Patel's talent search comes to town

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Former New Zealand test cricket off-spinner Dipak Patel is searching the country for talent.

Patel has taken up a job as head coach of spin bowling for New Zealand cricket and yesterday he visited Blenheim as part of that job.

Patel said his job was targeting the top end of talent, as well as trying to develop young spin bowling talent.

"Most provinces are well served in terms of one or two spinners. The difficulty in this country is giving spinners the opportunity to bowl and spending more game time bowling and keeping them in the game as long as possible."

Patel said a lot of youngsters were taking up the art of spin bowling and he credits the likes of Sri Lankan great Muttiah Muralitharan and Aussie wizard Shane Warne for encouraging that.

"That's the role we want to play, encouraging players to take up spin bowling. We've probably got two world-class spinners in New Zealand at the moment ? Daniel Vettori and Jeetan Patel. There wouldn't be a better advert to encourage spin bowling."

The changing face of cricket means that Twenty20 cricket is becoming more popular on the international scene, the success of the recent World Cup in South Africa evidence of that.

Patel believes that version of the game will encourage, rather than discourage spinners.

"In the Twenty20 World Cup, spinners played a big part. They give the captain another option and I think that will help in developing them."

Patel said New Zealand cricket asked all the provinces to identify who their best spin bowlers were from the age of 14 years up to first-class cricket level and he's currently two weeks into a nationwide tour viewing that talent. He said once the talent was identified, programmes could be set up to make sure the promising players could develop their skills.

The three Marlborough spin-bowlers at Patel's clinic yesterday were Marlborough senior rep left-arm spinner Nick d'Auvergne, age-group rep and left-arm spinner Josh Poole and teenage leg-spinner Michael Bush.