The seven season county veteran has signed for the entirety of 2011 as our overseas player, acting as the second such player in the T20s alongside Shaun Tait.
Arafat has been a regular on the county circuit for a long time and he's still only 28. He'll be available (barring injury) for pretty much every game and offers something in both the batting and obviously the bowling departments - I'm not sure how good his fielding is. His experience will bring a lot to a very green fast bowling group and it also goes some way to plugging the giant gap left by one C. T. Tremlett.
As Chris Adams says on the official site we have suffered for some years now regarding the overseas signing through a mixture of purely picking the wrong players (Elliott, Rao) and not having the right players available for any length of time (Harris). Arafat certainly rights that wrong and the continuity he will provide should not be underestimated.
And neither should his talents, over 700 first class wickets at 23, and a batting average of 26 including four hundreds (two in the County Championship). He was in good form for Sussex last year too, 37 wickets at 25 and 255 runs at 36 including two fifties. He's a very fine county number 8.
It won't surprise you to hear that there are still some niggling problems at the back of my mind. We have a lot of batsmen who can bowl (De Bruyn, Hamilton-Brown) and bowlers who can bat (Meaker, Jordan, Arafat) and Gareth Batty, but no genuine allrounder. I'm sure there are plenty of counties cursing their lack of a Daniel Vettori or Andrew Flintoff though. What I think will hurt us even more is the lack of any kind of front line spinning options, and I'm risking sounding like a broken record here for which I apologise.
Batty is a valuable cricketer, on and off the field and I don't wish to belittle his contribution to the side, but I'm sure even he would acknowledge that he isn't going to be running through sides on a regular basis. Schofield's bowling last season was not up to the standard of the year before, and Simon King is still an unknown quantity.
Moaning aside, I do think we have a decent side. A middle order containing De Bruyn, Hamilton-Brown, Maynard and Davies (and Ramps when he returns) ought to get us plenty of runs and a seam attack of Dernbach, Meaker, Jordan and Arafat is an exciting prospect. I think few would argue that Adams has gone down the wrong route with his signings, it just remains to be seen if he can get them playing the way we need them to.
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Unfortunately I don't see us getting promoted in the CC without a more penetrating spin option. Happy to be proved wrong though!
In limited overs though I think we're very well placed.
Tim
Hi Tim
I think it will be tough, all the best CC sides tend to have a 50+ wkts a season spinner. I think Adams has done a good job preparing a team aside from that though, and like you say, our limited overs side looks dangerous, better than last year and it was pretty decent then too!
Good stuff and totally agree that the spin department is the only major worry. I think it will be the major obstacle between us gaining promotion, but after the last few seasons just a year in which we challenge would be a start. As Tim says, we'll be a real force in the 20 and 40 over formats and a decent championship season plus a semi-final/final in one of the limitted overs comps would be a step forward. Adams' plan is clearly a 3-4 year one. Maynard, Arafat (how is he only 28?!), De Bruyn and Tait are all promising signings...
Afternoon Rich
You're right about Adams' plan, but I'm sure he said it was a 4 year plan when he first started, he's a little off the pace on the progress front. I think things were in worse shape at the club than he ever imagine, but that's by the by now, we have to look forwards and all that! I think he's built a good little side and they should be at least competing on all fronts. And yes, I was sure Rana and Arafat were roughly the same age, but apparently not!
go yasir go iim ur cousin to support u!!!!
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