If the BCCI had more faith in its hand-picked television commentators and allowed them to discuss the DRS on air, it might discover there are some like-minded souls out there - i.e. people who are equally sceptical of the system.
If ever evidence was needed that there are flaws in the Decision Review System, they were amply provided in the SCG one-dayer between Australia and Sri Lanka. With Michael Clarke having used up Australia's sole review, David Warner and Moises Henriques were then ambushed by incorrect umpiring decisions. Both batsmen got healthy inside edges to deliveries but were adjudged lbw.
Those SCG examples contradict the assertion of Dave Richardson, who was the ICC general manager when he spoke to a gathering of Channel 9 commentators at the Gabba prior to the 2009-10 series against West Indies. He told the commentators: "The DRS is designed to eradicate howlers and get the right decision." At the time I thought, how can you guarantee the correct decision will be reached when there are a finite number of unsuccessful reviews?
I suspected the individual aspect of a team game would ensure the bulk of the reviews would be utilised by top-order batsmen. As former Australian prime minister Paul Keating shrewdly observed, "Always bet on self-interest because you know it's a goer."
Little did I realise that the DRS would also become more of a tactical ploy than a review system. In the same way that West Indies in their heyday slowed the over rate down on the odd occasion they were in danger of losing a game, the DRS is often used as an unwarranted trick in strategy. Umpiring decisions and over rates should never be a part of cricket's tactical fabric.
The DRS, in the unreliable hands of players, is being used more for 50-50 decisions than to eradicate howlers. If a team's best batsman is at the crease and the side is in trouble, a review will almost always result - more a case of self-preservation than any highly principled attempt to be a part of improving the umpiring standard.
The constant reviewing of 50-50 decisions can only undermine the confidence of the umpires, and more importantly, is likely to change their decision-making thought process.
There never has been, nor will there ever be, a case where a 50-50 decision causes animosity on the cricket field. Players are conditioned to accept that one day these decisions will go your way and the next they'll go against you. What does cause animosity on the field is the absolute howler that can change the course of a match. Andrew Symonds being given not out to an obvious caught-behind early in his innings and then going on to score 162 not out in Sydney is a classic example of a howler that caused great animosity on the field. It also led to a terse retort from the normally equitable Anil Kumble at the after-match press conference.
One of the founding principles of the game is also flouted when the DRS is put in the hands of players. As kids we were told the umpire is right, so always accept his decision without question.
The DRS also interrupts the flow of the game. Some of the more exciting moments, like the celebration of a crucial wicket or a brilliant catch, are put on hold, never to be recaptured, as the review process grinds to a conclusion. It would be a case of criminal interference to interrupt the celebration of a hat-trick with a torturous review.
Surely it's time to put any review system in the hands of the umpires so that it stops being a tactic, rids the game of the howler, and on most occasions, brings a satisfactory outcome. Trying to devise a system that produces the correct decision is not possible at the moment (and probably never will be) and attempting to achieve that aim robs the game of one part of the delightfully enticing human element.
It's time to seriously rethink the DRS. It's a topic that should involve a lot of discussion and input from ex-players and some robust debate on commentary.
It was in 1997 that the chairman of the ECB, Lord MacLaurin, declared
England would be the best team in the world within a decade. His
aspiration was ridiculed at the time - and two years later England sank
to the bottom of the unofficial Wisden world rankings. In 2011, with the
4-0 win over India, they finally realised their ambition. Four years
late, perhaps, but no one was counting - even if the calculators were
out again in 2012 when they lost 3-0 to Pakistan.
There were many reasons for their elevation, not least the decline of
other, once distinguished, sides. But to cite that alone would be to
belittle England's feat, which was the result of considerable talent,
careful planning and total dedication. To attain sporting predominance,
it was ever thus.
Central contracts, introduced during Duncan Fletcher's regime, in 2000,
were a major factor. They gave the players a sense of belonging at
international level, empowered the coaches to work closely with their
charges and, vitally, gave them time. England now have a backroom staff
who at times outnumber the players. While this arouses some scepticism
in the media, especially among the in-my-day fraternity, there is no
doubting their worth as England transformed the art of cricket into
something more scientific. In that spirit, here is a suitably ordered
analysis of their route to the top.
