Where Do High Class Spinners Pitch the Ball?

In another guest article, club left arm spinner AB talks us through exactly where to land the ball to cause maximum damage to batsmen’s averages. Courtesy Pitchvision Academy

We all know the key to top quality spin bowling is to bowl a consistent line and length. But what does that actually mean?

First we need to figure out where is the best length to bowl.

We want a length that is full enough that the batsman is forced to come forward, but not so full that he is able to reach the ball on the half volley without mis-hitting it.

Consider that the average spin bowler delivers the ball at approximately 50mph, and that after bouncing the speed of the ball is reduced by about 50%. This translates to a speed of about 10 metres a second. The average reaction time of a human is 0.2s. If we pitch the ball within 2 metres of the batsman, then he will be unable to play back as he would simply not have time to react to any movement off the pitch.

Therefore the maximum distance away from the batsman's stumps that we should land the ball, given that he will move back one foot when playing back, is approximately 11 foot. Anything shorter than 11 foot and the batsman will be able to play comfortably off the back foot.

 How about minimum distance?

A batsman playing on the front foot normally plays the ball about 3 feet in front of his crease. The ideal location to pitch the ball is the one at which the ball has just turned enough to hit or just miss the edge of the bat. On a normal pitch, we will find the ball turning something in the order of 5 degrees, which translates to about 1 inch sideways for each foot after bouncing.

Therefore we need to pitch the ball between 2 and 4 foot in front of the bat (8 to 10 foot from the stumps) in order to take the edge.

On a turning track, a ball pitching only a foot in front of the bat would be sufficient to threaten the edge.

The best length on this pitch would therefore be between 7 and 9 foot from the batsman's stumps. So the spin bowler has an area of about 4 feet, or just over a metre, in which to aim: anything inside this will pose the batsman problems.

------Also read

What India's spinners are doing wrong

Good Length and Right Speed

Spin and the art of attack

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Spinner’s line

No matter the pitch, the ball will not always turn a consistent amount. This variability of turn is major positive factor for the spinner. If he can't predict what will happen, how can the batsman be expected to?

A competent batsman will most likely play the percentages and play for a small amount of turn when defending off the front foot, reducing the likelihood of a ball that turns just 1 or 2 inches catching the edge. However, the inadvertent result of this is that now both the big turning delivery and the straight ball are the potential wicket taking deliveries. The spinner must always take advantage of this by ensuring that every time the ball beats the bat, whether the inside edge or outside edge, then there is a decent probability that the batsman will be dismissed.

Batsmen are able to play more assertively when they feel comfortable that they are able to use their pad as a second line of defence without the risk of being dismissed lbw. This is why it’s important for a spin bowler to constantly attack the stumps with either the big spinning delivery, the straight ball, or both.

We therefore want to keep as many deliveries as possible ending up in the danger zone: either on the stumps for a chance of bowled or lbw or within 6 inches of off stump for a likely caught behind chance.

On a spinning pitch, then 10 degrees of turn will translate to a difference of about 15 inches between the straight ball and the big turning delivery. So we need to take this into consideration when planning our line of attack.

 If the ball is turning away from the batsman, the ideal stock line is to pitch the ball on middle and leg, with the straight delivery angled in towards leg stump. Spin the ball hard enough for the spinning delivery to hit or go past the top of off stump.

The batsman will then be forced to play down a middle stump line to defend against the spin, and this will mean that both the straight delivery and the big spinner will have a good chance of dismissing him.

The off spinner should ensure that his big spinning delivery is not wasted by constantly turning down the leg side. This means that he needs to pitch the ball just outside off stump. A sensible batsman will then play down the line of off stump to defend against the spin, leaving both the big spinner and the straight ball as wicket-taking options.

What India's spinners are doing wrong

V Ramnarayan in Cricinfo

Ashwin goes round the wicket far too often  © BCCI

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As someone who watched the great Indian offspinners of the past from close quarters, it is frustrating to watch their modern contemporaries failing to follow some of the basic principles of the discipline.

Before I go into the specifics of the offspin bowling on view in Sydney, with particular reference to India's R Ashwin, I will venture a sweeping statement about Indian bowlers, one that I'll be delighted to be corrected about. On the evidence of the last eight to ten matches I have watched, they give the impression that they do not practise bowling enough. The evidence - circumstantial, I admit - is there for all to see, as they spray the ball around match after match with seemingly no control over length and line. My suspicion was strengthened by what I heard from someone who followed the team around in England and was witness to their practice routine: a lot of gym work and physical training on the field, but not much bowling in the nets. 

This is in sharp contrast to the way Indian bowlers in the 1970s and '80s trained. Spinners and fast bowlers bowled for hours at the nets. Not only does inadequate net practice make you inaccurate in a match, it also denies you the confidence you need to go all out to bowl in an attacking mode, because you are not sure you can land the ball where you want it. You can only play safe then by, for instance, choosing to push the ball through innocuously with greater confidence rather than trying to spin it sharply.

