Sauce 2.0: The Utility Player
There is promise in Aiden Markram's part-time bowling ambitions.
Some people say you can't put Sauce in everything. I disagree. Sometimes you should throw caution to the wind, just say screw it and put sauce on everything, especially if that Sauce is Aiden Markram.
If you want someone, a spinner, to bowl in the PowerPlay, I am not sure that Aiden Markram is your man. In T20Is, he has bowled lots of balls in the PowerPlay, taking only one wicket. Looking at his numbers, I don’t get why he bowls in the PowerPlay. What I get is why he bowls.
This year, in his bowling for the Proteas, he has returned numbers of five wickets, at an economy of 7.82 from 11 overs. Not too shabby for a part-timer. Something else about Aiden Markram’s bowling that caught attention is his overall record against right-hand batters, he averages 30.85, at an economy of 7.53. He has better numbers against left-handers, averaging 30.4, at an economy of 6.12.
These are pretty good numbers.
He is just not a great PowerPlay bowler. It takes quite a bit of skill for a spinner to operate in the PowerPlay because the bowler has no protection from the field. These are skills that Markram might not have, and would need some time to develop. But, this should by no means imply that he is a bad bowler. He might not be exceptional, but he is quite good.
Even though he is not doing well in the PowerPlay, have you looked at his numbers in the middle overs? He averages 13.6 at an economy of 5.9.
I know some people will want me to put the caveat that his bowling this year has been against Ireland and Sri Lanka, and that did his numbers a world of favour, but then, if your part-timer is not going to do well against these sides, then maybe they are not worth their salt.
Aiden Markram's bowling has been one of the great things about his second coming. It has been a long road from poor form, self-inflicted injury - after he punched ‘a blunt object’ in India - and then missing out on the England tour of South Africa due to injury.
Looking back, dismissal in India, over a decision he could have reviewed, was the last straw. He was growing increasingly frustrated with his batting, and everything else, including the weight of expectation, was taking a toll. Things were looking bleak. For a moment I toyed with the idea that instead of being a rising star, he might have been a comet. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have entertained that idea.
When the Proteas were preparing to return to cricket, I asked Victor Mpitsang where the Proteas stood where Markram was concerned. Victor only said, “He is in the squad. We know what he can do, he has shown us before what he is capable of.”
Every player needs that kind of backing, it does wonders for their self-confidence, especially in cricket, a sport where players will fail more than they are successful. It is especially much more difficult now that even guys who never won an egg race in kindergarten get to broadcast verdicts on international careers. The pressure is massive on coaches and selectors to move on from players much sooner rather than later.
Look at Markram now, he has come back better and stronger as an athlete.
I mean, he exudes confidence, and because of that, his batting is flourishing. His body language is very different from 2019. You get the feeling that he is finally coming into his own as a cricketer. This could also be one of the reasons why he gets to bowl in the PowerPlay. He has confidence and approaches each ball with a sense of purpose. His confidence outweighs his abilities, and sometimes that is all that is required.
That is the thing with part-timers. It’s not always the most skilled that find success, but the most confident. Batters can smell uncertainty, panic, and a lack of confidence, and they will punish you severely when a part-timer bowls with a bit of trepidation or doubt.
Someone brought this up on Twitter, that Markram could be that guy who could consistently bowl two overs or so in T20Is for the Proteas and maybe even grow into a decent batting allrounder. I was quick to ridicule the idea, but now that I am taking a closer look at him, my opinion has changed. Maybe, just maybe, Aiden Markram could well be the player to fill the hole left by JP Duminy.
JP fashioned a role for himself that the Proteas didn’t know they needed someone for. When they called him up, it was based on his batting and not his all-round abilities. That was just a bonus, one which was probably not exploited to the fullest. South Africa has always been obsessed with a pace-bowling allrounder, someone to become the next Jacques Kallis, hence the steady stream of bowling allrounders in Ryan McLaren, Dwaine Pretorius, Andile Phehlukwayo, Wiaan Mulder.
Finding another Kallis hasn’t been and won’t be easy.
But, one thing that JP did was help the team find balance in the post-Kallis years. It’s always great when a team has a batting allrounder, a reliable bowling option who allows the team to bat deep.
In terms of natural talent or ability, Aiden Markram is nothing like JP. You see, there are two types of part-timers, part-timers like Mark Butcher and those like Aiden Markram.
Mark Butcher probably started throwing cricket balls while in diapers. There is very little surprise that he went on to become quite a good bowler. Butcher started his career as a bowling all-rounder. It was on that basis that Surrey picked him. He opened the bowling and batted 3 for his club teams in UK and Australia. He wasn’t just serious at his bowling, he was quite good at it. When he played for South Melbourne Cricket Club, Butcher had the best average for the side ahead of future stars like Damien Fleming. Fleming didn’t exactly enjoy being upstaged by Mark Butcher.
But then Butcher suffered a couple of serious injuries that required operations, and he was forced to transform himself into a batting allrounder. The pain from injuries was a little too much when he bowled pace, so he stopped bowling pace and started spinning the ball. His captain could throw the ball to him and he could bowl a few overs, hold down an end if required.
“I always enjoyed bowling but I didn’t want to miss games through bowling injuries,” Mark Butcher says. “I’d be first to volunteer to have a bowl if the conditions felt right though.”
