Spinners are throwing up outstanding returns

Published : Sep 29, 2001 00:00 IST

IF cricket were a game of stocks, the blue chips would be the spinners. They have been a pretty solid investment over the years and currently, across continents and cultures, they are throwing up quite outstanding returns. Wrist spinners have always been a very reliable safety net but in the last year, the finger spinners have produced some wonderful results as well and a couple of left-armers have now surfaced. Nothing could be better for the game.

The spinners are normally a very happy bunch of guys and you will rarely find them complaining about things; unless of course one of them is called Robert Croft (the purists would scorn at his presence in this list!) for on a good day on a dusty track he will complain about the length of the umpire's shoelaces! But this story is about successful spinners so let us move on!

Shane Warne, savaged on the sub-continent, bruised in captaincy battles and the subject of more than one obituary has just gone past 400 wickets and took 31 in five Ashes Tests. Muttiah Muralitharan, like a locomotive out of control is now the fastest man ever to 350 wickets. Anil Kumble is threatening to get to 300, Saqlain Mushtaq has just gone past 150 and even the unfortunate Daniel Vettori has gone past 100 wickets. Harbhajan Singh took 32 wickets in three Tests against the best batting side in the world and even Ashley Giles spun England to a couple of Test victories. Danish Kaneria took 12 in a match and as I write this even South Africa, a perpetually spin-starved nation, seem to have produced a wicket-taking spinner in Claude Hendersen.

It is a wonderful time then to open up a little debate on who the best of these merry men is. I suspect whichever criterion you choose, you will find yourself locked between Warne and Muralitharan for the eventual prize. An Australian and a Sri Lankan don't always mix very well, Dav Whatmore is a rare combination, but these two have a lot in common and but one crucial difference.

Both have been extraordinarily successful because they possess the basic strength of a classical spinner; the big turning ball. Warne has gone through long days with his flipper out of control, his top spinner out of fizz and his googly out of his armoury itself. But he has managed to get by with amazing variations of line and pace with the leg-break alone. A leg spinner without the big leg-break has to be as special as Kumble. For years, Muralitharan only bowled the big off-break and like Warne, he relied on variations in line to cast doubt in a batsman's mind. But he was vulnerable to the man who had the courage to come down the wicket to him and in his early days, his wickets were obtained at great cost.

Special as both of them are, it was the one basic variation that made them even more dangerous; the straight ball. With Warne it was the flipper and in the heady period from 1993 to 1996, it was, along with Waqar Younis' sliding inswinger, the most lethal ball in the game.

Batsmen aiming for the pull found themselves hit on the left pad in front of leg stump and he must have lost count of the number of intended cut shots that ended up with the ball clipping the off stump.

Muralitharan discovered as well, that he only needed to bowl one ball every two or three overs that went straight through to prevent batsmen from charging down the wicket to him. The moment he had them locked in the crease, it was like picking chocolates from the refrigerator. Warne has 407 wickets from 92 Tests and on first glance it must seem that Muralitharan with 350 from 66 has left him way behind. That is not a wrong comparison to make by itself but you need to factor the fact that Muralitharan bowls, on an average, 50 balls (or 7 overs) more per Test. That is why the strike rate is probably a better measurement tool and they are virtually locked together on this one (Murali gets a wicket every 61.8 balls to Warne's strike rate of 62.8) as indeed they are on averages (24.79 versus 26.02).

That is why any ranking will have to be a question of individual preference and I find myself tilting towards Warne as the possessor of a more classical action. I am still not quite sure that Muralitharan fulfils every requirement of a legal action as per the latest definition (the arm should be straight at all points once it passes the horizontal at shoulder height). On such quirks are judgments made sometimes and so it is best that each man makes his own!

I have absolutely no doubt on any criterion though about the man who must follow in that list. Anil Kumble's 276 wickets from 61 Tests represent a staggering result. Among the leading spinners in the game he has the most skewed home and away results but you would expect that for a bowler of his type. My criterion for placing him well above Saqlain Mushtaq is that in our conditions, a spinner must be able to win matches consistently at home. Throughout the nineties Kumble did that with amazing reliability and his 175 wickets from 31 Tests are fit to rank with the best in the world.

Stuart MacGill might have been a strong contender for these honours had he played more than his 16 Test matches. But there is a very proud consolation prize there for him as the only spinner with a strike rate of less than 50 balls per wicket. It is an awesome record and he must be the unluckiest bowler of our times.

Tailpiece: Martin Snedden of the New Zealand Cricket Board said he didn't care what Pakistan thought when he pulled his side out of the tour. And there have been the usual safety is paramount statements.

Funnily I don't seem to see anybody in the Pakistan Cricket Board asking for New Zealand to be left out of the ICC, or asking for compensation to cover losses or even suggesting that New Zealand are scared of losing.

The ICC seems quite accepting of it as well. So why isn't anybody saying politics has no place in sport anymore? Or was India right in the first place?

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