Nathan Lyon of Australia shows much more self-belief than others of his ilk, as did Graeme Swann not long ago. Both give the impression of being well-oiled machines, evidently well primed before they bowl the first ball in a match. Unfortunately even Lyon does not demonstrate great skill or common sense when bowling to left-handers, choosing to go round the wicket the moment one arrives at the crease.

Ashwin, too, is guilty of this seeming lack of application of mind when it comes to bowling to left-handers. Prasanna and Venkataraghavan (and Harbhajan Singh, too) seldom slipped up like this. They preferred to bowl an annoyingly constraining leg-and-middle line to left-handers, to a field that included a slip and gully (or a lone slip after the batsman had settled down and the wicket was not doing much), and always with a forward short-leg waiting for the bat-pad catch. It took a left-hander extraordinarily strong off his pads to force them to go round the wicket. A left-hand batsman will normally feel much more comfortable facing an offspinner coming round the wicket than otherwise.

So when does an offspinner go round the wicket? Mainly to right-handers. Here again, you don't have to look beyond Prasanna and Venkataraghavan. Except when they occasionally did so just to break the monotony of bowling to well-set batsmen, they went round mainly to force the batsman to play, on wickets yielding turn and perhaps bounce. That way, they also reduced the angle and enhanced the chance of lbw decisions, which excessive turn could negate from over the wicket. Two cardinal rules while bowling from round the stumps to right-handers: always have a man at slip, and never change your line. Stick to the off stump or outside it, except when you push one through with the arm from middle to off for an attempt at a clean-bowled or slip catch. The trick is to induce false shots by sticking to the same line and length but altering the angle of delivery.

Going round the wicket also often works against batsmen strong on the sweep. I have seen many such batsmen top-edge catches against this angle of attack.

Watching the Indian bowlers in Sydney, it is difficult indeed to believe that they are sure of their length and direction, or that they have the confidence to bowl to get wickets. The only time they seem to bowl attackingly is when they bowl short - with disappointing results.

In addition to resorting to modern tools of analysis and training, I am sure India's bowlers can benefit from watching videos of former greats or seeking their advice. Ashwin, for one, could be a transformed bowler if he approaches Prasanna or Venkataraghavan for guidance and puts into practice some of their lessons. They could help him improve his finish and follow-through, for instance. I'm sure they are just a text message away.

Why has the quality of spinners in India declined?

 Ranji pitches? Overcoaching? The IPL? A defensive mindset? Five experts share their thoughts

Interviews by Nagraj Gollapudi

October 3, 2014

Narendra Hirwani: "My message to spinners like R Ashwin is, bowl your stock delivery 80% of the time in first-class cricket" © AFP

Two years ago, when England won the Test series in India 2-1, R Ashwin, India's favoured offspinner since the dropping of Harbhajan Singh, took 14 wickets at 52.64. This summer in England, Ashwin played the final two Tests of the five-match series; Ravindra Jadeja played in the first four. Their combined aggregate of 12 wickets was seven fewer than the tally of the best spinner in the series: England's Moeen Ali, a part-timer.

On India's domestic circuit, spinners have ceded place to seamers. In the last three seasons of the Ranji Trophy, only Shahbaz Nadeem, the Jharkhand left-arm spinner, has finished among the top-five wicket-takers. Till the turn of the millennium, Ranji teams had high-quality spinners who were at par with those playing for the national side. Now, a country that boasted the likes of Erapalli Prasanna, Bishan Bedi, BS Chandrasekhar, Maninder Singh, Narendra Hirwani, Venkatapathy Raju, Anil Kumble, Sunil Joshi and Harbhajan Singh suddenly finds its pool dry.

What are the factors that have contributed to this decline? Five experts - Bishan Bedi, Maninder Singh, Narendra Hirwani, Murali Kartik and Amol Muzumdar - share their thoughts.

A lack of quality spin

Bishan Bedi (former India left-arm spinner and captain): Where is India's next-generation spinner coming from? We are at a very strange crossroads where everybody and anybody wants to get into the team in a fast manner. That does not happen when it comes to spin bowling. Spin bowling is all about learning your craft over a period of time. You can't learn spin bowling by just delivering four overs in a T20 match.

Murali Kartik: (former Railways and India left-arm spinner): We have come to a stage where even a part-time bowler is being looked at as a spinner. To bowl spin there are lots of important basics in technique that need to be developed. That is not happening right now because the youngsters at the grass-roots level are playing the limited-overs versions. Before you are learning what your action is, learning how to bowl the conventional form of spin, the thing that is happening now is, because of the lure of money, youngsters want to play the shortest format.

At the age of 18 or 19, if you ask a spinner to play T20 and then ask him to bowl well in four-day cricket, it will not be possible. Even within India, you are not getting spinners to bowl well, even if you give them spinning pitches. So they do not have the wherewithal to bowl at all overseas.

Amol Muzumdar: (former Mumbai batsman and captain) The spinners are not a threat anymore. When does a batsman feel threatened at the crease? Only when the ball has fizz. If you are darting the ball at him, I am happy [as a batsman], absolutely happy to face that. But when the ball fizzes off the surface, when it has flight and spin, then batting is not easy. And that is not seen anymore.

