A good cricket book

10 for 66 and All That
by Arthur Mailey

	Mailey: would rather have been hit for four than have bowled a straight one at a batsman © Getty Images  Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Sir Neville Cardus | Jack Fingleton | Lord Harris | Lord Hawke | Sir Pelham Warner

Suresh Menon: Today the most prized cricketer might be the one in coloured clothing who hits a ball into the dinner basket of a spectator near third man while intending to clear the fielder at midwicket. But not so long ago, it was the "character" who was the most popular. Of one such, Neville Cardus wrote: "The most fascinating cricketer I have known was the Australian [legspinner] Arthur Mailey, an artist in every part of his nature."

The writer and the cricketer were firm friends; both emerged from slums (though thousands of kilometres apart), both taught themselves to write well, each had a personal manner of demonstrating he had climbed out of the past to walk among kings and prime ministers. Cardus wrote on classical music, while Mailey threw champagne parties.

Mailey once said, "I'd rather spin the ball and be hit for four than bowl a batsman out by a straight one." And on another occasion, "If ever I bowl a maiden over, it is not my fault but the batsman's."

Yet the line he is best known for is the one he wrote in his autobiography, 10 for 66 and All That. He had just dismissed his great hero Victor Trumper, stumped off a googly, and the batsman walked back, pausing only to tell the young bowler, "It was too good for me." Mailey captured that moment thus: "There was no triumph in me as I watched the receding figure. I felt like a boy who had killed a dove." This most glorious of lines in all cricketing literature has, in recent years, had doubts cast upon its authenticity. Yet character is revealed as much by what a man has said as by what he would have said. If it is not factual, it is still truthful, and that's what matters.

Mailey, the only Australian to have claimed nine wickets in a Test innings, was an accomplished cartoonist, and his cartoons, which tell of a time and a place, enrich his autobiography. Even if it were merely a well-written story of an unusual life, 10 for 66 And All That might still have made the cut among the best books on the game. But it is more, its insights and predictions both startling and original.

And another five Jack Hobbs: Profile of the Master by John Arlott A warm and affectionate story of a great batsman, the highlight for me a letter from Hobbs to Arlott that ends: "Thank you for everything John. You have been very kind and good to me over many years." It Never Rains... A Cricketer's Lot by Peter Roebuck Comparable to the great mathematician G H Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology, this takes you inside the heart and mind of the cricketer and his futile search for perfection. Pundits from Pakistan by Rahul Bhattacharya The cricket tour as excuse for history, travel writing, biography and cultural commentary. A Corner of a Foreign Field by Ramachandra GuhaA historian and cricket nut brings his two passions together in this story of a man, his time and the consequences of the events that took place then. On Top Down Under by Ray Robinson: An incredibly detailed story of Australian captains, most of them even more interesting off field than on.

Like those who go against the grain by temperament rather than planning, Mailey displayed a combination of authority and empathy that was unique. He was the one Australian who was sympathetic towards Douglas Jardine and Bodyline. What the series did, according to Mailey, was, it changed the face of cricket reporting. "On the next tour of Australia came an army of 'incident-spotters'," he writes, "just in case there were repercussions that were too newsy... it was then we saw a blast of criticism about umpires' decisions, about playing conditions, about the advisability of players having two or three eggs for breakfast, and of fried liver being on the menu... some of us viewed the future of cricket journalism with apprehension."

Mailey was an accomplished painter too. At an exhibition of his works in London, a royal visitor told him he "had not painted the sun convincingly". Mailey's response was: "You see, Your Majesty, in this country I have to paint the sun from memory."

Mailey, who played his last Test in 1926, was 70 when he wrote this book. And there was nothing wrong with the memory then of the man described by Cardus as an "incorrigible romantic".

Not picking the wrong 'un

Jarrod Kimber

	In the '90s, Australian kids who tried to bowl like Shane Warne often wore themselves out because they weren't built like him © PA Photos  Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Craig Howard | Shane Warne | Michael Beer | Beau Casson | Xavier Doherty | Nathan Hauritz |Brad Hogg | Jason Krejza | Nathan Lyon | Bryce McGain |Stuart MacGill | Marcus North | Steve Smith | Cameron White Teams: Australia

Shane Warne's first real victim wasn't a batsman, but a fellow legspinner - a fellow Victorian legspinner, in fact, with a wrong 'un so brutal it would crash into the chest of those who lunged blindly forward; a legspinner who ran in like a graceful 1920s medium-pacer, but who then produced a dramatic twirl of his long arms and ripped the ball off the surface like few teenage legspinners before or since. This legspinner was so good that Warne said he had more talent than he did. His name was Craig Howard. And if you've never heard of him, it's probably not your fault: Howard doesn't even qualify for a single-line biography on ESPNcricinfo.

By December 3, 1995, Warne - who was by then closing in on 200 Test wickets - had already saved legspin. If the date sounds random, then for Howard it was not: it was his final day of first-class cricket. He was 21. Howard retired with 42 wickets in 16 first-class games at 40 apiece, which was no great shakes. But to understand how good he was, you had to be there - you had to see him hit a batsman with his wrong 'un. Aged 19, he had returned second-innings figures of 24.5-9-42-5 at the MCG against the South Africans.Wisden noted: "Only Rhodes, with 59, made much of Howard's leg-spin second time around." Darren Berry, who kept to Howard at Victoria, said he would have named him in his all-time XI of those he had played with or against if it hadn't been for Warne. Yes, Craig Howard could definitely bowl.

