Was spin bowling once an easier art?
 

I don't know if this is the case, am asking out of pure curiosity, but was it easier to be a more successful(statistically speaking) spinner in years gone by? Due to uncovered pitches and other factors etc which resulted in a lot of spinners e.g laker ending up with such low averages, not to mention even older spinners such as rhodes and verity, who ended up with ridiculously low FC averages.Or was it just the case that they were technically brilliant?

Pitches, IMO :)

Yes it can be uncoverved pitches.

Though what hurts current spinners averages in particular is attacking batting employed these days by batsmen.

True, but the whole point of spin bowling is deception to the point that hand eye co-ordination of a batsman cannot counter whatever a spin bowler is making the ball do. Therefore the more a batsman attacks the ball, the more likely he is to get an edge etc, that is if the bowler in question has a lot of variation. Many pitches (away from the subcontinent) no doubt add to this fact that averages are going up however because of the lack of options they give to spin bowling.

Pitches for me, too.

I am of the opinion that a good spin bowler in one era would be good in every other era. Pitches may help him to improve stats but a good spinner will remain good. A lot of bowlers today are not flighting the ball enough due to the one day cricket which is the reason they are not bein successful. You look at the Pakistani spinners right now or the Indian spinners of the 70s... they all used to flight the ball except Chandra.

The spinners which are doing well right now, be it Warne, Murali or the lesser category of vettoris and prices, all flight the ball.

There is an old saying that a young beginner fast bowler with a messed up action later becomes an Off spinner ...... Right ?

Yup.

When Warne and Murali were young, they both used to bowl medium.

They switched to spin for various reasons.

And Kumble still bowls medium pace..

Very true. ;)

Giles, of course, used to be a seamer.
If you ask me a wristspinner can be a dangerous bowler anywhere, a fingerspinner can be dangerous only once the pitch offers a certain amount of turn.
Otherwise it is simply not possible for a human hand to impart the neccesary spin to turn the ball dangerously.
There can surely be no question that uncovered wickets caused these conditions to prevail far more often and hence fingerspin used to be effective far more often than it is now.
Flight, with loop and drift, is very useful but only as a compliment to turn. It will simply make a dangerous bowler even more dangerous. It will not make an innocuous bowler a dangerous one.
If you try to attack spin when the ball is turning, meanwhile, the chances are you'll pay for it sooner rather than later, so I don't think attacking batting has made potentially good bowlers less so.

I agree with everything you say here.

very good & very true...........

IMO not only were the uncovered pitches a factor but also the pitches today are 'dead' in comparison - as per the flat tracks thread - no bite on Day1 for the seamers & no turn on Day 5 for the finger spinners in particular.......hence why AUS has a preference / prevalence for wristies atm..........

Better Pitches
Better Bats
Better Outfields

Id say its harder bowling in general these days, whatever you happen to be bowling...

And you know why Subcontinent spinners are good. Coz of their natural thin and FLEXIBLE wrist . And actually their fingers also are thin and so their grip is firm and placement of fingers is very flexible . Not me saying only The experts do say this thing also ... right ?