I can sort of see why. He looks a lot worse than he is, because he has poorly-dyed hair, uses no front arm and barely gets the ball to turn ever. And the same with the bat, where he just hangs around on the back foot and soft-hands everything to fine leg or third man.
It comes from the fact that they had a damn good team in 1996/97/98 and 2001/02 and 2005/06 as well - but still went to pieces. OK, so no-one should automatically presume based on that that they'll do such a thing a fourth time but it's very, very debateable whether this team is better than that of 2005/06 and there's no way on Earth it's as good as those of 1996/97/98 or 2001/02. Of course Australia are less good now than they were in any of those series but if SA go to pieces again they could easily win very handsomely indeed.
Yeah - it's cosmetics getting in the way of judgement of ability. The awful front-arm and batting technique and the fact he's hardly the most photogenic you'll see makes far more impact on some people than it should.
That's what you said before the series against England, though. Compared to the previous teams, this side is excellent at getting the job done. Also, Australia are as weak as they've been in quite a while.
Yeah i'd agree with that. He also actually bowled very well in the 4th innings at the Oval in the test just passed, but for little reward and in a dead rubber so noone took much notice. But at least it proved he can turn the ball a little. And he does have a pretty good arm ball for those rare occasions where he gets turn.
Indeed, and the England Test series victory is one step in the right direction. Whether they can repeat the trick against Australia, we wait to see. Holding catches would make a massive difference, for starters.
Their catching was excellent in England, particularly in the slips. You don't get a much better cordon than Smith-Kallis-de Villiers. So the omens there are good too.
**** he got it to turn in Pakistan? I take back EVERYTHING I just said.
Can't believe i'm defending him now, i gave him a good mocking over the summer. But when i did it my tongue was firmly in my cheek.
Not entirely sure what you mean by this - I presume there's a heavy dose of sarcasm there. The point is that he did get it to turn on the 2 pitches he played on in Pakistan but barely 6 months later was failing to do on perhaps an even more helpful one at Green Park, Kanpur. This suggests some form of deterioration.
Well - as I've said, he does turn the ball on a helpful surface, which is about all you can expect of a fingerspinner really.
Does Harris still have a better average than Panesar?
No. Seamers and fingerspinners aren't the same thing. Outstanding seamers can prevail on any surface. Outstanding fingerspinners cannot. On far more surfaces than not, even a good fingerspinner like MSP or Vettori has negligable chance of causing problems to good batsmen and should not be selected.
Fingerspinners can never be Test-class without the appropriate surface. However, some fingerspinners are Test-class with such things (Vettori, MSP, Giles, maybe Harris) and others aren't (Dawson, Gareth Batty, Hauritz, Kartik, etc.). If you get on the wrong surface you might well think there was no difference between Giles and Batty, when there patently is. However, get the right surface and you can easily see that Giles was far better.
Warne wasn't a fingerspinner, he was a wristspinner. Like seamers, outstanding wristspinners can prevail on any surface. This makes the average seamer easily, easily better than the average fingerspinner (or at least has for the last 40 years or so). Although wristspin isn't the same thing as seam (wristspinners as a rule tend to be either poor or exceptional, because it's an incredibly difficult art to master, there's very little middle-ground) the rule applies that wristspin and fingerspin are totally different things and completely pointless to compare. Many wristspinners are poor regardless of the surface; a select few (Murali; Warne; Mushtaq Ahmed for a brief time; Benaud; Grimmett and O'Reilly) are so good they can prevail on any surface.
