John Young cricket
The first-class averages published after the round-robin phase of SuperSport Series matches shows that the four-day competition’s top wicket-taker was born in the West Indies. No surprise there. The surprise is that Paul Adams’s name doesn’t appear on the bowling list at all and there are 20 names on it.
Can it be that Adams with 94 Test wickets behind him isn’t good enough to be even among the best bowlers in domestic cricket? If so, can the selectors consider him for the five-Test series coming up against the West Indies?
Well, it depends what you want from statistics. As a learned judge once said: “Facts speak louder than statistics,” and the fact is that Western Province topped their pool by a country mile and the bowling of Adams was a major factor in that success.
Bowling lists are traditionally organised by lowest number of runs a wicket and on that basis Adams’s average of 29,33 puts him just outside the top 20. But every other way of looking at the season’s performances so far puts Adams up with the best.
Adams has taken 15 SuperSport wickets, which places him joint eighth on the most important list number of wickets taken. His economy rate of 2,84 runs to the over places him just 0,05 behind Kenny Benjamin of Easterns, who is the top wicket-taker with 27. Adams has also bowled the seventh-most overs and the sixth-most maidens (restricted to a comparison with the 20 names on the published list). Kosie Venter of Free State and Western Province’s orthodox left-armer Claude Henderson are the only two spinners to appear in the top 20, because of the 10-wicket quali-fication and the ranking based on average a wicket. A spinner’s table organised by number of wickets taken this season is provided at the end of this article.
So who is the premier spinner in the land? The top 20 has Henderson highly rated because of his low average.
Our list has Kosie Venter at number one because of wickets taken.
KwaZulu-Natal’s Gulam Bodi took 4/37 in the last game of the first round. Like Adams, he’s a left-arm wrist-spinner and his wickets cost nearly 30 runs each, but he has the best strike rate of the spinners to take 10 wickets. Bodi also scored a century opening against Eastern Province in the limited overs competition, so he’s one to watch for the A-tour later this year.
Griquas’ Craig Copeland is taking a wicket every nine overs (the same as Venter) but he’s been dropped, probably because he is conceding nearly four runs an over.
Robin Peterson of Eastern Province has a worse average and his wickets come at 12-over intervals. He’s still playing for his team, but then batsmen are scoring fewer than three runs an over against him. It helps that he’s a useful batsman.
The lesson for spinners seems to be that whatever else you do, don’t concede too many runs. Boland coach Omar Henry recently told a spinners’ symposium that one of the main reasons for the lack of quality spin bowling in South Africa was the way that captains treat spinners. Too often the emphasis is on containment.
If it’s containment you want, Clive Eksteen is still the master. Wickets have been few and far between for the Strikers captain, but then his stats weren’t helped by the rain that caused the Boland game to be abandoned without a ball being bowled.
In their first two games, Western Province’s two left-arm spinners took 19 wickets between them: Henderson 10, Adams nine. Since then, Western Province have opted for Adams’s marginally better strike-rate in the four-day game and the accuracy and economy of Henderson in limited overs. For their make-or-break Standard Bank game against Boland last week, both of Western Province’s spinners bowled their full nine-over spells: Adams took 2/38, Henderson 2/44.
Not so long ago Adams had figures of 1/29 in 10 overs in a limited overs final for South Africa, against Sri Lanka before the Test series got under way. The next-best figures were those of Nicky Boje, whose 10 overs cost 56 runs.
In using statistics it’s always worth remembering Andrew Lang’s stinging accusation: “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts for support rather than illumination.” So it’s with trepidation that I conclude that the way the first-class averages are organised should be changed.
The game of cricket requires 20 wickets to be taken for a team to win, so bowling statistics should be ordered in such a way that wicket-takers get more credit.
Benjamin is way ahead on 27 wickets, Dewald Pretorius and Barbados-born Mark Lavine both have 22, then there’s Garth Roe with 21. Victor Mpitsang and Steve Elworthy are on 19 wickets.
Alan Dawson, Justin Kemp and Charl Langeveldt share fifth position with 18 wickets, followed by West Indian Vasbert Drakes (17), Kosie Venter (16) and David Townsend and Adams on 15. Looked at this way, we have to say that Adams is not only among the best bowlers this season, he’s among the very best.
When selection convenor Rushdi Magiet reads out the players to travel to the Caribbean, expect to hear the name of Paul Adams.
Wickets; Strike rate; Economy rate; Average a wicket: K Venter (FS): 16; 54,00; 2,90; 26,00
P Adams (WP): 15; 62,00; 2,84; 29,33
R Peterson (EP): 14; 73,71; 2,78; 34,21
C Henderson (WP): 10; 64,80; 2,24; 24,20
G Bodi (KZN): 10; 52,20; 3,44; 29,90
C Copeland (GW): 9; 54,00; 3,71; 33,44
C Eksteen (GP): 7; 120,00; 2,18; 43,70
M Strydom (NW): 6; 48,00; 2,64; 21,14