Unspinable
Cricket Spectator
Which spin at international level works best?
Not bad.Well, it's more accurate to characterize it as wrist-spin and finger-spin, as wrist spin gives you more variation is more dangerous while finger-spin is pretty much futile on non-conducive pitches, as most of the cricketers in the past can tell you (there is a reason why guys like Benaud make a point to specify that they only considered wrist spinners for their all time XI). There have been a few exceptions of course, but not Murali, since he is a wrist spinner, but there haven't been many.
How was that?
Murali is Jesus now?! Come on, he's good but let's not be hasty!Not bad.
Seriously though, I understand the argument viz. wrist-spin. But I think it should be characterised as over the wrist spin when differentiating it from Murali who is more of a round the wrist, or through the wrist, spin merchant. And yes, finger spinners do need some assistance from the surface, as I think does Murali, if not to the same extent as more orthodox off spinners.
Pity the sar-chasm joke has become passe...Why'd you need match records? Find me some Tests in the post-covered-pitches era (1970 in England, not sure when it was elsewhere) where fingerspinners have taken a bag which haven't turned all the way through.
It's no coincidence that England's last great in a huge line of fingerspinners (mostly left-arm) was Derek Underwood in 1972. Thereafter, Underwood and everyone else tried since him have been almost totally ineffective in home Tests, and have mostly ended-up being written-off as "defensive bowlers" because they can't be attacking ones.
Australia, where pitches started being covered in the 1950s-ish, haven't had a fingerspinner of note since then, apart from Ashley Mallett for a short time. And even the two they had 1930-1950 were both seamers who sometimes bowled fingerspin (Ironmonger and Johnston).
Fingerspin's time as an art that can be purveyed with success everywhere in The World has passed. And wristspin has always been an art only a tiny select few can bowl to the required standard of accuracy. We've been impossibly fortunate to have two wristspinners who do have that capability at the same time recently, in Warne and Muralitharan - we had the same in the 1930s with Grimmett and O'Reilly. In between times, the only (conventional, at least - Anil Kumble is nominally a wristspinner but he spins it far less than most) wristspinner of serious note was Richie Benaud.
You kidding? Richard owns property in teh sarchasm. So much so that anyone who falls into it has to pay him rent.Pity the sar-chasm joke has become passe...
You know me - never miss the chance to turn a joke into a serious point.Pity the sar-chasm joke has become passe...
Bill O'Riely and Bagwhat Chandrashekar comes to my mind as wrist spinners.Derek Underwood and Phil Tufnell as finger spinners. Jayanada Warnaweera was also very akward to play because of his pace, but layed too few tests too far apart to get a comparision.Surprised no one else has gone the Anil Kumble route.