3 minute read
A lot has been made about the state of the wickets in the UK and how they will play over the course of the World Cup that begins at the end of May.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, it seems a dead certainty that the wickets will actually suit spin instead of fast bowling, which will have a few teams unsure of how to approach games.
The road to the semifinals of the World Cup is a long one that will see every team play nine round-robin matches before the best teams in the table progress to the last four, which basically means there will be lots of time to get it right before it really matters. For once it appears that the spotlight is off the Australian fast bowlers in the build-up to the World Cup, with the spinners taking centre stage.
All of the talk currently revolves around whether Nathan Lyon should start ahead of Adam Zampa, or even if they should both start in the UK, as Australian coach Justin Langer has already hinted at. Very few would have ever believed they would live to see the day where two spinners were considered the way to go under overcast conditions in England but fortunately for both Lyon and Zampa, it looks like they will have a very evenly shared workload over the summer in the UK.
Thinking outside the box has its merits and it looks more and more likely that actually, playing two spinners is far from revolutionary thinking and really more of a necessity than anything else. The problem with letting it dominate the narrative is that it may take the responsibility off the fast bowlers at the top of the innings which could be fatal to Australia's World Cup chances.
Naturally, all of the Aussie quicks will want to deliver regardless of anyone saying the wickets will most likely be taken by the slower bowlers, but it should be stressed to the likes of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Nathan Coulter-Nile that the onus is still on them to deliver at the top. Taking advantage of the fielding restrictions in the first Powerplay is key to a team's chances of setting a competitive score or chasing down a tough one, this obviously leads to the more aggressive batsmen taking the game to the bowlers by clearing the infield as much as possible.
It goes without saying that this offers a glorious chance to the fast bowlers taking the new white ball to strike up front and make some early headway. Not doing enough damage at the top of the inning means any spinner coming on to bowl the bulk of the overs during the middle of the innings, will have less chance of succeeding given the opposition don’t have to take any undue risks as they are already ahead of the run rate.
The margin for error will be a lot less now that the wickets will play into the hands of the spin bowlers but that doesn't mean there won’t be anything for the big quicks to work with, this is England we are talking about after all.
Every successful World Cup-winning Australian team has had the benefit of extreme pace doing the business early on, which has enabled the likes of Shane Warne and Brad Hogg to dictate the pace of the game. As it stands, it's going to be a struggle for Australia in any case as their 4/1 cricket betting odds of retaining the World Cup suggest, but if they have any sort of failure in the quick bowling department, it could be over before it ever began.
With that said and on a positive note, Mitchell Starc was recently saying that World Cup is the pinnacle of the ODI game, which suggests the current Australian fast bowling society are well up for the challenge ahead.
Of course, the pitches won’t provide as much assistance as they did during Australia's 1999 World Cup triumph in the UK, where Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie ran through top orders with the greatest of ease, but they will offer a window of opportunity at the start of an innings which if teams utilize correctly, could determine who wins the World Cup.