Tom Smith - voter apathy likely to hold him back

We've neglected our Tips for the Future for quite a while now. It occurred to us that maybe Tom Smith of Lancashire warranted inclusion after he took 4-55 yesterday.

By any standards Tom Smith has had a blazing start to the season, but there are a few factors counting against him. Our Tips for the Future are meant to be international players who we hope will make a big impact at Test level and in that regard we have a few reservations about Tom Smith.

If other observers are to be believed, he's not actually fast, but fast-medium. In international cricket we don't have a great deal of time for fast-medium bowlers. It's the difference between Old Jason Gillespie and Current Jason Gillespie for example. Also, there's the first season syndrome, where players achieve a great deal because no-one knows what they're doing. The following season when opposing players are familiar with them, they struggle.

Conversely, he's clearly doing something right to take all these wickets; we thought that he was quite quick; and rumour has it he can bat a bit. So should we make the leap and induct him in our Tips for the Future or not? There's nothing at stake because we don't have any credibility, but we would have to write another post and then copy the link into the Tips for the Future post. If there's any opinion either way from our readers, we'll go with that.

Dheeraj Jadhav tests himself against the best

Dheeraj Jadhav has been in action against international opposition. He opened the batting for a Mahashtra XI against Australia in a warm-up.

He scored one.

He's still only 27. Plenty of time for our rash prediction to come true...

Zimbabwe get soundly beaten

Bangladesh beat Zimbabwe. This is good. Ordinarily Bangladesh would have been in the post title, but we're expanding our vocabulary by using Zimbabwe as the subject for any number of 'get beaten' synonyms.

In fact we've not really got much to add to that. Our man Saqibul Hasan took 3-18 off ten overs in bowling Zimbabwe out for 130 in response to Bangladesh's 231. Shariar Nafees hit 123.

Saqibul Hasan is in Bangladesh's World Cup squad

Saqibul Hasan was always going to be in Bangladesh's World Cup squad, but we're guessing that most of you don't pay as much attention to Bangladesh's one-day line-up as we do.

All we're really doing is restating our belief that Saqibul Hasan is going to be 'Someone'. He may not be Someone at this World Cup. He'll be someone - he'll be Saqibul Hasan. We're just not sure he'll be 'Someone'.

He's still only 19, so we might have to be patient. On the other hand, great players do great things on the grandest of stages, so maybe we shouldn't be patient.

At the time of writing, Saqibul averages 40 with the bat in one-day internationals and 26 with the ball. He's only played 18 matches and the vast majority were against Zimbabwe, so you can probably ignore those figures.

Far better to admire his textbook batting in the accompanying minuscule and blurry photo. Some people might say that he looks overcoached on this evidence, but they'd be wrong. You can't teach a batting stance like that. It's innate.

We're uncertain whether that's a lone, disapproving spectator in the background, or the door to the gents.

Saqibul Hasan puts India to the sword

Actually, India won. Saqibul Hasan put in his usual barely-noticeable, steady-yet-effective performance. He hit 50 and then took 2-43.

The end.

We've got a good post for tomorrow. We promise.

Adil Rashid five-fer against Durham

Is that right? Do you change the spelling to 'fer' when you use that phrase? We should standardise this as soon as possible or we'll have a repeat of that embarrassing time when we spelt 'Sourav' as 'Saurav' for about six months.

Adil Rashid's living up to his One To Watch billing thus far. He'll need to do more to justify his 'tip' status however. A tip is three or four better than being One To Watch. Possibly even five better.

Round one of the County Championship brought Adil Rashid scores of 86 and 19 and 4-105 and 3-64 against Surrey. Yesterday, he took 5-88 against Durham.

This is particularly encouraging being as it's early season and Adil's a leg-spinner. Normally early season wickets are the preserve of innocuosos like James Kirtley - fast-medium bowlers who stick to the basics.

Adil Rashid, Yorkshire - one to watch in 2007

Give England cricket fans a leg-spinner and they flock together muttering excitedly about 'the chosen one'. Give them an all-rounder and they genuflect and dab incense all over themselves. Given them a leg-spinning all-rounder and they'll be sacrificing second team wicketkeepers before you know it.

We're proud to be among them. Adil Rashid is like some supernatural blending of Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar.

Note to Adil Rashid:

Sorry, mate. There's no way you can live up to this. Just give it a crack and we promise we'll always be nice to you, even if you get bowled by a straight one from Andrew Hall.

Other Ones To Watch in 2007

Saqibul Hasan hits 50 against India

The man's some kind of genius. Ask anyone. Saqibul Hasan hit 53 against India.

Shortly afterwards we went into the middle of town, took off our shirt, stood on a pedestal and screamed: "See! See! See how Saqibul Hasan's a genius! See how his 53, comfortably the third-highest score of the match, confirms his status as one of the future greats!"

