We were told when Shane Warne first burst on the scene in the 1990s that his success would generate a number of youngsters wanting to take up leg spin bowling.
But here we are nearly 20 years later and the tidal wave hasn’t happened.
Australia has always had a fascination with leg spin. It’s an aggressive, attacking type of bowling that suits the nature of how we play the game.
Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s the game was dominated by the Australian and West Indies fast bowlers and I can remember the late Bill O’Reilly, champion leg spinner and journalist, banging on continuously about the forgotten art of leg spin.
Australia always looked a better side with a leg spinner in its attack. Even back then in 1989 Trevor Hohns played an important role in the Ashes victory. Preceding this Peter Sleep was another who made cameo appearances.
The leg spinner is a much more potent weapon than the finger spinner, particularly in Australian conditions so when Warney burst on the scene his era was the most successful in Australian cricket history.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we also had another name in Stuart McGill who in another time would’ve been known as a truly great leg spinner, however was always in the shadow of Warne.
The proposal of the Australian hierarchy to push forward Fawad Ahmed eligibility to play Test cricket illustrates the lack of leg spinners currently in first class cricket. On the back of the Warne phenomena we have failed to harness the young leg spinner.
In more recent seasons the Sheffield Shield sides have played without a recognised spinner.
This has a twofold effect. One is no flow on to the Australian team providing a lack of spin bowlers to select from and two the Australian batsmen do not get the opportunity to play spin bowling at a high-level. So when we go on a tour of India we are exposed.
What can be done to rectify this situation and make spin bowling more attractive to young players coming through and more attractive to state sides to select them and to give them an opportunity to ply their trade. Let’s start at the top.
– We need to get more professional and appoint a national spin bowling coach whose role is to travel round the states coaching, developing, identifying and bringing through spin bowlers. This role should be on a permanent basis not on an ad hoc basis as it is now.
– A radical solution may be in introducing spin bowling quotas into Sheffield Shield games. It could be mandatory to have in a bowling innings a nominated spin bowler who must bowl 10 overs minimum in the first eighty before the second new ball.
This way spinners would have to be introduced at the latest by the 60-over mark. It would also mean that state sides would have to select a minimum of one spin bowler. It would force state captains to use their spin bowlers. This will be a good thing to promote the art of captaincy.
It would also be necessary for curators around Australia to prepare pitches suitable to spin bowling. Too often the pitches are slanted towards fast bowling and games are completed within three days.
You can still have a pitch with first day greenness that flattens out and breaks up by the fourth day to enable the spinner to come into the game. This would also have a flow on effect for the batsmen, as the batsmen would get match practice against first-class spinners which they do not get now.
We need to protect and promote the spinners. They are an important weapon in Australian cricket history and going forward one that we need to promote better.
Michael
Roar Rookie
I totally agree with you about the need for experts to travel the country looking for talented young spin bowlers especially leggies. Not just the big cities. Many regional areas have some great young leggies who have grown up on turf pitches. My son has spent the last 4 years playing mostly on turf pitches learning to read them and what areas he needs to bowl in. He just came back from the Qld State Championships U14 playing against the best juniors in his age group & it showed me that there is still hope for the craft of wrist spin bowling. There were a number of good leggies. Someone who would travel the country identifying talented young spinners may be the answer. Maybe Warnie would be interested :)
Jacques Voigt
Guest
As a leg spin bowler it is very frustrating and very annoying to have a captain take me off after 3 overs when I've been conceding 4 runs an over! Defensive captaincy, scoreboard pressure and fear of embarrassment are some of the main reasons why good spinners are disappearing. Knowadays a typical "spin bowler" will be a left arm off spinner that bends the ball around a corner and straightens it :| what an anti-climax!!! When I was at cricket trials I was the only leg spinner among 30 other spinners, plus I'm a chinaman so there was no one who turns the ball away from the right hander! Leg spin is a dying art once again...