1. The right stuff
It all began when Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower, two determined and
ambitious men, joined forces in early 2009. Their first step was to
identify players with the right character, and sift out anyone not
completely in tune with the team's goals. Chief among these were Andrew
Flintoff - emblematic as ever as he approached the end of his career,
but a law unto himself - and his faintly lethargic sidekick Steve
Harmison. Flower recognised the team was sprinkled with what he regarded
as individual plcs and saw the importance of selling them off. He and
Strauss developed a slogan, "The team is not a hire car", which
encouraged the players to treat it with care and respect, rather than
take advantage of it like a hatchback leased from Avis. They introduced a
new level of commitment, consideration and honesty, and everyone bought
into the ethos. Now, there was genuine delight at each other's
successes.
2. Cover all bases
Keen to draw on ideas from other sports, Flower went to The Oval soon
after taking over to watch a game of American football, strangely
enough. He was struck not only by the number of coaches employed by the
NFL's Green Bay Packers, but by the meticulous organisation of the
pre-match training. As a result, England rehearse their roles with all
manner of accessories. There are bright orange ramps off which close
catches are skimmed; extra-thin bats for slicing slip catches; rubber
clubs for whacking balls into orbit; springy stumps or mini-goals to shy
at; and small square frames of elasticated mesh off which the ball
ricochets to replicate bat-pad catches. Every possible fielding scenario
is visualised and practised with total concentration. Unsurprisingly,
England's out-cricket has been consistently better than anyone else's,
while Jimmy Anderson - who among other key positions now stands at slip
to Graeme Swann - is possibly the best all-round fielder England have
ever had.
3. Wot no football?
Warm-ups with a kickabout had become an incongruous cliche´: in no other
sport do players prepare by playing, well, another sport. Since the
arrival as fitness coach of Welshman Huw Bevan, the former conditioning
coach of the Ospreys rugby union team, England's training has been more
rigorous, while the drills fit the disciplines. Fast bowlers are taken
through a succession of 24 short sprints to replicate a four-over spell.
Batsmen bat overs and are ordered to run the occasional three during an
enervating net. Fielders are carefully filmed to pinpoint their
biomechanical strengths and weaknesses. Data relating to successful
catches, diving stops and run-outs is also collated by assistant coach
Richard Halsall.
With an incessant schedule and frequent back-to-back Tests, stamina is
vital. By keeping training varied, Bevan has raised fitness standards to
almost Olympic levels. One of Flower's favourite moments of the 2010-11
Ashes win came when Jonathan Trott, after batting more than eight hours
for an undefeated 168 in Melbourne, still had the energy, alertness and
agility to swoop low at extra cover and run out Phil Hughes early in
Australia's reply. The practice - amusing to some - of running over to a
team-mate to congratulate him after a good stop not only induces a
feeling of claustrophobia in the batsman but wards off lethargy in the
field.
4. The whole world in one place
For some time England have led the field in cricket gadgets. Following
on from Merlyn, an ingenious piece of engineering that can propel any
kind of spin to precise specification, was ProBatter, a souped-up
bowling machine that had the approach and delivery of opposing bowlers
projected, film-like, on to its front to face the batsman. Using
Hawk-Eye data, it can even reproduce actual overs from Tests.
This is as close as it gets to cricketing time travel: if you didn't
handle a spell very well first time round, now is your chance to make
amends. In effect, ProBatter transports the international game's bowling
brethren to the nets at the ECB Academy in Loughborough. There is also a
device that measures the amount of revolutions imparted by a spinner;
unsurprisingly, Swann scores highly.
5. Pinpoint accuracy
England collect a wealth of data on their opponents. For any opposing
batsman, the pitch is divided into coloured squares, with a statistic in
each one revealing how the batsman fares when the ball lands there. In
some cases, it confirms what everyone already knew: Mike Hussey, for
example, is brutal against anything short and wide. But it also offers
the bowlers clues about a batsman's weaknesses: in 2011, it proved a
major aid in combating Sachin Tendulkar, as England plugged away outside
off in the knowledge this was the best means of keeping him quiet.
