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“Now you see it, now you don’t”: Remembering Gleeson’s mystery spin

Expert
8th October, 2016
11

John William Gleeson, the Australian mystery spinner of the 1970s, died on Saturday aged 78.

Gleeson was a shortish man with long fingers. He resembled a jockey who played the piano.

To cricket lovers he will be remembered as the spinner who bamboozled batsmen with his unusual bent middle finger grip.

Born in the NSW country town of Wingaree, near Kyogle on 14 March 1938, Johnny remained a jolly, unspoilt countryman despite his many successes in cricket. In 29 Tests he took 93 wickets at an average of 36.20.

But statistics barely sum up the legend from Tamworth. It is how he took his wickets. To quote his spin partner Ashley Mallett, “As with two of Australia’s great leg-spinners – Clarrie Grimmett and Shane Warne – John Gleeson, the finger-flick spinner of the 1970s, played the mystery card of his art as well as Martin Luther King Jr. worked a crowd.

“Nicknamed CHO (“Cricket Hours Only”) Gleeson’s repertoire was limited in comparison with the man who inspired him, Jack Iverson. In his armoury of tricks, Gleeson had a flat-trajectory off-break, a seam-up faster ball and a finger-flick leg-break which he delivered with a seeming off-break action. It was the leg-break which caused all the consternation for batsmen.”

Boy Johnny started as a wicket-keeper batsman. But after his thumb was broken by a snorter from Alan Davidson he was unable to bat. So Gleeson turned to bowling and in a few years a star was born.

As a youngster he twice toured the world with the Emus, a bunch of bush cricket tragics, who put up their own money to taste cricket on foreign soil. He dabbled with Western Suburbs Club before he was spotted by Balmain District Cricket Club’s captain Keith Stimson in 1965.

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Gleeson was then a postal technician in the Tamworth Post Master General (PMG) office and could not afford to travel every Saturday by air. He had expressed his intention to play in a city club to Dick Burgess, Hon. Secretary of the Umpires’ Association during an Inter City PMG match. Acting on Burgess’s recommendation, Stimpson went to see young Gleeson in action.

Impressed by his unusual grip and ability to turn the ball sharply, Stimpson recommended his name to the Balmain Cricket Club. The Balmain Rugby League Club sponsored his air travel just as they were doing for another Balmainian, Tim Grosser. Gleeson was an outstanding success there and his climb towards the top started with Balmain.

But how did he develop and then master his mystery ball?

Gleeson revealed that it took place after watching former Australian leggie Jack Iverson bowl for Victoria. Iverson had mastered his unique grip after experimentally flicking table-tennis balls down a table. Gleeson learnt it by bowling at gum trees in Tamworth. His long and strong fingers helped.

According to author Jack Pollard, “His [Gleeson’s] fingers could handle the job because they were used to unscrambling telephone wires. He never turned the ball as sharply as Iverson had done, but he used the bent-finger grip with far more subtlety.”

Gradually he lengthened the distance between delivery and the tree until his finger was strong enough to propel the ball the full distance of a cricket pitch. His short-distance strategy worked, just as it does for anyone wanting to learn to bowl the flipper, a ball invented by Grimmett and utilised so brilliantly in the modern era by Warne.

Gleeson approached the wicket like a long-striding Groucho Marx, looking for his next cigar. He lost height at delivery and bowled a flat trajectory, the batsman mostly getting onto the back foot to negotiate his deliveries.

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Gleeson was never a prodigious spinner of the ball, but he did enough to beat the bat or grab the edge.

In 1966–67, he took four wickets in five balls, including a hat-trick, in a Sydney grade match, before taking 5-28 against Victoria. He was subsequently selected in an Australian second XI team to tour New Zealand at the end of the year.

He made his debut for Australia in the 1967–68 Test series against India in the First Test in Adelaide, taking 2-36 and 2-38.

He toured England in 1968. Newspapers were full of articles about the mystery of his bowling.

On that tour he took 12 wickets at 34.75 in five Tests. But in all tour matches he was Australia’s most successful bowler claiming 58 wickets. A report in Daily Telegraph was headlined ‘Gleesonitis’, to depict opposing batsmen’s plight to ‘read’ him.

On eve of the first Test on this tour England’s captain Mike Smith commented, “I didn’t know what to make of him. He bowled three different types of deliveries at me and they all seemed to come out of the hand without a noticeable change in action.”

He likened Gleeson to the West Indies spinner Sonny Ramadhin who mystified batsmen from 1950 to’58. Spot the googly was the favourite pastime among batsmen and critics on that tour.

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In India in 1969 Gleeson bowed magnificently in the second innings of the Bombay Test, taking 4-56 off 32 overs. Ashok Mankad was bowled by a ball which pitched middle and leg and hit the top of off-stump; the Nawab of Pataudi fell to a similar ball, only he was good enough to nick it to Keith Stackpole at slip and Dilip Sardesai was snapped up by Brian Taber behind.

Gleeson preferred wickets traditionally good for seam bowlers. After India, Gleeson toured South Africa, taking 19 wickets and no batsman other than Barry Richards could fathom his spin.

Richards, a genius with a bat with more than a hint of the Victor Trumper spirit, told his teammates, “You don’t have to read Gleeson. Use your feet and hit it on the half volley; that way doesn’t matter which way it’s turning.” Not all of the South Africans were in Richards’ class.

A batsman had to be fleet of foot, for Gleeson was not like other spinners who mostly brought a player forward. Gleeson liked to force a batsman to play him off the back foot. If you misread Gleeson there wasn’t time to adjust when you were on the back foot.

Remembers Mallett, “Gleeson and I bowled in tandem in a few Tests. In the fourth Test at Sydney in 1970-71, England openers John Edrich and Geoff Boycott were batting well on a wicket which was conductive to spin.

“At the end of a Gleeson over, Edrich walked down the track: ‘Boycs, I’ve worked Gleeson out. I can read him every time.’ Boycott eyed Edrich and said with a wry smile, ‘Ah, Ede, I worked him out two Tests ago, but don’t tell the other fookers.’

Gleeson milked the mystery of his deliveries for all it was worth and he operated with a poker face.

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Skipper Bill Lawry loved using Gleeson because he gave nothing away, very few runs per over and he knew how to build and maintain pressure on batsmen, always playing the mystery card.

If Jack Iverson was the torchbearer in the finger-flick bowling business, John Gleeson kept the flame burning and Sri Lanka’s Ajantha Mendis re-ignited the flame to such an extent that he took the art to a new level.

Mendis taught himself. He never saw film of Iverson or Gleeson, nor did he read of their special way of bowling.

According to Doug Walters, “Gleeson was a mystery bowler with an unusual action. Batsmen worked him out later in his career. I certainly did. To me he was more of a seamer than a spinner and played better on pitches that seamed rather than those which spun.”

John William Gleeson is survived by his wife Sandra. They had two sons and two daughters. Rest in peace, Johnny the likeable.

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