To be the best you have to have spin, quality spin. Which is why the ECB’s stated goal of England becoming the best team in the world by 2007 is likely to remain elusive. England have a fine trouper in their cast in Ashley Giles, but even he would acknowledge he cannot seriously be expected to pose the same threat as the maestros of Australia or India.
On Friday, David Graveney announced the squads for India. Giles, of course, was there. We hope and anticipate he will be properly fit when the first Test starts in Nagpur on 1 March. Giles will be accompanied by Shaun Udal and, somewhat bizarrely, the selectors will add a third spinner to the party by 12 February after assessing the candidates at the Academy at Loughborough.
Spin bowling is usually the key in India. Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, with 604 Test wickets between them, await the tourists hungrily. England have Giles and a couple of Test novices. It is no wonder India are favorites to win the series.
Giles is not to be derided, but in our affection for him we cannot pretend he is likely to win the series for England. He is a stout supporting act. Giles can bottle an end up, thereby giving the pacemen some breathing space. Apart from two startling Tests against the West Indies in 2004, he perseveres, picking up a few wickets along the way. He is less comfortable as the spearhead, which will be his role in India next month. Kumble and Harbhajan, who have a touch of mystery, are accustomed to functioning as their side’s strike bowlers. In this era the English spinner’s traditional capacity for orthodox perseverance is rarely enough.
Over the past 15 years, there have been moments of desperation when England have decided to try anyone with a bit of mystery. Ian Salisbury played 15 Tests, Chris Schofield two. Neither was capable of disturbing international batsmen since they could not master the basics. They bowled far too many bad balls.
Coach Duncan Fletcher, ever the pragmatist, whose first aim was to make England harder to beat, soon opted for the ‘multi-dimensional’ cricketer rather than the specialist when filling England’s spin requirements. He preferred Giles to the not so trustworthy, but more gifted, Phil Tufnell, who could only bowl.
But England are stronger now. It is worth embracing the specialist again, particularly in India, where the conditions are likely to demand the presence of two spinners in the side. Monty Panesar, albeit an orthodox bowler, has the most potential on the county scene. England should select him as the third spinner in the squad ahead of the ‘multi-dimensionals’ Alex Loudon and Ian Blackwell. They could even pick him in their best XI. England’s ambitions should be higher now, and to be the best in the world they have to nurture a potent spinner from somewhere. Currently, Panesar is the best bet.
Just one side has prevailed for any length of time without a quality spinner: the West Indies team of a couple of decades ago. Their strategy was cemented in the mind of Clive Lloyd at Port of Spain, Trinidad on 12 April 1976. That was when India, with centuries from Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath, knocked off the 402 runs required for victory in the third Test.
Lloyd’s declaration had been made to look stupid. At his disposal were three spinners – Imtiaz Ali, Albert Padmore and Raphick Jumadeen – none of whom would feature prominently for West Indies throughout the next decade. Lloyd, battered by Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson that winter, had had enough. “Our players were put under constant pressure by sheer pace in Australia. Everyone at some stage during that tour felt the pain of a cricket ball being sent down at more than 90 miles per hour,” said Lloyd before coming to an obvious conclusion. “That’s the game. It’s tough; there’s no rule against bowling fast. Batsmen must cope to survive.”
For the next decade or more, no one could against West Indies. In their next match in Jamaica, the final one of the series, they played four fast bowlers and they found no reason to change that policy thereafter. In that game, Bishen Bedi declared both India innings closed with six and five wickets down respectively as his players nursed their bruises. (Bedi, who damaged his hand fielding, was not over eager to go to the crease in either innings. So he didn’t.)
West Indies won by 10 wickets. One correspondent reported: “At the end of the tour when the India team trudged along the tarmac towards their airplane at Kingston they resembled Napoleon’s troops on the retreat from Moscow.”
The four-pronged pace attack was in vogue; the dainty spinner was not. As Allan Lamb, one of the best players against the West Indies pacemen, observed at the time: “When a spinner comes on, your eyes go round like dollar signs on a fruit machine. Everyone wants to hit him because they can’t smash the fast bowler.” Ian Botham disdainfully referred to the slow men as “step and fetch it bowlers”.
