Ones to watch

Paul Horton, Lancashire – one to watch in 2009

Lancashire’s batsmen were full-on toss last year. Pretty much the sole exception was Paul Horton.

Paul Horton is an opening batsman and that’s a position where Lancashire have been short of class for a while now. He’s also 26, which is pretty reassuring in a side which has had a mild-drinking, slipper-wearing batting line-up in recent years.

Last year Paul Horton hit a hundred that stood out like a sore thumb in a mini skirt at a black tie event for undamaged fingers. No other player got going in the whole match. Maybe that’s not what’s needed in Test cricket these days. Maybe you need batsmen who consistently cash in on flat pitches.

We reckon Horton could do that too. He averages 47 in first-class cricket and in our eyes he’s a very real contender for an England place. However, a one-day average of 18 and a Twenty20 average half that seem to block his most likely avenues.

Sod avenues, Paul. Walk right down the middle of the main road. Ignore the horns. Ignore the glares. Ignore the fat man shouting ‘get off the road, you dickhead’. You take your own route, regardless of any possible intervention from a police officer.

Simon Jones, Worcestershire – one to watch in 2009

Simon Jones isn’t one to watch for the reasons you think.

A lot of English (and Welsh) cricket supporters think Simon Jones is England’s Imran Khan or something; a master of fast swing bowling who can destroy any batting line-up. On top of his game, he’s a great bowler, but we can’t help but feel he’s got better and better during his long spells on the sidelines.

As England have floundered, so Jones’ reputation has soared, largely through having no opportunity to bowl a great whack of shod overseas. Maybe he would have been the best bowler in the world over the last four years had he been fit, but the odds are against it.

And he hasn’t been fit. Being fit is important. Other than polishing your unsullied reputation, you can’t do ball all while you’re injured. Simon Jones’ puny little legs can’t carry his artificial gym torso and they repeatedly buckle.

But yet he’s one to watch?

Darn tootin’. Last year Simon Jones cleaned up for Worcestershire. He took 42 wickets at 18. Crucially however, that was in Division Two.

Is Division Two inferior as we have so confidently asserted? That question will be partly answered by Jones’ performance now that Worcestershire have been promoted. Jones’ team mate, Kabir Ali, took 59 wickets at 18.74. We’ll be watching him too.

Will Smith, Durham – one to watch in 2009

We decided to make Will Smith one to watch this season in August last year. That was before he was made Durham captain. Don’t know whether that will affect him.

We’d been keeping an eye on him anyway, but the match that decided it was against Hampshire at Basingstoke. The wicket flattened out later on to allow Hampshire to chase 240 in the fourth innings, but 16 wickets fell on the first day and 19 on the second. The only batsman to score more than 28 in that time was Will Smith, who hit 70.

He also scored 201 not out against Surrey and averaged 51 over the course of the season. That average is all the more impressive when you consider he plays half his cricket at Chester-le-Street. For county champions, Durham’s batting averages aren’t good. If you’re going to play for Durham, be a bowler.

Will Smith’s average was the highest for Durham bar Gareth Breese’s freakish average of 184 from two innings.

Michael Di Venuto averaged 46. Di Venuto’s hit 47 first-class hundreds. He’s an okay bat. Dale Benkenstein averaged 43. He’s an okay bat. The only other batsman to average over 30 was Shivnarine Chanderpaul. He’s most definitely an okay bat.

Smith topped them all and batted at three.

Tim Bresnan, Yorkshire – one to watch in 2009

Tim Bresnan’s 2007 season saw 34 wickets at an average of 32, accompanied by two hundreds and a batting average of 39. His understated 2008 season saw 45 wickets at 28 and 506 runs at 33.

It’s solid stuff. He’s an asset to Yorkshire, but he’s not at the stage where you can just say his surname when he’s about to bat or bowl and convey a whole range of hopes and expectation through doing so.

If you said ‘Bresnan’ to someone, what would they think? Would they rush to the nearest TV in expectation of cricketing fireworks, or would they look at you quizzically anticipating elaboration. Maybe if you happen to have addressed someone whose surname is Bresnan, they’ll say ‘yes?’, but more likely you’ll need to add a few words.

In the unlikely event that you do know a Bresnan and felt moved to address them regarding Tim Bresnan and what he might imminently achieve on a cricket field, you’d probably anticipate this confusion and allow for it, so again you’d need additional words.

If you were discussing the merits of Yorkshire cricketers, you could easily find yourself in a situation where you could respond to a question using the single word ‘Bresnan’ and it would be understood, but the context’s already been created there, so that doesn’t count.

Tim Bresnan should aim to make the use of the word ‘Bresnan’ create context and meaning on its own, possibly when allied to an urgent looking facial expression. If we walk into the bar at a county ground during a match and say ‘Bresnan’ to everyone in there, we’d like to see everyone clear out to go and see what’s going on.

Review of today’s update: Rambling and largely pointless. 2/10.

Adil Rashid, Yorkshire – one to watch in 2009

Adil Rashid, eh? Bet you’re blown away by our depth of cricketing knowledge and originality.

It’s three years since we first tipped Adil Rashid and it’s the third year he’s been one to watch. It’s probably about time things started happening.

