Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland says Shane Warne is “a freak” and it’s unfair to use him as a benchmark to measure other spin bowlers.
Debate over Australia’s depleted spinning stocks has intensified with the current crop of slow bowlers struggling to take wickets in the series in India.
In the first two Tests, Cameron White took four wickets at an everage of 51, with back-up Michael Clarke picked up two victims at 56 runs apiece.
Sutherland said CA was doing all it could to find and advance new talent.
“It’s an important aspect of the game spin bowling and it’s something that we, through our various expert coaches, are doing quite a lot to develop,” Sutherland said today.
“Shane Warne is a freak. Shane Warne is probably the greatest spin bowler ever and unfortunately everyone seeks to benchmark any other spin bowler against Shane Warne and that is just not fair.
“At the same time, particularly when we tour overseas, having a quality spin bowler in our lineup is very important and we are conscious of that, the selectors are conscious of that.
“The various programs we have across the country and states and everywhere else, will continue to try and find a way to unearth and give the support necessary for a player to come through.”
Meanwhile, Sutherland said he was concerned about comments on the size of the second Test crowd in Mohali that saw Sachin Tendulkar become the biggest Test run scorer in history earlier this month.
“My concern with the comments on the crowd is that I would just ask what people were comparing that to,” Sutherland said.
“If you are comparing that to a Twenty20 IPL match, it’s a completely different concept.
“The Mohali Test started on a Friday and it was a day match in a relatively small Indian city.
“For anyone to expect a full house for that game is beyond me to understand.
“I didn’t see a major negative in the crowd. We always want to see bigger crowds, but Test cricket is a very different game, it’s played during the day, it’s played on week days and the comparison with one-day cricket or Twenty20 cricket I think is just not appropriate.”
Sutherland said ticket sales for this summer’s international fixtures involving Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were good.
“Things are shaping well for us. We see really strong tickets sales for the Test matches, particularly the early days of the Tests and the one-day series, with the separate formats, head-to-head, tickets sales are strong,” he said
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