Andrew Longmore speaks to Martin Moxon in the Sunday Times about Yorkshire’s wonderfully gifted Adil Rashid. Moxon, Rashid’s coach, is determined to protect his young legspinner, concerned that media hype could affect his potential.
“That’s what we’re trying to do with Adil. To create pressure on the batsman, you need to land the leg-spinner consistently. That’s what I have been most pleased about: he has bowled consistent line and length while still spinning the ball.”
So concerned are Yorkshire that the next Monty Panesar/Shane Warne/Mushtaq Ahmed (delete as applicable) should develop quietly and methodically through his first full season of county cricket that they have thrown a protective blanket around him reminiscent of Ryan Giggs in his early days at Old Trafford. Given the history of leg-spinning prodigies in England in recent decades, the policy is understandable, but it is probably unnecessary. Rashid can look after himself in the interview room as readily as he can on the field, and the more exposure he can get to the world he might be asked to inhabit sooner rather than later, the better prepared he will be.
Rashid also sought the counsel of Shane Warne, who he faced in Yorkshire’s Championship draw against Hampshire, when Moxon booked in an afternoon’s coaching in Warne’s back garden. But perhaps the most revealing comment comes from one of the batsman who faced Rashid:
“I can’t remember him [Rashid] bowling one rank bad ball,” says Michael Brown, whose second consecutive championship century kept Hampshire in the game. “Traditionally this pitch hasn’t got a lot of bounce, but he gets more bounce than Warney. Yet his control was so good and he worked the pitch out pretty quickly, bowling a little slower. Usually with a leggie you can wait for the bad ball. Here it was a question of limiting your mode of dismissal and trying to rotate the strike. Warney is always on about that and how irritating it is for a bowler. I tried to work him into the covers or behind square on the leg side, but there were no balls to release the pressure. For a kid of 19 . . . ”