I remember facing Venkatapathy Raju in Mumbai in my early years of first-class cricket. I could hear the turn in the air. Same with Maninder Singh. That really put me in my crease. I told myself I had to be careful. They put me on the back foot.

Narendra Hirwani: (former India legspinner and former national selector) There was a time when the level of spinners at Ranji Trophy and Test level was virtually the same. That divide has become very big now. During Bishan paaji's time there were Padmakar Shivalkar and Rajinder Goel, who were equally good left-arm spinners.

Today the youngsters are a little too smart for their own good. When you become too smart, you become cautious. But these youngsters do not understand that every batsman is afraid of spin.

Maninder Singh: (fomer India left-arm spinner) This is a concern. The BCCI did not either realise or it did not bother to make sure young spinners coming up did not start drifting towards T20 cricket. I will give the example of Akshar Patel, the Kings XI Punjab [and Gujarat] left-arm spinner. He darts everything in to the batsman, which is absolutely fine for T20, but I hope it does not become a habit.

	"I would feel good only when I had bowled sufficient hours to get confidence in the nets, which then I could take in to the match. I would bowl at least seven to eight hours every day. I was obsessed"Bishan Bedi

The part pitches play

Kartik: It was a knee-jerk reaction [making green pitches] when we lost Test series in England and Australia in 2011 and 2012. The thought process was we needed to play on wickets which are conducive to fast bowling.

In India, say I win the toss on a green pitch and ask the opposition to bat. I play three seamers, a batting allrounder who can bowl a little, and a spinner. Generally, if you bundle out the opposition anywhere between 120-220 runs, the next thing you do is you ask for a heavy roller when it is your turn to bat. So over four innings, by the time the match is into the third day and when the wicket is supposed to disintegrate, because the heavy roller has been used, the wicket is no longer green for the seamers. It becomes a flat deck. And because of the grass cover that has been rolled time and again, there are no natural variations, there are no footmarks. So even on the fourth day there is nothing for a spinner.

Also, the SG Test ball, which is used in domestic first-class cricket, starts [reverse] swinging once the ball is 30 to 40 overs old. By the time the spinner comes in to bowl the ball is about 60 overs old. But he gets only about ten overs to do the holding job on a pitch made for the seamers.

I bowled a total of 71 overs during the 2013-14 season in seven matches for Railways. Out of that, for ten overs I ran in and bowled seam-up against Tamil Nadu at the Jamia Millia ground in Delhi. At times we have played on pitches that resembled the Wimbledon tennis courts.

I can still bowl on those wickets because I have bowled in the conventional four-day method. Harbhajan Singh has done that. [Ramesh] Powar has done that. Sunil Joshi has done that. But Ravindra Jadeja, Iqbal Abdulla, Vishal Dabholkar have learned only the restrictive way of bowling: round-arm, undercutting. That is what is happening closer to the grass-roots.

Making spin-friendly pitches is no foolproof solution. By doing that the spinner goes in with a false sense of confidence that he has taken lots of wickets. But you are still not a complete bowler. Your skill sets are not up to the mark.

Hirwani: I have always said that a spinner should train on a wicket where he needs to make the ball turn. Not on pitches that take turn easily. It should be a pitch where you need the skills - not everyone can spin on it.

A defensive attitude

Bedi: There is no imagination. You are only playing a waiting game. So the batsman will always be on top. You have to make a batsman do what you want him to do. Spin bowling is a philosophy. How to outwit your opponent. It can be compared with playing chess. It is not bowling flat, like young Indian bowlers, even Jadeja, are doing.

	Maninder Singh: "Akshar Patel darts everything in to the batsman, which is fine for T20. But I hope it does not become a habit" © BCCI  Enlarge

Hirwani: I feel the main reason behind that is if the idea is to minimise the runs I want to concede, I need to not reduce the spin on the ball. If you spin less, then you could give less runs, but you also reduce the chances of taking a wicket. So if you minimise taking risks, you also cut down your chances of taking a wicket. The shorter versions of the game have started affecting some spinners.

Take even Harbhajan Singh. Why did he slide in the latter half of his career? He started to focus more on checking the runs. His line started to go towards the middle stump and that reduced his chances of taking wickets. An attacking line for an offspinner is pitching on the fifth stump [outside off], where he is trying to get the batsman bowled by breaking in. The moment he brings the line inside, he starts becoming defensive. That means only if the batsman makes a mistake will you get a wicket. But then how are you forcing the batsman to commit a mistake?

My message to even senior spinners like R Ashwin is: bowl your stock delivery 80% of the time in first-class cricket, and for rest of the time you can use the variations as a surprise. A spinner should not become predictable.

Kartik: Even in first-class cricket, spinners and captains now place a long-on, long-off, deep point with silly point and short leg, when all you are doing is darting the ball. To dart you do not need to know the fundamentals of spin bowling. To bowl flight, to beat the batsman in the air, to spin the ball, you need the basics to be very strong. It takes time.

