Not many athletes get a second chance on the international stage. Especially if the first opportunity was not nearly adequate enough. There are many cricketers who made it to the national team who were given a handful of opportunities before falling victims to the impatience that brews with the lack of immediate results.
Gareth Batty must have considered himself a member of that club. He made his ODI debut for England in 2002 and made his Test bow the next year. A handy off-spinner and a more than capable lower-order batsman, Batty made a greater impression with the bat when he helped save back-to-back Tests in Sri Lanka against a rampant Muttiah Muralitharan.
His bowling, however, was not considered threatening enough for Test cricket.
That was it then. His last Test came against Bangladesh at home in 2005, with England’s explosive pace attack of Steve Harmison, Simon Jones, Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard doing the bulk of the damage. He played four more ODIs after that game and fell off the radar.
England had discovered a world-class spinner in Graeme Swann by that time and they were only going to need one good slow bowler in a pace-heavy attack.
The emergence of Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid also gave them an excellent cushion in limited overs cricket. So Batty was completely forgotten. Until this month.
England looked far and wide to bolster their spin attack for the upcoming tour of Bangladesh and they found 38-year-old Batty’s numbers for Surrey this season in the county championship – 41 wickets at 31.32 – very appealing. But while a return to Test cricket after more than 10 years sounds appetising, it isn’t always a fairytale.
The list of longest gap between Tests is dominated by cricketers who played during the early part of the 1900s, their games disrupted by the first and second World Wars.
The most prominent cases of non-war disruption in Test career is that of John Traicos, who played Tests after a gap of 22 years. The off-spinner played for South Africa in the late 1960s, right before his country’s international isolation due to apartheid.
However, when Zimbabwe gained Test status in 1992, a 45-year old Traicos was still talented and sharp enough to represent the country he hailed from (Zimbabwe/ Rhodesia had been considered a ‘province’ within South African domestic cricket set-up).
Traicos picked up five wickets in Zimbabwe’s debut Test against India and played three more matches before he was forced to leave the country following political tensions. But even for Traicos, it was a forced disruption.
There are almost no ‘big’ names in the list of players who did anything worthwhile after being away from Test cricket for so long. The scenario in ODIs, however, is different.
Batty’s contemporary, Swann, had a seven-year gap in his ODI career and he himself admitted he was given a chance in white ball cricket too early – in 2000. Once he had established himself in Tests, he became a more potent ODI bowler and was thus drafted in.
India leg-spinner Amit Mishra is another such player. He played three matches in 2003 and then fell down the pecking order following the rise of the Harbhajan Singh-Anil Kumble combination.
But by 2009, Mishra had proved his mettle in IPL and was brought back into the limited overs fold. He is still an irregular member of the side but is always in the mix.
Sri Lanka’s Rangana Herath had to wait for five years to get another shot at ODIs in 2010. In Tests as well, Herath had two breaks of three years each but they were interspersed with a handful of appearances.
The most famous comeback in white ball cricket has to be that of Aussie chinaman bowler Brad Hogg. He retired in the 2007-08 season, took up commentary, gave T20 cricket a shot in the Big Bash League and at the age of 40 made an international T20 comeback against India in 2012.
The point is, it is possible for spinners to make comebacks because it is said they get better with age. However, the path is easier in limited overs cricket than Tests.
It is possible for a nearly 40-year-old to get the job done by ‘keeping things tight’ in 50 and 20-over games. In Tests, however, decent is not good enough.
It’s not that Batty can’t do well against Bangladesh. After all, the wickets will be conducive and he is in good bowling form. But even he and the England management know this is a short-term arrangement.
Batty will be competing for a spot with 24-year-old left-arm spinner Zafar Ansari and England will be hoping that it is Ansari who does well so that they can plan for the future.
Even so, it’s a great achievement by Batty. He has kept himself fit and motivated and has been rewarded for years of toil.
If he does get a chance, he will without doubt put his body on the line to get wickets and win matches. But just don’t get your hopes up.