Plenty of others have been bit parts in the story of Australia's post-Warne spin apocalypse, but no one has been a more intriguing bit part than Howard. He is the only Australian bowler to go through the Cricket Academy twice, once as the artistic legspinning prodigy from my teenage years, later - after one of his fingers packed in - as a 28-year-old, made-to-order journeyman offspinner. And now Howard is back, plucked from his office job in telecommunications to coach Nathan Lyon, currently Australia's No. 1 tweaker.

Howard, as it happened, did play alongside Warne in four Sheffield Shield games in 1993-94. The comparison is unflattering: Warne took 27 wickets at 23, Howard - who bowled 100 overs to Warne's 247 - three at 108. But in between, with Warne away on international duty, Howard finally got a decent bowl: he took 5 for 112 against Tasmania, including the wicket of Ricky Ponting. More than 15 years later, when another leggie - Bryce McGain, who was almost 37 - was making his Test debut for Australia, the 34-year-old Howard was playing for Strathdale Maristians in Bendigo, up-country Victoria.

He is philosophical now. "Had I played Test cricket, my life would have turned out different," he says. "I probably would have ended up in some sextext scandal and lost my wife and kids and ended up a lonely bum. Although, yes, playing Test cricket was the dream."

There are many reasons why Howard didn't make it: injuries, bad management, terrible advice, over-coaching, low self-confidence. But had he played in an era when Australia were desperate for a spinner, he might now be a household name - or at least someone with a decent blurb on the internet.

"At one stage, there were headlines saying I was going to play for Australia," he says. "I remember being about 20, and at the top of my mark at the MCG. Instead of thinking, 'How I am going to get out Jamie Siddons or Darren Lehmann?' I'm thinking about a small group of men in the ground who are judging me. It wasn't like that all the time, but when I was struggling this is how I felt. In the back of my mind I know the captain of my side doesn't like me, and has told me to f*** off to Tasmania. The coach believes that, because I can't bat or field, I am never going to be that useful. It was a dark time."

In the mid-1990s, no one needed to look for Warne's replacement, because he would play for ever and inspire so many kids to take up legspin that any who fell through the cracks wouldn't be missed. Junior sides each had four or five leggies - often with peroxide hair - and they all walked in slowly, ripped the ball hard, and barely bowled a wrong 'un. But they weren't Warne. None had his physicality: Warne was built like a nightclub bouncer, not a spinner. Massive hands led into awe-inspiring wrists, the whole lot powered by an ox's shoulders. But kids who try the same quickly wear themselves out.

Howard knew how they felt: "My body never backed me up. I couldn't feel my pinky finger, had part of my right arm shortened, tendinitis in my shoulder was operated on, a wrist operation, stress fractures in my shins, tennis elbow in my knees from excessive squat thrusts, a spinning finger with bad ligaments, and barely the fitness to get through a two-day game, let alone four. There was no million-dollar microsurgery in the US for me. In the '90s, you still had to pay for a massage and work a day job.

"There were suddenly legspinning experts everywhere - not ex-spinners but just ex-cricketers, coaches and selectors who spent years ignoring legspin. No one ever came up to you and said: 'You should be more like Warne.' But every bit of advice seemed to be about making you more like him. It wasn't subtle. Everything just created doubt in your mind. And with legspin, if you have an ounce of doubt, you're cactus."

Warne's retirement sparked a desperate search for his replacement. One spinner simply begat the next: Stuart MacGill, Brad Hogg, Beau Casson, Cameron White, Jason Krejza, Nathan Hauritz, Marcus North, Bryce McGain, Hauritz again, Steve Smith, Xavier Doherty, Michael Beer, Nathan Lyon. Never mind Simon Katich, Michael Clarke or Andrew Symonds.

MacGill should have softened the blow of Warne's departure, but his knees gave way, his career as a lifestyle-show TV host took off, and it was clear he just didn't want to bowl any more. Even then, there was Hogg, the chinaman bowler with two World Cup wins to his name. But after one horrendous home summer against India, he retired as well - only to make a bizarre return to international cricket during the Twenty20 home series against the Indians once more, in February 2012, aged all but 41.

Along came Casson, another purveyor of chinamen, but a boyish one who seemed too pure for international cricket. His first (and only) Test was uneventful, and within 12 months he would be out of the Australian set-up altogether after an attack of the yips. A brief comeback was ended by tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect.

White was captain of Victoria, where he virtually never bowled himself, but suddenly - a product of injuries to others and weird selection - he was Australia's frontline spinner. He was awful. Krejza eventually got a chance and, on Test debut in Nagpur, claimed 12 wickets. The problem was he also gave away 358 runs; he played only one more Test. Marcus North became a Test batsman because he could bowl handy offspin, some said better than Hauritz. But despite a flattering six-wicket haul against Pakistan at Lord's, North's offbreaks were gentle; and they weren't much help when his batting faded.

McGain made his debut amid plenty of jokes about Bob Holland, who was 38 when he first played for Australia. McGain was an IT professional in a bank, who had never really been especially close to state selection. But he wouldn't go away. And while the search focused on big-turning kids, McGain sneaked into the Victoria side. In the 12 months before his Test debut, a shoulder injury had limited him to four first-class games. When the day finally came, at Newlands, McGain was roadkill: 18-2-149-0. That was it. McGain now plays part-time in the Big Bash League.

Hauritz was not deemed good enough even for New South Wales. He was a timid offspinner from club cricket with a first-class bowling average of more than 50, but he fought hard and improved regularly. The trouble was Hauritz was neither an attacker nor a defender, and Chris Gayle said it was like facing himself. By the time Hauritz was dumped, he was in the best form of his career.

