James Franklin, New Zealand - Player profile

When James Franklin was first called up, we were quite pleased. He was a bowler. As in, he was just a bowler. Not a middle-order batsman who bowled a bit of medium-pace and not a medium-pace bowler who batted a bit. A bowler.

Recently, James Franklin has shown signs of becoming a better batsman. Even though we don't like New Zealand's medium-pace all-rounder production line, we were paradoxically pleased by this. We like to see players improving themselves. It shows a good attitude. We may not like the end product, but we respect a player working at the weaker parts of their games. That's one thing that's great about cricket: Everyone has to bat.

Then we found out that James Franklin had apparently always had 'batting potential'. Now we don't like him because he's not someone who's worked at his game and improved himself unexpectedly, he's just the latest player heading for his rightful place as a medium-pace bowler/middle-order batsman in the New Zealand team.

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