Paul Adams Quits Professional Cricket
Paul Adams, the bowler with “frog in a blender” action, has declared his retirement from all forms of cricket. He shot to fame soon after being called up by the national selectors at the age of 18, after playing just five first-class matches in 1995-1996. The left arm Chinaman bowler made the batsmen puzzled with unpredictable deliveries in his early days. Actually, his unconventional action had a huge role behind his success in all forms of cricket. Batsmen could not guess what sort of ball they would face because Adams’ action was such that batsmen could not see his grip while delivering the ball.
In the first three test series, Paul Adams bagged 31 wickets at 25.06, keeping the batsmen busy in unraveling the mystery of the deliveries. However, the dominance of Paul Adams started decaying once the batsmen got used to with his deliveries. Eventually, his bowling started losing effectiveness due to lack of variety. Moreover, his career was also affected by injuries and another most important thing is that he delivered bad ball very often- that eventually led him to lose his place in the South African team.
Paul Adams played 45 Tests for South Africa and took 134 wickets at an average of 32.87 with four 5-wicket hauls in an innings. In limited over cricket (ODI), Paul Adams represented South Africa in 24 ODI matches and picked up 29 wickets. He played his last test in 2004 against New Zealand and his last ODI appearance for South Africa was against Zimbabwe in 2003. However, he has a very good first-class record with 412 wickets at 32.66 from 141 matches.
I think, Paul Adams may not have a glorious career or remarkable record to his cap, but he will be remembered among the cricket fans and pundits for a long time only because of his trademark bowling action.
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