Six Obsession - Allrounders

[The Outsider]

A very well written article about something I have been harping on for so long - Australia's obsession with fielding an allrounder after the 2005 Ashes, even though it's evident they don't have one.

When Andrew Hilditch played Test cricket for the first time, the man listed at No. 6 was Phil by name and fill-a-hole by nature. Phil Carlson, tall and fair, bowled 10 wicketless overs in that game. He batted twice, enduring seven minutes in total, outsmarted by an Ian Botham long hop and sparring with bat too far from body at a John Emburey offbreak. The ball ballooned - Carlson's final act of the match and his Test career - and as it hit short leg's hands the captain, Graham Yallop, squatted at the non-striker's end and slowly shook his head. Hilditch himself was dumped soon after, and he stayed dumped for most of the next six years. The last time Hilditch played Test cricket, Wayne "Flipper" Phillips was Australia's No. 6. "Flipper" was a simple bastardisation of Phillips' surname. Coincidentally, the selectors looked on him as a kind of performing dolphin. His first trick was a scintillating 159 on debut. Then the selectors got thinking: Phillips should not merely make runs but keep wicket too, not that he wished to, and not that five other wicketkeepers in the land weren't considerably more dexterous. The experiment was a flop. Phillips, a freewheeling and clear-headed batsman, grew bedraggled at a time when clear-headed and freewheeling Australian batsmen were nigh on extinct. If Hilditch now has an odd and twisted notion of what a No. 6 should be, that is understandable. The trouble is that Hilditch is chairman of Australia's selectors. It could be that the effect his dysfunctional upbringing had on the young Hilditch's mind is influencing the make-up of Australia's cricket team now. Selecting is hard. Always selectors, knowing they can pick only 11 men, wish somehow to turn 11 into 12. Under Hilditch's chairmanship the wish has become an obsession. Normally selectors see that there is no allrounder worthy of summoning and so content themselves with 11, the best 11. Hilditch's method is different: where no allrounder can be found, we shall build one. Andrew McDonald of Wodonga is the latest Frankenstein-style construction to be stirred from sleep, wound up at his back and sent on to the Sydney Cricket Ground as Australia's new No. 6. History is against Hilditch. Australia has fielded more allrounders than most countries. Even so, if we rule out wicketkeepers and stick to the classic definition of an allrounder as someone who bats and bowls well enough to earn a place in any team for either discipline, then Australia has produced seven: George Giffen, Monty Noble, Warwick Armstrong, Jack Gregory, Keith Miller, Richie Benaud, Alan Davidson. That's one every 19 years, and none in the past 46. Even these are inflated figures. Technically, if Benaud or Davidson had elbow niggles that prevented them bowling, selectors would seldom have picked them as specialist batsmen; the reverse applies to Armstrong and, less strongly, to Giffen and Noble too. If we believe the classic definition, only Garry Sobers and about six others were ever true allrounders. The classic definition is too strict. Really, an allrounder is someone who commands selection with one skill and is an invaluable contributor with their second string. By this logic, handy sorts like Gus Gilmour and Greg Matthews just about qualify. By no available logic do Hilditch's projects - McDonald, Cameron White, Andrew Symonds or Shane Watson - amount to Test allrounders. McDonald looked at home in that Sydney Test without quite appearing menacing. Wish him well. Attempts to manufacture a No. 6 allrounder out of Watson have come at the cost of Watson's health and his batting. An upright defence, a taste for boundaries and a brace of hundreds signalled a bright new batting prospect in the summer of 2003-04. It didn't win Watson a Test berth - but what if he bowled more? Geoff Lawson ranked him back then as Australia's 17th-best seamer. Now Watson does enough with the ball to have taken seven-for against South Australia. But the first-class hundreds have dried up - four in his past 65 outings - and the backache that scared him off bowling as a child is currently stopping him leaving the couch as a man. Symonds was saluted by pressmen at summer's beginning as "the world's finest allrounder", when it was not necessarily evident that he was an allrounder at all. Not so long ago, Greg Chappell spun the ball harder and wobbled cutters and swingers more deadly; he batted, too. No one called Chappell an allrounder, let alone a fine one. People look at how far Symonds has fallen and they try to explain it. They say he is mentally not right, and they are probably on to something, although for a player with a mental approach so simple - "Give it some Larry Dooley" - it would seem strange if that were all there was to it. A true batsman - a dangerous if not totally reliable one; that used to be Symonds. He'd bowled little spinners in his junior days, taking up quicker stuff much later, at the urging of the state selectors and his Queensland coach, John Buchanan. As Symonds tells it: "Buck's line of thinking was that I should add medium-pace bowling to my batting, slow bowling and fielding, and frankly, I could see no real counter-argument." Had he spotted the counter-argument, he might still be in the Test team today. For Hilditch, one answer is to do what selectors have done forever: pick the six best batsmen, four best bowlers - including a spinner - and one wicketkeeper. To do anything else is to overcomplicate an already complicated job. Australia now has no real allrounder. Of the seven they used to have, none batted regularly at No. 6. It stands to reason that the person who bats at six should be his country's sixth-best batsman. A 21-year-old Victor Trumper started there. Don Bradman debuted at seven, graduated to six, and conquered the world from three. Neil Harvey, two Chappells, two Waughs, Allan Border and Ricky Ponting did apprenticeships at No. 6. In the time the selectors have been playing snakes and ladders with McDonald and company, David Hussey and Brad Hodge have grown two years older. Who knows what they could have been? Selecting is not a one-man job. Presumably Hilditch's three companions share his obsessions. All are young enough to remember the days of Carlson and Phillips. All understand the urge to turn 11 into 12, or 13. Still, perhaps it's time they had another conversation and drew once more on their own experiences. David Boon is the panel's second longest-serving member. When Boon played Test cricket for the first time, against West Indies in 1984, his team-mates were being tenderised by four blokes bowling fireballs. His captain was writing out his resignation note. Malcolm Marshall had promised to come around the wicket and kill him. Boon killed time. Two-hundred-and-thirty-six minutes he batted. Fifty-one runs he made. He went on to play another 106 matches for Australia in which he bowled a grand total of 36 balls. Boon batted, that first time he played Test cricket, at No. 6.

