Learning Curve

The English county cricket provides quality opportunity to cricketers to keep up their tempo during off-seasons, if at all such prolonged breaks are to be had in the modern-day international cricket. Zaheer Khan who had been bowling his heart out with little success in the previous international season, is rightly eyeing a stint with an English county during Team India's three months leave from international commitments. Though back-to-back games take a lot out of the players, Zaheer Khan, the single-minded trier that he is, should enjoy county cricket and reap rich dividends from it. He is already no mug with the bat. And some serious batting at the fiercely competitive county level might also add consistency to his lusty hittings, especially when Twenty20 cricket is experiencing a boom. He might just return as a reliable all-rounder for India, at least for the one-dayers, as did Dion Nash for New Zealand, Nixon McLean for West Indies, among others. Even Jacques Kallis, who was just a batsman who could turn his arms to decent effect, made a sensational return to international cricket as a match-winning all-rounder in both the versions of the game.