Most significantly, England had the bowlers to put these plans into
action. Anderson, in particular, can land the ball in the same spot time
after time, though he is also extraordinarily versatile. Two deliveries
from the recent past stand out: the ball to dismiss the left-handed
Hussey for eight in Melbourne,
tantalisingly pitched a fraction outside off stump, just short of a
half-volley, inviting the drive, then nipping away a fraction to take
the edge; and a near mirror-image to the right-handed Virender Sehwag in
the second innings at Edgbaston.
The plan had been to bowl straight as a die, but Stuart Broad said in
the dressing-room beforehand: "I've just had a vision: Sehwag caught
Strauss bowled Anderson zero." Anderson decided to offer the Indian
opener, on a pair, the carrot of a driveable ball. Just as Broad had
predicted, Sehwag had a swish and sliced it to Strauss at first slip to
depart for a king pair. Despite their superb discipline, then, the
bowlers were never dissuaded from going with their hunches.
6. Cherish the ball
The potency of a new ball is taken as read, and England generally make
excellent use of it. With the help of bowling coach David Saker they
focused on the periods when a ball is older and less effective, and
worked on different strategies. Led by Anderson, they developed the
wobble-seam delivery for use when the ball has lost its initial shine -
after about 20 overs - but still has a proud seam. Released with the
seam slightly canted, rather than bolt upright, the ball lands on the
edge of the seam, then moves unpredictably. With meticulous care, they
were also able to find reverse-swing earlier, sometimes by the 12th
over. The key is to keep the ball scrupulously dry, so it is kept off
the grass, or bounced on bare, rough parts of the square, and
religiously passed back to the bowler via the sweat-free Alastair Cook.
7. Don't change gear
If bowlers are Test-match finishers, then batsmen do the spadework. But
until recently England have rarely run up mammoth totals. Watching the
way prolific subcontinental batsmen such as Mahela Jayawardene and Rahul
Dravid assembled their scores, they realised the secret was to keep
playing the same way throughout an innings, rather than seek to go
through the gears and finally dominate the bowlers. Players such as Cook
and Trott abided by this philosophy, picking up their runs quietly,
unobtrusively, incessantly. They never sought to score in unfamiliar
areas, sticking instead to their own risk-free plans. Cook's
extraordinary propensity to avoid sweating - his sole pair of batting
gloves were still bone dry after his marathon 294 against India at
Edgbaston - has certainly helped.
Graham Gooch - England's leading run-scorer and now the batting coach -
has been a major influence in this regard. He focused the players' minds
with simple sayings like "play straight - be great", and encouraged
them to convert "daddy" hundreds (150-plus) into "grand-daddies"
(200-plus). He has also been unstinting in his support, whether feeding
them thousands of balls with his ingenious Sidearm thrower, or hardening
their mental approach. The result was six individual double-centuries
in 12 Tests and seven team totals of over 500.
8. The end of the tail-end
One statistic put the England-India series into perspective: England's
last five wickets averaged 57 runs each; India's 20. This was no
accident, for the England lower order spend almost as much time in the
nets as the main batsmen. Importantly, though, there is no pressure
applied to them from the top and middle order: each lower-order batsman
("tailender" now feels obsolete) is encouraged to be positive and do
what comes naturally, as long as it is not reckless and takes into
consideration both the batting partner and the match situation.
9. Doing the maths
Flower was profoundly influenced by Moneyball, Michael Lewis's
fascinating account of how the Oakland Athletics baseball team used
statistics and computer analysis to improve their results. The
recruitment of Nathan Leamon - cricket coach, maths boffin, and known in
the team as "Numbers" - has been significant. On a daily basis, he
enters individual, team, ground and other historical data into the Monte
Carlo simulator, a specially designed computer program which forecasts
the probability of various eventualities. These projections form the
basis of England's decision-making - from team selection and what to do
at the toss, to declarations, field settings and bowling strategies.
Leamon played the Melbourne Test of 2010-11 through his simulator
thousands of times in advance, concluding that England were 15-20% more
likely to win if they bowled first. The statistics not only convinced
England, but also invigorated them after their defeat at Perth: on
Boxing Day, at the spiritual home of Australian sport, they put the home
side in and promptly skittled them for 98. Three days later, the Ashes
had been retained.
