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Another young fast bowler goes down injured, what a surprise.
James Pattinson’s Ashes-ending back injury is the latest example of a problem which the high-performance geniuses at Cricket Australia can’t seem to work out.
You don’t need a degree in sport science to work out that our young bowlers are being asked to bowl too fast, and are being given the burdensome task of switching from T20 to Test bowling on a regular basis.
Obsession with fast bowling has been a bugbear for some time. Bowlers are judged based on their speed, rather than their overall quality.
It seems that bowlers like, say, Mitchell Starc, who are quick but erratic, are preferred to bowlers like Trent Copeland, who bowl accurately and economically.
Copeland must surely be the unluckiest cricketer in Australia. Not even Simon Katich has such strong credentials for a persecution complex.
In 44 First Class games (in both Australia and England), Copeland has taken 177 wickets at an average of 24.07, conceding runs at a miserly rate of 2.41 per over. At the same time, Mitchell Starc has played 36 First Class games, taken 109 wickets, averaging 31.51 each. His economy rate is more than a run an over worse, at 3.45.
This comparison with Starc is somewhat crude, but in Cricket, statistics are as telling as any other sport in the world. They say that Trent Copeland takes more wickets for less runs than Mitchell Starc. However, while Starc has been given ten Tests and a couple of chances to return after poor performances, Copeland has been given only one shot.
His Test career to date spans a measely three weeks; three Tests on the dormant wickets of Sri Lanka in September 2011. He only took six wickets in these Tests and conceded only 2.1 runs per over.
In this Ashes series, where Australia has twice allowed the game to drift from strong positions because of an inability to build pressure, a bowler who gives the batsmen so little would undoubtedly be useful. Yet in all the talk around the squad announcement and now, the replacement for Pattinson, Trent Copeland’s name has scarcely been heard, if it has been heard at all.
Given his obvious pedigree, the only possible reason for Copeland’s complete disappearance from the national discourse is the fact that he is not quick. Where Starc, Pattinson and others regularly nudge 150km/h, Copeland languishes in the 130s.
It seems Australian cricket is far more concerned with the speed at which the ball gets to the end of the pitch than what it does once it gets there. Indeed, it was infuriating last Australian summer when Channel 9 ran a competition for young fast bowlers to see who could bowl the quickest ball, with absolutely no regard for whether it landed on the pitch.
This approach is damaging. If results and form alone were considered, Copeland would surely be in the Australian side, or at least on its fringes. Instead, he is playing for Northamptonshire.
This is another example of the favourites and scapegoats mentality of the Australian set up which has isolated Katich. We seem intent on finding room for sugar hit players capable of bowling one unplayable ball every hundred or get one dashing century every twenty innings, rather than proven performers who are consistent in their output.
This is counter productive in the extreme. If Australia is to find its way again in Test cricket, we need to be picking Test players. Trent Copeland has shown that he has all the attributes necessary for Test cricket, he just needs to get a look-in.
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