Is modern coaching to blame?

Muzumdar: Earlier there were spinners with different actions. In the 1980s there was Maninder Singh, Ravi Shastri, Venkatapathy Raju and so many others. But all had different actions which were natural. That is the essence of spin bowling - keep your action natural. I think now we are over-coaching some youngsters.

Take Harmeet Singh, the Mumbai left-arm spinner. When I saw him a few years ago in the indoor nets in Mumbai, he had a unique action. It was not the conventional action. His front foot would land with a heavy thrust on the ground. That was his skill and it helped him deliver the ball nicely. But now he delivers with a much lower arm and that is because he has changed his action. I fear we have lost one more good spinner due to over-coaching.

Maninder: As a coach, I do not try and change the action at all. I try to look at the strengths of the youngster and coach accordingly. But I have seen certified coaches teach kids about the arm coming from a certain height and degree. I would rather focus on the youngster's natural arc and polish that.

Hirwani: Many of my students at my academy in Indore tell me: "Sir, I have bowled 60 balls. Sir, I have bowled 50 balls today." I tell them: if you want to make cream, you have to condense it, and that only happens after boiling it for a period of time. A good rabri [sweet] is made only when the cream rises. For quality you need quantity.

I would bowl minimum of 90 overs a day as a youngster at the Cricket Club of Indore. I would bowl at just one stump for a couple of hours. In all, I would bowl for a minimum of five hours. If you are bowling at one stump you end up bowling about 30 overs in an hour. This kind of training, bowling at one stump, is equivalent to vocalists doing riyaaz [music practice]. You build your muscle memory.

Bedi: I keep hearing about pitching it in the right areas. The right areas is between your ears, in your mind.

I also had an outstanding coach. He gave me a lot of cricket sense. Cricket ability and cricket sense are two different things.

You just have to bowl. Bowl and bowl and bowl. I would feel good only when I had bowled sufficient hours to get the confidence first in the nets which then I could take in to the match. It took me a long, long time to learn good bowling. I would bowl at least seven to eight hours every day. I was obsessed.

The importance of captains

Muzumdar: As a captain you have to be patient. You need to relax even if a four or six is hit off a spinner. Nowadays batsmen go after a slow bowler, especially ones who do not impart too much spin on the ball, as soon as he comes in to bowl. So the captain immediately says to keep it tight till his fast bowlers can come back.

I saw the rise of Sairaj Bahutule under Sanjay Manjrekar, Ravi Shastri and Sachin Tendulkar. After about four years, I think, Sairaj picked his first five-for. You had to be patient. And I saw the development in Sairaj in that period. Against Delhi in a Ranji Trophy match, Ajay Sharma was taking control but Manjrekar persisted with Sairaj and Nilesh Kulkarni though Sharma was playing aggressively against the spinners. In the end Mumbai won that match.

Kartik: A captain can make or break a spinner. So he should understand what the spinner goes through, how they function and how they can be turned to match-winners. When the captain wants you to give as few runs as possible, he is not giving the spinner any confidence.

Maninder: Take the example of Gautam Gambhir. I have seen him in T20 cricket place a silly point and a short leg as soon as a wicket falls, when a spinner is bowling. Dhoni does not do that when a new batsman comes in in a Test match. When I had those close-in fielders my focus and concentration went a notch higher. But for that you have to have the habit of bowling with those fielders. With time your confidence goes high and also you stop worrying if you bowl a long hop or a full toss.

	"If a spinner starts at the age of 12 or 13, he needs seven to eight years to understand his bowling"Murali Kartik

New talent on the horizon

Kartik: There are a few slow bowlers but not a spinner. When I started playing first-class cricket there were good spinners who were not getting a place in their state squads. Sunil Joshi, Kanwaljeet Singh, Sunil Subramaniam, Narendra Hirwani, Rajesh Chauhan, Bharati Vij, Sunil Lahore, Pradeep Jain, Rahul Sanghvi, Sarandeep Singh, Harbhajan Singh were quality spinners. Now I can't take a single name.

Hirwani: I have faith in two: Bengal offspinner Aamir Gani, who just turned 18. He has the skills and the desire. I also like Kuldeep Yadav, the chinaman bowler from Uttar Pradesh. He is an attacking bowler.

Maninder: Kuldeep Yadav, if the slight technical flaw in his front arm is fixed.

The problem with T20

Kartik: T20 cricket is not only harmful for a young spinner, it can also affect a senior bowler. Take Pragyan Ojha. He went at the rate of five an over, did not get a wicket in his 35 overs in the one Test he played on the India A tour of Australia in July. This is a spinner who has taken more than 100 Test wickets. He is confused after he has come back. So you can imagine the state of a young bowler who does not know his game inside out. All he is doing is bowling four overs for 25-30 runs and getting one wicket off a good or bad ball, because you know the next day you are up and running for the next T20 match.