10. A constant quest
As a player, Flower had a restless desire for self-improvement. As a
coach, he has imbued that urge in his team, though he admitted he fell
short of his own high standards before the series against Pakistan in
the UAE; if that was untypical, his honesty was not. Flower says he
tries to make each individual keen to discover how good they can
possibly be, which is why he and the coaching staff offer the players
regular challenges to better themselves. The squad met at Cardiff Castle
at the beginning of last summer to discuss how they could continue to
progress. All the bowlers and three batsmen - Cook, Trott and Pietersen -
were regarded as having attained world-class status after the Ashes,
but others were lagging behind. By the end of last summer, during which
the bowlers continued to reign supreme, England had four batsmen (now
including Ian Bell) in the world top 10, two genuine allrounders (Broad
and Tim Bresnan), plus Matt Prior, who had the best batting average of
any England wicketkeeper. In short, they had no weak link. In the end,
it was hardly surprising they crushed India.
Between the nadir of 51 all out in Jamaica in February 2009 and the end of 2011, England played 34 completed Tests,
won 20 and lost only four. When asked to pinpoint one underlying reason
for their success, Strauss said simply: "A team working together."
While this may sound tautological, in high-level sport it is notoriously
hard to achieve. Just ask Martin Johnson or Fabio Capello.
Knowing when to attack and when to defend is crucial to the success of good spinners, and that comes only with experience. Terry Jenner talks to Nagraj Gollapudi
Nagraj Gollapudi
September 27, 2007
Terry Jenner played nine Tests for Australia in the 1970s but it is as a coach, and specifically as Shane Warne's mentor and the man Warne turned to in a crisis, that he is better known. Jenner said that his CV wouldn't be complete without a trip to India, the spiritual home of spin bowling, and this September he finally made it when he was invited by the MAC Spin Foundation to train youngsters in Chennai. Jenner spoke at length to Cricinfo on the art and craft of spin bowling in general and legspin in particular. What follows is the first in a two-part interview.
"Most of the time the art of the spin bowler is to get the batsman to look to drive you. That's where your wickets come"
How has the role of spin changed over the decades you've watched cricket?
The limited-overs game has made the major change to spin bowling. When I started playing, for example, you used to break partnerships in the first couple of the days of the match and then on the last couple of days you were expected to play more of a major role. But in recent years, with the entry of Shane Warne, who came on on the first day of the Test and completely dominated on good pitches, it has sort of changed the specs that way.
But the difficulty I'm reading at the moment is that captains and coaches seem to be of the opinion that spin bowlers are there either to rest the pace bowlers or to just keep it tight; they are not allowed to risk runs to gain rewards. That's the biggest change.
In the 1960s, when I first started, you were allowed to get hit around the park a bit, as long as you managed to get wickets - it was based more on your strike-rate than how many runs you went for. So limited-overs cricket has influenced bowlers to bowl a negative line and not the attacking line, and I don't know with the advent of Twenty20 how we'll advance. We will never go back, unfortunately, to the likes of Warne and the wrist-spinners before him who went for runs but the quality was more.
What are the challenges of being a spinner in modern cricket?
The huge challenge is just getting to bowl at club level through to first-class level. When you get to the first-class level they tend to you allow you to bowl, but once you get to bowl, instead of allowing you to be a free spirit, you are restricted to men around the bat - push it through, don't let the batsman play the stroke, don't free their arms up ... all those modern thoughts on how the spinner should bowl.
Do spinners spin the ball less these days?
The capacity to spin is still there, but to spin it you actually have to flight it up, and if you flight it up there's always that risk of over-pitching and the batsman getting you on the full, and therefore the risk of runs being scored. So if you consider the general mentality of a spinner trying to bowl dot balls and bowl defensive lines, then you can't spin it.
I'll give you an example of an offspin bowler bowling at middle and leg. How far does he want to spin it? If he needs to spin it, he needs to bowl a foot outside the off stump and spin it back, but if he has to bowl a defensive line then he sacrifices the spin, otherwise he'll be just bowling down the leg side.