But the pacemen could not prevail forever. Why not? The volume of international cricket mushroomed so that the bodies of the fast bowlers started to rebel from constant labour. The pacemen grew more sensitive. The modern speedster is more likely to be aware of his paternity-leave entitlements than say, FS Trueman, would have been. The advent of helmets and sundry other forms of protection made batsmen braver. The pitches became more docile. Moreover, the likelihood of four or more brilliant fast bowlers emerging simultaneously – as was the case for West Indies – was very slim. So teams had to find another way. In the modern game, only West Indies have singularly failed to do so. They have not produced a serious spinner since Lance Gibbs almost 50 years ago.
In the 1990s, spin bowling enjoyed a renaissance, but not as we once knew it. For decades, good-quality, orthodox finger spin had been enough to command respect and conjure a few wickets. In the 1980s, only Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir did something unusual, so unusual that he befuddled your correspondent more than once. A cruel reporter noted, after more failed attempts to decipher what was going on: “I don’t know what Marks read at Oxford, but it certainly wasn’t wrist spin.”
But in the 1990s, came a cabal of spinners with a hint of mystery; most propelled the ball from the back of the hand; most were so good that they are still going strong today. None of them was English. Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Kumble, Mushtaq Ahmed, Stuart MacGill and, most recently, Danish Kaneria are cricketing magicians, mesmerizing and all much more fun to watch than a battery of pacemen. They might not hurt batsmen, but they can intimidate them.
The absence of Englishmen from this list has frustrated recent coaches and captains alike. David Lloyd, reviewing his time in charge, said: “England’s cricket has had a variety of shortcomings over the years, but the recurring Achilles heel has been the absence of a big-spinning leg-break bowler.” Nasser Hussain was equally gloomy upon his departure: “We desperately need a mystery spinner in the England team, yet we are still coaching orthodox spin, which, I’m afraid, has died in Test cricket on present wickets.”
England has hardly ever produced a ‘mystery’ spinner. Examine the list of those who have taken 100 Test wickets and only Doug Wright, lethal one day, a liability the next, and Johnny Wardle, a maverick Tyke who could switch from orthodox left-arm finger spin to wrist spin (‘preferably not in Yorkshire, lad’), bowled the ball out of the back of the hand.
So the top six are all finger spinners: Derek Underwood (297 wickets at 25.83), Jim Laker (193, 21.24), Tony Lock (174, 25.28), Fred Titmus (153, 32.22), John Emburey (147, 38.40) and Hedley Verity (144, 24.37). Look at number seven and there resides Giles proudly (140, 39.60).
All of England’s top seven are orthodox bowlers, although Underwood bowled faster than usual – and so did Lock when, as many suspected, he threw the ball. Only Emburey and Giles were denied the chance to bowl on uncovered pitches at Test level. On a sticky wicket of the past, the greater accuracy of a finger spinner meant he was a far more efficient wicket-taker than the wrist spinner.
Indeed, those uncovered wickets, whose disappearance is so frequently lamented by the old guard, might provide one reason why England has been incapable of producing anyone mysterious. On wet wickets, mystery was unnecessary; unrelenting accuracy was the key. In the 1960s, an aspiring young leg-spinner would be encouraged towards finger spin or seam-up. A young wrist-spinner would be encouraged now, but still none has surfaced.
Of the magnificent, if not mysterious, seven, all except Emburey and Giles played in an era when the spinner was treated with rather more deference than today. Underwood once, self-deprecatingly, described himself as a ‘low mentality bowler’, by which he meant that he banged the ball down on the same spot rather than flirting with too many variations. Even if the ball was not turning, stifled batsmen would make a mistake eventually.
It is a damn good policy still, which could be pursued more doggedly by the modern spinner, but there were fewer batsmen in Underwood’s era who were prepared to attack the good balls. (Viv Richards was one; he made a point of assaulting Underwood on principle because he was regarded as the best spin bowler around – a compliment ‘Deadly’ seldom appreciated.) It has become harder to bowl spin now as bats hit the ball further and batsmen explore more exotic strokes. The reverse sweep and the slog-sweep were not part of the cricketing vocabulary 40 years ago and, perversely, the administrators keep bringing in the boundaries.
England have tried to manufacture a bit of mystery, but it is not something that can be instilled on a production line. Programs have been created and aspiring wrist-spinners have been regularly shipped out to Australia to benefit from the wisdom of Terry Jenner, who has created a thriving cottage industry in Adelaide. So far there has been no reward.
