Feb 08 2009
Spinners who took the world by storm in 2008
A good spinner is always a luxurious commodity. A great one is rarer. That is why, a certain Rajinder Goel has the most plausible reason to be as heart-broken as a lady who has lost her first love; having snatched 750 wickets at the domestic level and yet, that opportunity to play for the country at the highest level proving to elusive. He may have consoled himself with the fact that he had suffered the misfortune of been a contemporary to four rare gems in Bishen Singh Bedia, Chandrashekhar, Venkat and Prasanna and hence this end-result. After all, no spinner after the four had ridden high into their respective dusks, could ever capture the imagination of world cricket – let alone India – over such a sustained period of time apart from the sporadic existence of Abdul Qadir. Other than Qadir, the purists world over had begun to worry about the slow death that this great art was besieged by. Till…
…till a certain trio of Anil Kumble, Shane Warne and Muthiah Muralitharan began an almost two-decade long sojourn, which was a recovery path for the spin bowling that left the world of cricket a much richer place to live in. Kumble and Warne have left the scene with more than a lot, while Murali may be scalping and erasing newer records by the buckets, but what they have also done is revived the spin bowling department. They spawned enough interest amongst youngsters to pick up the baton and deliver that finger-lickin’ wizardry that makes the inventions of latest technology like ‘slo-mo’ as thrilling as it is! hanks to the three, the art is, now well alive and kicking his piece features the spinners who took the world by storm in the year 2008, or exhibited enough potential to do so in the years to come.
Ajantha Mendis: A Rich Man’s ‘Tendulkar-the-bowler’:
For those uninitiated, this title needs an explanation or two. When Sachin Tendulkar was a more regular ‘irregular’ bowler, the television broadcasters had a serious problem in defining a suitable caption for him while describing his bowling when he came on to roll his arm over. Ajantha Mendis posed the same riddle to TV guys the world over. And the reason? He, like Tendulkar before him, bowled a variety of deliveries; one that spun back into the batsman, another that left him, a third that endeavoured to leave him but came back, and vice-versa, along with the usual bag of straighter ones, googlies, flippers and the Doosras and the Teesras of the world! Let me assure you, its not as simple as it is writing about it!
The best part about the whole thing was that his consistency over his lines and lengths was almost Glen Mcgrath-like. And this was reflected in his figures for the year, as he ended the year 2008 with an average that was so George Lohmannesque in nature, that everyone had to take notice. Such was the sheer bizarreness of his bowling and the corresponding result – most batsmen would have thrown a white handkerchief in surrender if they had been allowed to – that ‘google’ searches were dominated by keywords like ‘Ajantha Mendis video’!
Unfortunately, Sourav Ganguly and his men hadn’t had the opportunity to play Mendis in a lot more than what he did, otherwise, the results may have been a little different for the Kolkata Knight Riders.
He first made his mark in his debut ODI against the West Indies, where, on an unhelpful pitch he bamboozled Ramnaresh Sarwan enough to have elicited a quiet little snigger from most watching him bat. Sarwan had kept plodding and prodding, waiting in rapt anticipation for a loose delivery, but it never came and Mendis ended with figures of 3/39 off his ten. There was no looking back for him.
The final of the Asia Cup saw India get their first little dose of this wily, ‘you-name-it-I-bowl’ spinner, as he tickled the Indian line-up into surrendering to his magic; Mendis ending with a six wicket haul. But if Team India had thought that they were done with him, they were proved to be wrong as the very vaunted line-up of the likes of Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman found the going difficult in the test series in the Island Nation; all thanks to this man.
And that is putting it mildly.
26 wickets at around 17 runs per wicket broke the Indian back to splinters, and had it not been for one crazy inning by Virender Sehwag, it could very well have been a 3-0 whitewash for the Sri Lankans.
These were the only three test matches that he featured in the year, but one would be interested to watch his progress over the next couple of years. Especially against the teams that are not-so-proficient against the slower ones. A delicious battle lies in store ahead!
Amit Mishra: Out of wilderness, into Kumble’s boots
Anil Kumble’s retirement was around the corner for a couple of years now. And the one huge reason why he would have had extended his playing career would have been the absence of a leggie who could, if not replace, at least give a semblance of hope for the future. And after five years of toiling away at the domestic level, Amit Mishra had finally captured his skipper’s imagination enough to return back to the team at the oldest format of the game.