A young allrounder named Steve Smith bowled legspin, and was brought in to play Pakistan in England. He madea dashing 77, was dropped and then later recalled in the Ashes as a batsman who bowled a bit - just not very well.

Xavier Doherty was given a go because Kevin Pietersen kept falling to left-arm spin. He got his man - but for 227. So in came Michael Beer, who admitted he probably wasn't ready for Test cricket, and then proved it.

Mighty big shoes to fill

Bowler	Style	Test debut	Matches	Runs	Wkts	BB	Avg	SR	Econ
Shane Warne	LBG	1991-92	145	17,995	708	8-71	25.41	57.49	2.65
Brag Hogg	SLC	1996-97	7	933	17	2-40	54.88	89.64	3.67
Stuart MacGill	LBG	1997-98	44	6038	208	8-108	29.02	54.02	3.22
Nathan Hauritz	OB	2004-05	17	2204	63	5-53	34.98	66.66	3.14
Beau Casson	SLC	2007-08	1	129	3	3-86	43.00	64.00	4.03
Cameron White	LBG	2008-09	4	342	5	2-71	68.40	111.60	3.67
Jason Krejza	OB	2008-09	2	562	13	8-215	43.23	57.15	4.53
Marcus North	OB	2008-09	21	591	14	6-55	42.21	89.85	2.81
Bryce McGain	LBG	2008-09	1	149	0	0-149	-	-	8.27
Steve Smith	LBG	2010	5	220	3	3-51	73.33	124.00	3.54
Xavier Doherty	SLA	2010-11	2	306	3	2-41	102.00	151.66	4.03
Michael Beer	SLA	2010-11	1	112	1	1-112	112.00	228.00	2.94
Nathan Lyon	OB	2011-12	10	832	29	5-34	28.68	55.72	3.08

The first anyone in Australian cricket heard of Nathan Lyon was when Kerry O'Keeffe mentioned him on radio. At that stage, Lyon was part of the Adelaide Oval groundstaff, and was travelling to Canberra to play for the second XI. After some good performances in the nets, Darren Berry - now Adelaide's Twenty20 coach - took a punt on him. Lyon suddenly looked like the best spin prospect in the country - which wasn't saying much.

Howard really had come along at the wrong time. But there were moments, before I finally spoke to him, when I wondered if he actually existed at all. Finding someone who remembered his name was hard enough; finding someone who'd seen him play next to impossible. I'd talk to a guy, who'd tell me to contact a guy, but that guy would also tell me to contact a guy. The leads never went anywhere. Craig Howard wasn't the missing link of Australian spin bowling: he was just missing.

Then I asked Gideon Haigh about Howard, and he gave a long stare, as if he was searching through his billion-terabyte memory. I had my breakthrough. Haigh talked about how Howard looked like an otherworldly artist - long shirt buttoned to the wrist, billowing madly in the wind; incredibly gawky, like a schoolkid. Howard didn't fit into Haigh's, or anyone else's, imaginings of an athlete. But it was the Howard of my youth. Someone else remembered my poet leggie.

After that I cornered O'Keeffe, legspin's court jester. He had coached Howard at the Academy, probably twice. O'Keeffe's eyes were full of regret: he said Howard had a biomechanically flawed action, and O'Keeffe hadn't tried to fix it. But that didn't stop him happily reminiscing about "a wrong 'un batsmen had to play from their earhole".

I collared Damien Fleming, Howard's Victoria colleague. Fleming seemed surprised to hear the name again. He told stories about how he thought Victoria had a champion on their hands, but said his skin folds were thicker than those of Warne or Merv Hughes: "Basically bone and fat." He could have gone further with a more supportive coaching structure, said Fleming. He added, almost lustfully: "The best wrong 'un I've seen." Then came the clincher. "If someone like him came on the scene now, he'd be given everything he needed to succeed. Like they treat Pat Cummins."

Haigh, O'Keeffe and Fleming all seemed to think Howard was a Test spinner we had missed out on. They could be right. But Howard was caught between two eras, relaxed and regimented. And Australia had Warne.

"My career is long over," says Howard. "It finished with me out of form and mostly injured. It wasn't one thing that ended my career, and I'm not coming up with excuses, but this is what happened to me. Due to my finger, I can't even bowl legspin any more - I have to bowl offspin, but nothing can ever compare to being a legspinner. I'm younger than Hogg, McGain or MacGill and instead of preparing to play in my 100th Test and thinking about retirement, I am working in an office in Bendigo."

Craig Howard went from a freakishly talented wrist-spinner to a boring club offie. Australian spin did much the same.

How to Adapt to the 4 Types of Attacking Batsmen

From Pitch Vision Academy

http://www.pitchvision.com/how-to-adapt-to-the-4-types-of-attacking-batsmen

Sometimes your bowling spell doesn't go to plan and the batsman is the one on the attack.
Now it's time to adapt our plan to take into account how and where the batsman is hitting the ball.

One option is to move a fielder or two around to cut off his favourite shot, and try and force him to play a shot he isn't so comfortable with. This will often lead to his dismissal.

Another option is to leave the field as it is. Instead back ourselves to dismiss him by adjusting our bowling strategy itself. Here we look at how to counter-attack four types of aggressive batsman:

1. The batsman who is playing aggressively against the spin
The batter is cutting and cover driving the off spinner, or playing across the line against the leg spinner. Here the percentages are with you, so simply keep spinning the ball as hard as possible to try and beat the bat. Probe for an error. Work in some simple variations and find the hole. Keep spinning the ball as much as possible. Eventually, he will make a mistake.

