Posted by “I realise I have been blessed by God and feel I have nurtured my talents to the best of my abilities.”
No, actually what happened was that you were ‘blessed by God’ and then you threw that blessing back in His face, pausing only to give him a prolonged hand gesture in the form of a lengthy career of line and length medium-pace.
For Shaun Pollock was once a fast bowler. When he first came out (we realise that’s ambiguous and don’t care) Shaun could bowl really quickly. Mike Atherton said he was quicker than Allan Donald at first. Mike knows about these things. He may have edged the greatest medium-pacer of them all more often than most, but he faced down a fair few quicks as well.
But Shaun Pollock changed his approach. He sacrificed speed on the altars of reliability and consistency – two of the shittest altars of them all. Come on everybody, let’s find the altars of reliability and consistency and draw penises on the sides of them.
Reliability is a handy attribute, but it’s one best viewed in scorecard form. Shaun Pollock was really good and you might even want him on your side, but you’d prefer his contribution to happen on the day when you weren’t at the Test. Unless he contributed with the bat. He was a really rather fun and actually more than handy batsman.
But our overall memory is one of stultification. Let us instead remember Shaun Pollock’s arms of expression, because at least they were fun for about ten minutes back in October.
We had what we thought was a nice point to make about how Pollock’s transformation had ultimately cost him, but somehow this didn’t make it into the final draft.
It was something about how South Africa’s selectors eventually replaced him with more dynamic seam bowlers and how this has directly led to his retirement.
yay – the Vulcan Salute picture! I like that picture.
What pisses me off is that people still defend him. It’s like if Nick Cave ends up on pop idol and gets popular, people will defend that move backwards as long as he is still successful to the main stream.
Ingrates.
Well – a lot of people are slamming the SA selectors for dropping him.. He was continuing to take wickets; you don’t drop a man for being boring.
Anyway, let us not blame Shaun Pollock but rather the laws of cricket. What kind of perverted set of laws rewards bowlers for delivering the same ball to exactly the same spot outside off stump over after over after over? Hoping for one inch of deviation in any direction to get an edge?
A just set of laws would award only 0.25 or 0.125 of a wicket for that kind of “dismissal”. Give the batsman eight lives I mean. A full wicket should only go for clean bowling someone. In that kind of world, we would have had a different Shaun Pollock. One nicknamed “Ginger Lightning” rather than “Polly”. No, I’m not serious.
What?
What ? What?
Pollock boring? who has the guts to say that?
Being an indian, I absolutely loved the way shaun pollock bowled and still do.
He was one of the premier fast bowlers of international cricket. Second to Glen Mcgrath in terms of line and length.
Look at his stats, economy and average in the later stages of his career as well. The author has lost his mind.