The “turning point” in every aspiring fast bowler’s life is when he realises that inspite of doing everything that his coach has recommended and doing most of the drills mentioned in Dennis Lillee’s The Art of Fast Bowling things are not shaping anywhere close to being one. I was forced to realise this when a kid two years younger than me thrashed me for 4 boundaries in an over. I did some introspection to find that though my running speed was like Imran Khan’s, my bowling speed was barely a yard faster than Laxman Sivaramakrishnan. Yes he was a spinner in my time who bowled well and sometimes spun the ball more than the length of his name.
It was difficult to accept this reality that was staring me in my face. Lord Krishna had said to Arjuna in the Mahabharata that you can’t leave the battlefield so there was no question of me leaving bowling altogether. However I was not able to figure out what to do next. The only option available to me was to become a spinner.
Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that a day would come when I would have to take this decision. It was like settling for a BA when all your life, you wanted to be an engineer or doctor. Like most Indian kids of my time, I idolised Kapil Dev and there was no chance that I would let him down.
While spin bowling might be considered cool today, thanks to the likes of Shane Warne and Muralitharan, it wasn’t so back then. With all due respect, one never visualised Bedi, Prasanna or Venkataraghavan with hot chics on a bike, but Kapil Dev or Imran Khan, definitely. So spin was never in my aspiration list. But I had to come to terms with my limitations and kill my ego, which was tough for a hormonally charged 16-year-old.
As a mediocre student, cricket was a kind of a safety valve for the frustrations one experienced in the classroom. When one got bad marks, which in my case was quite often, I could justify it by claiming to be a part of the school and college cricket teams. My mother always saved me from my dad by saying “he is bright but he couldn’t study because he was playing”. The most horrific thing for any middle-class family was to accept that their child was average in all aspects because that would dash any hope the family had in you and make your parents look even worse in front of their friends. So from my perspective it was important to be in some sports team. Also to justify my mediocrity in class I had to be a batsman or a fast bowler. I would never want my mother to feel embarrassed at her kitty party by having to say that her son was an off-spinner. I still got away because my parents didn’t care much, but in today’s competitive environment, parents would accept nothing less than their child breaking every record Sachin has held, before he has even turned 16. My neighbour actually believes that his son is an alloy of Viv Richards and Sachin even though he can barely make it to his class team and I can see that child buckling under parental pressure every day.
The only problem Abdul Qadir had was that he spun more than the ball.
Back in the 80s, there was a bowler from Pakistan who was making huge inroads in our minds as a spinner and that was Abdul Qadir. The only problem was that he spun more than the ball. A great bowler, but his action would make Johnny Lever’s facial contortions and mannerisms look very normal. I felt for Qadir. He probably was just trying to do funny things to get attention to his craft because otherwise spinners would never get noticed or even stand a chance in the endorsement market. One realised the value created by the drama of Abdul Qadir only years later as now every spinner who is making a mark is creating his own theatre and performing art. Paul Adams with the head inside the knees action, Muralitharan with the popping ghost eyes which can make Kathakali dancers look like novices, and the latest additions being Sunil Narine and Ajantha Mendis who even added inputs from another game called carrom board in their bowling. It was a matter of survival, get noticed or die.
After a lot of deliberations I finally came to terms with the fact that I was going to be a spinner. In my mind, a spinner was essentially a bowler who started his career as a fast bowler but because he was a loser and mediocre, he had no option but to bowl slow to stay in the game. Surprisingly, Sachin also started his career as a fast bowler and I’ve often wondered if he also went through this turmoil.
For years if you were a spinner, you’d be embarrassed to introduce yourself as a cricketer because for some reason even you didn’t personally believe that you were doing anything valuable. Even in team photographs one would be somewhere on the side. Whatever fame Ravi Shastri got was only after he started batting up the order for India, the “Sir Jadeja” status too has a lot of batting in it. That’s the way the game goes.
I started as a leg spinner probably the same time Shane Warne started his career. One of the first challenges for a leg spinner is to first land the ball in the right place. I struggled with this for a long time. Despite a run-up, reminiscent of the greats, for some strange reason my balls landed straight on to the batsmen’s bat or directly in the wicketkeeper’s gloves. Months later I showed some signs of improvement but then most of my deliveries landed in my half of the pitch which is what happens with ordinary leg-spinners.
That’s when I turned to off-spin bowling. Now, off-spinners are accorded the same status in cricket that mopeds get in the motorbike chain, with fast bowling being compared to a Harley Davidson. Even there, my life was not hunky-dory. As an off-spinner, I struggled with the same problems that Harbhajan Singh would face later in his professional career; so from that perspective I possibly was ahead of my times. My off-spin never spun and always went straight or the other way. Therefore everytime Saqlain Mushtaq gets credit for the Doosra I feel hurt and distressed. My leg spin was no better as my natural delivery was the googly and I never got the leg spin to turn which great spinners like Piyush Chawla and Amit Mishra suffer today after years of playing professional cricket. It was a truly challenging period in my life.
