I’m first Mason Crane saysEnglishkid
Chris Stocks on a young leggie who broke a century old drought by playing for New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield at just 20
Mason Crane fell in love with the art of leg-spin when watching Shane Warne during the 2005 Ashes. However, the Hampshire youngster has shied away from comparisons with the Australian great, insisting: “I don’t want to be anyone else, I’ll do things my own way.”
Crane’s hugely-successful winter in Australia, which finished with him becoming the first Englishman to play Sheffield Shield cricket for New South Wales since the 19th-century, has already seen him mentioned as a possible England pick for next winter’s Ashes tour.
Just 20, Crane’s links with Hampshire and the fact he has already taken 50 first-class wickets – that feat was achieved when he took 5-116 in New South Wales’ Shield win against South Australia at the SCG – have seen him compared to Warne, the game’s greatest leg-spinner.
In fact, Crane, mentored by another former Aussie leggie in Stuart MacGill during the winter, has reached the 50-wicket mark quicker than Warne.
But he is reluctant to play up any comparisons.
“I’ve met him once, briefly, at the Shaun Udal benefit do,” Crane says of Warne. “But I’ve not had anything more than that.
“I think that connection is there and so it’s obvious and plain for everyone to see. It’s great if people are saying ‘is this guy the next whoever’ but I personally don’t enjoy that.
“I’d just like to be myself. I want to be the first Mason Crane, if you will, not the next anyone else.
“I don’t want to be a copy of anyone else. If something works for me, it works for me. I’m not going to be going round copying anyone.
“Obviously when you grow up watching people that’s what you start doing in your back garden but ultimately I’d just like to be my own bowler.”
Crane, who only turned 20 in March, initially went out to Australia in October to play grade cricket for Gordon in New South Wales. But his work with MacGill saw him progress rapidly.
Three successive seven-wicket hauls early in the year and then New South Wales losing Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe to Australia’s tour of India, resulted in the Englishman being catapulted into the reckoning for a Sheffield Shield debut.
He became the first overseas player to represent New South Wales since Imran Khan in 1985.
“It was a big surprise,” he says. “There were a few murmurs from guys saying they thought I should be playing but it never crossed my mind until I started getting involved when O’Keefe and Lyon were in India and New South Wales realised they needed another spinner.
“It was really weird from that perspective because they just don’t really do overseas players. It was a big honour to be given a chance to play. It was great they trusted me considering my age as well.”
Crane is generous in his praise for MacGill, who would have achieved far more in the game than 44 Test appearances and 208 wickets had his career not coincided with Warne’s.
“He was excellent because what he knows about bowling is second to none,” says Crane. “He was actually brilliant as a mentor and a coach and he’s very passionate about bowling.
“He was a phenomenal bowler in his own right and very unlucky not to play