Rather ironically, it was not only at the domestic level, but also his performance in the first season of the Indian Premier League that had changed the direction of the wind in his favour. Playing for the Delhi DareDevils, Mishra featured in only six of the 15 matches that his team played in – surprisingly, one must add – but when he did, it was his hat-trick against Hyderabad that stole the thunder. There was no looking back after that for this orthodox leg-spinner.
However, it had been the season before he was selected for the IPL that would have tilted the scales in his favour, when he had picked 27 wickets in the five matches that he featured in, at a rather measly average of 15 runs per wicket! And all this translated into Mishra getting a nod over the likes of Piyush Chawla and Chetanya Nanda for the home test series against Australia.
There were a few questions asked about his inclusion, so to say, pulled out of the blue, but all of them disappeared when he mixed his leg-spinners – that spun a mile on occasions – with his difficult-to-pick-up googlies and stunned most of the Aussies on his debut. Michael Clarke was dismissed off the last ball of the day off one such delivery that did not spin from around the wicket, as he picked a fifer in his very first inning.
Five tests and 20 wickets later, Mishra seems to have established himself as the number one leg-spinner in the Indian side, and knowing Dhoni’s penchant for continuity, it may just be a difficult task to get him out of the side now!
Jason Krezja: One Match Wonder?:
Shane Warne’s retirement, and Stuart MacGill’s sudden loss of form, confidence and self-belief left the Australians in dire straits this year. But what would have not helped matters was the unwarranted frequency with which they shuffled around with their spinners throughout the year. After MacGill’s full-tosses had been dispatched from the scene, along with the bowler himself, Beau Casson was tried out for a match, but then dropped for no apparent rhyme or reason. Bryce McGain was an injury-free week away from making into the test team after having only recently quit his software job, while the likes of Cameron White got a look-in for four tests in India.
Amongst all this melee, the one bowler who outshone everyone else – and by miles at that – was Jason Krezja, who finally made his debut in the final test match of the series, and captured a mind-boggling tally of 12 wickets against a team that was once a great player of spin bowling as a whole. India.
And then, for reasons known to the selectors only, he was dropped to make way for Nathan Hauritz, after one bad test match against South Africa at, the mother of all spinner-graveyards, the WACA in Perth.
What had stood out in his debut match was his ability to continue flighting and looping the ball amidst the barrage of shots that got played against him by the likes of Virender Sehwag and company. Whether he is able to maintain the same in the year to come is a question-mark, but a huge part of it would be answered only if the selectors decide to groom this very orthodox, but effective spinner.
Samit Patel and Graeme Swann: English Spinners, an oxymoron of sorts!
Till before the advent of Monty Panesar, an English spinner was anybody who had a run-up of less than five steps and delivered the ball at less than 100 km/hr! Such has been the paucity of the tweakers, that this year must rate amongst the best when it comes down to the spin bowlers. Apart from Panesar, the likes of Samit Patel and Graeme Swann made their mark this year, though, it must be said that it had a trifle lesser fan following than what Mendis would have had, and for obvious reasons.
The left-arm slow blower Patel was more of an ODI bowler with his strong hitting down the order to boot, but the real surprise was Swann who had made his debut eight years back and had then disappeared away into wilderness. His return to international cricket happened last year, and based on some of the excellent spells that he bowled against Sri Lanka, he was picked for seven ODIs against the Kiwis. With his ability to flight the ball and extract some turn, he played against India in the shorter version, and then impressed all and sundry with his bowling in the couple of tests he featured in. So much so that there were talks of dropping the more experienced Monty Panesar for the second, Mohali test and retaining Swann, and picking a quick bowler instead.
Shakib Al Hasan: The Surprise Package:
There is no doubting the fact that an year ago, not many would have given a Bangladeshi too much hope of featuring in a list of top play-makers in the spin department. In fact, most would have scoffed at the very suggestion. Shakib Al Hasan seems to have upset many an expectation with his all-round performance during the year. Hasan, the batsman was impressive enough, but it was as a bowler that he captured everyone’s imagination. 30 wickets at an average of less than 26 in tests would read good in anyone’s cricketing dictionary, but when one factors in the fact that he bowled without too much support from the other end and played against all his matches against stronger oppositions like the Kiwis, Proteas and the Lankans, one cannot help but doff one’s hat to him.
His best performance, though, came in a match against the Kiwis, when his seven-wicket haul had the tourists on the mat, before a one-man showing by Hasan’s left-arm spinning counterpart, Daniel Vettori helped them scrape through. He ended with match figures of 9/115, and for posterity ended with a neat half-century.
In the end, Hasan proved to be Bangladesh’s lone knight in a very shining armour; unfortunately, it was never enough to see the team through to a win.
