Bowling prospects

I am sure that John Morris would have preferred to have had a more experienced attack against the Australians today, but the upside of the injury list (which must have kept James Pipe a very busy man this year) is that it has given an opportunity to three young left-arm seamers of talent to show what they can do.

Kevin Dean was the last Derbyshire-reared seamer to progress through the ranks and if any from Mark Footitt, Atif Sheikh and Ross Whiteley can emulate him we will have few complaints. Footitt of course came from Nottinghamshire, where his talent was obvious but was outweighed by too many periods of absence through injury. A recent one has kept him out at Derbyshire, but fans shouldn't jump to the easy inference that he has returned to old ways. The bowler has worked hard on his fitness under the guidance of Steffan Jones and has bowled well at times in the County Championship. In some ways he is similar to another player we recruited from Trent Bridge, Peter Hacker. Both bowlers capable of good, wicket-taking balls, but both prone to bowl too many loose ones that dilute the impact.

A physiotherapist once told me that bowling was not a natural thing for a body to do and that stresses and strains were to be expected if the action was not good and similar for every ball. Alan Ward was a classic example of a bowler whose action put undue strain on his body, his arched back prior to release putting undue strain on his back and pelvis. Trying to bowl too quickly does the same and your experienced quick learns that mixing it up, rather than trying to bowl at the speed of light every ball, prolongs a career as well as keeping a batsman guessing.

Part of the problem at Derbyshire is that we're used to our seamers giving nowt away. Three an over? That's scandalous, or was when Cliff Gladwin, Les Jackson, Mike Hendrick, George and Alf Pope, Harold Rhodes and Bill Copson were plying their trade. Yet we're talking masters of their craft with those fellas and you can't compare young tyros to the finished articles that they became. Footitt is comfortably young enough to improve further if he has the right attitude and the ability to learn from others. If his fitness is genuinely more robust and he can work on eliminating the wildness that must make Lee Goddard and Tom Poynton blanch, he could have a role to play in our future.

That certainly goes for Atif Sheikh, a bowler good enough to gain national selection at under-19 level. Sheikh has good pace but has had his struggles with no-balls this year. When a bowler is worrying about where his feet are, concerns over direction become secondary, but such problems are relatively easily sorted. When we talk about revamping the seam attack, it is important to remember that Sheikh next season should be a better bowler than this, when he has shown himself capable of taking wickets. Yes, he is raw and like Footitt can be erratic, but time is very much on his side and I have very high hopes for the lad. Taking Shane Watson's wicket in his first over today and Simon Katich in his fourth will have done his confidence no harm whatsoever. If you can do that at 19, the world could be your oyster at 25...

Left-arm seamers must be like buses - you wait a while for one and three come at once, but Ross Whiteley is a little different from the other two. He's not especially quick, but perhaps more in the Kevin Dean mould, above medium and capable of swinging it both ways. I have been impressed with him when I've seen him in second eleven matches. A couple of years ago I saw him run through a very good Yorkshire side at Denby, taking five wickets in an excellent spell of bowling when players like Simon Guy, Garry Ballance and Chris Taylor struggled to get a bat on him. He looked less impressive in a subsequent first team appearance, but nerves came into it and when you're trying too hard, sometimes it won't swing. Whiteley's university commitments will restrict his Derbyshire cricket in the immediate future, but he has a lot of talent. Again, he needs to eliminate the bad balls and time will tell if he can do that. He also has ability with the bat and can hit the ball a long way, suggesting he could develop into a genuine all-rounder in time. He may become a batsman who bowls a bit - at his age it can sometimes be hard to call.

The newest name today was Matt Higginbottom, a right arm seamer from the High Peak who bowled a tight first spell after experience for Bradford/Leeds UCCE this year alongside Whiteley and Ben Slater. His returns in the Second XI have not been sensational, but he will benefit from this experience and is another who could develop - at 19 he has time on his side and he will face few batsmen much better than Ponting and Hussey, both settled at the crease when he came on to bowl.

The potential in these youngsters is obvious, just as it is with young batsmen like Redfern, Borrington, Hughes and Slater. Yet there's no magic wand that can turn them into experienced cricketers overnight. For the next two, maybe three years they will make their mistakes and endure bad spells, but the key for Derbyshire fans is to remain patient. I'm old enough to remember the young Kim Barnett, batting at six, and the mistakes in shot selection made by him, the young John Morris and Chris Adams. I also saw the raw Alan Ward, Mike Hendrick, Dominic Cork and Devon Malcolm.

None of them turned out too badly, did they?