by Tim Wigmore
The First Era of Spin Bowling – Leading Spin Wicket-Takers, 2003–07
Bowler
Spin Type
Wickets
Nayan Doshi
Finger Spin
53
Mushtaq Ahmed
Wrist Spin
42
Graeme Swann
Finger Spin
36
Jeremy Snape
Finger Spin
36
Jason Brown
Finger Spin
34
Robert Croft
Finger Spin
33
Thandi Tshabalala
Finger Spin
31
Gareth Breese
Finger Spin
29
James Tredwell
Finger Spin
28
Dinesh Mongia
Finger Spin
28
The man at the forefront of this age was the off-spinner Snape, instrumental in helping Leicestershire reach at least the semi-finals in the first four seasons of the Twenty20 Cup. Snape’s most important attribute was his intelligence; already 30 when T20 was introduced, he used this experience to read and second-guess the batsman’s intentions. With a wiry frame, balding head and sunglasses, Snape was an unassuming character, but his cricketing intuition, combined with his slow speeds and accuracy, made him immensely difficult to score off.
‘We found that taking pace off the ball was a really good way of doing it because it placed the pressure back on the batsman to add pace to the ball and place the ball and do something with it,’ he recalled. ‘You’ve got a ring of fielders that are there and there’s not much pace on the ball so placement becomes really key for a batsman.’
Snape combined this lack of pace with exceptional control and sheer cunning. ‘Where I wasn’t getting huge deviation or drift, I could set a field to the line and pace variations which meant I could play with the batsman. And as they got more frustrated I could vary the pace more but still hold my line.’
Together with classical cricketing nous, Snape brought original creative thinking. ‘I was innovative and entrepreneurial,’ he said. He would walk back to the top of his run-up backwards – never taking his eyes off the batsman. ‘The interesting time for the batsman when they are building their strategy and their commitment to their strategy is while I’m walking back in the space between deliveries. So I wanted to catch every clue that I could find in that time so I started to walk backwards past the umpire and watching the batsmen right the way through it and collect the ball at whatever time I needed it because I was building a plan as to what he would do next.
‘If a batsman looked to deep midwicket and was eyeing up the stands, I would very quickly shout to my deep midwicket it’s coming to you so move a bit squarer, or get a bit taller or whatever it might be. Just by me signalling where the batsman was going to hit it he had to second-guess it and by the time he got confused I was already in my run-up and about to bowl at him. So the confusion and the lack of clarity became a bigger weapon for me than my deviation off the pitch – which was rare in any instance anyway.’
Another innovation driven by Snape was the ‘moon ball’ – a delivery which saw him approach the crease very quickly and rush through his action before lobbing the ball very high and very slowly in the air. The combination of the speed and the trajectory meant the ball suddenly dropped on the batsman at the last moment and it proved difficult to hit. The loopy nature of the delivery disrupted the batsman’s core strength, causing them to lean back on impact rather than into the ball.
In the first era of T20 – before the 2007 T20 World Cup and the launch of the IPL truly globalised the format – conventional finger spinners dominated the T20 circuit, and made up nine of the ten leading spin wicket-takers in that period. There was very little mystery or magic associated with these bowlers. Like Snape, they succeeded by taking pace off the ball, by being accurate and by out-thinking the batsmen. It was a quiet and unassuming start to the transformation of spin bowling.
***
Ostensibly Trinidad and Tobago was an unlikely starting point for a cricketing revolution. With a population of 1.25 million and a GDP outside the world’s top 100 it was a country of little political or economic clout. Yet throughout its history these two islands nestled at the bottom of the Caribbean have produced a number of great international players: from Learie Constantine to Larry Gomes to the iconic Brian Lara.
Cricket has formed an intrinsic part of the culture of the country and the rise of T20 provided a format of the game that chimed with the style of cricket the region has always nurtured: free-spirited, powerful and innovative. In the first age of T20 arguably no nation contributed as much to the format, especially spin bowling, as Trinidad and Tobago.
‘The style of cricket that West Indians play – it’s very instinctive, it’s very natural, it’s got a lot of flair,’ remembered Daren Ganga, who captained the islands between 2001 and 2011 in all three formats. ‘A cavalier sort of approach to the game and different formats. The West Indian style fits perfectly with the requirements for T20 cricket because it requires you to be fearless as a cricketer and that’s why you see a lot of West Indian, and Trinidad and Tobago players in particular, warm towards this format of the game.’
Trinidad and Tobago was also the Caribbean territory where windball cricket – played with a smaller and lighter ball than a regular cricket ball and with no more than 12 overs per team – was most popular.
The type of players produced by windball cricket was radically different to those produced by the more formalised coaching structures in England and Australia, the game’s oldest nations. While in England and Australia cricketers were often more conventional, the windball, beach and street cricket more prevalent in the Caribbean and Asia produced unusual talents with unique skills. Nowhere was this more apparent than in spin bowling where countries with softer balls and fewer coaches produced bowlers with new and distinctive deliveries that spun in unexpected ways.
