Aussie connection set to bring Stokes to Big Bash revealed as $600k bidding war erupts<\/a><\/p>\nCatching the eye; Corey Rocchiccioli has performed extremely well for Western Australia in recent seasons in the Sheffield Shield. (Photo by Quinn Rooney\/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Catching the eye<\/p>\n
The rangy Rocchiccioli, who is 190cm tall, is doing such a good job that he has caught the eye of an Australian great.<\/p>\n
The Sandgroper has taken 179 wickets in 52 first class games, which includes 122 in the past three Sheffield Shield seasons, something former Australian captain Allan Border described as a great effort given his home ground is the WACA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difficult thing for me and the worrying thing for me was when Nathan (Lyon) didn\u2019t play in the Sydney Test match because of injury and Australia didn\u2019t pick another spinner,\u201d Border told foxsports.com.au. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think that Rocchiccioli from WA … he interests me because he gets people out. It\u2019s one thing to bowl well and get ones and twos, but he\u2019s been getting fives and sixes bowling in Perth, so I think that is a good sign for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocchiccioli is eager for the opportunity ahead in Darwin, should he be selected for a Cricket Australia XI, and also for what lies ahead on a domestic front with Western Australia and, potentially, the international scene in coming years.<\/p>\n
He has arrived in Darwin fresh from a month training at the new Cricket WA training facility at the redeveloped WACA after getting married during an off-season that included a quick honeymoon in Noosa with his wife Rebecca.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my first pre-season in a couple of years, which has been nice,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think I played 25 first-class games in 18 months, so I had quite a few ailments I needed to sort of saw through – I wouldn\u2019t say get fitter – but I\u2019ve managed to wipe a good few seconds off my 2km (time trial and) ran a 6.36min the other day, which was quite nice for this time of year. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo … I\u2019ve enjoyed being at home. As much as I would have loved to keep playing cricket and obviously keep performing and keep learning, it\u2019s been nice to be home (this winter).\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocchiccioli takes hatty over 2 innings! | 00:56<\/p>\n
Learning from a legend<\/p>\n
Rocchiccioli believes he is only now entering the prime of his career and not surprisingly looks to Lyon, who will return to the Australian team for the series against Bangladesh in Darwin and Mackay, as an inspiration.<\/p>\n
The champion off-spinner told foxsports.com.au last year that spinners learn something new about their craft every season and that is something that the Western Australian aspirant agrees with.<\/p>\n
His coach Beau Casson, who played a Test against the West Indies and was recently promoted to head coach in WA after highly-successful coach Adam Voges ended his tenure at the completion of last season, is his primary source of advice.<\/p>\n
But Rocchiccioli, who has spent the past month bowling to Cameron Green at the WACA in training, said Ashton Agar had also proven a good sounding board, while he also shares trade tricks with fellow aspirants Todd Murphy and Matt Kuhnemann.<\/p>\n
Lyon has offered advice when they have met and he marvels at the ability of the New South Welshman to keep his body in a condition where he has been able to be effective for so long at the top level.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re constantly evolving and I think the word mastery, like Gaz is on his journey to mastery far greater and farther along the line than I am, and I\u2019m obviously a little bit younger than him, but … you\u2019re always striving for it, knowing that you\u2019re never going to get there,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut what you do learn along the way is you\u2019ll have moments, whether that might be a moment for me coming up in Darwin, that I learned something 10 games ago in India that I\u2019m able to put into play now, or mentally or physically, things that I\u2019ve tried to work on. They sometimes stick in a game a long way down the line. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe nature of what we do with our bodies as well … your body\u2019s never in the same state all the time, so you\u2019re always trying to master your body to be able to bowl at your top and be able to develop your skill set. <\/p>\n
\u201cGaz is a genius at what he\u2019s able to do with his body. Technically, the proficiency that he\u2019s got is unbelievable. Like, for a layman and people who don\u2019t bowl off-spin, they sort of just see Gaz do what he does. But when you look at it from the inside, what he does is really awesome, and it shows cases to me that if you spend 10 to 15 years owning your craft, by the time I get to that age, and hopefully I\u2019m still playing, I\u2019m able to do the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corey Rocchiccioli celebrates the wicket of Campbell Kellaway, who is a teammate in a Cricket Australia XI clash with Bangladesh in Darwin this week, in a Sheffield Shield outing in Melbourne in 2024. (Photo by Quinn Rooney\/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
The spinner with a difference<\/p>\n
Rocchiccioli differs from other Australian spinners in the bounce that he is able to generate, which he believes is a positive when bowling at the WACA. As he noted, it is not uncommon for him to enter the attack early in Shield games in Perth.<\/p>\n
He notes that what might work for Lyon or Murphy will not necessarily prove the same for him, and vice versa, and that he has honed his craft through experiences across Australia and also in India and England, where he played last winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have a direct line with Gaz but whenever I see him, I\u2019ll ask him certain things about how he\u2019s going about it. It is the same with Murph and Kuhni (Kuhnemann),\u201d he said<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all bowling off-spin and we\u2019re always trying to like help each other and and learn. Essentially, everyone\u2019s learning on the job. There\u2019s no-one who\u2019s figured it out (completely) so you\u2019re constantly asking. As an offie and a curious offie at that, I\u2019m just asking as many people as I can and seeing where it fits. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re a young player, you take in a lot of information and you don\u2019t really understand how it fits into your game, (but) then as an older player or a more mature player, you start to figure out how that fits into your own game. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s probably been the difference for me the last couple of years, actually understanding that what works for a 6.3 foot off-spinner might be a little bit different to a 5.6 foot guy who slides them on the sub-continent. So I\u2019m just learning and adapting and sort of just figuring out what\u2019s going to work for me.\u201d <\/p>\n
Long live the spinner<\/p>\n
Concerns have been raised about the impact of spinners in Australia in recent Test summers given the propensity for green, seaming pitches that have proven bountiful for the nation\u2019s premier pace attack.<\/p>\n
Border cited the decision to overlook Murphy at both the MCG and SCG last summer when Lyon was injured, while the champion off-spinner also missed the Gabba Test and a match in the West Indies last year as a worry.<\/p>\n
But Shane Warne always stressed that if a pitch seamed, it would spin as well and that is a theory Rocchiccioli subscribes to when insisting chatter about the death of the craft in Australia is misplaced for several reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually quite funny because I don\u2019t know if anyone\u2019s really watched the WACA over the last few years but (the pitch) is usually the colour of the outfield most of the time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was picked a few years ago and then worked out a way to perform … because of the fact of what my spin can offer on those green wickets. I feel like good spinners make themselves perfectly available to be of use all of the time. That\u2019s why Gaz has played 100 and whatever Tests he\u2019s played. It\u2019s why Murph has played the amount of cricket he\u2019s played, and same with Kuhnemann and Zampa. Good spinners make themselves pickable and I feel like that\u2019s always going to be the case. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven for a fact of how it helps quicks, I think there was there\u2019s been some studies around that if spinners play, it helps the injury reduction for pace bowlers. So I selfishly hope that spin is in the game for a really long period of time, and I think a good spinner will always be in it, whether we have to add more strings to our bow, whether we have to be really good batters or really good slips catchers … I think it\u2019s got a place in cricket for a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
PERTH, AUSTRALIA – OCTOBER 22: Corey Rocchiccioli of Western Australia celebrates the wicket of Kieran Elliott of Tasmania during the Sheffield Shield match between Western Australia and Tasmania at the WACA Ground, on October 22, 2024, in Perth, Australia. (Photo by Paul Kane\/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Corey Rocchiccioli was a national selector, he would be penning his name in the Australian team in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-842896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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