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For more than seven years, Australian cricket has been sick. Many ill-advised selections have been made amidst the dizzying effects of WSS (Warne Separation Syndrome).
The O’Connell Cricketing Dictionary defines WSS as such: “The clamour to prematurely unearth a match-winning wrist spinner as a means of quelling bouts of yearning for a fallen legend.”
Cameron White, Beau Casson, Bryce McGain and Fawad Ahmed have all been vaulted into Australian sides without justification as a result of WSS.
White, Casson and McGain collectively played just six Tests, snaring eight wickets at 78.
Their failures were no surprise to the majority of cricket followers.
White was never a frontline spinner and after bizarrely being asked to fill such a role in the Test side, and flopping, he turned away from bowling almost altogether at State level.
Casson was a specialist slow bowler with a better pedigree but also was rushed into a baggy green based on nothing more than the fact he wasn’t a finger spinner.
Merely three years later, at the age of 28, Casson had retired from all cricket following a wild descent which took him from the Test side to the Sheffield Shield to Darwin grade cricket.
Then along came McGain, the most confounding selection of all, a blinding example of WSS at work.
Prompted by a theory that South Africans were puzzled by leg spin, McGain was offered a Test debut in Cape Town just days before his 37th birthday.
In one of the most comical performances in recent Test history, McGain was treated like an eighth grade bowler en route to figures of 0-149 from 18 overs.
The shock and pain attached to the McGain incident seemed to cure Australian cricket of WSS, in a manner akin to scaring someone free of the hiccups.
Some residual effects remained such as the insistence that dependable finger spinners not simply play their role within a successful Test attack but rather break free and take ten-fors.
However, for a while, the symptoms largely evaporated.
Then came a Pakistani refugee who prompted a startling outbreak of WSS which tore through the cricketing community.
This time its effects were not limited to sporting circles but infected the very halls of Federal Government.
Soon, laws were being amended as the syndrome tightened its grip.
That refugee, Fawad Ahmed, then earned an ODI cap after being described by Australian chairman of selectors John Inverarity as a “consistent wicket-taker on the (recent) Australia A tour of Zimbabwe and South Africa.”
A consistent wicket-taker? Hmm…Ahmed had returned 2-274 for in the 50-over matches on that tour of Africa.
He had a soft ODI debut against Scotland before getting a proper test in two matches against what was still a second-string England ODI side.
Ahmed promptly returned 2-106 in those games, conceding 7.6 runs per over, and was soon flung back into obscurity.
Six months on from that failed experiment, the 32-year-old cannot even get a game for Victoria.
The reason? The emergence of the latest leg spinning golden boy, James Muirhead.
The cherubic 20-year-old Victorian was a complete unknown just two months ago.
Then, after taking 1-41 combined over three Big Bash League matches, he was shovelled into the national T20 side to play England.
Muirhead impressed in those three matches with his composure and hard-spun deliveries.
This alone was enough to spark another epidemic of WWS.
Suddenly, he was being suggested as a possible contender for the Test side, with some excitable cricket followers claiming he would soon have incumbent Test spinner Nathan Lyon nervously peering over his shoulder.
Muirhead was already being earmarked for next year’s Ashes series according to a report by Fairfax cricket correspondent Chloe Saltau.
The air was quickly let out of that balloon last week when Muirhead returned to Victoria and was taken apart in the Sheffield Shield match against NSW, returning 0-61 from seven overs.
NSW youngsters Kurtis Patterson and Scott Henry are reasonable batsmen.
But neither is close to the standard of an international cricketer.
Yet they carted Muirhead all over the SCG.
The young tweaker’s struggles were so pronounced that, despite being picked as a frontline bowler, his skipper Matthew Wade risked him only for seven overs in New South Wales’ lengthy innings spanning 121 overs.
His teammate White, an occasional leg spinner these days, had no such trouble, sending down eight economical overs which conceded just 20 runs.
If Muirhead is being comprehensively outbowled by a part-time wrist spinner, it is fair to assume his development is in its infancy.
Leg spin is the most complex art in cricket.
I am intimately aware of this.
I myself toiled away in grade cricket as a teenage leg spinner before being devoured by its eccentricities and later taking up the less complicated method of delivering the ball off a long run.
Leg spin has become even more devilishly difficult in this era of shortened boundaries and ballistic bats.
Moreso than any other skill within cricket it takes astounding levels of repetition in practice coupled with natural talent to result in anything approaching consistent performances at first-class level.
Granted, Shane Warne was only 22-years-old when he played his first Test.
But Warne is the very definition of a freak.
He is one of the five greatest Test cricketers in history.
It is madness to use Warne as the benchmark for future wrist spinners.
Ideally, a leg break bowler should have played 40 to 50 first-class games, at a minimum, before being lobbed into the caustic pits of Test cricket.
Maybe, just maybe, we should allow Muirhead to become a solid Shield player before we start forecasting Test appearances.
But, then again, such rationality is not possible when WWS takes over.