It's impossible for you to try and take a wicket every ball, but when you're really young that's what you do - you just try and spin it as hard as you can and take the consequences, and that usually means you don't get to bowl many overs. The art of improving is when you learn how to get into your overs, get out of your overs, and use the middle deliveries to attack
Legspinners bowling at leg stump or just outside - there's been so few over the years capable of spinning the ball from just outside leg past off, yet that's the line they tend to bowl. So I don't think they spin it any less; the capacity to spin is still wonderful. I still see little kids spinning the ball a long way. I take the little kids over to watch the big kids bowl and I say, "Have a look: the big kids are all running in off big, long runs, jumping high in the air and firing it down there, and more importantly going straight." And I say to the little kids, "They once were like you. And one of you who hangs on to the spin all the way through is the one that's gonna go forward."
Great spinners have always bowled at the batsman and not to the batsman. But the trend these days is that spinners are becoming increasingly defensive.
First of all they play him [the young spinner] out of his age group. Earlier the idea of finding a good, young talent, when people identified one, was that they didn't move him up and play him in the higher grade or in the higher age group. There was no different age-group cricket around back then, and if you were a youngster you went into the seniors and you played in the bottom grade and then you played there for a few years while you learned the craft and then they moved you to the next grade. So you kept going till you came out the other end and that could've been anywhere around age 19, 20, 21 or whatever. Now the expectation is that by the time you are 16 or 17 you are supposed to be mastering this craft.
It's a long apprenticeship. If you find a good 10- or 11-year-old, he needs to have a ten-year apprenticeship at least. There's a rule of thumb here that says that if the best there's ever been, which is Shane Warne - and there is every reason to believe he is - sort of started to strike his best at 23-24, what makes you think we can find 18- or 19-year-olds to do it today? I mean, he [Warne] has only been out of the game for half an hour and yet we're already expecting kids to step up to the plate much, much before they are ready.
It's a game of patience with spin bowlers and developing them. It's so important that we are patient in helping them, understanding their need for patience, at the same time understanding from outside the fence - as coach, captain etc. We need to understand them and allow them to be scored off, allow them to learn how to defend themselves, allow them to understand that there are times when you do need to defend. But most of the time the art of the spin bowler is to get the batsman to look to drive you. That's where your wickets come, that's where you spin it most.
Warne said you never imposed yourself as a coach.
With Warne, when I first met him he bowled me a legbreak which spun nearly two feet-plus, and I was just in awe. All I wanted to do was try and help that young man become the best he could be, just to help him understand his gift, understand what he had, and to that end I never tried to change him. That's what he meant by me never imposing myself. We established a good relationship based on the basics of bowling and his basics were always pretty good. Over the years whenever he wandered away from them, we worked it back to them. There were lot of times over his career where, having a bowled a lot of overs, some bad habits had come in. It was not a case of standing over him. I was just making him aware of where he was at the moment and how he could be back to where he was when he was spinning them and curving them. His trust was the most important gift that he gave me, and it's an important thing for a coach to understand not to breach that trust. That trust isn't about secrets, it's about the trust of the information you give him, that it won't harm him, and that was our relationship.
I don't think of myself as an authority on spin bowling. I see myself as a coach who's developed a solid learning by watching and working with the best that's been, and a lot of other developing spinners. So I'm in a terrific business-class seat because I get to see a lot of this stuff and learn from it, and of course I've spoken to Richie Benaud quite a lot over the years.
Shane would speak to Abdul Qadir and he would feed back to me what Abdul Qadir said. Most people relate your knowledge to how many wickets you took and I don't think that's relevant. I think it's your capacity to learn and deliver, to communicate that what you've learned back to people.
From the outside it seems like there is a problem of over-coaching these days.
There are so many coaches now. We have specialist coaches, general coaches, we've got sports science and psychology. Coaching has changed.
Shane, in his retirement speech, referred to me as his technical coach (by which he meant technique), as Dr Phil [the psychologist on the Oprah Winfrey Show]. That means when he wanted someone to talk to, I was the bouncing board. He said the most uplifting thing ever said about me: that whenever he rang me, when he hung the phone up he always felt better for having made the call.