Growing up in the pre-liberalisation era of the 80s and the early 90s, we largely made safe and defensive choices under the influence of our elders because of which our personalities lacked any sense of natural aggression. As spinners, we just rolled our arm over and waited for some result which was in tune with the Hindu philosophy of “Karma karte raho par phal ki chinta mat karo”. Obviously with an attitude like this, there was no way we’d get any wickets.
Thanks to Warne and Muralitharan this ignominy of being a spinner got reduced over the years because of their sheer dominance and the way they proved to the cricketing world that even spinners were real men. Shane Warne ensured that he put this message across even off the field and proved to the world that his off-field victims were more than his on-field victims thanks to his ability to charm the maidens.
My perspective towards spin bowling changed when I first got to see Muralitharan practise his craft from close quarters in Colombo. Watching Murali bowl in the nets was an amazing experience because every time Murali was at the point of releasing the ball there was this big hissing snake like sound, which could easily reach the batsman. The rip he gave the cricket ball was so hard that this sound was generated even before the ball pitched. If he was bowling in the subcontinent then the snakes would definitely get an inferiority complex. The rip he gave the ball, which felt like it went through a million revolutions, was possibly similar to the way God spun the Earth and then left it to rotate. When he was about to leave I overheard him telling a colleague, “The batsmen should know how much I can turn the ball, but then the wicket will come when I don’t turn the ball”. It was only years later when Indian spinner Murali Karthik explained to me that I understood what Muralitharan actually meant.
During a discussion, Muralitharan once told my dear friend Murali Karthik and me over a cup of coffee that he used to love turning the ball, but for years he was unable to get as many wickets as he wanted to. In one of the matches Aravinda de Silva walked up to him and said that if he stopped turning the ball he could get wickets. This was something Muralitharan just couldn’t digest. Once on a flight with the legendary Kapil Dev, the former Indian captain told him, “Your problem is that you are predictable because you spi
n the ball too much, I know where your ball will be and I can hit you all day. You have to start learning how to bowl straight.” This utterly confused him and he just couldn’t get the plot. This was like telling Sunny Leone that if you want to be a successful actress you need to wear a sari and cover yourself with a pallu. That was the time he watched Saqlain Mushtaq bowl the doosra and was amazed by his success. Once he got his inspiration it took him four years of daily practice and it was only in 1997 when he started getting it right. His first victim was Steven Fleming and it was only then that the Murali magic started in its true sense.
Wow! The best spinner in the world is saying that unpredictability is the reason you fox your victims. No wonder I never made an impact with women. I was just too predictable, I didn’t do different things. I just did the right things and that just doesn’t work with either women or batsmen. Women like surprises, now I know why. Whether in life or in cricket how consistently unpredictable you are is what makes you great.
Its not about how many deliveries you have, its about how many deliveries the batsman thinks you have. — Shane Warne
It didn’t stop there, he went on to say that the mantra for a spinner to be successful is to create an illusion, then bowl the line and length and then finally let the wicket do the rest. What does “creating an illusion” mean in terms of cricket? Illusion is what one associated with people like David Copperfield. Ironically, David Copperfield’s illusions not only helped him wow audiences, but the heart of a super model called Claudia Schiffer.
When it came to Murali, I wondered if the big popping eyes at delivery and the wicked smile created the illusion. According to him Shane Warne was the master of creating a reputation and taking the batsman’s wicket even before he bowled the ball and that’s the most important thing that he had learnt from him.
The “Warne” Mind Games
Shane Warne knew what mind games and reputation bring to the table. He had two main deliveries, a good leg spin and the straight on. That’s it. But he made the world believe that he had 15 of them. Warnie once explained to Murali how he created a web of deceit in the minds of the batsmen.
Step 1 – Be big and overbearing. This comes with reputation. The ability to play with the mind of the incoming batsman.
Step 2 – Rip the first ball the hardest and make it spin like a top. This ball is to tell the batsman how much you can spin the ball. The objective of this ball is basically to make the batsman think that this guy is going to spin me out.
Step 3 – Next, bowl the ball straight. This ball is going to tell the guy that not only do I spin the ball but there are some balls which are not going to spin at all. So the batsman is confused and starts thinking.
Step 4 – So these are essentially Warnie’s two main balls. But then the third ball, he will change the line from outside the leg stump to the leg stump coming wide of the crease.
Step 5 – Next one he will come close to the stumps and change the line to bowl it on middle and off stump, by this time the batsmen is so confused that he will edge it to the slips.
This was getting to me. These guys played mind games and planned every spell of theirs. No wonder it’s called a “SPELL”, it’s just the right word. I was constantly wondering whether everything that Shane Warne did helped him get the reputation, the SMSes, the pills from his mother, the leaked photographs. Come to think of it now, I am not surprised he had so many girlfriends. These are the exact steps that can be used to be successful with the girls too.
Get a reputation. Girls like macho guys. Give her an extremely expensive gift so she knows that he can do a lot for her, surprise her, make her play everything you throw at her and she will be bowled over forever. What learning! A little too late though.
