NEW Zealand cricketing fans must have got themselves into a spin or something, because Ish Sodhi isn't the Kiwi Shane Warne we're all hoping him to be - not yet anyway.
With Northland's Bruce Martin having been edged out of the Black Caps test side, I'm going into bat for him. There probably wasn't a game gone by in Martin's stint as New Zealand's premier test match spinner, albeit a short one aided by injury and slim spin stocks, where the poor guy wasn't referred to as being too old. But, he's not. Martin is 33.
Yes, he's no spring chicken - and I'm sure he would agree with that - but that doesn't mean he's too old. Everyone thought it was great when Martin was initially selected in the test team, with his fairy-tale story of being picked after something like 12 years slogging away at domestic first-class level. But, soon after that nice feeling weakened, calls for a new spinner were heard.
I agree, Martin is purely a stop gap. He's not going to be our number one spinner for the next 10 years like Dan Vettori has been. But, for now at least, he's as good as we've got. Don't get me wrong, I like the look of Sodhi but old mate Bucko from Kerikeri deserves to be persevered with - just for now.
This Sodhi craze seems to have people fooled into thinking that he is some sort of super player who eats Martin for breakfast. Well, I'm sorry, but he doesn't. Maybe it's just we're liking watching a leggie, rather than a left-arm spinner, toss balls at a weak West Indian team and have some success. And, "some success" is five wickets in three games at 60.2.
As any fan knows, cricket is a game that has a fair amount of statistics associated with it, often helping justify a selection or to compare players. However, stats and player records are most definitely not the be-all and end-all.
If you put Martin and Sodhi next to each other, now that both have played five tests each, their records say a lot.
In the red corner is Sodhi the great with a record of five tests including 11 wickets at 51.45 apiece. Not stunning reading but definitely showing signs of improvement and promise.
In the blue - Cambridge blue of course - corner is old mate Martin with a record of five tests including 12 wickets at 53.83 apiece. Not much between these two.
What separates them though is that Martin has bowled nearly 100 overs more. Yes, he has only picked up one more wicket in those 100 overs but that doesn't mean Sodhi is this dangerous leggie who is following in Warne's pathway - you can't say that after just one domestic season. What's also worth putting out there is that for those 100 overs Martin has only conceded 80 more runs, giving him a considerably lower run rate.
This is where it gets confusing. What do you want from your primary spinner, for them to take lots of wickets or tie up one end while the likes of Tim Southee and Trent Boult rip apart opposition teams? Or both? Because going by the above test record Sodhi is only semi-capable of one - taking a few wickets - and it's not every game that conditions are going to suit spinners so you need to be able to restrict the run flow if needed.
What's also worth a thought is that most of the pitches the Black Caps play on aren't big spinning ones where an amazing spinner is going to be a necessity. Also, does Brendon McCullum need to be schooled up with how and when to use spinners? Because Martin's record suggests he's been used as a work horse to slow the runs - and if you're doing that you're not focusing on trying to take wickets.
With the bat, Sodhi has the advantage over Martin - with 152 runs averaging 30.4 compared to Martin's 74 at 14.8. However, the way I see it we're comparing bowlers whose primary role is to do a job with the ball. There's no doubt, at 21, Sodhi is one for the future but there's plenty he could be learning from playing domestically - unlike Martin.