Bedi: The modern generation is all about the IPL. Tell me if you get Rs 9, 10, 12 crore why would you want to bowl 35 overs [in a first-class match] for five lakhs? Sport is about money in the modern context.

The way out

Maninder: It is the BCCI's responsibility. When the IPL started, it had a lot of enemies. But that was also the time the BCCI should have taken the challenge of creating a pool of young talent and putting them under the expert guidance of former players or greats. These guys would not just talk about the specifics of spin bowling but also talk to them about how to sustain in the longer format of the game. If you speak to Bishan Bedi, the way he communicates, you would think: five-day cricket is what I want to play.

Kartik: If you are trying to push 11-year-olds into T20 cricket you are never going to learn the art of spin. Till the age of 21 at the state and age-group level at least, there should be no exposure to T20 cricket. Kids should play only three- or four-day cricket - learn to flight to ball, learn to get hit. By getting hit your natural survival instinct kicks in. Right now the natural instinct in T20 is to bowl quick. When you do that you cannot go back and bowl in four-day cricket, where you are trying to prise out a wicket.

If a spinner starts at the age of 12 or 13 he needs at least seven to eight years to understand his bowling: to bowl up and over, to flight the ball, to give the revs, and such things. You can coach, but if you are not allowing the player to first learn and understand his own game there is no point. Technically Test cricket is the deep end because getting a wicket when the batsman is defending is difficult
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Spinners need intelligent, trusting captains to thrive

V Ramnarayan in Cricinfo

Anil Kumble set a fine example as captain in managing the slow bowlers  © AFP

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To consistently give their best, bowlers need their captains to have confidence in them. This is particularly true of spinners, who must rely on craft and cunning more than the quicker bowlers do. Rarely do we come across spin bowlers thriving under captains who do not believe in their ability or have an inadequate understanding of their trade.

For starters, the better captains allow at least four or five overs for the spinner to settle into an even rhythm. This is the time the bowler takes to ensure that every ball lands where he wants it to, before he can launch into any variations. Some of the greatest spinners in the game have been known to attempt nothing dramatic during this period. 

Only once he has found his length will the sensible bowler try out variations of flight and turn. He is aware of the subtle variations inherent in deliveries, even without his attempting them; no human can actually bowl six identical balls, though they may look similar to the naked eye. A good captain therefore starts with a fairly defensive field, and brings his men in only after the bowler has found his groove.

In contrast, not only do some bowlers, even at the international level, appear to try too many tricks too soon, some captains too expect their bowlers to start attacking from the word go, impatient with the relative lack of flight and turn in the early overs. The result can be overpitching, or bowling rank short balls, or bowling down the wrong line altogether, giving the batsman free runs and a bonus dose of confidence.

The ideal delivery by a spinner has the batsman playing forward but unable to reach the ball, the arc caused by the spin dropping the ball just short and deflecting it in a direction not intended by the batsman. The genuine spinner hates it when the batsman can play him off the back foot, a much more damaging prospect than being driven off the front foot.

While close catchers on either side of the wicket are essential for the bowler to have any impact on the batsman, the rest of the field is just as crucial to the effectiveness of the bowler, as we all know. In addition to slip (and gully) for the legspinner, or forward (and backward) short-leg for the offspinner, short extra cover and short midwicket are excellent attacking positions, ready to hold on to miscued drives. To a right-hand batsman, a sweeper on the off side for an offspinner, or a deep midwicket for a legspinner would indicate either a criminal lack of confidence on the part of the bowler or complete ignorance on the part of the captain and/or the bowler.

The question of who sets the field, the bowler or his captain, is something we hear discussed in the commentary box, and my view is that the bowler must bowl to his captain's field, assuming that the captain knows what he is doing.

This is where it is handy to have experienced bowlers in the side, because they can save the captain the trouble of setting their field, unless the captain is shortsighted enough to overrule the bowler who knows his bowling, and imposes his own views on him.

With young or inexperienced bowlers, however, the onus is on the captain to decide the line of attack, guide the bowler and set the field appropriate to the bowler, batsman, wicket, or state of the innings.

Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and Ajit Wadekar - each in his own distinct way - were captains who knew how to bring out the best in their spinners. In his first stint as India captain, Pataudi was young and inexperienced, but by the time the new crop of spinners (soon to become known as the quartet) came into the side in 1967, he was five years old in the job, and I suspect had gained much practical wisdom in the company of such captains in the South Zone as V Subramanya of Karnataka and ML Jaisimha of Hyderabad. The famed close-in cordon of the Indian team perhaps had its origins there. Wadekar's captaincy was shaped in a relatively defensive mode, but when he took over from Pataudi in 1971, he had the advantage of leading a highly experienced combination of spinners, who helped deliver India's first series victories in the West Indies and England.

In the decades that followed, captains from Bishan Bedi down to Rahul Dravid led spin attacks in varying degrees of efficacy and different styles of handling, but I am partial to the manner in which Anil Kumble marshalled his spin resources, thanks to his superior domain knowledge. I believe he was the best when it came to managing the slow men. Unfortunately, the Indian captaincy came to him late in his career. After all, the idea of a bowler-captain is not the most popular theory around.

