2008 season so far
FP Trophy: 1*, 4, 7, 1, 61
Twenty20 Cup: 31, 37, 9, 17, 1, 152, 17, 18
6 poor scores, 3 average, 3 good and 1 amazing one. Outside of a single 45 minute period Graham Napier has been fine. OK. Normal. Over his 11 year career he averages 16.84 in List A matches. Fair to that's fine for a bowler, which he's meant to be, and with figures of 148 @ 24.93 he's been worth having in the squad most of the time.
He's been a journeyman for a long time now, but since June 24th you'd think he learnt to shit gold bars.
The whole countries media has taken every leaf available from Cricket AM's book and no live show has gone to air without the 5 minute, 3 minute, 1 minute, 30 second and 15 second versions of his innings highlights all queued up and ready to roll and my God they've had their money's worth out of them.
Maybe it's because everyone wants to believe he's our McCullum or something. But when Nassar and Willis and everyone else can't stop talking about him, it just seems they're whipping each other into a frenzy which really doesn't exist outside of their directors feed into their ear.
This cheeky chappy has got the rest of the season to show he's got long term talent as a ball twatter, a good show in the FP final and a confident Pro40 season and maybe this hysteria will be able to become something more solid but for now, he just got lucky. Actually let's make that "Lucky" with air fingers, as I bet there was no drug testing at the match that day...
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Breaking News! Graham Napier is human!
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3 comments:
He did look rather good last night (and that's not said in my usual shallow cricket fan voice) both batting and bowling.
The boy knows when to deliver, is all I'll say on the matter.
Super Smasher.
Well where was he for the last 10 seasons?? Debuted in 97 and no one knew his name until now. Sure he's at the disposal of the Essex board, and no reason to promote him over any other journeyman there without reason...
Northants totally fell to pieces though, even jugged eared Masters looked good.
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