KEY POINTS:
Jacob Oram isn't about to give up the fight to remain an allround force for New Zealand, but he knows that a tough decision is getting closer with each injury setback.
The big allrounder is out of this month's two-test cricket trip to Australia after suffering back problems during the tour to Bangladesh.
He hopes to start bowling again in eight to 10 days and be ready for the arrival of the West Indies at the start of next month.
"Oram" and "injury" are no strangers to being in the same sentence, and the player is increasingly frustrated at being unable to stay healthy for a reasonable length of time. He calls his frequent injury layoffs "a bit of a joke", except no one's laughing.
That said, the period from the world Twenty20 championship in South Africa 14 months ago to the end of the England tour in July was one of Oram's happiest as far as his fitness was concerned.
"I probably played about 80 to 90 per cent of games, which for me, given my last three or four years' history, is pretty successful," he said yesterday. "I felt like I'd got back on the horse and physically felt okay. After two months in the gym before heading to Bangladesh I thought I was in great nick, and it's just annoying knowing my body is getting to the stage where the workload I'm carrying as an allrounder, and as a bowler, is starting to maybe get a bit too much."
Which leads to the obvious line about when, not if, Oram puts the bowling boots away for good and plays as a specialist batsman. He knows it is coming, but when he makes the call it will be through gritted teeth.
Oram, 30, feels he owes his initial New Zealand selection to the decision he made about eight years ago to work on his bowling to crack it as an allrounder.
The decision paid off - he is world cricket's No 1-ranked ODI allrounder, and No 6 on the test list. But he is at the stage where his body is giving off warning signals.
"It's not as easy as some people think to flag bowling and just bat," he said. "There are a lot of other middle order batsmen in the country I'd be in competition with, so it's not an automatic assumption I'd make the side. Then it's all about scoring runs and it's a totally different mindset preparing for a match solely as a batsman."
Oram won't rush into giving up bowling, "but I'd be kidding myself if I thought I could keep playing another four or five years as an allrounder, because it's getting to the stage where playing three months then being injured for one month isn't all that enjoyable any more". He will spend the next week swimming and cycling and hopes to have a couple of games for his United club in Palmerston North and get in some State Championship play for Central Districts.
The first-class schedule means he could have two or three games before the first test against the West Indies starts in Dunedin on December 11.
The New Zealand squad for Australia will be named tomorrow. The selectors might choose a group only for the warm-up against New South Wales, starting next Thursday, and the first test at Brisbane, beginning on November 20, then rejig it for the second test at Adelaide.
That horses-for-courses thinking might mean that while naming 15 players, offspinner Jeetan Patel, for example, would not be required at seam-friendly Brisbane, but would certainly be in the frame at Adelaide, where batsmen prosper and spinners can have more say in proceedings.
Those not needed for one or other test would stay back to play first-class cricket, with the championship starting next Monday.