Cricket - Let's hear it for the unorthodox spinner

V Ramnarayan in Cricinfo

Sonny Ramadhin troubled England with his variations in 1950 but lost his edge on the next tour, and later confessed to having chucked during his career  © PA Photos

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Back in the 1960s, my college team had a "legspinner" - for want of a better description - PS Ramesh, who bowled legbreaks, offbreaks and straight ones, all with identical actions and no obvious change of grip. We played all our cricket on matting, and while Ramesh bamboozled most batsmen at that level, we did not find out how he would have fared on turf, as the selectors never fancied him beyond college cricket. These days he would probably have been taken much more seriously, and have played representative cricket, for his armoury certainly included the carrom ball, if not the doosra.

More than a decade earlier, West Indian crowds had first chanted the calypso about "those little pals of mine", Ramadhin and Valentine when the spin twins decimated England at Lord's to earn West Indies their first Test win in England. Bespectacled, nerdy-looking Alf Valentine was an orthodox left-arm spinner, but short and squat Sonny Ramadhin had a whole box of tricks that batsmen found hard to unravel. Bowling in long sleeves, he made the ball go this way or that at will, giving no hint of the deviation with his action. 

Ramadhin's spirit was broken seven years later, when Peter May (285 not out) and Colin Cowdrey (154) put on 411 for the fourth wicket in the second innings of the first Test at Edgbaston. While May counterattacked, Cowdrey showed he was a master of pad-play in an ultra-defensive display of attrition. Ramadhin never recovered.

Cowdrey's padathon probably played a role in the introduction of the new lbw rule that enabled the umpire to rule a batsman out to balls pitching outside the off stump if he offered no stroke and the umpire believed the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps. In 1999, Ramadhin sensationally confessed in the wake of widespread arguments over the legality of the doosra that he threw the odd ball in his time.

Were he playing today, Cowdrey could not have got away with the generous forward thrust of his leg in front of his bat to demolish the Ajantha Mendises and Sunil Narines of world cricket, considering umpires are ever so willing to give lbw decisions, unlike their 20th-century counterparts, many of whom had their hands firmly in their pockets except when the batsman was palpably in front - while playing fully back!

Perhaps the first freak spinner in Test cricket history was Australia's Jack Iverson, who gripped the ball between thumb and middle finger and bowled a bewildering array of offspin, legspin and googlies. The mystery of his bowling was, however, short-lived. He barely lasted five Tests.

I had the pleasure of watching a mystery spinner at close quarters. My Hyderabad team-mate, the left-arm spinner Mumtaz Hussain bowled Osmania University to a Rohinton Baria Trophy triumph in 1966-67. No batsman at that level had an answer to his wiles, as he sent down orthodox left-arm spin, the chinaman and the googly with no perceptible difference in the action. His prize scalp of the tournament was Sunil Gavaskar, who says in his autobiographical book Sunny Days:

"Their (Osmania's) left-arm spinner Mumtaz Hussain, the hero of the tournament, proved deadly with his disguised chinaman and regular orthodox spin. In the second innings, Ramesh Nagdev and I were going strong after Naik's cheap dismissal. But Nagdev was not able to fathom Mumtaz Hussain's spin when he bowled the chinaman. I thought I knew, so in a purely psychological move I called out loud to Nagdev at the non-striker's end: 'Don't worry, Ramesh, I know when he bowls that one.' When Mumtaz heard this, he smiled mysteriously and tossed the ball up to me for the next few deliveries. I came down the wicket, but managed to hit only one four while the others went straight to the fielder. Mumtaz tossed up the last ball of the over slightly outside the off-stump. Too late I realized that he had bowled a googly and was stranded down the track, to be easily stumped."

Mumtaz was tragically converted to an orthodox spinner in first-class cricket, and though he had a very respectable career, he was never again the wonder bowler of his youth - at least not until he unfurled his magical wares again in his last two Ranji Trophy matches. Legspinner BS Chandrasekhar was luckier. In a land notorious for coaches who would try to fit every spinner into a single mould, it was a miracle that allowed him to continue to deliver lightning-quick missiles all his life, with no concession to orthodoxy.

A story similar to Gavaskar's, but probably apocryphal, involves Geoffrey Boycott and legspinner John Gleeson, who posed quite a few problems for English batsmen during the 1970-71 series in Australia. When one of his batting partners told him he was now able to distinguish Gleeson's googly from his legbreak, Sir Geoffrey allegedly whispered to him, "Don't tell anyone. I could always read him."

V Ramnarayan is an author, translator and teacher. He bowled offspin for Hyderabad and South Zone in the 1970s

On Batting: Go forward, not back

Why an initial back-foot trigger movement may not be a great idea

Sanjay Manjrekar

December 18, 2013

 

Alastair Cook: too late into position in Perth © Getty Images

A fireman once said, "We are crazy guys, you know. When a house is on fire, people are running out and we are running in." A batsman has to do something similar when a bowler like Mitchell Johnson is steaming in, hurling thunderbolts at 150kph.

