Quote:
Originally Posted by Top_Cat
Left-arm wristies aren't closely analogous to right-arm offies at higher levels, mainly because they have fewer effective options to keep a bat on strike for a decent period of time which, really, is what matters against guys who can bat. Even if the bloke is getting massive turn, you know a loose one is coming soon but a bigger factor is that you get a really good look at the line of the ball with a leftie wrist-spinner bowling over the wicket. So you can look to tuck away just about anything with low risk and knowing which ones to leave is pretty obvious because the bowler has to pitch them so wide to stop this. This applies double if they bowl around the wicket. A wrong'un won't save the bowler either because the line means it's a relatively easy decision for a batsman to decide whether to milk or leave the ball.
Big turn and tricks aren't everything at higher levels and blokes who rip a ball square are a dime-a-dozen at all levels. It wasn't Murali's bag of tricks that got so many bats out, it was the fairly relentless pressure he applied because batters knew they'd be facing him all day and that he had more subtle crease and line variations available to him so you can put more guys on the off-side. Left-arm wristies never have that luxury and rarely one of an attacking off-side field so facing them is fairly simple in the end; smash the more frequent loose offerings, work them away if they do land a ball and leave the clearly wide ones.
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I don't disagree that offspin/left arm chinamen aren't particularly analogous, but leggies bowling to left handers is exactly analogous to chinamen to right handers. If the bolded were true, Shane Warne would have had far less success against left handers than he actually did. I know there's a theory that he was less successful against lefties and there's probably some truth to it, but still he had a lot of success against them and some of the batsmen he had most success against were left handed.