Who'd be a fast bowler?
Cricket is in the midst of a bowling crisis, writes Richard Lord in The Wall Street Journal
Liam Brickhill
25-Feb-2013
Cricket is in the midst of a bowling crisis, writes Richard Lord in The Wall Street Journal. Only England, and arguably South Africa, bowl as well as they bat, he suggests, a variety of factors - from the increasingly packed international schedule, to the rise of Twenty20 cricket, to the surfeit of lifeless pitches around the world - having come together to thin the ranks of quality seam bowlers, particularly in Tests.
There's a strong and understandable financial aspect to this. Professional cricket is a short career, for many there are limited prospects afterwards, and as a fast bowler, that entire career could end at any moment. So it's natural to follow the money, particularly when it's kinder on that fragile body. This is often seen as somehow mercenary and vaguely unsporting; in other words, the exact behavior that would be commended as laudable ambition in most careers gets condemned as disloyalty in sportsmen.
Liam Brickhill is a freelance journalist based in Cape Town