Like for the firemen, it is like an inferno approaching a batsman from 22 yards away, and like the fireman, the batsman has a job to do, and it does not include running away. Watching some of the England batsmen in this Ashes series, I have been reminded of this analogy.

When Johnson runs in to bowl, they take a significant step backwards in the crease before the ball is delivered. That is fine when the ball is short, but when it is full - and Johnson bowls a lot of those along with bouncers - they become extremely vulnerable, as we have seen.

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Also Read - Martin Crowe on Gavaskar's technique

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Look at Alastair Cook's dismissal in the first innings in Adelaide and in the second in Perth. Both times, the ball was pitched up, but he was just too late to get into position to defend it solidly, which would not have been the case if they were short deliveries. We talk about how great those deliveries from Johnson and Ryan Harris were, and they were good, especially the Harris one in the second innings in Perth, but if Cook had got forward to them quicker, they would have been just two other pitched-up balls that a batsman defended safely.

I am not a big fan of the big back-foot movement - the one batsmen make with their feet before the ball is delivered - unless it's made in order to propel another movement forward. Both the England openers have that initial back-foot movement and only when are set do they use it to spring forward - until then, they seem to hang back a bit and so become vulnerable to balls pitched up, and miss a few scoring opportunities to balls pitched up.

	A short, quick delivery is best handled by a batsman when he is reacting instinctively to it - whether he is playing an attacking shot or defending

With a big initial back-foot movement, you are committing yourself completely to a delivery of a particular length, short. So when the ball is short you seem to have plenty of time to play it, but when it is full you are invariably late on it, and if your luck as a batsman has run out, as Cook found out, that full, seaming ball will come early in the innings, hit the right spot and get through your defence.

As a batsman you ideally want the smallest trigger movement, so that you are prepared for all kinds of lengths and lines. In this Ashes, Michael Clarke, Steve Smith, Joe Root, and also Ben Stokes, have shown that kind of technique, with no pronounced prior commitment to any length. Because of that they have looked much better positioned to balls that are pitched up. Batsmen make the initial move in the crease because that way they feel they are setting themselves up for the challenge. Very often it's just a matter of "mental preparedness". Some do it to be in a good position to face a particular kind of delivery that they feel they are susceptible to.

My view is that if you have to move your feet before the ball is released, it's better to have a front-foot movement instead of a back-foot one: looking to move forward before the ball is bowled rather than back. That way, you are better prepared to handle the ball that gets most batsmen out in this game - the one that is full in length.

What about the short ball then, you ask? Doesn't the front-foot movement make you a sitting duck against it? Well, there you need to trust the instincts that we have all been gifted with as human beings, born of our evolution over millions of years and our survival instincts against physical threats. That short ball from a fast bowler is a physical threat to a batsman. Look at how batsmen react to a short ball from a spinner as opposed to one from a fast bowler.

	Batsmen like Hashim Amla have shown you can be extremely successful with big initial back-foot movements © AFP  Enlarge

As a batsman you will be amazed at how quickly you get on the back foot - though you are telling yourself to go forward - when the ball is short and quick. This back-foot movement happens automatically; it is a case of natural instinct taking over. My argument is, why deliberately try to do something that is going to happen automatically; instead, why not train yourself to do something that is against your instinct? Like getting forward to a fast bowler, because the ball that is pitched up is the one that's most likely to get you out.

The other great benefit in trying to get forward is, that way you also handle the short ball better. I believe that a short, quick delivery is best handled by a batsman when he is reacting instinctively to it - whether he is playing an attacking shot or defending.

During the course of my batting career I had two distinct phases, one when I handled the short ball well and the other when I didn't. It was quite obvious to me that when I was in good form and in a good frame of mind I would look to go towards the fast bowler, try to get on the front foot, and that was when I handled the short ball comfortably. When you are looking to get forward, the head tends to stay forward, and with it the body weight. That is the perfect kind of balance you want to have as a batsman, whether you are playing off front foot or back.

When you are out of form, with a big back-foot movement, the head tends to stay back that fraction of a second longer, and because you are expecting a short ball, the head also stays quite high, which means you are poorly prepared for the full delivery.

Having said all this, there are still many extremely successful contemporary batsmen, like Hashim Amla, Graeme Smith, and Cook himself, who have big back-foot movements. Their success can be attributed to all the other strengths they have brought into play to succeed, but you will see even they look vulnerable early in the innings to balls that are pitched up and seaming.

As a batsman you should have a technique you can fall back on when you are out of form and low on confidence. Your other strengths will have deserted you by then, and your technique will be the only thing you can count on. You need a technique that can get you back into form from a bad patch, and that's where I have a problem with the big back-foot trigger movement.

