Tim Southee's prowess as a bowler seems to be increasing with age. Photo / Photosport
Tim Southee's prowess as a bowler seems to be increasing with age. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Tim Southee could find swing in Death Valley. Or a broom cupboard. Or a crater on the moon.
He's about two weeks away from his 33rd birthday and is showing every sign of continuing as one of New Zealand's most under-appreciated and remarkable sportspeople.
Not so long ago Iheard a radio host dismiss him more completely than playing round a 150km/hr full toss and having all three stumps spread-eagled. "Oh, he's never going to run through a side for you," the host said.
No? What about five for 69 against India in India – on a pitch which looks like it's been made out of clay and rice pudding, treated until all the sauce has gone out of it and it resembles an air strip dug out of the ground with fingernails by desperate castaways on a tropical island.
Cricketers call them "submarines" – a delivery that doesn't bounce, scuttling through low. One from left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel was so subterranean it bounced twice before surprising keeper Tom Blundell, heading off to the boundary like a rabbit bolting for the nearest hole.
It was a clear sign of the lifelessness of this pitch – completely unsuited to a medium-fast bowler. To call it dead is an insult to dead things; it was a kind of zombie pitch, not quite dead but certainly not alive either.
Tim Southee celebrates one of five first-inning wickets against India. Photo / Photosport
We haven't even noted The Thing That Must Not Be Spoken Of – the unlovely murk that settles on the inaptly named Green Park in Kanpur as if the crowd and the cricketing gods have all decided to smoke Cuban cigars at the same time and blow the smoke over this ground. Green Park? Grey Park. At times, when the cameras panned wide, you almost couldn't see the other side of the ground; the rest of Kanpur was a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, hidden by a shroud (to misquote Churchill).
Maybe the TV commentators were trying not to give offence by ignoring the elephant jammed in the doorway. They didn't succeed. I was offended they didn't mention the air soup Southee had to bowl in. Even though it looks like it might aid swing, scuzzy air like that generally doesn't – it makes life harder for pace bowlers running in, trying to extract life from a somnolent pitch.
Southee went off on the first day for treatment for a groin injury – an injury most athletes will tell you is (a) difficult to endure and (b) hard to get rid of if you don't rest it. But he returned, hobbling, full of painkillers and somehow pulled off a terrific display of swing bowling and control in a land often called a pace bowlers' graveyard, sucking in air that just might help you enter one.
If you can swing a ball, fine. Control is another thing entirely. Southee was precision, mixed with accuracy, seasoned with variations. He didn't try for speed but never let the batters relax. This one swings away from the bat before pitching and twitching further away, the keeper's gloves poised like a trapdoor spider. That one's his delicious inswinger, delivered with an action exactly like the outswinger.
There are pace variants, he has a knuckle ball, an off cutter, a leg cutter, a three-quarter ball. The batter doesn't know what's coming next; he's not playing cricket – he's playing chess with Southee.
He unsettles the batter with intelligence and stealth, working several moves ahead, like a good chess player. His control means he can set batters up for dismissal, probing weaknesses and finding the crack in their defences he can turn into a canyon.
He had a bit of luck, mind, in that the ball went out of shape in one session; the ball the umpires chose to replace it swung more than its predecessor. But you still have to control it – and Southee did.
It was a good day for him, of course, and they can't all be good days but Southee shows every sign of continuing for New Zealand for years yet. That ability to swing the ball – no matter where on the globe he happens to be – means they still need him.
Tim Southee's prowess as a bowler seems to be increasing with age. Photo / Photosport
In a way it's a shame that England's formidable pace bowlers, Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, are as long-lived and effective as they are, eclipsing even Southee's achievements. Anderson is 39, still going strong, and his 632 test wickets make him the most successful fast bowler of all time. At 35, Broad has 524 test wickets and is in the top six all-time test wicket-takers. Both have given up white ball cricket, focusing only on tests.
Southee has played for New Zealand across all three formats (though he hasn't played in an ODI for nearly two years).
He now has 319 test wickets, behind only Sir Richard Hadlee and Daniel Vettori – but he has 615 wickets across all formats, more than anyone except Vettori (705). Hadlee didn't play T20 but Southee has more ODI wickets, gathered at a better strike rate.
We'd better enjoy watching him through the Kanpur smog. Unhelpful matters like groin injuries may yet interfere with the closing chapters of his career. And, as Joni Mitchell had it in the old song, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