2. The batsman who is consistently playing with the spin
Here the batter is cutting and cover driving the leg spinner, and working the off spinner into midwicket. He has now left himself vulnerable to the ball moving in the opposite direction. The killer blow will come from beating the opposite side of the bat to the direction of turn. To do this, use either a googly to bowl him through the gate or an arm-ball to find the leading edge.

3. The batsman who is attacking with cross batted shots
Sweeping and pulling in the order of the day with this batter. The wrong ‘un or a big spinning stock ball will have little effect against the cross batted shots. In this case, we need to vary our flight - especially using topspin and backspin - to get the ball over or underneath the horizontal swing of the bat. A backspinner will get us a bowled or LBW. A top spinner will result in a top-edge or a nick behind.

4. The batsman who is charging down the track or slogging.
These two can be dealt with in the same way. You're looking for a stumping or an aerial shot resulting in a catch. Changes of pace are key here, so that batsman is unable to time his shot. Top spin will also create extra dip and bounce and make the ball more likely to go in the air. If you can make the ball move away from the batsman, you will also have a better chance of a stumping.

About the author: AB has been bowling left arm spin in club cricket since 1995. He currently plays Saturday league cricket and several evening games a week. He is a qualified coach, and his experiences playing and coaching baseball often gives him a different insight into cricket.

The ART of Flight to deceive the batsmen

What spin bowler hasn't heard these clichés in his cricketing career?

"Toss it up" the young spin bowler is so often told. "You've got to flight the ball, give it some air, and get it above the batsman's eye line".

The problem is that experience soon teaches that simply lobbing the ball up in the air does not suddenly make a competent batsman turn into a tail end bunny. Whilst the advice may be well meaning, it completely misses the point. Flight is about deception. There is nothing deceptive about simply bowling the same ball but slower and with a higher trajectory.

 

So what is flight then?

 

The art of spin bowling is the art of deceiving the batsman as to what the ball will do. This comes in two parts: we are able to confuse him when the ball pitches by making it turn. It might turn a small amount, it might turn a large amount or it might turn the other direction entirely.

We are also able to use the same set of techniques to deceive him as to where the ball will pitch in the first place.

This is flight: the art of deceiving the batsman as to the exact location where the ball will pitch.

How do we do this?

Well, first and foremost we use the same technique we use to make the ball turn: by spinning it hard. In the case of flighting the ball, this primarily means using topspin and backspin.

These make use of the Magnus effect to change the trajectory of the ball as it travels towards the batsman.

• Top spin will make the ball drop more quickly and land further away from the batsman than expected. Imagine a tennis player playing a top spin shot with his racquet, hitting over the top of the ball. You can apply this same spin on a cricket ball. How you do it will depend on whether you are a finger spinner or wrist spinner but the effect of spinning “over the top” is the same.

• Back spin will make the ball carry further and land closer to the batsman.  Our tennis player would slice underneath the ball to make the shot. Again your method for doing this will vary but think ‘slicing under the ball’ to create the effect.

Using the two in combination makes batsman completely clueless as to whether to play forward or back to any given delivery.

Tahir trains with Qadir in Lahore

	Abdul Qadir: "He [Imran Tahir] sought my guidelines regarding the finger googly and using flight as a weapon." © AFP Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Abdul Qadir | Imran Tahir Series/Tournaments: South Africa tour of England Teams: Pakistan | South Africa

Umar Farooq in Cricinfo

Abdul Qadir, the former Pakistan legspinner, has said he rues the fact that the Lahore-born Imran Tahir went on to play for South Africa and not Pakistan. Tahir had met Qadir in Lahore on Tuesday, and will remain in Pakistan for the rest of the week, for personalised training sessions in preparation for South Africa's tour of England in July. 

The pair had worked on increasing the variations in Tahir's bowling. "He is here to enhance his variations, and sought my guidelines regarding the finger googly and using flight as a weapon," Qadir told ESPNcricinfo. "He is very keen to learn more and I love to help him, because he applies what I teach him. I have only shared the googly information with him and Shahid Afridi."

Qadir is confident of Tahir making an impression in England. "England [have always] struggled against spin bowling a lot, but once it comes to their home conditions, they are good. I have shared my past experiences with Tahir, told him how to counter English batsman in their own conditions … I am optimistic that he will make an impact with his improved bowling."

Tahir, who has played seven Tests for South Africa, played cricket in Pakistan from 1996 to 2006. "My relations with Imran aren't something new," Qadir said. "I've know this boy since he was playing in the Under-19 team here; he had tremendous talent and I was urging the [Pakistan] board to try him. I still regret not having this boy in Pakistan colours, but I am proud of him."

Tahir was once part of the Pakistan A team and was one of the popular legspinners on the Pakistani domestic circuit in 90s. He was team-mates with Shoaib Malik and Abdul Razzaq in 1996, in the Under-19 squad that played against England and Australia.

"He has played an ample amount of cricket in Pakistan, it's unfortunate that we couldn't have him playing for Pakistan," Qadir said. "He was so hardworking and a good learner, and always wanted to play cricket on the big stage. He eventually got there, where he always wanted to get.

"This is not the first time he has come up to me for tips, he was consistently in touch with me and always visits me when he is here in Lahore."

