Our greater need a bowler?

I'd a couple of interesting e mails after Monday's game against Essex, suggesting that we should perhaps have signed another bowler for the T20 instead of Loots Bosman. The argument carries some credence, especially since it would appear that Chesney Hughes could give us a lively start to the innings himself. One suggested that we could have re-signed Charl Langeveldt for the competition, but I'm not sure on a number of counts.

Firstly, the very nature of this competition is that bowlers are cannon fodder, a sideshow if you will, to the big hitting batsmen. By the nature of things there will be times when every bowler will go out of the park, no matter how good he is.

Secondly, as I've said before, a bowler who takes four wickets will do a good job for the team but will win fewer headlines than the bloke who smashes a 23-ball fifty. Look at the inflated reputation and salary earned by Kieron Pollard to see what I mean. The other side of that, of course, is that the batsmen will generally be the people that fans will part with their hard-earned cash to see. I had a lot of time for Langers and he was a fine asset to Derbyshire two years ago, but if you asked me if he would be a bigger draw than Loots Bosman, I would have to say no.

The cricket club is a business and the more people they can attract, the more commercially viable that business will be. If Loots Bosman can conjure up one of his special innings early in the campaign, there could well be a lot of people buying tickets in the hope of a repeat performance.

The final point I would make is that Langers is not quite the bowler he was two years ago. After shoulder problems it can take some time to recover form anyway, but at 35 it is likely to take longer than in a younger man. In the South African competitions this winter he got more "stick" than might normally have been the case and my sightings of him in the IPL suggested that he had lost a yard or so of pace.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying he's suddenly become a bad bowler, but the Langers of 2008 was a very fine bowler. He's still good enough to make the South African squad, but I'd sooner remember him as a class act who didn't make the mistake of one curtain call too many.

Mind you, if we needed an emergency replacement for Bosman we could do worse - and I doubt he'd have been carted around Leek on Monday...