Ashes 2013: England's spin king Graeme Swann makes all the difference

Transpose the seamers and the story would probably be the same. Do so with the spinners and Australia might well be in the ascendant – Graeme Swann is that influential

• 
• • Mike Selvey
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 6 August 2013 16.50 BST

Graeme Swann is on track to be not just England’s, but one of the game’s, greatest ever spin bowlers. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images

Spin them how you like, twist them until they look like a DNA double helix but in the end statistics can tell a story. In this series, after three Tests, they are revealing both similarities and differences between the sides.

Ian Bell, for instance, stands head and shoulders above any other batsman, with the possible exception of Michael Clarke, and is unmatched for consistency. Closest for England is Joe Root and 180 of his 242 runs have come in a single knock, while Stuart Broad has more runs than Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott, and averages more than any other England batsman beyond Bell and Root.

Of the seam bowlers, Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle have outbowled their England counterparts significantly. Harris, brilliant, has 11 wickets from two Tests at 18 runs apiece and Siddle, an industry all on his own, has 16 at 21.68. Only Jimmy Anderson comes close for England, with 15 wickets at 26, but he had one of his least productive games for England at Old Trafford, where both Australian seamers excelled.

England's three other seamers in this series – Steve Finn, Tim Bresnan, and Broad – have only as many wickets as Anderson between them, and at a cost that might put them on the shelves in Harrods rather than Lidl. There has been a great deal of mediocrity from both sides in this series.

If England have the upper hand in any area, though, it is with their use of and success with spin. Here the differential is huge.

Australia's spinners have taken seven wickets for 442 runs, four of those going to the occasional legspinner Steve Smith who got lucky once. It means that the two front-line spinners, Ashton Agar and Nathan Lyon, have three wickets between them, costing 111 runs each.

On the same pitches Graeme Swann and, briefly, Root have managed 22 at 23.4 each, 19 of them to Swann.

Only in the maiden-overs column, where the Australia spinners have sent down 30 to England's 29, and from 43 fewer overs, do they have the upper hand – and that most likely is a function of the fields that have been set. Swann is the single player who is making a difference. Transpose the seamers and the story would be the same, probably more so. Do so with the spinners and Australia might well be in the ascendent – he is that influential.

Perhaps it is unfair to compare his figures with those of a teenager elevated to the heights with the rapidity of an ejector seat (although Dan Vettori, for example, managed well enough) or someone whose perceived weakness, despite a perfectly credible career, meant that no Australian had played as many Tests as Lyon had before Old Trafford without one against England. But Swann has moved beyond the stage of being merely a phenomenon and is on track to be not only England's greatest spin bowler, but one of the game's greatest.

At the moment he has 241 wickets from 55 matches, which places him 11th in a list of wicket-taking spinners, headed of course by Muttiah Muralitharan, with 800, then Shane Warne, 708, and Anil Kumble (619).

These are players surely out of reach for all time and perhaps, for Swann, Harbhajan Singh, 413, too. But the rest – from Vettori (360) down to Bhagwat Chandrasekhar (242), are within range. More pertinently, he is closing in on Derek Underwood's England record of 297 wickets as a spinner.

What is surprising is that of those 10 spinners with more wickets than he, his career average of 28.41 is bettered only by Murali (22.72), Warne (25.41) and Underwood (25.83), and this playing half his cricket on generally seam-orientated English pitches.

Indeed sometimes it is hard to understand quite what it is that elevates Swann above other bowlers. There is no mystery to him, no doosra or carrom ball. He is an orthodox finger spinner, not back of the hand like Warne, Kumble, Danish Kaneria or Chandra; or a double-jointed physical freak of nature as Murali has been.

He spins the ball hugely for a finger spinner – about 2,500 revs, according to the TV spinometer – but then Lyon gets close to that, too.

With the spin comes drift away from the direction of turn (physicists can explain that one) and thus he can beat the outside of the bat as well as inside. This, despite his late entry into the Test arena (which given what has happened is as baffling as anything else about him) is a thoroughly modern DRS savvy bowler, whose enviable record against left-handers owes as much to him hitting the pads as beating or taking the outside edge.

Yet even this aspect seems to have tailed off, with batsmen now making sure they keep their pads out of the way.

In the end, it must simply come down to nous. He has supreme confidence in his ability, is unflappable under fire (an interesting contrast to how Lyon reacted when first Pietersen and then Bell got stuck into him in a calculated manner in England's first innings at Old Trafford), can pick holes in a batsman's technique, and varies his pace and trajectory according to conditions and circumstance. There is a tantalising line that he bowls to right-handers too. England offspinners of yore, helped by a lack of fielding restrictions on the leg-side, tended to bowl a straighter line than their overseas counterparts but Swann operates outside the off-stump, inviting the drive through that side. No off-spinner likes being hit through extra cover off the front foot but none mind seeing a batsman try.

Perhaps Swann does have a little magic to him. When, from round the wicket, he proceeded to bowl the left-hander Usman Khawaja behind his legs with an off-break that turned significantly, he celebrated with the sort of joy that only comes when something is pre-planned, or at least signalled beforehand as an act of bravado.

It looked for all the world as if he meant it: he probably did.