Adil Rashid makes a case to be England’s new number seven
A week or so ago, Adil Rashid hit two hundreds in successive innings. In Yorkshire’s two innings in the field adjacent to those hundreds, Rashid took five wickets in each of them.
England will naturally be looking for a seam bowling all-rounder to replace Andrew Flintoff – perhaps Rashid’s team mate, Tim Bresnan – but is that the best ploy?
With Stuart Broad offering fast-medium seam and James Anderson offering fast-medium swing, England really need a vicious fast bowler to take wickets on the world’s flat Test pitches. Is there one?
Not really and even if there were, he wouldn’t be able to bat. So why not pick a leg-spinner? If Broad, Anderson and Graham Onions can’t get wickets on a given day, a fourth bowler of similar ilk isn’t going to help one bit.
Leg-spinners can get wickets on flat pitches. Adil Rashid is a leg-spinner. And he can bat.
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Moving Broad up to 7 is too soon in my opinion. I’d rather see Rashid or Wright given a go there, depending on the pitch. Both have stepped up their batting and bowling in recent weeks – leave Broad to find consistency with his bowling and at number 8. For me, Bresnan loks well short of international quality with bat and ball.
I’d feel pretty good about a tail that had Rashid, Broad & Swann filling out 7,8,9 but can’t see us playing two spinners too often. Let’s hope England actually give the guy a run out this winter instead of carrying the drinks like he did throughout last winter in the Windies.
He’s both the New Andrew Flintoff and the New Shane Warne all rolled into one. Yay!
Gah! It is so annoying this Rashid fetishism.
He is not a legspinner who bats but a batsman who legspins. And he’s not even one of the leading county batsman at that.
His bowling is okay, like Peter Such but out the back of the hand. His batting is okay – as good as Mark Butcher but right handed.
He’ll play for England and average 30 and 40 – the wrong way round.
Boy, He’ll sure be handy down the order as a batsman and also as a bowler but with Broad and Swann, already England bat down deep…………
He’ll have a good career, although we’re not totally convinced now is precisely the right time.
To paraphrase Kevin Keegan: Leg-spinners and batsmen these days aren’t born until they’re 30.
May as well chuck him in tomorrow. If he’s not old enough now, he will be by the time ths 489-game series ends.
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Am I the only person in England who thinks we should go with 6 batsmen? We don’t have an all rounder in England at the moment.
So sod it play four bowlers and tell them to fucking aim at the fucking stumps. Onions can do it and broad seemed to have figured it out in the last test.
SO FUCKING BOWL AT THE STUMPS RETARDS!!!!
“Heβll play for England and average 30 and 40 – the wrong way round.”
Seems to work ok for Stuart Broad.
To be honest I was amazed that he didn’t play throughout the ashes series, and even more amazed he was left out of the lineup yesterday.
The problem England has at the moment is they have too many ‘good’ cricketers to choose from who might be able to step up to the international arena without there being many (any?) ‘great’ cricketers standing out for selection.