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There haven’t been many Ashes series in recent years where you look at the probable team sheets for the 1st test and struggle to decide who is stronger on paper. This year’s series has thrown up a rare opportunity where neither England nor Australia can boast about having the better team. Australia are not the force in world cricket that they once were. Without the likes of Warne, McGrath, Lee and Hayden, the Australian team lacks one thing that all sides need. Match winners. People who can change the course of a game single handedly. England are much the same. Without the energetic character of Andrew Flintoff, and with Kevin Pietersen struggling with both his game and his psychological frame of mind, it is hard to see who both teams will look to in order to change the course of an Ashes test this winter.
Fortunately for England, there is one exception. Graeme Swann. Swann is not only the best spinner in world cricket at the moment, but he is a player who can be relied on to change the course of cricket matches. Putting drink-driving charges to one side for now (bless him, he had to drink-drive to buy screwdrivers to rescue his cat from under the floorboards... apparently) , there are three things about Swann that makes him the most vital player England have in their squad.
Firstly, Swann isn’t a Shane Warne or a Murali. He doesn’t have eleven or twelve different balls, and he isn’t a bowler that confuses batsman because they don’t know what will be thrown down at them. He is the opposite. A standard off-spinner with a masterfully disguised straight ball and clever variation in pace. And that’s it. But it is the uncomplicated nature of Swann’s bowling that makes him so dangerous. Batsmen constantly seem to underestimate him because he is ‘too normal’. However, Swann doesn’t need to hide behind a smokescreen of variation because he is unbelievably good at what he does. Why bowl eleven different balls when you only need two to get wickets? If Swann stays natural and doesn’t try and complicate his own game, he will cash in down under.
Secondly, Swann is very good at bowling to left handers. It seems like a fairly minor detail, but the Australians are likely to start the first test with five left handers in their side, and Simon Katich, Marcus North and Michael Hussey are left-handed batsmen that can hurt England (if in doubt, think back to Cardiff in 2009 when Katich and North both scored magical hundreds that left England with no chance of victory). Yet Swann seems to have mastered the art of bowling to left handers and getting them out, something which could prove so vital this winter.
Finally, Swann has an uncanny knack of being able to get wickets in his first over. Again, something that may seem like an irrelevant coincidence, but actually is crucial when it comes to changing the course of a match. Swann is the person that Andrew Strauss will throw the ball to when things aren’t going England’s way, and more often than not, he will make something happen. That is what makes him so important to England’s Ashes cause, and in what is likely to be the closest Ashes series in a long time, Swann could be a shining light of difference between England and the Aussies.
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