Dependable Fraser faces prospect of being expendable all over again

Nor, alas, is there any end to human folly. It looks very much as though England's World Cup selectors are about to leave their most reliable bowler out of the opening match with Sri Lanka at Lord's on Friday. On his home ground.

Fraser has taken his 46 one-day wickets for England at a respectable average - 28 - and an exceptional runs-per-over economy rate of 3.52. His rivals for one of the three prime bowling places in the XI, presumably, are Alan Mullally and Ian Austin. Mullally's 28 wickets have cost 31 at a rate of 4.04; Austin's three wickets in seven matches have cost 98 runs apiece and he has gone for an average of 4.85 runs an over.

There is talk of Fraser having a knee niggle, but it looks as though the selectors are looking for an excuse to leave him out. Officially he is fit, and if his first five overs in his only warm-up match last Sunday looked rusty and a trifle tentative, his last five showed him to be back to his best. The case against him, apparently, is that he cannot be used as flexibly as the others. Rightly or wrongly, the captain feels that he has to use the old boy for ten overs from the start. If he is going to bowl them for only 35 runs, and take a wicket or two in the process, however, why not?

If ever a cricketer is used to the cold shoulder, it is Fraser. He was not picked for the one-day games in Australia and was left out initially in Sharjah after the selectors had decided to name him in the World Cup squad in the hope of "early-season" pitches.

What he proved once again in Sharjah, after the rest of the bowlers had been mauled by Pakistan in the opening game, is that that, whatever the pitch, a tall man who consistently plonks the ball down a fraction short of a good length, gets a bit of bounce because of a high action and deviates it occasionally off the seam is going to be hard to get away. As he puts it himself: "If they want to take a chance, fair enough."

Essentially, Fraser the one-day bowler is the same as Fraser the Test and county bowler: accurate and unflappable. Only when he lets himself down does the expression change from one of red-faced concentration to red-faced fury.

"Letting himself down", in Fraser's case, means a ball too short, too full or too wide: the inevitable kick at the turf is reminiscent of an old-fashioned full back aiming a place-kick between the posts. It has become so much his trademark that he used the image as his logo for a very successful benefit in 1997: £200,000 would be a modest estimate.

There had been a time five years before when it looked as though he might never get a benefit, let alone another Test cap. Overbowled on successive tours of the West Indies and Australia, he suffered a hip injury serious enough for him to miss an entire season and, pressed now for his happiest moment on the cricket field, he tends to bypass the spectacular analyses - eight for 75 in victory in Barbados, eight for 53 in defeat in Port of Spain - and to treasure instead his return to the England fold against Australia at the Oval in 1993.

The annus mirabilis was 1998, with 27 wickets at 18 each in the West Indies and another 24 at 20 against South Africa. Much of the ill luck suffered earlier in his career was repaid by the nature of the pitches in successive Tests in Trinidad, which suited him ideally. Form and fortune continued through the season in England that followed.

It had been a long and hard year's work, however, by the time he got to Australia in October and, once again, he quickly became the expendable bowler in the eyes of the selectors. A bad bowl at Perth against Western Australia, a dropped catch and an indifferent match generally at Brisbane and he was back among the also-rans.

"I accept I didn't bowl as well as I can do in Australia but I don't think I bowled rubbish. I just didn't have the zip," he reflected this week, switching between the personal and the general with characteristic reluctance to blow his own trumpet.

"You go there as confident as you've ever been after the most successful year I've ever had, and you are hoping for another five Tests and another 15 or 20 wickets. I was rough at the start in Perth, but then I bowled well against South Australia and I don't feel I bowled badly in Brisbane.

"I remember sitting in the dressing-room before the match and hitting my legs to try to get myself going. Normally you feel inflated by the prospect of a Test match, but I had a sort of numb feeling. I can't explain it. Perhaps it was nine months of intense cricket. Still, after getting wickets in the last two Tests against South Africa, which was one of the reasons we won the series, you expect a decent run. When you don't get a bowl until just before lunch on the first day of the series, you begin to wonder. It seems they've been trying for years to find someone to replace me, but they haven't."

The latest "run" in the side lasted one Test and he only returned for the fourth game at Melbourne when the original plan to play Alex Tudor was changed at the last moment. He took little part in the extraordinary victory that followed, other than as an immensely encouraging moral support for Dean Headley during his decisive spell, and he left the tour early with bitterly disappointing Test figures of four for 229.

His rest undoubtedly has refreshed him and, the World Cup being so much more important than the Carlton and United series, it looked as though, for once, the selectors were looking after him in the interests of a greater cause. His omission from the probable England first-choice XI in the final warm-up match yesterday suggested otherwise. Sitting in a draughty tent all day was not the best preparation for a man who always wants to bowl.

"After getting back from Sharjah, my plan was to bowl for as long as I could in the nets," he said. "Over the last two or three years, I've monitored what I've bowled more. Batsmen tend to want early-morning nets in county cricket, but if you're not careful you end up bowling for 40 minutes as if you've been in a match. I've learnt to be slightly selfish, to try to get through the seasons better. I want to play as much as I can.

"Perhaps I'm just not a fashionable cricketer or not dynamic enough, but you look at bowlers who've played a lot more Tests than me and perhaps not done that much better, or blokes who've bowled in 140 internationals or so but have conceded more than 4½ an over and again you can't help thinking you should have played more than you have."

Fraser has played 46 Tests and if, after all, he plays in the opening match of the World Cup, it would be only his fortieth one-day international. The talk, for obvious reasons, is of Darren Gough, but Fraser has taken 177 Test wickets at 27 to Gough's 125 at 28 and the economy rate, once again, does not compare. Among contemporary English players who have played a significant number of games, only Phil DeFreitas is also under four an over.

Is it the relatively ponderous fielding that counts against him? He accepts that he is, as he puts it, "no Jonty Rhodes", but contends with some force that the occasional run conceded through being slower than most over a short distance is more than made up by his bowling. A cautious self-assessment belies a passionate desire to play in his first and, at 33, surely his last World Cup.

"I'm far from some unbelievable one-day cricketer and maybe I don't have a good slower ball, but my feeling is that I'm better off inviting the batsman to take a chance. Some days I just might get hammered, but there are other days when you have the luck. With the weather like it is at the moment, you like to think you might feature in most of the games and maybe you might make some sort of impact."

Modest, shy, hesitant, loyal, reliable Angus. He is a white-shirted, old-fashioned professional at heart, masquerading as a showman in shimmering World Cup blue; and still no one will sponsor his bat. But he is just the man to keep the lid on too much batting exuberance from England's opponents and the selectors would be wise to realise it before it is too late.

May 12, 1999