"Think high, spin up" was the first mantra you shared with Warne. What does it mean?
When I first met Shane his arm was quite low, and back then, given I had no genuine experience of coaching spin, I asked Richie Benaud and made him aware of this young Shane Warne fellow and asked him about the shoulder being low. Richie said, "As long as he spins it up from the hand, it'll be fine." But later, when we tried to introduce variations, we talked about the topspinner and I said to Shane, "You're gonna have to get your shoulder up to get that topspinner to spin over the top, otherwise it spins down low and it won't produce any shape." So when he got back to his mark the trigger in his mind was "think high, spin up", and when he did that he spun up over the ball and developed the topspinner. Quite often even in the case of the legbreak it was "think high, spin up" because his arm tended to get low, especially after his shoulder operation.
Can you explain the risk-for-reward theory that you teach youngsters about?
This is part of learning the art and craft. It's impossible for you to try and take a wicket every ball, but when you're really young that's what you do - you just try and spin it as hard as you can and take the consequences, and that usually means you don't get to bowl many overs. The art of improving is when you learn how to get into your overs, get out of your overs, and use the middle deliveries in an over to attack. I called them the risk and reward balls in an over. In other words, you do risk runs off those deliveries but you can also gain rewards.
There's been no one in the time that I've been around who could theoretically bowl six wicket-taking balls an over other than SK Warne. The likes of [Anil] Kumble ... he's trying to keep the lines tight and keep you at home, keep you at home while he works on you, but he's not trying to get you out every ball, he's working a plan.
The thing about excellent or great bowlers is that they rarely go for a four or a six off the last delivery. That is the point I make to kids, explaining how a mug like me used to continually go for a four or six off the last ball of the over while trying to get a wicket so I could stay on. And when you do that, that's the last thing your captain remembers, that's the last thing your team-mates remember, it's the last thing the selectors remember. So to that end you are better off bowling a quicker ball in line with the stumps which limits the batsman's opportunities to attack. So what I'm saying is, there's always a time when you need to defend, but you've got to know how to attack and that's why you need such a long apprenticeship.
Warne said the most uplifting thing ever said about me: that whenever he rang me, when he hung the phone up he always felt better for having made the call
Richie Benaud writes in his book that his dad told him to keep it simple and concentrate on perfecting the stock ball. Benaud says that you shouldn't even think about learning the flipper before you have mastered the legbreak, top spinner and wrong'un. Do you agree?
I totally agree with what Richie said. If you don't have a stock ball, what is the variation? You know what I'm saying? There are five different deliveries a legbreak bowler can bowl, but Warne said on more than one occasion that because of natural variation you can bowl six different legbreaks in an over; what's important is the line and length that you are bowling that encourages the batsman to get out of his comfort zone or intimidates him, and that's the key to it all. Richie spun his legbreak a small amount by comparison with Warne but because of that his use of the slider and the flipper were mostly effective because he bowled middle- and middle-and-off lines, whereas Warne was leg stump, outside leg stump.
Richie's a wise man and in the days he played there were eight-ball overs here in Australia. If you went for four an over, you were considered to be a pretty handy bowler. If you go for four an over now, it's expensive - that's because it's six-ball overs. But Richie was a great example of somebody who knew his strengths and worked on whatever weaknesses he might've had. He knew he wasn't a massive spinner of the ball, therefore his line and length had to be impeccable, and he worked around that.
In fact, in his autobiography Warne writes, "What matters is not always how many deliveries you possess, but how many the batsmen thinks you have."
That's the mystery of spin, isn't it? I remember, every Test series Warnie would come out with a mystery ball or something like that, but the truth is there are only so many balls that you can really bowl - you can't look like you're bowling a legbreak and bowl an offbreak.
Sonny Ramdhin was very difficult to read as he bowled with his sleeves down back in the 1950s; he had an unique grip and unique way of releasing the ball, as does Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan]. What they do with their wrists, it's very difficult to pick between the offbreak and the legbreak. Generally a legbreak bowler has to locate his wrist in a position to enhance the spin in the direction he wants the ball to go, which means the batsman should be able to see the relocation of the wrist.
