Melbourne : Former Australian batsman Michael Hussey has suggested that spin will play a minimal role in the 2015 ICC World Cup and believes Australia will play without a specialist spinner in the tournament.
Hussey also feels spinners will play largely a peripheral role in next year’s World Cup to be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand – an opinion that leads him to believe Australia will take a pace-heavy attack into the tournament.
“Other than probably (Saeed) Ajmal and (West Indian) Sunil Narine who are mystery spinners, I am fearful that spin won’t play much of a part in the upcoming World Cup,” Cricket Australia (CA) website Thursday quoted Hussey saying to Fairfax at the Melbourne Cricket Club’s annual Bradman Luncheon, where he was guest speaker.
“We have got very flat one-day pitches here in Australia and certainly New Zealand – New Zealand grounds are very small, (and) with the field restrictions these days you can only have four players outside the circle.
“With batting power plays plus much bigger bats it makes one-day cricket for spin bowlers in this country and New Zealand extremely difficult.”
“Watching the one-dayers last year against England it was very difficult for spinners to be able to keep it tight or get wickets through the middle. We will probably rely on Maxwell to bowl a few overs and (Michael) Clarke to bowl a few overs rather than go with an out and out spinner.”
Talking about the increasing number of bolwers being reported for illegal actions, Hussey said: “Players seem to be able to beat the system a little bit too easily at the moment and I think it’s something that needs to be looked at.”
“More people seem to be getting called around the world, but ideally where I would like to get to is that you’ve got a measuring device in-game rather than sending someone off to a laboratory. It would be great to measure it properly.”
Hussey’s comments come in the wake of a spate of incidents of players being reported for suspected illegal actions, and Hussey suggests it may be a result of the sport become more batsmen-dominated in recent times.
“I think it has started to creep into the game a bit more because a lot of games are (tilted) in favour of batsmen, with bigger bats and flatter pitches, so bowlers are maybe stretching things as much as they can to be competitive in games. But the rules are there and we should stick to the rules.”
