The Aussies are Crazy for Krejza

Roar Guru

By David Wiseman, 8 Nov 2008 David Wiseman is a Roar Guru

Tagged:: Cameron White, Jason Krejza, Monty Panesar, Sachin Tendulkar

Regardless of what he does in the rest of his career, the Test debut of Jason Krejza will never be forgotten. 8/215 from 43.5 overs and just one maiden was an incredible start.

He bowled unchanged on Day Two and took all five Indians wickets to fall. It makes you wonder why he wasn’t in the side to start off with.

And why Cameron White was.

There are parallels with what England did on its 2006/07 tour of Australia.

Ashley Giles was selected for the first two Tests, ahead of Monty Panesar, and played horribly. His bowling was average and he dropped a vital catch at Adelaide. With nothing to lose, Panesar was selected for the Third Test at Perth, and took five wickets in the first innings and eight for the match.

This return was staggering after Giles had only managed three wickets in two Tests.

The reasons why Panesar and Krejza weren’t initially selected would later be proved to be sheer lunacy. It’s all about taking wickets and Krejza could have had nine had Sachin Tendulkar not been dropped from his bowling – twice.

If that would have happened, Krejza would have had the most wickets in an innings on debut in the history of the game. Given the amount of runs he went for, it sounds a bit strange to say ‘best’ figures.

Krejza joins Albert Trott, Bob Massie, Lance Klusener, Alf Valentine and Narendra Hirwani in taking eight wickets on debut and, of course, Massie and Hirwani both repeated the effort in the second innings. The ironic thing with most of these guys is that the debut wasn’t consistent with the rest of their career.

None of Trott, Massie and Hirwani would play over 20 Tests and Valentine is the only one in the quintet to take over 100 wickets.

All this and Krejza’s 8/215 being the most expensive bowling figures on debut only reinforces once again how cricket is such a funny game.

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The Crowd Says (2) | Page 1 of Comments

Spiro Zavos said | November 8th 2008 @ 10:49am | Report comment

I wrote a comment that Jason Krezja seemed to me to be a club bowler when he had taken his first three wickets. Then he had a spell in which he took 5 for 18, and became the second Australian bowler to take 8 wickets in an innings on debut, although his figures were nowhere near as good as those of Bob Massie.
On the list of the top ten Australian bowling debuts are two other off-spinners, Ian Johnson and Peter Taylor, who both took 6 wickets on debut. Johnson was a bit of a thrower, even back in 1946!, and a Melbourne establishment man, the reason why he was preferred as captain of Australia, I believe, to Keith Miller and Arthur Morris.
Peter Taylor was the famous Peter Who? selection when the selectors seemed to mistake his name for Mark Taylor. Australia went into the Ashes Test without an opener but Taylor P bowled splendidly to make a very good debut.
The issue is whether such a spectacular debut like Krezja’s indicates that the search for the next great Australian spinner is over.
My guess is that it is not. I still think that Kreja is more a Peter Taylor, Ashley Mallett, Ian Johnson type of off-spinner, serviceable but not a match-winner very often, than a Murali, Jim Laker, Hugh Tayfield or a Lance Gibbs.
But time will tell. For the near future, the selectors who have been poor in my view in unearthing talent will have to play him against New Zealand later this month, and then take it from there.

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Greg Russell said | November 11th 2008 @ 12:47pm | Report comment

One of my favorite phrases in German is “In nachhinein ist man immer schlauer”. This translates as “In hindsight one is always wiser”. It’s easy to say in hindsight that Krejza should have been selected earlier, but the truth is that there is absolutely nothing about his first-class record to suggest he should have been selected at all: no success for NSW, even though he got to bowl on the most spin-friendly pitch in Australia; overall first-class record of 43 wickets in 24 matches at 50.09 before this match; never a 5-wicket haul before this innings; no impact for Aust A recently in India; hammered from pillar to post – something like 0/200 off 30 overs – by the Indian reserves in the warm-up match of this tour.

My theory is that Krejza was only ever selected for this tour for net practice, so as to give the Australian batsmen practice against a tall off-spinner (replicating you know who). On the field the spin was to be provided by McGain, so when he dropped out the selectors brought in whom they considered to be the next best leg-spinner (having already made up their mind, on the evidence of last summer, that the chinamen style, as bowled by Casson, does not trouble the Indian right-handers).

Obviously Krejza made some progress in the nets, and then the series got to the stage where (1) it was clear that White was not going to bowl Australia to victory, and (2) Australia had to notch a victory. At this point there was no choice but to choose Krejza, because the worst that could happen was for him to be as ineffective as all the other bowlers had been.

It’s history now that a miracle happened for Krejza, in part because he is better than everyone realised, and in equal part because the Indians treated him with no respect. It has always mystified me that teams like India and Australia feel it necessary to try to hit a poor bowler out of the attack. I mean, if the guy is a poor bowler, then you should just let him serve up bad balls, and there is no need to try to his good balls out of the park. But for whatever reason India pursued this policy with Krejza, he took some wickets, got his confidence up, took more wickets, and …

And where are we now? Is the real Krejza the bowler of this match, who obviously should play regularly for Australia, or is he the bowler who averages less than 1 wicket per innings at an average of nearly 50 in Sheffield Shield cricket?

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