Umar Farooq is ESPNcricinfo's Pakistan correspondent

Feeds: Umar Farooq

© ESPN EMEA Ltd.

The Five Best Ever Spinners according to Ashley Mallett

 Ashley Mallett in Cricinfo

Shane Warne's star illuminated the cricket firmament, inspiring generations with the majesty of his art. When Warne reigned supreme on the Test stage, you'd see kids in the park and in the nets trying to emulate him. They got the saunter right, but what they didn't see was Warne's amazing strength, drive and energy through the crease. Watching him, it all looked so easy. They would emulate his approach, release the ball, and more times than not watch it disappear out of the park. There was a general lack of understanding about energy and drive through the crease. 

Warne turned up just when we all thought legspin had gone the way of the dinosaurs, who were bounced out when Earth failed to duck a hail of meteors. Sir Donald Bradman said Warne's legspin was the best thing to happen to Australian cricket in more than 30 years. I, along with thousands of television viewers, watched transfixed as Warne weaved his magic. Poor Mike Gatting, poor, hapless Daryll Cullinan.

I was in the South African dressing room when Warne destroyed them with 6 for 34 in their second innings at the SCG in 1998. And we all remember the time he got seven wickets for 50-odd at the MCG against West Indies, getting Richie Richardson with a flipper. Before that grand performance, which sparked his career, the camera focused on Warne in the field, and Bill Lawry said on air: "Now there's a young man who won't get much bowling today." The Phantom was right: Warne bowled 23 overs; not a lot of work for a slow bowler, but that was all he had to get seven wickets.

Warne's genius got him 708 wickets in 145 Tests. His physical skills were matched by an incredibly strong mind. He was frequently in a lot of controversy off the cricket field, but he managed to focus totally on his cricket when it mattered on the field of play. As with Don Bradman and Garry Sobers, he was a cricketing phenomenon.

The Indian offspinner Erapalli Prasanna was a small, rotund chap, with little hands and stubby fingers. Not the size of hand you'd think would be able to give a cricket ball tremendous purchase.

Pras, as he was affectionately called, bounced up to the wicket and got very side-on. He was short, so he tended to toss the ball up, and he spun it so hard it hummed. Unlike the majority of spinners, he could entice you forward with tantalising flight or force you back, and often got a batsman trapped on the crease. His changes of pace weren't always as subtle as Warne's, but Pras broke the rhythm of batsmen better than any spinner I've seen - especially with that quicker ball, which perplexed the best players of spin bowling in his era.

He possessed a mesmerising quality in that he seemed to have the ball on a string. You'd play forward and find yourself way short of where you expected the ball to pitch. In Madras once, I thought I'd take him on and advanced down the wicket only, to my horror, find that Pras had pulled hard on the "string" and I was miles short of where the ball pitched. I turned, expecting to see Farokh Engineer remove the bails, only to see the ball, having hit a pothole, climb over the keeper's head for four byes.

Pras was one of the few spinners to worry the life out of Ian Chappell, for he could trap him on the crease or lure him forward at will. Doug Walters, on the other hand, played the offspinners better than most - perhaps because his bat came down at an angle and the more you spun it, the more likely it was to hit the middle of his bat.

In 49 Tests Prasanna took 189 wickets at an average of 30.38. For a spinner who played a lot on the turning tracks of India, his average is fairly tall, but Pras was a wicket-taker and he took risks, inviting the batsman to hit him into the outfield. He always believed that if the batsman was taking him on and trying to hit him while he was spinning hard, dipping and curving the ball, he would have the final word.

For his tremendous performances in Australia in 1967-68, I place Prasanna if not above, at least on par with another genius offspinner, the Sri Lankan wizard Muttiah Muralitharan.

Murali's Test figures beggar belief - 133 matches for 800 wickets at 22.72, with 67 bags of five wickets or more (though, for some reason, he didn't shine in Australia).

He operated from very wide on the crease - which would inhibit the ordinary offie - but got so much work on the ball and a tremendous breadth of turn that he got away with bowling from that huge angle. At times he operated from round the wicket to get an away drift. Murali had the doosra, which fooled most batsmen, although the smart ones knew that his offbreak was almost certainly going to be a fair way outside the line of off stump to a right-hander and that the doosra would come on a much straighter line.

	His changes of pace weren't always as subtle as Warne's, but Prasanna broke the rhythm of batsmen better than any spinner I've seen

Saqlain Mushtaq lost his way over the doosra, the delivery he created, because he ended up bowling everything on too straight a line, and thus his offbreak became far less effective at the end of the career than it was when he began.

As with Saqlain and Warne, Murali made good use of his front foot. When any spinner gets his full body weight over his braced front leg at the point of release, he achieves maximum revolutions.

As a youngster Murali attended the famous St Anthony's College in Kandy, and every Sunday morning he trained under the tutelage of Sunil Fernando. Ruwan Kalpage, who also trained under Fernando at the time, and is the current Sri Lankan fielding coach, maintains that Murali always had the same action that he took into big cricket.

As with Warne, when bowling, Murali had an extraordinary area of danger, as big an area as your average dinner table. The likes of Ashley Giles, say, on the other hand, who didn't spin the ball very hard, needed to be super accurate, for their area of danger was about as a big as a dinner plate in contrast.

The key to spin bowling is not where the ball lands but how the ball arrives to the batsman. As with Warne and Prasanna, when Murali bowled, the ball came with a whirring noise and after striking the pitch rose with venom. Throughout his career and beyond there has been that nagging doubt about the legitimacy of Murali's action, but the ICC has cleared him and that is why I place him among the best five spinners I've seen.

