Peter Siddle

Why Peter Siddle doesn’t need the unplayable delivery

Pre-Ashes analysis tends to treat the players as if they’re machines. If it swings, Jimmy Anderson will be great; if it doesn’t, he’s screwed. Alastair Cook has a technical weakness. He’ll score no runs.

But cricket doesn’t work like that. For one thing, pretty much everybody’s shitting themself of the first morning of the first Ashes Test and decision-making and technique are all over the place.

Cricketers are rarely at their best or their worst. They’re almost always somewhere in between and different players have different extremes.

For example, if we say that a player’s effectiveness can be rated from 0-100, Jimmy Anderson and Mitchell Johnson might operate within a range that is 40-100. Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath probably delivered 80-100. Ajit Agarkar gives you about 40-60.

Peter Siddle pretty much gives you 80, every day, every ball. Maybe on a bad day, he might slip down to about 78 and on a hat trick day, he might get up around 81, but he’s not someone who’s going to bowl unplayable 94mph swinging, seaming deliveries.

Nor will he bowl any shod.

The thing is, Peter Siddle is also up against players who have their own performance range. Ian Bell played amazingly well on day one of the first Test and we wouldn’t have put much money on Siddle getting him out, but that’s not what Siddle’s there for.

If a batsman slips below a performance level of 80 at any point in his innings, Peter Siddle WILL GET HIM OUT.

You don’t have to be superhuman to succeed in Test cricket, you just have to be better than your opponent at any given moment. Peter Siddle is better than most batsmen for at least some of the time. That’s all you need.

Peter Siddle takes an Ashes hat trick at the Gabba

With his Ming the Merciless collar and his mercilessly minging face, Peter Siddle barrelled in and dismissed Alastair Cook, Matt Prior and Stuart Broad in successive balls.

We got through the experience by pretending it was a cartoon. Siddle looks like a cartoon character somehow.

Peter Siddle runs in all day

This seems to be Peter Siddle’s greatest strength in the eyes of his team mates. When asked about their bowling attack, Australian players refer to Johnson’s speed, Hilfenhaus’s swing, Clark’s control and Siddle’s ability to run in all day.

You don’t want bowlers to run in all day. You want them to take enough wickets that your team can have a bat.

You also want your bowlers to release the ball immediately after running in, preferably propelling it somewhere towards the stumps. Merely running in isn’t even half the job. The batting equivalent would be ‘he holds the bat in his hands’.

Australia’s bowlers aren’t flattered by comparisons with the past

Largely because they’re a bit toss. 425 ain’t good enough and England haven’t knackered out Australia’s four bowlers as much as they should have done.

Mitchell Johnson

Mitchell Johnson or James Anderson? Easy.

Johnson has promised a lot, but unless you love non-bouncing wides, he hasn’t really delivered. We love non-bouncing wides from ‘once in a generation’ Australian opening bowlers, so we’re suddenly a massive Mitchell Johnson fan.

Ben Hilfenhaus

When the ball swings, Ben Hilfenhaus looks a handy bowler, otherwise he’s a bit innocuous. This makes him an Australian James Anderson, only without the inswinger or the reverse outswinger, or the reverse inswinger.

He’s basically a quarter as good as Jimmy.

Peter Siddle

Peter Siddle’s the opposite of Mitchell Johnson. Where Johnson seems to get wickets while bowling dross, Siddle bowls well and gets nowt for it. He generally acts like a dick, which is what you want from Australian cricketers, so paradoxically, we find ourself liking him.

Nathan Hauritz

When you’re describing an Australian spinner as ‘worthy’, you know you want pitches that offer a bit of turn.

We’ve gone easy on Mitchell Johnson in this post. We didn’t over at The Wisden Cricketer.

Peter Siddle’s bowling speed

Arch woodchopper cum fourth choice Australian quick, Peter Siddle, can whang the ball at speeds up to about 150kph, which is about 93mph in old money and officially makes him a fast bowler on the King Cricket scale.

In light of this, we now want to see all young English quick bowlers spending their time chopping wood rather than playing on Xbox 360s or ‘conditioning’ themselves. If you spend all your time in the gym, that’s what you’re fit for – lifting things up and putting them down again inside a gym.

Bowl some balls and chop some wood, you fin-haired jessies.

Peter Siddle to make his Test debut

Stuart Clark’s injured, so arch woodchopper, Peter Siddle, looks set to make his Test debut for Australia in the second Test against India at Mohali.

Ricky Ponting said:

“He’s a no-nonsense sort of guy and no-nonsense sort of bowler who will run in and deliver what you want him to deliver.”

Which is, presumably, the ball.

Go Peter Siddle! Deliver the correct object in no-nonsense fashion!

Peter Siddle’s UNBELIEVABLE skill

Everyone’s got a skill. Everyone’s got one thing that they’re inexplicably good at.

For many people it’s something useful, like having the ability to retain facts. Other people have more specific abilities, like being good at table tennis without every really having played before. Our skill is drinking litres and litres of water if we do anything remotely physical. We can’t actually carry enough if we’re climbing a hill or something.

Australia’s new fast bowler, Peter Siddle, has a skill. Peter Siddle’s skill is that he’s really, really good at chopping wood.

According to Cricinfo, he was so good at chopping wood that he did it competitively. “District under-age woodchopping titles came his way in his early teenage years.”

Under-age woodchopping titles, not ‘youth woodchopping titles’.

That’s quite apart from the most obvious question, which is: woodchopping titles?