20 November 2011

Poor and poorer from Dominic Cork

The downside of Dominic Cork retiring is that he'll have more time to spend being a pundit. Take this exchange from yesterday as he commented on the intriguing second Test between South Africa and Australia (paraphrasing):

Cork: (with South Africa now in a good position following an Amla/deVilliers partnership) "Perhaps they can look at bringing Prince to 5 and dropping de Villiers to 6 to get the balance in their batting right"

Ian Ward: "They seem to be doing alright with the order they've got"

Cork: "I just think they may want Prince up one and a stroke player like de Villiers at 6 in England this summer. But then again Prince hasn't been in the runs lately and is under pressure for his place. And the batting order they have now is pretty much perfect."

Thanks Dominic. Another incisive comment.

And then talking through Mitchell Johnson's troubles with the ball he came up with another corker (geddit?). After showing how Johnson is working to get his wrist behind the delivery now, Cork suggested that (again paraphrased) "the in-swinger to the right-hander is the hardest ball for a left-armer like Johnson to bowl and he's showing signs he's rediscovering it".

Really Dominic - the inswinger to the right-hander is the hardest ball to bowl for a left-armer? Not the outswinger to the right-hander that I've only ever seen Wasim Akram bowl consistently well in my lifetime?

I think it's save to assume that Cork's captaincy at Hampshire was built around man-management and motivation rather than tactical nous. How useful for a pro pundit.

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