Posts
Loading ...Stretching my memory banks, but Wessels was a South African who joined the Aussies during World Series Cricket days. If I remember correctly. Then after WSC joined the ‘Establishment’ Test team.
He was a pretty classy bat on his day.
Some problems around leg stump meant he developed a really wierd technique at one point.
Changing nations
By Jonathan Liew 6 months ago Leave a comment on this post
According to Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph, England’s best hope of winning the Ashes in 2009 is to play two spinners and prepare some turning pitches.
It’s a seductive idea, but who on earth do you have as the second spinner? Graeme Swann? Adil Rashid? Gary whatsisface from Lancashire? Or England’s very own Greg Rusedski?
I was at Lord’s in about 1998 when Saqlain Mushtaq took a hat-trick against Middlesex. He’s top drawer, and certainly turns the ball more than Gareth Batty. But somehow the thought of Saqlain in an England shirt seems wrong - a little like seeing your mum in a catsuit. Of course, he’s legally resident and pays taxes and all that. And these days, the country of your birth can be shaken off like an itchy cardigan, and frequently has been. But the difference with the likes of Hussain, Pietersen and Shah is that they never stepped out to play a World Cup final for their home country. Saqlain is, to everybody but the ECB and the Home Office, a Pakistan player. Whatever he does in an England shirt won’t change that.
I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of any Australians reading about Kepler Wessels, a similar case, who’s a little bit before my time. Was he welcomed into the fold as a class player, or did his appearance in a baggy green smack of opportunism?
Tags: adil-rashid, ashes 2009, england, england qualification, graeme-swann, kepler-wessels, nationality, pakistan, saqlain mushtaq, surrey |
9 Responses to “Changing nations”
January 24th, 2008 at 2.11 am
January 24th, 2008 at 2.54 am
I can understand why Wessels was allowed to become an “Aussie” after WSC, but I still didn’t like it.
I’ll accept players who are born in one country but grew up in another like Andrew Symonds and Brendan Julian, but KP and the like ought to have to live in England for much longer than they did before playing for England.
You realise Geroink was a Manchurian Candidate like plant, don’t you?
January 24th, 2008 at 3.41 am
From what I’ve seen of him, I really like the look of Graeme Swann. He can bat at no. 7, with the wickie, whether it be Prior, Ambrose or Mustard, can bat at 6. Hoggard, Harmison, Sidebottom and Panesar complete the bowling attack, giving England a perfectly balanced attack of a right-arm swing bowler, a right-arm fast seam-type bowler, a left-arm swing bowler, a left-arm finger-spinner and a right-arm finger-spinner. That’s what I’d like to see England do.
January 24th, 2008 at 6.08 am
Wessels played for Australia PRIOR to playing for his native South Africa. South Africa at the time, was banned from International cricket. Not sure if that makes it any different??
January 25th, 2008 at 10.12 pm
Aye, it would be wrong - not technically, morally- for Saqlain to play international cricket for England.
I don’t think he would be able to play to the best of his abilities if he were up against Pakistan in a World Cup final at Karachi for instance.
A pity for world cricket that we didn’t see more of him at the highest level. He invented the doosra and bowled it better than anyone I’ve seen.
January 27th, 2008 at 8.40 pm
Well, if Mushtaq’s qualified, he’s qualified as far as I’m concerned. And I’m sure he’d give his all in an Ashes Test.
I think the basic theory’s based on the idea that the next generation of Aussie spinners (i.e. the two Cullens) aren’t that good. Hmm, not sure I buy it - God knows how many “not that good” players the Aussies have brought over here, and they wreak havoc with the English batting…
We don’t need a second spinner so much as a batting all-rounder who bowls (preferably off)-spin, in theory Vaughan or Pietersen or Shah could be such a man, but they don’t seem to get the bowling practice in so no one has a clue which of the three is the “sixth bowler”.
In the days before one-day cricket, batsmen preferred to tweak rather than to trundle - I don’t think any established English batsman between Bill Edrich and Geoffrey Boycott bowled an over of seam at Test level.
We also need to try to field a team that has no more than two No. 11’s in it, tops. It’s not going to be easy - there’s so much cricket played in an English summer that coaches can hardly be blamed for getting players to specialise. A three-division Championship, with teams playing ten games each of each type of the game (55 days’ cricket plus the knock-out cup) might help.
January 27th, 2008 at 8.41 pm
Sorry, I forgot Ted Dexter - who was initially picked as an all-rounder, to replace Trevor Bailey.
January 28th, 2008 at 1.49 am
What a joke players dont give sworn evidence at I.C.C. inquiry into the raceism alleged by Australian players against Harbhajan result I bet he gets off. This web site says it all about the Indian approach to cricket.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23044267-5001023,00.html
January 29th, 2008 at 6.16 am
Stu’s surely right. When he played for Australia, Wessels hadn’t previously played for South Africa (and indeed couldn’t play international Tests with them because of Gleneagles). That makes his situation then very different from Saqlain’s. (Admittedly it all gets more complicated, because Wessels joined two rebel bunches along the way - before getting an Aussie Test cap he played for Packer’s Australian team against the World team, despite then being a South African, and later on he was one of the Aussies who played rebel matches in South Africa.)
Maybe a better comparison would be provided by Wessels’ return to South Africa and selection for Test cricket as their first post-ban captain. After all, that’s when someone who had played Tests for one country was picked for another. As I recall, there was a fuss in South Africa about whether they should let him play.
