The mother of re-invention

Often it is said that necessity is the progenitor of invention. Equally, it could be said to be the mother of re-invention. When medium-fast bowler James Franklin debuted for New Zealand in January, 2001, few would have predicted that he would rise to occupy No.5 or 6 in New Zealand’s batting line-up. Indeed, the idea that some New Zealanders would be calling for his retention in the national contract system ten years later due to his batting capabilities would have been beyond belief. However, it merely proves another old adage: with consistent and creative practice, one’s skill level can markedly improve, even if it appears that one has no skill what-so-ever.

This was surely the case with the batting of the metronomic maestro, Glenn McGrath. When McGrath donned a baggygreen cap for the first of his 124 Test matches, his batting style was best described as that of a total ferret. However, with time, application and more than a bit of help and encouragement, he re-invented himself as merely a genuine bunny. Or maybe even a No.10, a position McGrath briefly occupied above legspinning team-mate Stuart MacGill. The difference between McGrath’s willow-wielding capabilities at the end of his long career is in stark contrast to its beginning. The span of his first 18 completed Test innings - 1993-1996 - yielded just 38 runs for an average of 2.11, including ten ducks. The span of his final 18 completed Test innings brought, however, a massive 191 runs at an average of 10.61 from mid-2004 to 2007. This included a run of four unbeaten innings, yielding a combined 36 runs, and his only international half-century (61 against New Zealand in Brisbane in 2004). McGrath was still making ducks, almost as many as he did at the beginning, but in between these he was doing something extraordinary; he was actually scoring in some sort of consistent fashion.

The rise of McGrath’s batting, however, was nothing compared to that of slow-left armer, Wilfred Rhodes. Rhodes began his long county career with Yorkshire in 1898, holding up the order at No.11. One year later, he was batting at 10 or 11 for England. By 1909, Rhodes however, was opening the batting with Sir Jack Hobbs. Admittedly, he had shown some aptitude down the order. Assisted by a number of not outs, his first eleven innings (batting at 10 and 11) saw him with a slightly higher average than when he completed his Test career. However, it must be said that a different price may be placed on openers’ runs as opposed to cameos by tail-end-Charlies, no matter how valuable they may be in the short-term scheme of things. Rhodes opened the batting with patience and tenacity. Although only scoring two Test centuries, he made a further 56 hundreds in other first-class matches, proving to be a genuine allrounder and easily one of the best that England has seen.

While Rhodes started as a spinner and developed his batting, Michael Bevan’s Test career for Australia went the other way. Long touted as a long-form batting prospect, Bevan had built a one-day international career on his sublime finishing skills. He failed, however, to fully transfer this to the Test arena. He did, however, take ten wickets in a match, bowling left-arm chinamen against the West Indies in Adelaide in 1997. Unlike Rhodes’, though, Bevan’s re-invention was not entirely to his satisfaction and his Test career unfortunately fizzled out.

The career of Imran Khan, by contrast, kept burning brightly. He started as a genuine fast bowler who could certainly bat. Yet, his batting average from his first 22 Tests was just 23.75 (760 runs in all), hardly a recipe for greatness. The haul from his last 22 tests was a far healthier 1218 runs at an average of 58. An ageing body was partly responsible for this change of emphasis, as was the emergence of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis as an opening bowling pair. In Abdul Qadir and Mushtaq Ahmed, Pakistan possessed a couple of fine spinners as well, so Imran’s bowling was no longer indispensible.

This, perhaps, illustrates one rule of cricketing re-invention that circumstances make possible and, therefore it follows, at times, they might also render it impossible. To believe success is impossible, however, is to never truly attempt it. Even a prime candidate for the greatest ferret of all time, New Zealand’s one-and-only Chris Martin, is apparently improving what appeared to be a non-existent batting ability. Martin began his Test batting career with 7, an unbeaten 5 and seven ducks in a row split by a nought not out. An average of 2.2 after an initial 10 completed innings, however, is comparatively dwarfed by Martin’s return of 33 runs (at an average of 3.3) from his last few short sojourns to the crease.

Perhaps even more unlikely is Malaysian-born Somerset player Arul Suppiah’s newly-achieved world record for T20 bowling. Previously a right-hand batsman who tweaked the occasional left-arm orthodox deliveries, Suppiah can now boast a best bowling of six wickets for five runs against Glamorgan. His victims included former Test representatives in Robert Croft and Simon Jones. Admittedly, neither of these two can be regarded as front-line batsmen, but such trifling matters are rarely included in the record books. Long may cricketing re-invention continue!