‘There is no coaching out there and what is great – and this is a big lesson for us all in the so-called more modern coaching countries like England and Australia – is that the evidence would seem to be that we stifle the potential talent rather than encourage it,’ explained the bowling coach Carl Crowe.
‘This is in all sports. In football kids are joining academies at seven and training like a professional player; they should be at the park playing with their mates and playing street football – that’s where you learn skills, not in an academy where it is all structured. It’s the element of free play that is so important in developing skill in a youngster.
‘You very rarely get that creative player where they’ve been coached since the ages of six and seven because it’s coached out of them. You’re not encouraging them to have success and failure and trial and error in that environment. Coaches like safety. Safety is not trial and error.’
If Trinidad and Tobago was an unlikely cradle for change, then Samuel Badree and Sunil Narine were even more unlikely agents for that change. But Badree, a PE teacher from the southern, agricultural town of Barrackpore, and Narine, a shy and nervous man from the northern town of Arima, would combine to form a revolutionary spin bowling duo.
Ganga knew both Badree and Narine when they were growing up – captaining Badree at primary and secondary school, before leading the pair at Trinidad and Tobago as well. ‘I always knew Badree as “that leg-spinner”,’ he recalled. Narine meanwhile was ‘an introvert, very quiet and kept his emotions to himself, but we recognised the uniqueness of his talent.’
Throughout his professional career Badree combined playing cricket with a job as a PE teacher. ‘I’m a full-time professional worker, and a part-time cricketer, I would say. Because as soon as I get back home I’m straight into my work.’ Even after winning his second T20 World Cup, Badree’s LinkedIn profile read: ‘International cricketer/Physical Education Teacher at Barrackpor
e East Secondary’. It summed up a cricketer who was the antidote to the razzmatazz of the West Indies side. Narine sported earrings, a large gold chain and a spiky Mohican but this showy image belied a reticent personality.
For Narine, more so than for Badree, windball and tennis ball cricket were central to his rise. Narine played with his dad Shaheed – and the ability for him to chuck the ball, rather than just bowl it, encouraged him to learn new deliveries that would have been more difficult to perfect with a conventional cricket ball or a conventional bowling action. ‘He is one of the most renowned tennis ball players in Trinidad,’ Badree recalled. ‘That’s where it all started for him and that allowed him to develop that unique grip that he has where he uses his knuckles to deliver the ball.’
‘You develop strategies that help you in international cricket inadvertently, and it certainly did for Narine and all players of the past who were really great. They grew up playing tape ball cricket.’
‘I had a love for it,’ Narine said. ‘It helped with my grip and my variations as well. You have different balls that you bowl in windball cricket and I just tried them in hard-ball and they worked out for me, so I just continued developing them.’ Naturally windball cricket shaped Narine’s bowling action in hard-ball cricket; Ganga remembered that even at the start of his career ‘there were concerns surrounding the legality of his bowling action’. These concerns would eventually culminate in Narine being banned from bowling in 2015, while he remodelled his action.
Badree and Narine both featured in a World Cup win in 2012, with Badree winning another in 2016. Both Badree, a leg-spinner, and Narine, an off-spinner, were marked by their ability to turn the ball both ways; Badree with his googly, and Narine with his doosra and carrom ball. Yet their point of difference went beyond simply their direction of spin. Together the Trinidad duo were instrumental in triggering the change that saw spinners bowl flatter, faster and shorter – a seminal shift in the nature of spin bowling that left an indelible mark on their art.
Not only did the pair transform their respective disciplines but they had enormous success as well. In October 2014, in an extraordinary moment for the tiny island of Trinidad, Badree and Narine rose to number one and number two in the ICC T20 bowling rankings. From the parks of Barrackpore and the streets of Arima this unassuming pair of Trinidadians became the best in the world.
***
Although Snape was a spin bowler, very little of his threat actually came from spinning the ball. It wasn’t until after the 2007 T20 World Cup and the inaugural season of the IPL that deviation started to be a significant weapon when a group of finger spinners elevated Snape’s craft through mystery, innovation and creativity. While Snape and the original finger spinners had relied largely on taking pace off the ball and accuracy, this second wave of bowlers added to these skills big spin in both directions and a flatter trajectory at faster speeds.
Narine did not make his T20 debut until 2011 but he became the figurehead of the second age of spin bowling which spanned from 2008 to 2015. Just four matches after his debut Narine was selected to play for Trinidad and Tobago in the 2011 Champions League after spending the 2009 edition of the tournament unable to break into the team. Over the ensuing weeks a new star was born as Narine snared ten wickets in six matches and maintained an economy rate of just 4.37 runs per over. His mesmerising performances in the tournament, which was competed for by the world’s best T20 teams from around the world and played in India, triggered a $700,000 contract with Kolkata Knight Riders in the subsequent IPL auction.
Over the following three years Narine played a central role in two title triumphs for KKR in the IPL and one for the West Indies in the World Cup. His success on the global stage won him contracts in leagues around the world and before long he had followed his teammate Chris Gayle on to the T20 circuit and away from international cricket: a freelance T20 gun for hire.