My No. 4 is Derek Underwood, the England left-arm bowler, who has to be categorised as a spinner, although he operated at about slow-medium and cut the ball rather than spun it in the conventional left-arm orthodox manner. On good wickets Lock was a superior bowler to Underwood, but on underprepared or rain-affected wickets, the man from Kent was lethal.

He had a lengthy approach, a brisk ten or so paces, with a rather old-fashioned duck-like gait, and a hunter's attitude, along with a keen eye for a batsman's weakness. In August 1968, Underwood demolished Bill Lawry's Australian team on the last day of the fifth Test. Heavy rain gave the Australians hope of escaping with a draw and so winning the series 1-0. But Underwood swooped after tea and cut them down, taking 7 for 50.

	Murali: his extreme spin allowed him to get away with operating wide of the crease © AFP Enlarge

A week later he joined John Inverarity, Greg Chappell (who had just completed a season with Somerset) and me on Frank Russell's Cricketers Club of London tour of West Germany. We stayed in a British Army camp just outside the old city of Mönchengladbach. We played a cricket match against the army, using an artificial pitch and welded steel uprights doubled for stumps.

A huge West Indian came to the crease and we pleaded with Deadly to "throw one up". Having faced him over five Tests in England, where his slower ball was about the speed of Basil D'Oliveira's medium-pacers, we were keen to see how the batsman - any batsman - would react, when Underwood gave the ball some air. He eventually did. As the ball left his hand we could see a hint of a smile on the batsman's face. The ball disappeared and was never retrieved. Underwood's face was a flush of red as he let the next ball go, and what a clang it made as it hit those steel uprights, while the West Indian's bat was still on the downswing!

Apart from his destructive ability on bad or rain-affected tracks, Underwood was also a brilliant foil for the fast bowlers on hard wickets. He kept things tight as a drum when bowing in tandem with John Snow during Ray Illingworth's successful 1970-71 Ashes campaign Down Under.

My fifth choice might surprise some for I've gone for Graeme Swann, the best of the modern torchbearers for spin bowling.

I first saw him with Gareth Batty and Monty Panesar, fellow spin hopefuls, in Adelaide in the early 2000s. Swann had energy through the crease, he spun hard, and he tried to get people out. At that time some of the coaches leaned towards Panesar and I couldn't understand it, for Swann wasn't just a fine offspinner, he could bat when he put his mind to it, and he was an exceptional slip fieldsman. In comparison Panesar did not seem to have the same resolve or the cricketing nous.

When he was finally recognised as a top-flight spinner, Swann proved himself straightaway. He was 29 years old when he played his first Test, against India in 2008-09, and in the four-odd years since, he has played 41 Tests, taking 182 wickets at 27.97. Swann doesn't have the doosra, but he does have the square-spinner, which looks like an offie but skids on straight, and he can beat either side of the right-hander's bat.

There's a cheerful chirpiness about him that may annoy his opponents, but that is part of his make-up, just as the aggression of a Bill O'Reilly, or the cold stare of Warne, helped them dominate batsmen. Statistically Swann's record so far compares well with Jim Laker's (193 wickets at 21.24 from 46 Tests) and Tony Lock (49 Tests - 174 wickets at 25.58 with 9 five-wicket hauls).

There are lots of good spinners who I have had to omit, including Lock, Laker, Abdul Qadir, Lance Gibbs, Richie Benaud, Daniel Vettori, Anil Kumble, Sonny Ramadhin, Intikhab Alam, John Emburey, Pat Pocock, Ray Illingworth, Fred Titmus and Stuart MacGill. But the five I did pick - Warne, Prasanna, Murali, Underwood and Swann - would do well against any batsmen in any era.

The perils of imitating Shane Warne

Shoaib Naveed | 27th December, 2011

Richie Benaud, the celebrated leg spinner also known for his legendary one-liners in the commentary box, once said, “a bleeding ring finger at the end of every training session was not only normal but essential for my development as a wrist spinner.”

Being one of the most influential and highly-regarded leg-break bowlers at a time when leg-spin was both rare and misunderstood, Benaud knew what he was talking about. He recalls spending most of his late teenage years at the New South Wales Colts’ nets. He would practice landing his stock delivery on the same spot for hours on end.

“Four times a week I would turn up at exactly quarter to three with Billy Watson (who coincidentally would go on to play for Australia himself) and practice in the same net.”

Numerous others would show up at their own leisure to replace Billy, but Benaud would keep practicing until the last ray of light had faded into yet another Sydney summer evening.

“It (leg-spin bowling) is perhaps the hardest and most complex facet of cricket”, Benaud said and the “easiest thing starting out would be to keep it simple and true to your ability.”

The end of that statement is perhaps more significant than it has ever been, for the modern day leg-spinner has to learn not only the complex art, but also to grow out of the shadow of the greatest spin wizard of them all — Shane Warne.

The apparent simplicity of the genius, with his easy flowing action, unprecedented success and captivating personality seems to offer the perfect road map for an aspiring leg spinner.

In the years since Warne’s retirement, talented young bowlers have devoted their energies to modelling themselves on the brilliant Victorian, misguidedly expecting such an ordeal to be rewarding. The truth, however, truth is far closer to the contrary. Such pursuits often give birth to “spinners” who rarely turn the ball or for that matter, possess any of the other bamboozling variations (flipper, top-spinner, googly) so essential to the authentic leggie’s bag of tricks.

