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Tymal Mills has been signed by Royal Challengers Bangalore for £1.4m. In response, many have felt inclined to ask what Ian Botham, Viv Richards or Ian Austin might have gone for. This seems to us to be somewhat missing the point.
In the UK, the phrase ‘Twenty20 specialist’ still has a faintly pejorative hue. Some do indeed come to focus on the shortest format as a result of shortcomings in the longer ones while Mills himself had the decision made for him by his own spine. But no matter how you arrive there, as far as the IPL sides are concerned, a player who is 100 per cent focused on the finer points of T20 can only be a good thing. A desirable thing. A thing they’d pay money for.
It’s not just that Mills is likely to be available for the entire tournament, it’s more that T20 is his whole professional life. Last season he described how he and his Sussex team-mates would practise yorkers with a white ball for a period. Then, when everyone else moved on to bowling four-day lines and lengths with a red ball, Mills would just carry on bowling yorkers.
To ask why Mills should sell for over a million when he hasn’t even played Test cricket is to overlook why that’s a good thing. Ben Stokes sold for £1.7m and while he is unarguably a better cricketer (if nothing else, he can bat) then Mills will surely prove the better investment. If Stokes’ adaptability is a key strength, then he is nevertheless pulled in many different directions. Mills doesn’t need to be especially adaptable. He can just focus.
Like Stokes, Mills has also profited by being two players in one. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but he does possess two qualities that are always in demand in the IPL auction. Firstly, he is a left-armer and secondly, he can bowl at 90-odd mph. Combine those two qualities with his unwavering focus on Twenty20 cricket matches and then subtract Mitchell Starc from the auction and see the bids roll in.
For the record, had he been around today then Ian Austin would have sold for six weeks’ supply of meat-and-tatty pies and a year’s subscription to the Racing Post – but it would have been a hell of a bargain for whoever saw fit to splash out on him.
Good for Tymal! And if people are pejorating and huing him for being a T20 specialist, he should channel his inner Liberace and tell them he cried all the way to the bank.
Viz Ian Austin’s price, surely you mean six weeks supply of meat-and-tatty pasty barms.
Anyway, thank goodness there’s been no more said of tomato and haloumi barm cakes for a while. Quite discombolulating, that talk was.
You clearly missed our reference halloumi and tomato Staffordshire oatcakes.
I did not miss that even more discombobulating (and close to my heart) reference…I couldn’t spake, duck.
None of us could spake, duck.
Glossary for Sam (who tends to request) and/or anyone else who seeks help with these references:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Stoke-on-Trent
This is a particularly fruity definition, very much in keeping with the discussion.
What would Rob Key’s price be? And would it need to be investigated by the authorities?
Tymal Mills’ back eh?
Junaid Khan’s back.
As in….
With Shiv playing for Lancs as well this year (although the two will presumably never play together), they’re basically going to end up with my old International Cricket Captain side .
Stephen Fleming doesn’t think that Stokes is a good investment if his reaction at the auction is anything to go by.
Some pretty expressive facial work from the Kiwi.
My guess for the hover caption was it would have mentioned the ghost of Tymal Mills’s first-class career. Also who stole the i’s dot in the word “first”?
Unrelated note: not actually a T20 scorecard, but worth clicking through to.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/zimbabwe-v-afghanistan-2016-17/engine/match/1079248.html
Being as the whites are now discarded, I have visions of him still bowling, only naked. Long format, running in hard etc etc.
Shame on you.
Plenty of swing.
Shame on us.