Craig Kieswetter has finally found his vocation
Forget Monty Panesar. He’s drops catches and he can’t bat. Forget Adil Rashid. His can’t even get in the Yorkshire side. Step forward England’s new great spin bowling hope, Craig Kieswetter.
During the final day of Somerset’s county championship game against Worcestershire yesterday, Jos Buttler was suddenly handed the wicket keeping gloves. The capacity crowd of six ducks went wild. What were Somerset thinking – had their skipper Alfonso Thomas lost the plot? Was their regular keeper injured? Nope, it was a tactical masterstroke of ingenious proportions.
Rather than heading for the pavilion for some much needed R and R, Kieswetter calmly marked out his run, tossed the ball in the air a few times, blew warm air onto his fingers, then blew away the Worcestershire middle order with a devastating spell of world class off spin.
He claimed two victims – neither of whom are mugs with the bat – in the space of three overs. Matt Pardoe and Gareth Andrew simply had no answer to his mesmerising flight and guile. His match figures were 3-0-3-2. Wow.
As a result, Kieswetter now has the best career bowling average in the country. He takes his wickets at a cost of exactly 1.5 runs and guarantees a wicket every nine balls. Name somebody with a record like that? Not even Shane Warne or Bishen Bedi can boast such incredible statistics.
What’s more, Kieswetter would give England the option of fielding three wicket-keepers – something they’ve been aspiring to do for approximately a decade. Why settle for picking Geraint Jones and Matt Prior in the same ODI team (or more recently Matt Prior and Jonny Bairstow in the same test team) when you can field the electrifying triumvirate of Prior, Bairstow and Kieswetter?
So come on Miller and the rest of the England selection panel. Get Kieswetter into the squad for the third test. You know it makes sense; well, more sense than refusing to let your best batsman play T20 cricket because he doesn’t want to play seven hundred meaningless ODIs per year anyway.
James Morgan
