30
Middlesex
MIXED FEELINGS
Ollie Rayner is back at Hove tonight with the Panthers but admits it’s not a game he is necessarily looking forward to!
What are the biggest changes you have witnessed during the first decade of the T20 format? Teams and bowlers picking up on and honing the techniques from the IPL so that the ball reverseswings within the 20 overs. The number of different shots has increased with the ramp, the ‘Dilscoop’ and reverse sweep and the bats have got bigger and heavier. Not only that, but the batsmen are fearless. It’s just a great form of the game.
night out’, so you can see how T20 has helped clubs market the game, and we all benefit from that as a result.
You are one of the few spinners to open the bowling in T20. Is it a role you revel in? I think Robert Croft was the first to try it at Glamorgan, and although I was keen to try during my time at Sussex I don’t remember ever being given the chance. I generally quite enjoy doing it for Middlesex. Sure, you can get whacked, but generally In terms of aspiration, what’s is more important it’s as good a time as any to bowl. With a new ball to a modern-day cricketer: winning a Test cap or you can’t expect to spin the cover off it, so I just try to chasing IPL and T20 dollars? skid it into the pads and leg stump area. More than I think for 90 per cent of first-class cricketers the anything you have to want to do it and I do like the pinnacle is still Test cricket, but you have to say that challenge. People opening the batting may want to T20 has really helped a lot of cricketers to make a have a little look first, so I may just get away with it. If really decent living. T20 has brought a lot to the someone does fly at you, what can you do anyway? game of cricket, it has put us into the limelight as a You just have to take it on the chin. In charge: Alec Stewart (left) had sport and I believe caninonly be a good thing. At a mentoring role atthat Surrey 2010 Kent games on Friday nights, they call it ‘The lads It has become known as ‘the group of death’, so hisT20 new job won’t be unfamiliar