Graham Napier Is Not Worth All the Hype

Graham Napier hit a brutal 152 in the Twenty20 league stage this year with more balls hit out of a ground than I have ever seen.

Since this innings he has turned into a semi-household name and a new favourite cricketer. He is very often mentioned as an England possibility to knock some life into our one-day team.

From the title of this article you may have worked out that I am not Napier’s biggest fan, but I don’t mean any disrespect to him at all.

His innings in the Twenty20 against Sussex was the best ever in this country. It had the most sixes ever and it was probably one of the quickest paced innings of any substantial length in that form of the game. He then backed this up with a good showing in the quarterfinal and also did well in the 50 over semifinal.

The thing is, this has been his best season ever, but these are the only three innings of note he has had. Everything else has been way below par for an international prospect.

No one is seriously suggesting him for the longer format of the game (in which he actually has a decent batting record for an all-rounder) so we’ll concentrate on his one-day credentials.

I don’t mean to base this on numbers, but over a long time period numbers give the best indication of how good a player really is. He has played 153 matches, which shows he is fairly experienced. This also means we can take his numbers as being accurate as they won’t be affected from one extreme innings (like his 2020 numbers).

He averages 16. This is poor.

Also, he has passed 50 only eight times (plus that time in Twenty20) with a high score of 79. Again, these aren’t the statistics of a future international.

People don’t just suddenly acquire the talent and coordination to hit balls as cleanly as he has shown this year, signifying that he has had this ability all his career. This tells us that he doesn’t have that something (The brain? The temperament? The mental endurance? The know-how?) which enables him to score as many runs as he is capable of.

People have constantly had a go at Ian Bell for not converting scores into big scores with England, but he still consistently gets runs and has hundreds at around one in every five test matches and many good contributions in ODIs.

In comparison to Bell, and a lot of other batters, Napier has not consistently done anything to suggest he can make the step up to the highest level.

Imagine the media stick he would get if he were in the England team and showed the same sort of performances that he has given throughout his career.  No one would then be saying he should be in the team.

Finally, it is his bowling, as a bowling all-rounder, that has been good for a number of years in one-day games.

If his bowling hasn’t been good enough for England, his secondary talent shouldn’t be good enough to get in the England team ahead of specialist batters who have scored runs more consistently, and in larger numbers, for longer periods of time.

Therefore, he should not be talked about as playing for England.

I’m not saying he wouldn’t make an immediate impact if promoted to the national team. (If he does make an impact, it is likely to be immediate.) I’m just saying that I very much doubt he’d get runs often enough due to the fact that he has never done this in the past, even at county level.