In part two of his interview on the art of spin bowling, Terry Jenner looks at the damage caused to young spinners by the curbs placed on their attacking instincts. He also surveys the current slow-bowling landscape and appraises the leading practitioners around.
"Most spin bowlers have enormous attacking instinct, which gets suppressed by various captains and coaches" Nagraj Gollapudi
Bishan Bedi once said that a lot of bowling is done in the mind. Would you say that spin bowling requires the most mental energy of all the cricketing arts?
The thing about that is Bishan Bedi - who has, what, 260-odd Test wickets? - bowled against some of the very best players ever to go around the game. He had at his fingertips the control of spin and pace. Now, when you've got that, when you've developed that ability, then it's just about when to use them, how to use them, so therefore it becomes a matter of the brain. You can't have the brain dominating your game when you haven't got the capacity to bowl a legbreak or an offbreak where you want it to land. So that's why you have to practise those stock deliveries until it becomes just natural for you - almost like you can land them where you want them to land blindfolded, and then it just becomes mind over matter. Then the brain does take over.
There's nothing better than watching a quality spin bowler of any yolk - left-hand, right-hand - working on a quality batsman who knows he needs to break the bowler's rhythm or he might lose his wicket. That contest is a battle of minds then, because the quality batsman's got the technique and the quality bowler's got the capacity to bowl the balls where he wants to, within reason. So Bishan is exactly right.
What came naturally to someone like Bedi was flight. How important is flight in spin bowling?
When I was very young someone said to me, "You never beat a batsman off the pitch unless you first beat him in the air." Some people think that's an old-fashioned way of bowling. Once, at a conference in England, at Telford, Bishan said "Spin is in the air and break is off the pitch", which supported exactly what that guy told me 40 years ago. On top of that Bedi said stumping was his favourite dismissal because you had beaten the batsman in the air and then off the pitch. You wouldn't get too many coaches out there today who would endorse that remark because they don't necessarily understand what spin really is.
When you appraised the trainees in Chennai [at the MAC Spin Foundation], you said if they can separate the one-day cricket shown on TV and the one-day cricket played at school level, then there is a chance a good spinner will come along.
What I was telling them was: when you bowl a ball that's fairly flat and short of a length and the batsman goes back and pushes it to the off side, the whole team claps because no run was scored off it. Then you come in and toss the next one up and the batsman drives it to cover and it's still no run, but no one applauds it; they breathe a sigh of relief. That's the lack of understanding we have within teams about the role of the spin bowler. You should be applauding when he has invited the batsman to drive because that's what courage is, that's where the skill is, that's where the spin is, and that's where the wickets come. Bowling short of a length, that's the role of a medium pacer, part-timer. Most spin bowlers have enormous attacking instinct which gets suppressed by various captains, coaches and ideological thoughts in clubs and teams.
You talked at the beginning of the interview about the importance of being patient with a spinner. But isn't it true that the spinner gets another chance even if he gets hit, but the batsman never does?
I don't think you can compare them that way. If the spinner gets hit, he gets taken off. If he goes for 10 or 12 off an over, they take him off. Batsmen have got lots of things in their favour.
What I mean by patience is that to develop the craft takes a lot of overs, lots of balls in the nets, lots of target bowling. And you don't always get a bowl. Even if you are doing all this week-in, week-out, you don't always get to bowl, so you need to be patient. And then one day you walk into the ground and finally they toss you the ball. It is very easy to behave in a hungry, desperate manner because you think, "At last, I've got the ball." And you forget all the good things you do and suddenly try to get a wicket every ball because it's your only hope of getting into the game and staying on. The result is, you don't actually stay on and you don't get more games. So the patience, which is what you learn as you go along, can only come about if the spinner is allowed to develop at his pace instead of us pushing him up the rung because we think we've found one at last.
How much of a role does attitude play?
Attitude is an interesting thing. Depends on how you refer to it - whether it's attitude to bowling, attitude to being hit, attitude to the game itself.