[The Outsider]

I don't think cricket has seen an allrounder yet who can be picked equally for his bowling and batting in the side. Closest would be to categorize them into : 1. Batting Allrounders : Someone who earns his spot as a top 5 batsman and can be a 4th/5th bowler averaging mid 30s or below in bowling with 2+ wickets per match. 2. Bowling Allrounders : Someone who earns his spot as a front line bowler and can bat at number 7/8 or higher averaging 25+ with the bat.

[graphic23]

Sir Gary Sobers was an awesome allrounder, I think - in the way you've defined it. He could bowl pace, spin, etc. Daniel Vettori would probably be the BEST bowling-allrounder today (or perhaps in the past decade or so). Jacques Kallis for batting allrounder. Flintoff used to be a very good allrounder - I'd say he's a bowler now.

[The Outsider]

My pick for genuine allrounders would be: Australia : Keith Miller Benaud India : Mankad Kapil WI : Sobers Pakistan : Imran Khan England : Botham Tony Greig Flintoff NZ : Hadlee Cairns SA : Pollock Kallis Quite a rarefied list in 120+ years of cricket, though I might have missed out some older players - grand total of 13.

[Sachinism]

^^^ Vettori? Shakib lol Watson will be one

[Rajan]

i think there were 2 south african cricketers who had great potential but were deprived of demonstrating their great skills in the international arena because of apartheid/isolation- Clive Rice and Mike Procter. ========================== Probably one of the most natural talents the game of cricket has ever seen, Mike Procter was denied the chance to showcase his talents on the international stage by South Africa's isolation. His performances in the seven Test matches he did play - all against Australia - suggest he would have kept favourable company with other great allrounders of the late 20th century such as Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and Richard Hadlee. He took 41 wickets at 16 apiece, and averaged 34.83 with the bat in the second of the two series. Always one for the spectacular, Procter put together a string of memorable performances for his English county side Gloucestershire, to which he was passionately loyal. He scored six centuries in consecutive first-class innings while playing for Rhodesia in the early 1970s, and went on to coach South Africa as they returned to the international stage. He later became a member of the ICC's elite panel of match referees where controversy seemed to follow him - he was the referee at The Oval in 2006 when Pakistan forfeited the Test and again in Sydney in 2007-08 when he banned Harbhajan Singh. He stood down from the position in 2008 in order to take up a new role as South Africa's convener of selectors. Neil Manthorp October 2008 =========================================== If Clive Rice's timing served him well through a first-class career that embraced four decades, it let him down badly in international terms. Rice made his first-class debut in 1969, a year before South Africa's last Test series prior to isolation. Although he captained his country on their three-ODI comeback tour of India in 1991, just months later he was deemed, at 42, to be too old to take South Africa to the 1992 World Cup. A record containing just three one-day internationals suggests a moderate cricketer, but Rice was far from that. Through the 1970s and 80s, for Transvaal and Nottinghamshire, he was one of the game's leading allrounders - a punishing right-handed batsman with one of the most savage cuts in cricket, a seamer capable of genuine pace through the 1970s and a captain as hard-headed as any in the business. He attracted the attention of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket - in itself recognition of his abilities - and was an automatic choice for the South African teams against the rebel tourists of the 1980s. He was also the epitome of the modern professional cricketer, quick to recognise the financial opportunities that began to arise in the game. Rice was at the centre of one of South African cricket's silliest controversies when he posed naked except for a strategically-placed (and pointedly-named) "Jumbo" bat. It was also almost impossible to come across a photograph of him in his heyday without an "Avis" cap covering a receding hairline. Rice was the driving force behind the Transvaal "Mean Machine" in the 1970s and 80s, similarly urging Nottinghamshire to success during the same period. Sadly, he was discarded by both South Africa and Transvaal at the end of his career, eventually moving to Natal where, with Malcolm Marshall, he helped shape the formidable talents of Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener and Jonty Rhodes. He subsequently returned to Trent Bridge as cricket manager. ============================== i am sure many of us here would at least vaguely remember the annual Best allrounder competition that used to be held in Hong Kong. Clive Rice won that once when the other 4 were present. he beat Kapil, Imran,Botham and Hadlee. point is, he was at least 5 years older to any one of them at that point of time.