Micromax 2010 Asia Cup: Testing waters and making comebacks

This seems to be the theme for nearly every team participating in what is being billed as the battle for supremacy in Asian cricket. For starters, both India and Pakistan have come to this edition of the Asia Cup with players who are finding their feet in international cricket after a brief spell of being rested or dropped, for various reasons. While Pakistan aims to fight its most usual nemesis, i.e. the threat of mutiny in its ranks, India is trying to establish what could be their probable line-up for the forthcoming World Cup. Sri Lanka too are looking beyond the usual players like Jayasuriya who have delivered in the past and the onus could well be on the likes of Malinga, Herath and Angelo Mathews to stake claims not just as potential match-winners but the core of the team that is going to try and bring back the world cup to Sri Lanka. While the persistence with Muralitharan at this juncture seems a bits surprising, it is not secret that Lankans are trying to find a permanent solution to their number five, six and seven slots that seem to have been changed with unwanted regularity in the recent past.

Swann: Purposeful Without Hogging Limelight

He was regarded as an off-spinner who never really did spin the ball but to silence all this critics, Graeme Swann of England has risen to be a very effective ‘spin’ bowler. Some analysts might comment that the word ‘slow’ should be used instead of ‘spin’ but considering the negligible amount of any worthwhile spin that is extracted by spinners in contemporary cricket, such differentiation is uncalled for. Swann is a different type of bowler, using more drift in the air than spin off the pitch. This makes him very different from the likes of Mendis or Harbhajan Singh who are essentially finger spinners. Muralitharan’s name should not be used here because he is in a category of his own.
However, if all the other spinners are compared at the moment, Swann seems to be the most quiet and unassuming of the achievers with little being said about him in the media and little or no on-field antics — a quiet, consistent performer. Swann has already totalled more than 52 wickets in just 13 test matches. You would need to remember that he has done so without playing on sub-continental wickets. He has always come in when the side wanted to contain runs rather than get wickets and surprisingly, Swann has managed to do both with little fuss. I would personally rank Swann a bit ahead of Bhajji, simply because he has been taking wickets consistently and his bowling is improving with nearly every outing. His immediate competitor seems to be Saeed Ajmal of Pakistan who is a more traditional off-spinner, keeping it slower in the air, and giving the ball a chance to rip-off the surface of the pitch. Further, Swann has the amazing ability to bowl decently with newish balls too. His arm-ball and the drifter that turns into a low-yorker like delivery haven’t been decoded by many batsmen and his recent fiver against the South Africa is testament to his growing stature.