The explanation to this fascinating conundrum lies in both the sheer inimitable genius of Warne and the finer aspects of the leg-spinning trait itself.

Leg-spin, unlike any of the other bowling traits, does not require a high-arm delivery release. The bowler, instead, is required to have the shoulder stretch a bit to the side at the point of delivery. This is due to the peculiar and extremely strenuous way the ball is released from the wrist (the flick).

Abdul Qadir ripping a leggie (notice the arm to the side)

The round arm action makes it much easier for the bowler’s wrist to make the necessary flicking movement, transitioning from facing the sky to facing the bowler at the time of release. It also allows for the maximum number of revolutions to be imparted on the ball, resulting in the drift and fast turn, which are crucial to the lethal leg break.

What determines the amount of turn more than any thing else, however, is the pivot of the legs of the spinner. This pivot has to be strong because it needs to drag the entire body with it, the rule being that the greater the momentum the greater the turn. The pivot is greatly aided by a side-on action. If the bowler is completely side-on in the delivery stride, half his work is already done for his body can then easily be dragged with the momentum generated by the motion of delivery.

Mushtaq Ahmed and Devendra Bishoo completely side-on – making it easier to pivot

The authentic leg-spinner’s action then requires an equal amount of work to be done by the front arm and the bowling arm, resulting in quick shifts in momentum that appear a bit haphazard in real time. This leads to “funny” actions being associated with leg-break bowlers.

My whole analysis goes out of the window when you look at Shane Warne. Having the most insignificant of jumps, Warne’s action is much more front-on compared to the traditional leg-spinner. His action doesn’t involve the extravagant movements associated with the likes of Qadir or Mushtaq and is in fact so fluent and easy on the eye that it often appears deceptively lethargic.

Shane Warne gets much more front-on and also avoids the extravagant momentum shifts to display one of the most graceful bowling actions .

“How, then, did the magician conjure the wicked turn that mesmerised so many?” Mike Gatting would surely ask. And the answer really can only be attributed to the oddity of Warne’s natural ability. His shoulder and wrist, both freakishly strong and flexible, were able to impart a vicious spin on the ball that others will find impossible to replicate.

This freakish nature is demonstrated even more clearly when you notice his variations. The top spinner and googly, the most common leg-spinning variations, both require the ball to be released with a very different wrist position compared to the stock ball, needing the back of the hand to end up facing the batsman (top spinner) or the ground (googly) after release. This is an extreme change that normal bowlers cannot achieve by a simple adjustment of the wrist. A change in the point of delivery is essential to bowling these variations. Where initially the shoulder stuck out to the side, the arm is now closer to the head for the variations. Compare, for instance, Qadir’s top spinner to his normal action shown above.

Abdul Qadir’s action; much more round arm for the change ups.

Qadir was not alone in needing to make this switch. Almost all leg-spinners who have versatility, so crucial to being a complete wrist spinner, have to rely on this slight give-away to land their change-up deliveries effectively.

Kaneria Legbreak Kaneria Googly (Blue:Head, Red:Line of Release)

Now compare this to Warne, and the difference is evident.

Shane Warne Legbreak Shane Warne Googly

In fact, comparing Shane Warne’s repertoire just confirms why it was so hard to pick the great spinner, who was able to churn out his entire array of deliveries without the slightest hint of change in his action or release point. His strong shoulder and unusually flexible wrists bore the brunt of the change up every time.

(Left to Right/Top to Bottom: Leggie, Wrong-un, Flipper, Slider)

Therefore, while Warne’s ability to turn the ball and perfectly camouflage his variations is nothing short of breathtaking, one must at the same time keep in mind the anatomy and natural gift of the great spinner that frankly can’t be imitated. With his destructive attitude and knack of getting under the batsman’s skin, Warne is definitely the embodiment of an attacking spinner.

Aspiring newcomers have a lot to learn from his attitude but would be better suited to look towards the traditional greats in Qadir and Benaud when it comes to modelling and reconstructing bowling actions.

A spinner's flight plan

 

The great spinners visualised their wickets and deceived the batsmen in the air. But why are today's bowling coaches almost always fast men?

Ashley Mallett in Cricinfo

July 24, 2011

In my first over in Test cricket, to Colin Cowdrey at The Oval in August 1968, I appealed for lbw decisions for the first four balls. The fifth ball was the decider. Cowdrey went well back and the ball cannoned into his pads halfway up middle stump. Umpire Charlie Elliott raised his index finger, and "Kipper" touched the peak of his England cap and said to me, "Well bowled, master."

In hindsight Cowdrey was a pretty good wicket, given that he had conquered the spin of Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine at a time when I was trying to track down an ice-cold Paddle Pop in Perth.

Test cricket is the ultimate challenge for the spin bowler. Sadly Twenty20s and ODIs bring mug spinners to the fore. They skip through their overs and bowl "dot" balls, which their legion of hangers-on believe to be something akin to heaven. Test spinners are all about getting people out. After all, the best way to cut the run rate is to take wickets.

Before getting into big cricket I felt the need to have a coaching session with Clarrie Grimmett. I was 21, living in Perth, and Clarrie, a sprightly 76, was based in Adelaide. To my mind a spinner cannot be doing things all that brilliantly if he thinks he is a pretty good bowler but doesn't get many wickets. That was my lot, and I sought Clarrie's advice. Two days in the train from Perth to Adelaide, then a short bus ride to the suburb of Firle, found Clarrie at home. He was up the top of an ancient pepper tree.

