Signings of the Mackay/Adams era - the story so far

Ever since Gus Mackay began a new era at Surrey in the Autumn of 2008 and Chris Adams joined him soon after we've signed a fair few players (some might say too many). I posted on a Surrey message board the other day that there were grounds to question their collective talent-spotting abilities. I thought therefore I'd put my money where my mouth is and look at the performances of those who have joined since the Autumn of 2008. I should note that I only looked at County Championship performances, I don't have the kind of time it'd take to look across all competitions!

The players who have been signed since then, from memory, are Andre Nel, Grant Elliott, Ryan Harris, Rangana Herath, Tim Linley, James Anyon, Gareth Batty, Chris Tremlett and Rao Ifthikar Anjum on the bowling front. Batsmen signed since then: Michael Brown, Rory Hamilton-Brown and Steven Davies. Instantly you can tell from that list that the focus was on signing bowlers, which is fair since our bowling in 2008 was truly crap, but we are now somewhat short in the batting department.

So, how have those players performed in the season-and-a-bit since the Mackay/Adams partnership began? The nine bowlers we've splashed out on have taken 68 wickets in 834 overs (strike rate: 73), at an average of 43 apiece - that's not very special, in fact its well below par.

Andre Nel is really the only bowler who can hold his head somewhere near high with 34 wickets at 29.5 (to be fair to him he missed the end of last season which partially accounts for the small number of wickets), indeed if you take Nel out of the equation their combined average shoots up to a dizzying 57.2! And in amongst all this, the lot of them could only muster one 5-for (that man Nel again with 6-36 against Northampton - incidentally the only game we've won in more than two years!) It remains to be seen how Tremlett will impact on those numbers, but surely it can only get better?

Andre Nel - or Gunther as he calls his in-match alter-ego - celebrates a wicket

And the batsmen? Only runs from the pure batsmen and all rounders (Batty, Harris and Elliott - yes folks, he was an allrounder technically) are taken into account, and the picture is slightly better, boosted somewhat by the early 2010 form of Davies and RHB. The collective batting average is 37.9 at a strike rate around 50, but only four hundreds have been registered from 50 innings - two for Brown in 2009 and one apiece from Davies and RHB this season.

So now we sit at least a batsman light and it looks like signing batsmen is the speciality of the Mackay/Adams regime! From the looks of them so far this season, the batting stats are heading in the right direction, but their record on bowlers is worrying. The likes of Rao and Herath just haven't performed for us and the English bowlers we've signed aren't much better.

I hope they've made a note of where they've gone wrong with the personnel so far, and if there is to be a long-term replacement for Piyush Chawla they'd better sit down and think long and hard about who exactly it is they want - it needs to be a top quality spinner who is going to take bucket loads of wickets. I'm not asking too much, am I?