The End Of The Road For Steve Finn?

 

 

Ashes 2013

 

Finn bites the dust

 

January 15^th 2014

 

The news that Steve Finn has been sent home as “presently unselectable” has produced three major reactions:

1. Sympathy for the player and a feeling that this step could have been taken earlier.
2. Puzzlement at how such a promising bowler could lose his way so badly, with anger directed at David Saker and the management team.
3. Hilarity, particularly from Australian fans, some of whom have been critical of the player for “giving up”.

Jon Agnew reports that, at the end of the Test series Steve Finn was reduced to bowling at gentle medium pace in an empty net. Since then, things have apparently got far worse and his confidence has gone completely. There are comments that he has been reduced to throwing the ball down from half way in an attempt to recover his action from first principals and that he has been infected with the yips.

What people have tended to forget is just how unnecessary this business has been. It all started with Graeme Smith complaining that the fall of the off bail at the bowler’s end, which happened occasionally when Steve Finn’s knee brushed the stumps, was distracting him. It was pure theatre and, without doubt, Graeme Smith would be the first to admit that it was just mind games. In the way that these stories grow in the Internet, many fans who have never seen Steve Finn bowl, genuinely believe that he was knocking the bails off four or five times every over, rather than once every four or five overs at most [this is not unique – there are also many fans who genuinely believe that Mike Gatting floored umpire Shakoor Rana with a sizzling punch and are outraged that he was allowed to get away with it].

The laws were changed. Steve Finn was obliged to change his action to get further from the stumps at delivery and the problems started. In New Zealand there was an experiment with a shorter run-up. Then he went back to a longer run-up. By Trent Bridge his bowling was falling apart. With Australia seemingly out of contention, Finn came on and bowled two overs that Brad Haddin dispatched for 24 runs, including 4 byes from a ball that almost clean-bowled Haddin. Up to then, Finn had the respectable figures of 8-3-17-0 in the innings – since then Finn has not bowled in Test cricket, although he bowled in two of the ODIs at the end of the summer and was bowling comfortably faster than any of the Australian bowlers apart from Mitch Johnson (the only England bowler to get close to Mitch Johnson’s speed was, interestingly, Chris Jordan, who may well inherit Steve Finn’s place in the England squad). Since then, things have only gone downhill.

With Steve Finn struggling so badly it was only fair and humane to get him out of the glare of publicity and home, where he can work in peace without the constant insensitive comments, mainly from former Australian players, questioning in the press his treatment, his non-selection, his issues, etc. In the majority of cases they have not seen him bowl recently and have no idea why he is not playing (had they seen him bowl on this tour, they would know). However, if, as suggested, his bowling has degenerated to suffering the yips, he may struggle even to get regular 1^st XI cricket for Middlesex.

One person’s crisis is another’s opportunity. Ollie Rayner is another who has a sudden and unexpected opportunity… or may do. Simon Kerrigan’s travails have been well documented – a disastrous Test debut, being withdrawn from the English Performance Programme tour at the last minute for extra work and now, an inopportune back injury that threatens his participation in the Lions tour of Sri Lanka. Just a couple of weeks after Michael Vaughan tipped him for a Test debut, Ollie Rayner has been put on standby to go to Sri Lanka should Kerrigan fail his fitness test. From being unsure of his own Middlesex place last season, Ollie Rayner has seen how Swann, Monty and Tredwell have fallen by the wayside, while Kerrigan and Borthwick are reckoned not to be ready. It is no longer impossible that with a couple of good performances, either for the Lions, or for Middlesex in early season, he could line up, either against Sri Lanka or, later, against India.