This was getting to me, here was I who thought spinning was a weakness and not something one would consider to be macho, but these guys had converted it into an art form.
Murali said that sometimes it didn’t work with certain batsmen like Sachin, Rahul and VVS Laxman and that’s where he had to rely on memory. A spinner ought to have a good memory so while playing against the Indians he used to memorise his routine by repeating to himself a few things so he didn’t make a mistake while bowling and his lines were, “Keep asking questions to Sachin, don’t bowl to Dravid on the back foot and don’t bowl on the leg side to Laxman.” No wonder India produces better spinners! Thanks to our education system, memorising is something which naturally comes to us and if you are smart engineers like Kumble and Ashwin, then that’s far easier.
Anil Kumble was someone who was smart and enjoyed the best of both worlds. He bowled spin but then he bowled with pace. This was substantiated when Mohammad Yousuf was once asked how he planned to play Kumble. His answer was that the best way to play him was like an in-swing bowler. Bizzare but true.
For a long time Anil Kumble was the senior most bowler in the team and along with Zaheer Khan, the captain of the bowling attack during India’s campaign in the 2003 World Cup. Shayamal Vallabhjee, who was then assisting coach John Wright during this campaign, told me about the sheer discipline and intensity Anil Kumble brought to the team. In the initial part of the campaign, when the bowlers were struggling with their line and length, Anil Kumble gave the boys a piece of advice that got the message across to the bowling department. He said, “If you are struggling with your line and length try to imagine that there are only two people on the ground—you and the wicketkeeper. It teaches you discipline.”
Just as fast bowlers hunt in pairs, spinners do so too. India’s success was also because of the combination of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. Two complete opposite personalities operating in tandem. The silent introverted leg spinner along with an ever excited aggressive off-spinner. Here was another character who added a lot of value to Indian cricket not only by taking 400 Test match wickets but also for lowering the stress levels in the team. It was always a challenge for the Indian captain if he had to choose between the two. While one was accurate and could contain the opposition, the other one was slightly expensive but a wicket taking bowler. Bhajji loved setting up batsmen and when I asked him about his craft, he said, “I enjoy playing with the batsman’s mind but sometimes it can back fire. You may have a good armoury and a plan of balls including the regular off-spin, one with cross seam, a doosra and even varying speeds; but then you have to execute them as well and sometimes while trying to do so, the batsman derails your plan by playing strokes which are completely unexpected. This is the real challenge for the bowler.” I related this to what my marketing professor said once, that any good business organisation may have many plans but how adaptable they are to competitive and market needs is the true test.
They say, spin bowling is very much like chess where one is constantly playing mind games with the opposition. Also understanding your craft and reading different pitches is very critical. Sometimes when the pitch is good one tends to get over excited and tries to do too many things. I used to get confused when the commentators said that one needs to bowl slower if one needs to get more spin and then when it came to a turning track they said spinners who bowl a tad faster tend to get more wickets. I once got irritated and at an unearthly hour called Murali Karthik for an explanation. He patiently said, “It’s plain and simple mate. When the pitch is doing a lot you have to bowl fast because then the ball spins anyway and the faster it spins it gives less time to the batsman to react and he gets out. So if the conditions are good, let the conditions do the damage.” This is something even my grandmother told me once, “Jab acha chal rahe toh bas chup chap baith ke apna kam karo.”
The Engineering Mind
It’s interesting how the legacy of Indian spin bowling now rests on someone who is a pretty canny unconventional spinner who probably bowled the ball of the century when he got Hashim Amla completely foxed by a carom ball. It was one of the evenings when Harsha Bhogle along with his wife Anita and me were deciding who we should be inviting for our Cricket Adda, an event where we invite cric
ket lovers to chat on various topics along with an expert as a guest. Harsha immediately said that we should go for Ashwin because he is someone who is extremely articulate about his craft and all things cricket. Well unlike many of us these South Indian boys have the ability to not only pursue engineering to satisfy their parents but also have a professional cricket career. Well, if you see the bowling styles of Anil Kumble and Ravi Ashwin you will realise that they have applied a lot of their engineering mind to their craft. Even when he was playing domestic cricket, Ashwin was blogging for cricinfo.com, which shows that he was a thinking cricketer even back then.
That one evening with Ashwin convinced me that he will be the future captain of India. He said, “I am very clear that I want to become an entrepreneur irrespective of how many years I play this game.” When he was asked about the most important quality for a spinner he said, “Cricket has changed. Spin bowling is no more about mystery because of the videos that players and the support staff put together. There is no X factor left per se and you know the stuff that every bowler can pull off. Most spinners in international cricket have good skill sets but what separates a good spinner from a great one is how brave he is. Imagine if you are bowling 2 balls to Kevin Pietersen and he has 12 runs to get. He is batting on 50. You very much know he’s going to tonk you for 2 sixes, so then what do you do? Do you try to contain him or do you try to get him out? These are the mindsets you are playing with and if you get in the negative zone than you’ve had it. You may not play the next game.”
How Sachin Destroyed My Life: but gave me an All Access Pass to the world of Cricket Page 6
