Spin bowling's death: Through the eyes of a 21st century cricketer

About eight years ago, I attended my first day at the cricket academy. My father had finally given in to my incessant cries to be in that academy, not to mention the constant endorsement of my dreams to set up a career as an all-rounder with the grace of Jacques Kallis, the batting prowess of Rahul Dravid and the ability to finish innings’ off like Lance Klusener.

Of course, the dream didn’t last too long. I ran in towards the popping crease, rocked back with the poise of Shane Bond, had my Kallis-bowling-grunt all set to come out and ended up releasing the ball like I can only imagine a cyclist would have.

Remember these two?

In a few weeks time, I was trying to bowl like Saqlain Mushtaq.

The point being: world cricket had Saqlain Mushtaq to follow.

And we had many, many more. If I’d failed in my off-spinning endeavour, I’d probably end up bowling 4-step leggies like Shane Warne (I could do his grunt too!). Or, worst-case scenario, pop in from around the wicket and spin the ball a mile like Sachin Tendulkar.

I shudder to think who a 10-year old spinner in India would look up to these days though. He’d probably have watched cricket long enough to know that Anil Kumble was captain of RCB. If he’s lucky, he might know Harbhajan Singh is a spinner and Irfan Pathan isn’t. And if he’s not at the academy because his mother thought cricket is an excuse for ‘summer camp’, he might have heard of Graeme Swann every now and again.

That narrows down the potential spin-bowling idols to: Aswin, Jadeja, Ojha, Sunil Narine, Johan Botha, Abdul Razzak (and the 60 other Bangladeshi left-armers who bowl like him), Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma and Suresh Raina.

Ouch.

The disappearance of the traditional spinner – one who actually turns the ball- is something that we should have seen coming with the amount of limited overs cricket that there is. It’s something we should have learned to contend with and not make an issue of. After all, there was still enough success for the aforementioned names in ODIs. Besides, cricket always threw up an occasional Rangana Herath or a Shane Shillingford and an Amit Mishra who would still toss a majority into the middle-and-off channel.

Still, the cricket-lover’s thirst to watch swerving spinners kick off the turf and make the batsmen dance (like their shoes suggest they should be), is insatiable. It stands right up there with the perfect cover drive and is almost parallel to watching Dale Steyn pitch the ball on middle stump and end up taking the top of the off. Therein lies the great disappointment with modern day cricket.

The bowling arms have obliqued, first slip has moved to extra deep-midwicket and boundary ropes are mere lines. All contributing to the new-age spinner’s trajectory, which isn’t all that different from an Andy Roddick serve. I remember my coach urging me to “toss the ball above the batsman’s line of sight” and beat him in flight. While we do see such bowling in every other test match (provided one team is from the sub-continent and the other isn’t), it’s rarely there to see in the 50-over version and is only seen in T20s when the batting team needs one run to win off 3 overs and the captain decides to give Venugopal Rao a bowl.

Yes, spin bowling cannot be the same with the amount of limited overs cricket that there is. And indeed, at the end of the day, it’s the result that matters. We cannot undermine a Sunil Narine spell because of his body dynamics or demean a 4-overs-8-runs spell by Ravi Aswin because he bowls from around the wicket with his body half-pointing towards fine leg.

But there’s something about the Indian (or sub-continental, for that matter) cricketing culture that makes the game incomplete, almost irrelevant, without the knowledge that the opposition batsmen can’t hear the ball ripping whilst in flight, half-expecting it to move slightly away from them but also well aware that a minuscule gap between bat and pad is enough to send them back into the locker room where the fan isn’t working.