish in domestic cricket for years and hadn't played any first class cricket for months when he got called up. Suprise suprise, he was rubbish when he waddled onto the field at the Oval.

Irfan Pathan hasn't played First Class cricket for over a year, and was pretty rubbish when he did play Test cricket. The idea that he'd have done well in England is utterly laughable.

Where did i say that?

In any case disagree with what you are saying and what the hell does RP have to do with it? Never rated him even when he was allegedly doing well.

Irfan is way better in swinging conditions when fully fit than many people give him credit for. Outswinger@Pace to back me up, but Irfan would be much fitter right now that RP too and has a much better record in recent times than RP in FC cricket.

RP was crap even in IPL ffs!!

 

[Furball]

Where did i say that?

In any case disagree with what you are saying and what the hell does RP have to do with it? Never rated him even when he was allegedly doing well.

Irfan is way better in swinging conditions when fully fit than many people give him credit for. Outswinger@Pace to back me up, but Irfan would be much fitter right now that RP too and has a much better record in recent times than RP in FC cricket.

No he doesn't. Irfan Pathan hasn't played First Class cricket for 18 months. You'd think you might have learned that selecting someone with precisely zero form behind them who bowled a couple of good spells 4 years ago isn't a particularly smart idea.

 

[Prince EWS]

Before I begin, Outswinger is indeed a champ.



The problem comes from this. It's not rational, but when it becomes obvious what said limitations are, the fan gets rather dispirited in what the man they're putting their faith in.

A lot of reasons why we pick players is not because of what they typically do. It's because of what they're capable of. Is it really a rational idea to get excited when Shahid Afridi comes out to bat in an ODI? Not really, but we do it anyway because we know the ridiculous heights he just might manage that day. Shaun Pollock never hit a hundred in 60 balls, but he's got a solid 50 a lot more often, and ended with better figures in the end. Who's the better batsman?

Players with limitiations - and limitations we can see, and know that is actually limiting them near every time they play - rub us the wrong way. So we end up thinking how good it would be if we have a player that might just wow us that bit more, in this case, with pace.

To a certain extent it's just an easy way of hoping for a better player. "If only Copeland was quicker" is more or less like hoping "If only Harris was fitter" or "If only Johnson was more accurate". It seems more like the former should be the first priority, because the impression we get of bowlers is that they have a set pace - but fitness, accuracy, ability to move the ball, etc - all come with practise or coaching (or even more irrationally in the case of someone like Mitch, that it just might happen one day). It's not really the case, but it has its roots in reality.

I think that to be a successful bowler you need three of those four key traits. I'm yet to put them in order, but I'm sure that if you've only got one or two there are too many holes in your game.

The thing is that people are prepared to give the "pace" trait a lot more patience than any other. If a bowler just gets one effort ball past 90, then he's going to be looked at as a bowler with pace. But if he strays one down the legside, it puts people off thinking he's accurate.

This was said a lot about Kumar in the recent series. He relies on movement, accuracy, and fitness, but not pace. When his accuracy deserts him for a ball, it jars you because you wonder what he has got. His bad balls look terrible, and ironically enough, the fact that they're fewer makes them stand out more.

I think, subconciously or otherwise, most of us don't want to have to settle for a Praveen Kumar taking 6-120 when they might, just might get a Shoaib Akhtar blasting away the Australians in Colombo. I think we want to be wowed.

Really top-notch post.

Praveen has a lower ceiling that most bowlers, but very, very few bowlers will ever get near their ceiling as consistently as he does.

 

[Cevno]

No he doesn't. Irfan Pathan hasn't played First Class cricket for 18 months. You'd think you might have learned that selecting someone with precisely zero form behind them who bowled a couple of good spells 4 years ago isn't a particularly smart idea.

RP was crap before the 18 months too while Irfan was doing well and has continued being Crap since. Don't think even if we had selected him in the FC season he would have done well.May have done better though.

Irfan has been playing Corporate trophies, OD cricket, and other SC matches since he recovered.
FFS!! Even if you watched both bowl in the IPL, you could see who was in better rythm and form. Plus Irfan specially in ODI's gives us a option of 5 bowlers.

Outswinger@Pace who has connection in Baroda cricket, confirmed the other day that Irfan was in Mumbai working on his fitness and raring to go.