FIGHTING FOR HIS SPOT

Attitude towards spinners in red-ball cricket in Australia not great: Zampa

by Rob Johnston • Last updated on

Although Zampa admits he has not bowled his best of late, his career numbers are decent, particularly when you consider he is probably three or four years from his peak. © Getty

To put it mildly, Australia have work to do ahead of next year's World Cup. They have won just three of their last 13 ODI games, and are staring at a fourth successive series reversal in the current rubber in England. There are questions over both tactics and personnel with time running out to put things right. As a result, there is plenty at stake for those Australians currently in the UK, including for a player who is trying to state his World Cup case - not with the international squad, but in county cricket.

As legspinner Adam Zampa sits in front of the pavillion, watching Essex's Paul Walter smash Glamorgan's 2nd XI all over the shop at the County Ground in Chelmsford, the obvious question is why is Australia's number one limited-overs spinner for most of the past two years not with his fellow countrymen for their five-match series against England. On the face of it, his omission from a squad containing no frontline wrist-spinner seems surprising.

Although Zampa admits he has not bowled his best of late, his career numbers are decent, particularly when you consider he is probably three or four years from his peak. He averages 34.73 with the ball from 31 ODIs - England's Adil Rashid was averaging 35 at more or less the same stage of his career - and Zampa played four matches of the series against Eoin Morgan's men in January, keeping things tight without taking the wickets he would have liked.

He then saw very little action during the Trans-Tasman T20 Tri-Series which followed - the format in which he excels - and was dropped for the current ODI tour of England in favour of the finger-spinners Ashton Agar and Nathan Lyon, the latter of whom has yet to play in the series. Despite a bowling average of 16 in T20Is, Zampa hasn't been selected for Australia's upcoming T20 games either, losing out to leggie Mitchell Swepson.

A thoughtful and intelligent interviewee, Zampa cuts an exasperated figure. "It's been a frustrating 12 months being in and out of the international team," he tells Cricbuzz. "It's due to lack of cricket. T20 has always been considered my strongest format and since the IPL last year, I've reckon I've only played seven or eight T20s in 12 months."

That lack of cricket is the reason Zampa is in Chelmsford, preparing to play for Essex in the Vitality T20 Blast. The county were keen to have a wicket-taking option in the middle overs and Zampa's variations, including a good googly and a straight ball, should provide that. "This is a good opportunity for me to get 14, 15, 16 games in straight," he says. "When I was bowling my best I was playing Caribbean Premier League, the Oz T20s and IPL all back-to-back. The more you play the better you get.

"I feel like I'm still learning but you actually have to play to get better. It doesn't really matter what cricket you're playing. I find even playing club cricket is a good opportunity for me to work on some things. Playing cricket is a short life-span so I'm just trying to get as much in. I obviously want my spot back in the Australian team."

Although he doesn't say as much, you get the impression that Zampa feels like he has been messed about by Australia of late. In and out of the side, often not bowling his full allotment of overs, he admits he feels he has been held back slightly. The good thing, in his view, is that the selectors say they want to take a legspinner to next year's World Cup although quite why they then haven't selected one for the current one-day series is anyone's guess.

"With a long tournament in England [next year], the wickets are going to slow up and become used so if they do want a legspinner and I am bowling well, I do well for Essex so they can see I have done well over here, I think that's a positive for me," he says.

Zampa made a fast start to international cricket after his debut in New Zealand in 2016. He took 30 wickets in his first 19 ODI internationals but things started to go wrong on last year's tour of India. He admits he should have gone to the CPL before the tour to get some game time in but "stuffed" himself by doing pre-season back home. That tour to India - four wickets at 47 and an economy of nearly seven runs an over - was the worst he has bowled for Australia and cost him an IPL deal this year. Yet more cricket missed out on.

Despite the selection of Western Australia's Swepson for the one-off T20I against England and the tri-series in Zimbabwe that follows, Zampa is clearly still in Australia's thoughts. New coach Justin Langer has been in touch telling him to stick with it - "He was pretty busy and he had the time to ask how it was going so that was pretty cool" - and the Essex stint is designed to restate his credentials ahead of an important summer back home.

Although Zampa's strength is clearly with the white ball, he hasn't given up on the red one either. He has, however, been forced to consider specialising in the shortest formats simply because he struggles to get a game in first-class cricket. This season was a case in point. After playing for the national team, he returned to South Australia, played one Sheffield Shield game and was then dropped.

"The attitude towards spinners in red-ball cricket in Australia is not great," he says. "There's a lot of leeway for batsmen that miss out. They get more opportunity. I'd come straight from a T20 tri-series against New Zealand and England - I played only one game in that - and I bowled OK and scored runs in the [state] game but it wasn't enough to keep my spot for the next two games.

"It's a frustration. I want to play back-to-back games. I want to get better and I just feel like I haven't really got that opportunity. My career average in four-day cricket isn't great but the last two season I've got 50 wickets in 15 games. Bowling on drop in wickets in Australia, that's improving."

Following the ball-tampering incident in Cape Town, Zampa, as the Australian overseas pro at Essex, hasn't stopped being asked about it. "Everyone makes mistakes," he says thoughtfully. He wasn't surprised about the strength of the reaction back home given the high standards expected of Australia's cricketers from the media and public alike but feels for the players involved. "If that was me, I'd be devastated as well."

Zampa is about as far removed from the macho, Australian stereotype as you could imagine and does not like the histrionics which can sometimes occur. "I just thought cricket was going to change a lot when Phil Hughes passed away, the aggressive side of it," he says. "I don't think it really changed that much which is probably the most disappointing part for me. I don't play my cricket like that at all. I just play."

Zampa is a young man, sure of both himself and where he wants his career to go, craving opportunities to play and to learn, to make a difference. Off the pitch, he is similar; along with Peter Siddle, Kane Richardson and Nic Maddinson, he is one of a growing band of Australian cricketers to embrace veganism. His face adorns buses in Adelaide as part of a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaign to publicise the cause of animal welfare.

"It's one of the best decisions I've made," he says of becoming a vegan. "My father went vegan a long time ago and I was just like 'Dad, that's ridiculous'. But then once you look into it, the impact farming has on the environment, the animals, we are ruining the resources we have and we are ruining the world. If you were to try and take kids to slaughterhouse, there's no way you would be able to do it but it's ok to feed them the meat. That doesn't make sense."

Zampa has worked with PETA and Animals Australia and hopes to change attitudes towards veganism. "The Australian attitude towards it is just like 'Mate, you need to have a beer and a steak'," he says. "And that's just the way the Australian culture is. Once you get passed that, you don't get too angry about it. There would be times when someone in a cricket team would say that sort of thing. I'd get angry but I know what I am doing is right so I wouldn't have it any other way."

That's not something he would say about his career right now. Desperate to get on the park and desperate for his place back in Australia's limited-overs team, Zampa is a man who does not want to be wasting time on the bench. With a World Cup on the horizon, his upcoming stint at Essex is a vital chance for him to remind Australia's selectors of what he can do. They would be wise to take notice.

© Cricbuzz

TAGS