Thursday, March 23, 2017

Mason Crane becomes New South Wales' first overseas player for 30 years

"It is hard not to be excited at the prospect of a young leg spinner in the England test team," I wrote towards the end of the 2015 season.

That young leg spinner was Mason Crane of Hampshire and remarkable things have happened to him since then.

Crane played 12 County Championship matches and took 49 wickets, albeit that they were a little on the expensive side at 45 runs each.

This winter he was sent to play grade cricket for Gordon District Cricket Club in Australia.

There he excelled, taking seven wickets in an innings three times. So well did he bowl that he was picked for New South Wales.

True, the state's best two spinners, Nathan Lyon and Stephen O'Keefe, were playing for Australia in India. But Crane became the first overseas player to be picked for New South Wales since Imran Khan in 1984/5.

Most recently he has being playing for South against North in the slightly odd series of three one-day games that the ECB has arranged in Dubai.

In the last of them he took four wickets for one run to remove the North middle order and win the game.

All very promising. If Crane does go on to have a serious test career, remember you read about him here first.

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