Spin Bowling enters its Next Phase

Only those with short memories or an irrational affliction to all things Antipodean write off the Australian cricket team. Yet their last Test match against India suggested that the era of dominance is entering its terminal phase. The batting rates with any side but a bowling line-up that was easily the world’s best now lacks balance and depth.

For me Shane Warne was the greatest cricketer bar none. He is simply irreplaceable, but of course his place in the side has to be filled. A combination of Michael Clarke and Cameron White place Australia below all the top teams except the West Indies in the spin-bowling department, and when was the last time you could say that about an Australian side?

Of course, White wasn’t the first choice spinner for the tour, that went to 36-year old Bryce McGain, who has only played 19 first-class matches. Unfortunately, he was not able to make his international debut returning home injured.

That the Australians selected someone considered a one-day specialist as McGain’s replacement raises the question of how they will fill the void left by Warne. Selector Jamie Cox was honest in his reply that he didn’t know. “There is no simple answer,” he admitted.

As the sport evolves so do the specialist skills required to compete. If the fast-bowler has traditionally been cricket’s proletarian, the spinner would be the equivalent of the artisan. For not only is greater variation the key to accomplishment but also the mental elements are more acute.

Denied the uncovered pitch in which the artist once enchanted, one fears for the contemporary specialist. England’s Monty Panasar, for example, brings little to the sport barring his ability to bowl sides out in cricket’s longer form.

Yet the twenty-20 has seen the unexpected renaissance of the slow bowler, but it has been the type who bowls tight, spearing the ball in towards leg-stump with the ability to fluctuate pace. It also helps if they can bat and field. So whilst England are sending both Graeme Swann and Sambit Patel to the Caribbean, Monty is off to perfect his craft in the Sri Lankan domestic league.

This is not to suggest the demise of the spin-bowler. The historian David Frith wrote in the early 1980s when West Indian pace-quartets were re-writing the bowling manuals that it would take a panel of learned sociologists and psychologists to establish why spin bowling has gone out of favour.

Yet a decade ago we enjoyed a resurgence of leg-spin with the greats Shane Warne, Mushtaq Ahmed and Anil Kumble, and also fine practitioners such as South African Paul Adams and Zimbabwe’s Paul Strang. In addition England’s Ian Salisbury and Chris Schofield and Aussie Michael Bevan were honing their talents. Saqlain Mushtaq and Muralitharan ensured that finger-spin also remained part of a team’s arsenal.

Since then a balanced side has been the order of the day. The retirement of Warne and the imminent departure of Anil Kumble and Murali again raises the question of the decline of this most difficult of talents.

However, two recent Test matches were dominated by young slow bowlers. The Indian leg-spinner Amit Mishra took five Aussie wickets in the first innings in the second Test and two in the second, whilst the seven first-innings wickets for the twenty-one year-old Shakib Al Hasan almost bowled Bangladesh to a surprise victory against New Zealand.

Add to this pair the mesmeric Sri Lankan Ajantha Mendis who at 23 has already taken 26 wickets in only three Tests and rather than decline we can speak of spin’s latest resurgence nearing take-off point.

How much though the poise and panache of spin bowling in Tests is allowed to be spoiled by the more mechanistic requirements of the one-day game is one of the key questions facing those who control cricket’s destiny.

For it is a rare bowler than can perform well in both formats.