An indifferent Manchester mostly ignored us.

We tipped Saqibul Hasan as a future something-or-other, by the way. He's also one of our World Cup players to watch.

Tip: Adil Rashid, England

We tried to stay measured. We tried to hold back. We tried not to get overenthusiastic. We tried not to make ludicrous pronouncements. We failed.

Adil Rashid will take 300 Test wickets for England. Adil Rashid will hit 3,000 Test runs for England. Adil Rashid is officially one of our heroes, even though he's a decade younger than us and we haven't yet seen him play. He's a leg-spinning all-rounder and he's 18. We don't have the resilience to stand up to that.

Last month Adil Rashid made a splash by being a Yorkshire-born player of Asian origin who played a match for Yorkshire. That really shouldn't be news: A Yorkshireman playing for Yorkshire. It's a very sad fact that this was news. However, he took 6-67 in a match-winning performance against Warwickshire and that really was news.

In the current under-19 international between England and India, Rashid hit 114 batting at six (15 fours, three sixes) and followed that up by taking 8-157. The man/lad/boy's above this standard of cricket. He's the next Andrew Flintoff.

We haven't gone overboard, have we?

King Cricket's other tips.

King Cricket's tips for the future

The list of Royal Posts on the left is starting to look more congested than 2001's Kumbh Mela in Allahabad. (See, we don't just go on about Transformers and fat cricketers. We're well-read.) We've decided to consolidate some of the more obvious themes.

We've decided to start with the tips section. We'll add names to this post each time we tip someone.

Dheeraj Jadhav
Saqibul Hasan
Andy Solomons
Adil Rashid

Tip: Andy Solomons

Thanks to our Sri Lanka correspondent, ‘Dad’, for uncovering Andy Solomons.

Andy Solomons was in the Sri Lankan squad for the recent Under-19 World Cup, but unfortunately, he didn’t get a game. We’re still tipping him for greatness.

He was recently awarded the Observer-Bata Schools Cricket ‘Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer 2005 Outstation’ award. Not a catchy title by any means, but previous winners include Arjuna Ranatunga, Muttiah Muralitharan and Marvan Attapattu. Sri Lankan schoolboy cricket isn’t of the blue stumps and rubber ball variety with children clumsily swinging bats and giggling. Your average Sri Lankan school side would probably rack up a four-figure score against Zimbabwe. Attempt a cross-bat stroke to a well-pitched up delivery and you’ll be laughed out of town if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be made an example of on the national news.

Andy Solomons is, according to Sri Lanka’s Sunday Observer, ‘a stylish right-hand bat’ and a medium pace opening bowler. His defining innings as far as we’re concerned was 263 against Lalith Athulathmudali Vidyalaya, Mount Lavinia, which included 24 fours. It also featured a Shahid Afridi-esque 21 sixes. That isn’t a typo. He scored 126 runs by clearing the ropes. Factor in 96 from fours and he only ran 41 out of 263. That’s immense, even if you’re playing in the back garden against yourself. We should know – although most of our innings tend to end when we lose the tennis ball next door after a particularly gung-ho six.

We’ve got some pictures of Andy Solomons, but we’d have to connect our scanner to our PC and it’s a hassle. If you promise to bowl at us in the back garden for a while, we’ll let you have a look at them.

King Cricket's other tips.

Tip: Sakib al Hasan/Shakib al Hasan/Saqibul Hasan

Sakib Al Hasan is representing the Bangladesh under-19s at the moment. He's 16 (or 18 - it's never simple) and he's a left-handed, top order batsman and left arm spinner. He was out for 20 off 16 balls against Uganda under-19s this morning, so this isn't the most timely of tips, but he is good. Really good.

He got the top four Pakistan batsmen out in Bangladesh's first match of the Under-19 World Cup. He also took 3-39 and then scored 100 off 86 balls against Sri Lanka in the final of an under-19 tri-nation tournament before Christmas.

He's also helping the under-19s in their bid to field at least three Hasans in every match they play.

- As a footnote to this, we do now know what Sakib looks like because we found a picture on cricinfo. We were going to steal it, but the warnings about stealing it are a little bit too clear, so instead we're going to make do with pointing out that cricinfo think that he's a medium-fast bowler when he isn't.

Click here to laugh heartily at cricinfo and their poor research/airtight legal warnings about image theft.

King Cricket's other tips.

Tip: Dheeraj Jadhav

This is Dheeraj Jadhav. At least we think it is.

We think that Dheeraj Jadhav is going to be an amazing batsman for India. He might not use this exact face, but he will use the name Dheeraj Jadhav.

Last year we tipped Gautam Gambhir for greatness (to ourself at least). This year we're going for Dheeraj.

We want Lancashire to sign Dheeraj, but they won't. They only seem to like Australians at the moment.

King Cricket's other tips.