By ‘things,’ we of course mean England recognition. Spectral badger visitation is a ‘thing’ as well, but no-one wants that to happen. Venereal disease is a ‘thing’, although we’re not sure that just happens.

The thinking on Adil Rashid runs one of two ways. (1) He’s not ready yet or (2) he’s some kind of warlock leggie who’ll bend the world to his will.

We tend to fall somewhere in the middle. We don’t want England to wait forever to pick him, but any notion that he’s some sort of magic jigsaw piece in the England puzzle is pure wishful thinking.

That England jigsaw depicts a maudlin-looking man attempting to unblock a drain with his bare hands. No single jigsaw piece can make that image change into a snarling leopard’s face. At best the maudlin-looking man will end up with congealed soap on his hands, not shit.

Steve Davies, Worcestershire – one to watch in 2009

To be honest, we haven’t got much to add to what we said about Steven Davies last year. At least this year he’ll be in Division One.

This is the problem with news of earth-shattering importance – it makes writing about Worcestershire wicketkeepers less appealing.

Imagine you work in the accounts department for a trampoline manufacturer. One day there’s a trampoline testing crisis and you’re whisked out of the office as an emergency stand-in for the normal test guy who’s been apprehended by the police after not returning an item to the bagging area when using the automatic cashier system at Tesco.

After a day of fun-packed trampoline testing, the man returns to work and you’re sent back to the accounts department. Suddenly your spreadsheets seem grey and sterile. No matter how much conditional formatting you use, you can’t recreate the breathless elation of just jumping up and down for a living.

That’s how we feel writing about Steve Davies right now.

Mark Davies, Durham – cricketer to watch in 2009

A second Durham player and a second Durham seam bowler. Mark Davies is always one to watch, even if we erroneously overlooked him for the first time last year, thinking he wouldn’t get a game.

We’ve a faint suspicion that Davies is the kind of bowler who’d get a lot of wickets in home Tests and not so many overseas, but as long as he takes wickets at an average of about 12, he warrants closer inspection.

Not scarily close; not unless he’s playing chess against Rob Key. We can’t be in two places at once.

Liam Plunkett, Durham – cricketer to watch in 2009

Liam Plunkett’s partly representing Sajid Mahmood here as well (if it’s possible for one person to represent an entirely different person). It’s that whole ‘actually, those bowlers aren’t shite’ sentiment that we expressed a month or so ago.

Both bowlers are synonymous with Duncan Fletcher prematurity, but that word ‘prematurity’ is the key there. These pair were selected on promise and just because they didn’t meet those expectations then and there doesn’t mean all promise has been washed out of them, like a beer stain out of your second favourite T-shirt.

Maybe that promising stain was greasier than that. Maybe it’s never going to wash out. Maybe it’ll expand and take over the whole T-shirt until you can’t even see the stain any more, because the whole T-shirt’s the same greasy colour; a better colour. Now it’s your favourite T-shirt and the one that was previously your favourite has to be thrown away or dumped in county cricket in order to get some overs under its belt.

Liam Plunkett is still only 23. He’s about a month older than Stuart Broad. Even we weren’t fully on the scrap heap at that age.

Cricketers to watch in 2009

We’ve named cricketers to watch in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and we’ve not been 100 percent wrong about all of them.

Of the 2006 vintage, Graeme Swann, Matt Prior and Sajid Mahmood went on to play Tests and Mark Davies is knocking around again after a couple of years of injuries.

In 2007, Swann and Prior were joined by Stuart Broad who’s been a qualified success for England and Adil Rashid, who’s not a million miles away from a chance with the national side.

Of the 2008 lot, only Rashid and Steven Davies have done much of note, but we’re generally a couple of years out with our predictions.

New rule for 2009

This year we’re doing things ever-so-slightly different. We’ve brought in a rule and it’s a harsh one. The rule is no players from the County Championship second division.

This rule has come in for a reason. Everyone knows that the first division is a far better standard, but everyone also seems to conveniently forget this fact whenever they’re talking about potential England players. We’re referring to the newspapers as much as the everyday cricket supporter here.

Cricket writers and supporters are prone to citing statistics as ‘proof’ of a player’s worth, without giving any thought to context. There was lots of talk about Simon Jones averaging 18 with the ball last year, compared to a higher figure for whoever he was being compared against from the first division. It wasn’t comparing like with like.

The fact that there are two divisions matters and people have to start acknowledging that fact. It would be hypocritical if we didn’t practise what we preach, hence the rule.

If we can be bothered writing about them, the first of this year’s ones to watch will appear later today. However, we know better than to promise something when ‘being bothered’ enters into the equation.

What’s Steven Davies been up to?

He’s been playing in division two, which of course doesn’t count. That’s what Steven Davies has been doing.

He has had a good time recently though. Worcestershire are in the first division of the Pro40 league and played two matches last week.

Against Somerset, Davies hit a quarter of the balls he faced for four and finished with 92 off 60 balls. The match was tied. Against Gloucestershire he did even better, hitting 119 off 87 balls. Unfortunately, his keeping’s not getting rave reviews. We say ‘unfortunately’ but it isn’t really fortune, is it? It’s to do with concentration, co-ordination, athleticism and stamina.

At least Worcestershire should find themselves in the top division next year, so Davies, along with team mates Kabir Ali and Simon Jones, can give a truer indication of how good they are.