Vernon scoops big one
Phenomenal Philander dominates at the Cricket South Africa Awards, walking off with three trophies to cap his spectacular rise in Test cricket during the 2011/12 season
HE TEST series between England and South Africa starting next month is already being billed as a battle between the top two attacks in Test cricket.
In the blue corner, featuring a trio of strapping lads, one who swings, another who seams it about and a third who looks to extricate bounce, is England; in the green corner, with the world’s No1 fast bowler (who swings it about too), another who uses his height to get bounce out of the surface and a third who “nibbles” it around off the seam, is SA.
There are a pair of interesting spinners too, and some, most notably former England captain, Michael Vaughan, have claimed England hold the edge because Graeme Swann is a better bowler than Imran Tahir.
And perhaps that is the case and the two spinners will play an important part at some stage of the three-Test series. But really what everyone is looking forward to are those fast bowlers.
Both sides have done extremely well to build a group of fast bowlers capable of providingdifferent “looks” for opposing batsmen.
It wasn’t that long ago that there were concerns about the support bowlers for Dale Steyn and Morné Morkel, but last season saw the emergence in the Test arena of Vernon Philander, and his extraordinary success has helped South Africa’s attack evolve into one which may be the best the country has had since readmission.
Philander claimed the major silverware at last night’s Cricket South Africa Awards
Tbanquet, scooping the SA Cricketer of the Year and Test Cricketer of the Year awards. The statistics for his first seven Tests make for eye-popping reading: 51 wickets at an average of 14.15 with six “five-fors” and two “ten-fors”.
The other big winner last night was AB de Villiers, who picked up the ODI Cricketer of the Year and the much-valued (among the players) Players’ Player of the Year.