The general feeling about Adil Rashid is that maybe everyone should just let him play a bit of cricket.

England helped his development no end last season by keeping him out of the majority of Yorkshire’s matches so that he could not play for them instead. Occasionally they let him bowl a single over before the captain, in keeping with English attitudes to leg-spinners, took him off and brought on someone to bowl flat, non-spinning finger-spin instead. Once in a while, he bowled well, at which point they dropped him.

Adil Rashid hit 387 runs at 77.40 last season, you know. Let him bat more. Let him bowl more.

Tags: Adil Rashid, Ones to watch by King Cricket
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England are going to have to watch this. It’s not deliberate, but if you had to design some tactics to erode a player’s confidence, what they’re doing to Adil Rashid might be what you’d come up with.

In the summer, Rashid started the one-day series against Australia well and promptly got dropped. He got one over in the second Twenty20 match against South Africa, got carted and from then Alastair Cook opted for Joe Denly ahead of him. Yesterday, he got three overs, got a little bit of welly and was then demoted below Jonathan Trott in the bowling hierarchy.

This is what the English do with leg spinners. If you’re a seam bowler and you go for a few runs, you quite often get a chance to make amends with a few more overs – because at least you’re shit in a predictable way. If you’re a leg spinner, there are no second chances.

Even Shane Warne said that his only aim in his first over was just to stay on. Leg spin bowling isn’t something that you can switch on and switch off. It’s not a light switch or your brain when you’re at work.

Tags: Adil Rashid, England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s by King Cricket
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Are they going to win a game with the bat? Are they going to win a game with the ball?

• Luke Wright
• Dimitri Mascarenhas
• Tim Bresnan
• Adil Rashid

There’s room for players who chip in, rather than deciding matches on their own, but there seem to be altogether too many of them in England’s side. Dimitri Mascarenhas, for example, is a great batsman when you’ve got five overs to go, but he’s unlikely to pass 50 too often and he’s not going to run through a side with his bowling.

The other three are slightly different, in that they’re younger and are investments for the future to some degree. But there’s only so much international experience to invest. You can’t field all three of them, because none seem likely to win you a game.

At the minute, they’re 32 runs and 1-52 players.

Tags: Adil Rashid, Dimitri Mascarenhas, England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Luke Wright, Tim Bresnan by King Cricket
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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.

Tags: Adil Rashid, England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Ones to watch by King Cricket
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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.

Tags: Adil Rashid, County cricket news | County Championship, one-day and T20, Ones to watch by King Cricket
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Was it really as far back as August 2006 that we tipped Adil Rashid? Tipped him to be a great player, that is – we didn’t incline him away from the perpendicular or anything. He was one to watch last year as well and justified his inclusion.

There are so many reasons why Adil Rashid should play for England and we don’t really see the point in waiting much longer. Just think, England could realistically field five bowlers and still have a lower order that went Flintoff, Rashid, Broad, Sidebottom, Panesar. That’d make the five-down to all out procession a tad more laboured.

Two all-rounders. Two spinners. A leg-spinner!

We’re coming out in a sweat. And a rash, but that’s unrelated.

Some county players who aren’t quite so worth watching – but you still have to.

Tags: Adil Rashid, County cricket news | County Championship, one-day and T20, Ones to watch by King Cricket
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With England fans understandably looking beyond the imminent one-day drubbing at the hands of India, the search for a second spinner for the forthcoming tour of Sri Lanka is truly on.

What better time for Adil Rashid to hit his maiden first-class hundred against Worcestershire.

The dominant view at present is that Adil Rashid should be held-back and given more time to prepare for international cricket. This view is usually expressed while simultaneously wondering who the hell else is up to the job.

Our gut instinct says that holding him back is right. However, why would you listen to your gastrointestinal tract? Since when has it been an authority on cricket? Since never, that’s when.

If Adil Rashid can both bat and bowl better than every other spinner (okay, Gary Keedy’s probably a better spinner) then what’s the point in not picking him? What are you protecting him from? International experience?

As a second spinner, he’s hardly likely to miss much county cricket next summer, like James Anderson and Liam Plunkett have in the past. For 90 percent of the time, there’s no such thing as a second English spinner. It’s not a permanent position.

If India can pick Piyush Chawla at 17, why can’t England pick Adil Rashid at 19? He won’t break, you know.

Tags: Adil Rashid, County cricket news | County Championship, one-day and T20, England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s by King Cricket
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