Between Shane Warne and Nathan Lyon : Australia's army of unheralded spinners

Special Mention : Steven Smith

Steven Smith made his debut as a specialist leg-spinner

When he first broke into the scene, Steven Smith was a leg-spinner, and New South Wales' best spinner at the time. He was being widely regarded as a successor to Shane Warne, as he was a proponent of the same art and even had a similar approach to his bowling, giving the ball a lot of revolutions and spinning it in the air.

On his debut he batted at no. 8 for Australia, and few would have imagined that when he would be handed over the captaincy five years later, he would be the world's best Test batsman and just an occasional bowler.

His batting talent was apparent early on, as he hit 2 fifties in the first five Tests of his career but couldn't inspire with his bowling. Playing all of those five matches in the 2010-11 season, he was dropped from the national side in favor of other spinners trying to make their mark.

In hindsight, it was the best thing to happen to Smith, as he worked on his technique as a batsman and made a comeback on the 2013 tour of India, hitting 92 in the first innings at Mohali. From then on, it was a meteoric rise for Steven Smith in the batting department as he established himself as Australia's no. 3 and scored Test hundreds for breakfast.

He has scored 20 centuries in just 56 matches, with the first one coming in his 12th match. An average of nearly 60 puts him heads and shoulders above all the contemporary batsmen and he looks set to scale a mountain of runs in years to come.

It has become an even rarer sight to see Smith bowling his leg-spinners, but that unorthodox style of batting, the high backlift and powerful cuts and pulls all over the park are always a value for time and money.