4th. Clarrie Grimmett, 519 points
Featured on 33 of 35 lists
Highest finish: 1st (1 time)
Ranking within spin discipline: 3rd of 16 (Leg Break Googly)
Test WPM ranking: 2nd of 43 (5.84)
Grimmett finishes at the 4th greatest spinner and 3rd greatest leggie. He is the first person to appear who actually came first on a list, achieving it once.
Like so many other spinners of the 20s he didn't make his test debut til very late in life, being 34. He still fit in a tremendous test career spanning 11 years and 37 tests. He claimed 216 test wickets in all, at nearly 6 per game(exactly 6 if you include a match he didn't bowl in). This puts him firmly at number 2 for this countdown. But more on this later. He was the first ever bowler to reach 200 test wickets and held onto the aggregate test record for 16 years. He averaged 24, took 21 five fers(his rate of five fers per test was about the rate at which Bradman scored centuries) and went for a little over 2 runs per over. This earned him the nickname the Miser, in contrast to Mailey's millionaire. Grimmett despised giving away runs. His superb accuracy meant he hardly ever did. Considering he bowled a lot of test deliveries to Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hammond and Headley, so this was no small effort. The pitches around Grimmett's time were also perhaps the most helpful to batsman that they ever were. Grit and determination got Grimmett his rewards.
Alongside the nickname Miser, he was also known by some as Scarlet, Grum, The Gnome and the Fox. Quite an array of aliases. He always bowled with a cap on. Grimmett took an 11 fer in his first test. He took 29 wickets in the famous 1930 series, quietly going about his business as Bradman took all the fame and glory. At the time this was a record for a series in England. There is also this quote I love about him:
He was wonderfully accurate because he was endowed with that special physical co-ordination that not even endless practice can turn into international class. It so happened that he did also practise endlessly.
He possessed leg breaks, toppies, and a googly but his best ball was the flipper. On the doped up pitches of the 30s that didn't take much spin the flipper was a deadly weapon for Grimmett. He used to snap his finger upon release of it and batsman caught onto this. So to keep batsman guessing he decided to snap the fingers on his left hand when bowling a leg break. Grimmett's WPM of nearly 6 was quite something. Gregory was the only real lasting Australian pace name of the time he had to share wickets with, but he bowled a lot of matches with his partner in crime, and the yet to be be featured on this list ATG leggie O'Reilly.
He averaged about 24 both home and away, took 77 wickets in 10 tests against SA at 17 and averaged 15 against the Windies. Against the star-studded England it shot out a bit to 32, but he still took 106 ashes wickets at nearly 5 per test. His best years came in 1931 and 1936, when he took 41 scalps from 7 tests @ 18 and 33 wickets from just 3 tests @ 11. After the latter he controversially never played another test, the cause of much debate years later. On one hand he was in his mid 40s, but on the other hand his replacement Fleetwood-Smith was a flop and Grimmett was still taking buckets of wickets before his dumping. Who knows what the right call was. With WW2 breaking out soon after he didn't miss too much test cricket, so it doesn't matter that much. He achieved so much in his 37 tests yet still ranks in as only the 3rd best Aussie leggie. Damn.