When you bowl a ball that's fairly flat and short of a length and the batsman goes back and pushes it to the off side, the whole team claps because no run was scored off it. Then you come in and toss the next one up and the batsman drives it to cover and it's still no run, but no one applauds it; they breathe a sigh of relief
When Warne was asked what a legspin bowler needs more than anything else, he said, "Love". What he meant was love and understanding. They need someone to put their arm around them and say, "Mate, its okay, tomorrow is another day." Because you get thumped, mate. When you are trying to spin the ball from the back of your hand and land it in an area that's a very small target, that takes a lot of skill, and it also requires the patience to develop that skill. That's what I mean by patience, and the patience also needs to be with the coach, the captain, and whoever else is working with this young person, and the parents, who need to understand that he is not going to develop overnight.
And pushing him up the grade before he is ready isn't necessarily a great reward for him because that puts pressure on him all the time. Any person who plays under pressure all the time, ultimately the majority of them break. That's not what you want, you want them to come through feeling sure, scoring lots of wins, feeling good about themselves, recognising their role in the team, and having their team-mates recognise their role.
I don't think people - coaches, selectors - let the spin bowler know what his role actually is. He gets in the team and suddenly he gets to bowl and is told, "Here's the field, bowl to this", and in his mind he can't bowl.
Could you talk about contemporary spinners - Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Daniel Vettori, Monty Panesar, and Muttiah Muralitharan of course?
Of all the spinners today, the one I admire most of all is Vettori. He has come to Australia on two or three occasions and on each occasion he has troubled the Australian batsmen. He is a man who doesn't spin it a lot but he has an amazing ability to change the pace, to force the batsman into thinking he can drive it, but suddenly they have to check their stroke. And that's skill. If you haven't got lots of spin, then you've got to have the subtlety of change of pace.
And, of course, there is Kumble. I always marvel at the fact that he has worked his career around mainly containment and at the same time bowled enough wicket-taking balls to get to 566 wickets. That's a skill in itself. He is such a humble person as well and I admire him.
I marvel a little bit at Murali's wrist because it is very clever what he does with that, but to the naked eye I can't tell what is 15 degrees and what's not. I've just got to accept the word above us. All I know is that it would be very difficult to coach someone else to bowl like Murali. So we've got to put him in a significant list of one-offs - I hate to use the word "freak" - that probably won't be repeated.
I don't see enough of Harbhajan Singh - he is in and out of the Indian side. What I will say is that when I do see him bowl, I love the position of the seam. He has a beautiful seam position.
I love the way Stuart MacGill spins the ball. He is quite fearless in his capacity to spin the ball.
I love the energy that young [Piyush] Chawla displays in his bowling. The enthusiasm and the rawness, if you like. This is what I mean when I talk about pushing the boundaries. He is 18, playing limited-overs cricket, and at the moment he is bowling leggies and wrong'uns and I think that's terrific. But I hope the time doesn't come when he no longer has to spin the ball. When he tries to hold his place against Harbhajan Singh, for example. To do that he has to fire them in much quicker. He is already around the 80kph mark, which is quite healthy for a 18-year-old boy, but he still spins it at that pace, so it's fine. But ultimately if he is encouraged to bowl at a speed at which he doesn't spin the ball, that would be the sad part.
That's why I say this, there are lots of spinners around but it's the young, developing spinners who are probably suffering from all the stuff from television that encourages defence as a means to being successful as a spinner.
Monty is an outstanding prospect. You've got to look at how a guy can improve. He has done very, very well but how can he improve? He has got to have a change-up, a change of pace. At the moment, if you look at the speed gun in any given over from Monty, it's 56.2mph on average every ball. So he bowls the same ball; his line, his length, everything is impeccable, but then when it's time to knock over a tail, a couple of times he has been caught short because he has not been able to vary his pace. I think Monty is such an intelligent bowler and person that he will be in the nets working on that to try and make sure he can invite the lower order to have a go at him and not just try and bowl them out. That probably is his area of concern; the rest of it is outstanding.
What would you say are the attributes of a good spinner? Courage, skill, patience, unpredictability, and spin. You get bits and pieces of all those, but if you have got spin then there is always a chance you can develop the other areas. For all the brilliant things that people saw Warne do, his greatest strength was the size of the heart, and that you couldn't see.