Mark is a more natural all-round cricketer, like JP Duminy. At one point in his career, JP Duminy bowled medium pace, he could never crank up the speed because he is a bit on the short side, so he transformed himself into an offspinner, and from the first day he tried it, it felt natural.
“I tried it out, and it just came out nicely and people recognized that maybe there's potential for it," says JP Duminy. “It just clicked. And that is what it became, that I was going to be a top-order batter that bowled off-spin.”
Then you have guys like Aiden Markram, guys to whom bowling doesn’t come naturally to, full-blooded batters.
Markram is not what you would consider a "natural athlete", he is more of a power athlete, somewhat stiff in his frame. And yet despite this, he makes it work. He works through his limitations. What does not come naturally to him, he overcomes with hard work.
Last year when I was working on an article on form and mindset I had a chat with someone who had attended the same school as Aiden. Markram was one of the subjects that I was interested in for the article. Here he was, a talented young cricketer who just seemed unable to bat his way out of a slump that just seemed to keep going on and on and on. I was curious about Aiden Markram the man.
One of the things that he told me was that, after a match, you were more likely to find Aiden Markram in the nets working on the shot that had gotten him dismissed, regardless of how many runs he had scored. His father or a teammate would be throwing balls at him.
Little has changed from those days, he does a lot of the same, and more. Where his bowling is concerned, Markram has been working on it just as diligently. When he broke into the Proteas squad in 2017, Aiden had already made up his mind that he wanted to be a batting all-rounder, so he started training with Keshav Maharaj and the other spinners.
One of his current coaches told me that at every training session Aiden Markram bats for an hour and bowls for an hour. Unlike in the past where sometimes batters had to bowl in the nets to help their mates get practice, there is no need for them to do so these days with the numbers of proper net bowlers available. For a batter to do, they have to be committed to bowling.
Aiden Markram takes his bowling very seriously. When he is not practising, he is consistently asking for pointers on how to improve from anyone who can offer any help.
One of the people he could add to his list of people to glean insights from - if he is not doing so already - is Paul Harris. They are cut from the same cloth. They are both strong and tall fellas who bowl a heavy kind of finger spin. They are western finger spinners, very much unlike guys like Shakib and Harbhajan Singh, who are Asian-style finger spinners.
Where Asian style offspinners generate less drift, their approach is often a little wider from the stumps and their deliveries are always angling in, keeping the stumps in play. Western-style offspinners’ approach is much closer to the stumps. Their balls are often drifting away from the stumps, spinning back. Markram is a bowler in the class of Monty Panesar and Rahkeem Cornwall.
By nature, Aiden Markram is a batter, but he is striving for duality in his craft. He is striving to be an allrounder or a part-time allrounder. If he achieves this, he will be able to step into the shoes left vacant by JP Duminy. JP was never picked for his bowling, he was primarily a batter. And yet, despite that, he bowled over 18 000 professional balls in his cricket career. In his 18-year career, JP bowled about 1035.67 professional balls a year. Markram currently averages about a quarter of that, with 394.86 balls a year. That’s a lot of bowling for a part-timer, and Markram has some catching up to do on that front.
But, with South African pitches becoming more receptive to spin, whether because of more use over the years or whether it is because of climate change - I am inclined to think that climate change has a greater effect - this means that Aiden Markram might close down the gap soon. By all appearances, he will bowl more locally. And if he plays under captains who value spin more at the national level, guys like Temba Bavuma and stand-ins like Keshav Maharaj, then his bowling workload might slightly go up.
Anyway, in T20Is, JP didn’t bowl in every match that he played in, yet he still averaged 5.7 balls a match. That’s almost an over-per-match. That is fairly regular for a part-timer. I suppose the best way to describe him would be that he was a utility player.
This kind of duality will beneficial to both Markram and South Africa.
“Your modern-day T20 utility player has two significant disciplines that they play a big role in either a great fielder and a top-end batter or a great batter that can bowl a little bit or a batter-keeper,” Gary Kirsten told me when we were discussing T20 player strengths that get them attention. “You generally have to take on two disciplines in the modern game.”
Markram is not really an elite batter, at least not yet. He has the potential to be one. At the moment he is still only a very good batter. He is also a fine fielder. But, that alone is hardly enough to help him attract many suitors from T20 leagues all over the world.
In contrast with the bowlers, this is an area where the current crop of Proteas batters is lacking, global T20 experience beyond SA leagues and international duty. It limits their earning potential and puts the Proteas T20 batting side on a bit of a backfoot. But, if Markram can be one more of those, then the Proteas get a boost.
Now, Markram will need to be very exceptional with the bat to get more attention. But, as a utility player, if he is able to give his side a bowling option every now and then, then his value as a T20 player rises. Utility players tend to get a lot of attention.
Moeen Ali is a utility player, but he thinks like a bowler. It’s not a bad thing, it helps him navigate bowlers when he bats. Nature forces you to think in a certain way. By nature, Markram thinks like a batter. This is good for him as a bowler because it helps him better anticipate what batters are more likely to do.
Another plus for Aiden Markram is that he has what clever commentators call tactical nous. He is a thinking cricketer, a smart cricketer. That, with his work ethic and drive to improve, gives him a great chance of making a bit of an impact as a part-timer or utility player.
His development as one is not going to be linear. His average and economy will do up the more he bowls and he is not always going to be successful. There will be dizzying peaks and soul-crushing lows, and he will need the same mental skills that brought him back after a lengthy rough patch that was followed by two injuries to pull him through. But, it will all be for the best.
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