Champions Trophy : Wayne Parnell an expensive option
South Africa has played two games in the Champions Trophy against Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Having lost one and won the next, South Africa’s destiny is in their hands. They face England at SuperSport Park Centurion this Sunday.
South Africa has chosen a team with four pace bowlers; Parnell, Steyn, Morkel and Kaills with two spinners; van der Merwe and Botha, Duminy has chipped in with the odd over here and there.
The South African selectors are going to change the team for the England contest, as Herschelle Gibbs will make his come back into the team after he sustained an injury in the warm up game against the West Indies. Who are they going to drop? I’d suggest that Morkel will get the boot, his bowling has been terrible and with Gibbs up the order we shouldn’t need Morkel’s batting lower down.
I have one major issue with Parnell at the moment; he’s simply far too expensive. Yes he’s the leading wicket taker at the moment, let’s be honest, the New Zealand batsmen pretty much got themselves out in the last game. Parnell has bowled a total of 18 overs for 136 runs, that’s 7.56 runs per over, those figures may be considered acceptable while he’s taking wickets, but what happens when he doesn’t take wickets and one of the other bowlers has an off day? Then we’ll get smashed like we did against Sri Lanka. Add to that when we drop Morkel the sixth bowler will be JP Duminy. Duminy can bowl a bit, but we can’t rely on three spinners in an ODI.
Parnell simply has to sort his economy rate out, we can’t afford to have a bowler going at 7.5 runs per over when you only have five specialist bowlers in the team. If Parnell continues with his expensive run rate, then the selectors will have to retain Morkel as the sixth bowler, which will see Hashim Amla missing out.
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I think its a bit of a blip. Prior to the Champs Trophy Parnell has been very economical for SA. I think Albie’s bowling is a bit more of a worry, but would still keep him around with his batting form seemingly back after the slump towards the end of last season.
@Darren, so then would you drop Amla for Gibbs?
Yeah, I’m not Gibbsy’s biggest fan but we need to win and win big and he’s more likely to produce a match winning performance with the bat.