Beau Casson has a great name for someone who bowls wrist-spin, the most beautiful and most difficult of the cricketing arts.
He made a good start to his Test career, taking wickets on the last day of the third Test against a resurgent West Indies side, something that Ricky Ponting suggested was the role of an Australian spinner.
My reading of the history of cricket suggests that the great wrist-spin bowlers, with one notable exception, have been colourful, larger than life players with eccentricities in their behaviour both on and off the field.
Think of the cliche of the temperamental artist and this gives you a sense of the character of the best of Australian wrist-spinners: Arthur Mailey who offered batsmen a cigar if they could hit him for a six; Bill O’Reilly, a spinner with the mentality and aggressiveness of a fast bowler; Richie Benaud, so fluid and so artistic in his method with his unbuttoned shirt giving the appearance of a sophisticated bohemian; Shane Warne, say no more; and Stuart MacGill, moody, truculent and given to outbursts that would do a prima donna proud.
The exception to this list was Clarrie Grimmett, the New Zealander (does that explain his smaller than life demeanour?) who wasn’t selected to play for Australia until he was in his 30s.
Grimmett, who bowled tight, round-arm leg-spin with accuracy rather than spin being his trump card, calculated that he took a wicket every 50 or so balls, so he tried to bowl them as inexpensively as possible.
He never bowled a no-ball in his long first-class cricket career. Nothing of the artistic largesse here.
Beau Casson is a left-arm wrist-spinner.
I was intrigued to read an article by Alex Brown in the Sydney Morning Herald stating that only two left-arm wrist-spinners (in pre-PC days, this form of deliveries was called a ‘Chinamen’) had achieved 100 Test wickets: Paul Adams, the South African who had an action of a frog going into a toilet bowl was one, and Johnny Wardle, the opinionated and talented Yorkshire bowler of the 1950s.
The most successful Australian left-arm wrist-spinner was Chuck Fleetwood-Smith with 42 wickets in 10 Tests.
Fleetwood-Smith, as handsome as Clarke Gable and a great ladies man, often made ‘cooeee’ calls on the field.
This lack of success of left-arm wrist-spinners is due essentially to the fact that it is relatively easy for a left-hander to bowl the ball that spins away from the right-hand batsman (the most difficult spin to face) with the use of finger spin.
A right-hander bowling wrist-spin also gets the ball to spin away, but gets the advantage of being able to impart top-spin (Bill O’Reilly’s main delivery) and wrong’uns (a speciality of Arthur Mailey and Clarrie Grimmett).
The left-arm wrist spinner spins the ball back into the right-hand batsman, generally a less dangerous ball.
He does have the chance to bowl top-spin, and a couple of Beau Casson’s wickets came from from this delivery.
His wrong’un, too, has the merit of spinning away from the right-hand batsman, an advantage exploited by Brad Hogg, particularly in one day matches.
I played grade cricket in Wellington with a left-arm wrist-spinner who bowled wrong’uns as his stock ball and ordinary wrist-spin and top-spin as the variety.
I’ve often wondered why left-arm wrist spinners, like Brad Hogg and Beau Casson, don’t adopt this method.
Watching Casson on television during his first Test, what struck me most about his method is that he is a roller rather than a spinner of the ball. Even on the last day of the Test he seldom made the ball fizz and pop, as Warne or MacGill did.
The thing about the wrist-spinners who give the ball a great tweak is that the more vicious spin that is put on the ball, the less control the bowler tends to have (Shane Warne is an exception, which made him the greatest wrist-spinner in the history of cricket).
This brings us to temperament.
The control-freak wrist-spinners, like Grimmett, prefer to accrue their wickets. They bowl like misers and generally have a cautious temperament.
The tweaker-freak wrist-spinners, like Mailey, Benaud when he was so inclined, and MacGill, ‘buy’ their wickets. They have the instincts of the gambler.
The history of cricket suggests that the gambling instinct is best for wrist-spinners. All three of the most successful left-arm wrist-spinners have this instinct.
But Beau Casson is clearly not in this category. He seems to me to have a cautious temperament. He may become more assertive in his method as he grows in confidence.
I would think that he needs to make this change if he wants to have a long and successful Test career rather than the shorter Test career of the likes of Lindsay Kline and Brad Hogg.
Probably the most popular Aussie in Wales, Marnus Labuschagne rarely lets down the fans at his Glamorgan "second home". The Test batting maestro was…
RCB were initially questioned after bringing Maxi on with the new rock. It worked a treat as he dismissed Ruturaj Gaikwad first ball.
Faf du Plessis took one of the catches of the tournament as Royal Challengers Bengaluru qualified for the IPL playoffs with a 27-run win.…
Jonny Bairstow wants to never mention it again and Alex Carey got sick of hearing about it but the firestorm surrounding their dramatic incident…
Arjun Tendulkar fell victim to the humidity as he cramped up, but he wished he had taken himself off as he delivered two gifts…
New Zealand took 28 years to win a Test match, finally triumphing in 1956. There were plenty of skilled individuals before that but not a complete team.
