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Simon Katich isn’t super keen on bowling. Not often, anyway. For one thing, his ageing body doesn’t handle the task quite as comfortably as it used to. And if he’s required it means the frontline attack isn’t working and the team is probably in a bit of trouble.

But as long as Australia persist without a specialist spinner, Katich will be called on from time to time. The answer is occasional short spells at carefully selected moments. It certainly worked in Durban, where Ricky Ponting turned to Katich on the final day when Australia needed to end the resistance from South Africa’s lower order.

“Ricky came to me about half an hour before lunch and said ‘get ready, you are going to have a bowl’ and I said ‘no worries’, ripped off my short-leg gear and got into it,” Katich said. “It always helps bowling to the tail. They always try and slog you as a spinner so it was nice to get a few wickets in the end.”

Three wickets to be precise. Three immensely valuable wickets. Paul Harris, Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn are not the best batsmen in the South African side but they were handling the fast men with relative comfort and Ponting wanted a wrist-spinner. Bryce McGain was running the drinks.

And so it was Katich or nobody. There wasn’t a great deal of turn but as old and wise a head as Katich was able to deceive the lower-order men, including with a handy wrong’un that caught the inside edge of Morkel’s bat and rocketed off his pads in the direction of Brad Haddin, who caught it between his legs.

“I would have liked to have spun the ball a little bit more, but the wrong’un was coming out all right and I guess that was something that helped because a few of them couldn’t pick it,” he said. “It just spun a little bit and deceived him [Morkel].”

There are batsmen, like Michael Clarke, who love to get the ball in their hand and are itching for opportunities. Subtly or not so subtly they’ll try and get the captain’s attention, perhaps with some shoulder exercises, maybe by bowling the ball to the next fielder instead of under-arming it on its way back to the bowler.

“I have been a reluctant bowler in the past,” Katich said. “When there have been other guys who have been doing the job and doing well then I’m happy not to be used because we are going well. I chuck them down every now and then [in the nets]. It just depends on the scheduling because it takes me a little bit longer to recover from bowling than it used to.”

That’s why Katich rarely uses himself in the Sheffield Shield. Last summer he sent down three overs for the entire domestic four-day campaign. Before Durban, he hadn’t bowled in a Test since the tour of India. He’s happy to do it if the time and place is right but the last thing Australia want is to begin tiring out a key batsman with a big workload in the field.

Since his return to the Test team last May, Katich has struck five centuries, the most recent of which came at Kingsmead in an enormous opening stand with Phillip Hughes. The men enjoyed a pat on the back when Hughes scored the first of his hundreds but despite their five-day form, neither was included in Australia’s limited-overs squad.

Hughes will surely get his one-day opportunity soon. But at 33, Katich knows his time in the green-and-gold clothing has long since passed. “No chance, no chance,” he said. “I don’t think at this stage of my career it is a wise move. You never say never but I would be very surprised.”

Source:Cricket News

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