Crazy actions

Wickman is looking forward to the World Cup because it’s been ages since he updated his repertoire of joke bowling actions for nets. Whilst still a youngster in the playground Wickman thought nothing of trying to bowl a Proctor (wrong foot), a Thomson (can you get your right hand into your left pocket round your back), a Dilley (drag the back toe so far you go through a couple of pairs of Dunlop Green Flash in a summer playing on the playground)… a Lillee (ball held out in front and pushed and pulled out in front like you were a bull pawing the ground trying to gore the entrails out of some flabby matador) or even the big lolloping run of a Botham, all last minute explosion of shoulder and massively golden arm.

One might have a Michael Holding (which essentially necessitated having a lung-bustingly long run-up before trying to knock a kid’s head off ) and you would need to have some spinner or other - because if you couldn’t get turn and bounce with a tennis ball you never would – perhaps Deadly Derek Underwood (there was, of course, in the 1990s Paul Adams, that glorious freak, but if you were caught practicing that by your mum in Bentalls on a Saturday morning while she tried on some dresses she’d have had you in A&E at Kingston in a jiffy thinking you had had a seizure).

In the interim, bar a bit of back garden cricket, Wickman has had few opportunities to study and perfect the art. It’s all very well having some classics up your sleeve, but what of the modern actions? Wickman is worried that so much work has been done by the likes of Troy Cooley and Kevin Shine that there’s nothing left but chest on merchants and one-day-dobbers.

Unless you’ve a double jointed arm / wrist combo of course so you could do a Murali. Or maybe you could practice sticking your tongue out and giving it large in front of the mirror and turn your Proctor into an Andre Nel. And then there is Makhaya Ntini although learning how to rule yourself out of ever winning an appeal for LBW might not be a brilliant idea… Wickman supposes that Brad Hogg does have that slightly mincey way of windmilling his arms and wrists… and there is old Malinga the Slinga… but who else? What fun is it to watch McGrath twinkle up the wicket? Or Flintoff? Or Taylor? Or…

Bring back Bob Willis. Frankly he’d be better that side of the camera. Stick him in the England squad, stick an Andrew Symonds wig on him and get him to hare in off that long run, alternately tucking the ball behind his back and showing it to the batsman before arriving at the crease and slinging in a massive bouncer… cor if that didn’t take you back to 1981 nothing would.