There he had hung a ball in a stocking. He handed me a Jack Hobbs-autographed bat, and having dismissed my protestations that I wanted to learn spin bowling, not batting, he said with a broad grin: "Well, son, there was a youngster I taught to play the square cut on the voyage to England in 1930 and… Don Bradman was a fast learner."

Clarrie swung one ball towards me and I met it in the middle of his bat. We then went to the nets. Clarrie had a full-sized turf wicket in his backyard. He wandered to the batting end. He wore no protective equipment - no box, no pads or gloves. Just his Jack Hobbs bat. "Bowl up, son," he cried.

My first ball met the middle of his bat. He called me down the track. "Son," he said, "Give up bowling and become a batsman… I could play you blindfolded."

As it happened I had a handkerchief in my pocket. He put that over his horn-rimmed glasses and my second ball met the middle of his bat. When he had stopped laughing he proceeded to give me the best possible lesson on spin bowling. He talked about spinning on a trajectory just above the eye line of the batsman. 

Eighteen months later I was playing a Test match in India. The Nawab of Pataudi was facing, and while he was not smashing my bowling all over the park, he was clearly in control. I had to find a way to arrest the situation, so I thought of Grimmett and the necessity of getting the ball to dip acutely from just above the eye line.

It worked. The dipping flight fooled him to the extent that he wasn't sure exactly where the ball would bounce. Pataudi pushed forward in hope rather than conviction, and within four balls Ian Chappell had grabbed another bat-pad chance at forward short leg.

A spinner needs a plan to get wickets at the top level. Even a bad plan is better than no plan at all, but it is not about reinventing the wheel.

Grimmett had many a plan. He told me that he often saw the image of a batsman he was about to dismiss in his mind's eye. When the wicket fell, he was nonchalant, for this was the action replay. Nowadays visualisation is an official part of cricket coaching.

The key to spin bowling is how the ball arrives. If the ball is spun hard and the bowler gets lots of energy up and over his braced front leg, he will achieve a dipping flight path that starts just above the eye line and drops quickly.

Grimmett firmly believed, as does Shane Warne, that a batsman had to be deceived in the air. Warne's strategy at the start of a spell was to bowl his fiercely spun stock legbreak with subtle changes of pace. Similarly my idea was to stay in the attack. There is nothing worse for a bowler than to go for 10 or 12 runs in his first over. Psychologically you are then playing catch-up to make your figures look reasonable.

	If a spinner doesn't plan he doesn't change his pace and thus does not break the rhythm of the batsman. It is crucial to a Test spin bowler's success that he attacks with subtle changes of pace

As an offspinner I found if my off-side field was in order the rest fell into place. My basic plan against a right-hander was to have the ball arriving in a dangerous manner: spin hard and drive up and over the braced front leg. And I wanted to lure the batsman into trying to hit to the off side, against the spin, to look at the huge gap between point and my very straight short cover. When a batsman hit against the spin and was done in flight, the spin would take the ball to the on side - a potential catch to bat-pad or short midwicket. Sometimes this plan doesn't work - the batsman might be clean-bowled, or if the ball skipped on straight, caught at slip, or it would cannon into his front pad for no result.  (Also a leg spinner's plan to a left hand batter)

If a spinner doesn't plan he doesn't change his pace and thus does not break the rhythm of the batsman. It is crucial to a Test spin bowler's success that he attacks with subtle changes of pace.

I had played 10 Test matches and taken 46 wickets when Bob Simpson, the former Australia opening batsman and Test captain, sidled up to me and said: "You need a straight one."

I eyeballed Bob and said that some of my offbreaks went dead straight and "they don't pick them". He went on to say that I needed a ball that, to all intent and purpose, looked as if it would turn from the off but would skip off straight. I could "bowl" what they call a doosra today, but when I played, offspinners did not have ICC carte blanche to throw the ball. I felt it was wrong to throw, so I discarded the whole thing.

In Tests a batsman is challenged by pace and spin. My aim was to take 100 Test wickets in 20 Tests. But I got there in my 23rd - the same as Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Garth McKenzie - after which circumstances changed. Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson joined forces, and man, you tried to grab a wicket anyhow while those two were on the hunt. My next 15 Tests brought little in way of wickets, but my experience helped me in a coaching sense. I knew how unloved and untried spinners felt.

Somehow the cricket world brought forth a bunch of national coaches who didn't know the difference between an offbreak and a toothpick. Some were celebrated ones, like South Africa's Bob Woolmer. His idea of combating spin was ludicrous. He had blokes trying to hit sixes against Shane Warne's legspin. As splendid as he was against any opposition, no wonder Warne excelled against Woolmer-coached sides.

It is amazing that all national sides pick ex-fast bowlers as their bowling coaches. At least in England, Andy Flower, easily the best coach in world cricket, recognises the role of the spin coach. Mushtaq Ahmed, the former Pakistan legspinner, teams with David Saker, the fast-bowling coach, to help the England bowlers.

For years Australia have floundered in the spin department. Troy Cooley, the bowling coach, is a fast-bowling man, not one for spin. Australia has suffered; a lot of the blame can be attributed to the stupid stuff going on at the so-called Centre of Excellence in Brisbane.

Australia have had three great spinners: Grimmett, Bill O'Reilly and Warne. If Grimmett had played 145 Tests, the same as Warne, he would have taken 870 wickets. Different eras, of course, but you get the idea of how good Grimmett was. However, the best offie I ever saw - by a mile - was the little Indian Erapalli Prasanna. Now there was a bowler.

Offspinner Ashley Mallett played 38 Tests for Australia

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