Tim Holt
Roar Guru
I think you would exclude Kaneria, Mushy and MacGill from that list as being defined great Leggies. And you could maybe add Aubrey Faulkner, Bhagwat Chandrasakhar True on the other points too
Deep Thinker
Guest
I'll give it a go - Warne, Magill, Grimmett, Kumble, Qadir, O'reilly, Benaud, Mushtaq Ahmed, Kaneria, Gupta hmmm..... they're not all great bowlers are they? Ok - how many all time great off spinners are there? Or left arm wrist spinners? Or left arm orthodox spinners? I think history shows if you can find a good spinner of any variety you're doing well.
Deep Thinker
Guest
I'd prefer to give shield teams a bonus point for taking 4 wickets in a game with spin bowling. That encourages captains to attack with their spinner.
Adam
Guest
sadly with smaller ovals, & bigger bats, it will be hard to see spin bowlers like warne & co ever again, the slightest mishit now easily clears the boundry line, we will more likely see the more defensive spin bowlers like the dohetys, beer, etc
Tim Holt
Roar Guru
+1 To the Author- see if you can name 10 leggies in the history of the game that you could define as 'great'
JGK
Roar Guru
Let's face it, leg spinning is hard. That's why the good ones only come along every 30 years or so.
Ian Whitchurch
Guest
The other problem is 3-50 off 4 overs are both good figures for a legspinner, and the sort of numbers that get you removed from attacks these days. Add the death of turning pitches these days, and we get economical offspinners keeping one end tight while the fast men get their breath back.
Russ
Guest
I'd argue the lack of Shield sides is the biggest problem. Spinners will peak somewhere around 26-30 years old, if not later. No Shield team wants to play a 19 year old, nor keep one on contract for 7-10 years in the hope they become good. Instead young bowling all-rounders have sway, and spin bowlers come up through grade cricket to Shield (and then the test side) in their mid-20s with little to no first-class experience - or even the opportunity to develop properly, if they've been amateur for several years. Incidentally, this was a problem in Warne's time, and it was a problem in Benaud's time. Great players get around it by being great. But in between times Australia has lurched from one inexperienced spinner to another, regularly selecting players with less than a dozen games at the top-level behind them. But I wouldn't use a quota to fix it. Rather I'd do two things: 1) increase the number of sides, to eight, if not ten, to allow more scope for young players to get experience. 2) Introduce a substitute rule for Shield games between the second and third innings. This would have the three-fold benefit of allowing young pace bowlers to be managed better, because their workload would be flattened out; for young spinners to get time in conditions that suit them; and for batsmen to face fresh bowlers bowling in ideal conditions, and testing their technique.
Don Corleone
Guest
Thanks for the article. It is a mystery as to why the generation of leg-spinners never eventuated. At the height of his popularity, Warne never made a secret about his bowling technique. I can remember Shane Warne leg spin instructional videos being sold with balls with numbered finger placings in Woolworths. Now you can go on Youtube and watch Warne's old masterclasses where he clearly shows how to bowl his 5 deliveries. I can only think young spinners have given it a try in junior cricket and been discouraged by reactive or impatient captains and coaches. I have a 16-year-old daughter in the state academy system who is committed to bowling leg-spin and an 11-year-old son who is a dedicated Chinamen bowler...hopefully they'll be given a good opportunity in the future to ply their craft.
Gr8rWeStr
Guest
Forcing teams to bowl a certain number of overs of spin is unlikely to produce Warne type, attacking leg spin bowlers, more likely Doherty type, defensive off spin bowlers. From memory they did try to encourage using spin bowlers in the 2nd 11 or Futures League games by awarding bonus points for using them, I'm not sure on the exact details. I know its radical, but I think you have to put score board pressure on captains to use spin bowlers, the idea I came up with was using over rate pressure to force more overs to be bowled in a day. Penalizing a tardy over rate with 6 runs per over a team is behind, allowing for circumstances beyond their control, the number that should have been bowled at the conclusion of an innings seems to be the most likely option to encourage captains to use attacking spin bowlers. Of course defensive captains will still go for defensive spinners who get through there overs quickly, but that can't be avoided, the higher the over rate required the more likely captains who want to win will use attacking spin bowling.