MELBOURNE, Dec 7: A desperate Nathan Bracken is eyeing to cash in on the void in Australia’s spin department to force his way back into the national side and now-a-days the left-arm pacer is busy fine-tuning his spin bowling skills in the nets, instead of swing.

“I’ve been practising them (spin) a fair bit. I’ve been bowling them at training but the hardest thing has been trying to get the chance to bowl them in a game,” said Bracken, who was earlier this year ranked the world’s No 1 one-day bowler.

Incidentally, during the last Sheffield Shield game against Tasmania, Bracken who took a match total of eight wickets playing for New South Wales, asked his skipper Dominic Thornely to allow him to bowl spin in the second innings. “I said to Dom (Thornely) the Tasmanians would ‘go’ me I knew they’d want to take me on and figured it might have brought us a wicket. He wanted to see how things went but, to his credit, Dom didn’t rule the idea out,” Bracken said.

Although, he has been practising spin at the nets for quite sometime, Bracken admits having some problems in working out the pace of his tweakers. “It’s been suggested I look at Colin ‘Funky’ Miller as an example. Funky bowled them at about 90 to 95 km an hour. He had a fast bowler’s mentality because Colin would make sure the batsman couldn’t get down to him.

“I was bowling to a few of the younger guys the other day and one of them said during the session he’d just realised I didn’t turn the ball. He came down the wicket for the next one and it turned in a big way But I am still learning,” he said.—Agencies