Windball cricket shaped Narine’s effectiveness in T20. The softer, smaller ball allowed him to develop a unique way of spinning the ball with his knuckles which saw him release the ball from the front of his hand while still imparting a huge number of revolutions. This front-on release made Narine exceptionally difficult to read, with almost no discernible change from his off break and the ball that went the other way. This ability to spin the ball in both directions and the difficulty batsmen had in reading which way it would go was the foundation of his success.
Batting against a spinner who could turn the ball both ways was very difficult. ‘You’ve got to pick which way it is going first, which can be tricky in itself,’ explained Luke Wright who scored more than 7,000 T20 runs. ‘You tend to try and pick up signals from the ball or the pitch – which is even harder. So you need to pick which way it is going and then decide your shot, whereas against seam you are able to just react or decide what shot you are playing but against spin you need to be able to pick it first so it makes your decision-making that much harder.’
‘Because he delivers the ball out of the front of his hand, so many batsmen I talk to in and around cricket are saying, “We can’t pick him. We don’t know which way the ball’s going,”’ explained Narine’s mentor Crowe. ‘So you’ve got very little chance of being able to set yourself up well and have a real clear game plan all the time. You’re being very reactive.’
‘The uniqueness of his action was a great asset for him,’ observed Ganga. ‘Everyone was very much used to the conventional off-spinners. Narine – from the way he grips the ball – is very different. Most off-spinners would grip the ball with their index finger and their middle finger but Narine gripped it with his middle finger and his fourth finger and he locked it in. It was very difficult to read him.’
For conventional finger spinners the motion of imparting spin on the ball typically spun the ball up and out of the hand. But Narine’s unique grip and front-on release enabled him to impart spin while also pushing the ball out on a notably flatter trajectory. This flight path enabled Narine to bowl short lengths at a good pace, preventing the batsmen from being able to ‘step and hit’.
‘Coming up in cricket I always used to bowl as tight as possible,’ said Narine. ‘I was never a big wicket-taker. I always liked the runs as low as possible. So from a young age that is why I have been more effective in white-ball cricket. It started there and I just continued.
‘The first thing I do is try and keep down the runs because if you keep down runs then the batsmen will try and take a chance and that is how you take wickets.’
Narine may have been the most effective exponent of this new style but he was far from the first. Before Narine’s emergence in 2011 the Indians Ravichandran Ashwin and Harbhajan Singh, the Sri Lankans Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis and the Pakistani Saeed Ajmal started to have major success through extracting big spin in both directions and typically on a flatter trajectory.
Wrist spinners were at a natural advantage over finger spinners because for them balls that turned in the opposite direction to their stock ball – known as googlies – were part of the traditional art of wrist spin. For finger spinners getting a delivery to spin the other way was more difficult. The equivalent deliveries for finger spinners, known as doosras or carrom balls, did not emerge until the turn of the century and they were much more complex to bowl than the googly. Yet between around 2008 and 2015 a coterie of finger spinners perfected these mystery deliveries and in doing so ushered in the second wave of T20 spin bowling.
‘As a batsman, if you’re setting yourself up to hit the ball knowing the ball is going to spin one way, it’s not easy, but it’s comfortable,’ explained Crowe. ‘If you’ve got a guy who spins the ball both ways, [as a batsman] you’re very much more reactive rather than proactive, and particularly with the pace off as well.’
As with many developments promoted by T20, the origins of finger spin innovation lie further back in history, before the 20-over format was played at professional level. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the Pakistani Saqlain Mush
taq brought the doosra to international cricket – a delivery that he had invented when playing rooftop cricket in Lahore with a tennis ball as a young boy. The doosra was swiftly perfected by Muralitharan as well. The word ‘doosra’ means ‘other one’ in Hindi and Urdu and the beauty of the delivery wasn’t only that it turned the other way to the off break but it spun appreciably, fizzing viciously off the pitch.
The doosra was fiendishly complicated and required an unnatural movement of the arm, pushing the limits of the laws of the game, which banned bowlers from bending their elbow in delivery.
In 2009 the ICC biomechanist Bruce Elliott made a startling claim that his research suggested a lot of bowlers from the subcontinent could bowl the delivery legally but many Caucasian bowlers could not. Shortly after Elliott presented this research, a group of former spin bowlers from Australia decided that they would not teach the doosra to young spinners because it ‘offended the laws of the game’. In Asia, where rare talent was more readily promoted, there was less resistance to the delivery.
Muralitharan – born in the hill city of Kandy in the centre of Sri Lanka – founded his great career on his mastery of the doosra. However, his brilliance with the delivery was due largely to his extraordinary physicality. He was born with a deformed elbow which meant he could never totally straighten his arm, his wrists were double-jointed and his rapidly rotating shoulder practically dislocated itself every time he bowled the ball. These biomechanical quirks enabled Muralitharan – who imparted spin with his wrist and shoulder as much as his fingers – to become so effective with the doosra.
Muralitharan’s career was shrouded in controversy due to his bowling action which pushed the limit of the law: in 1995 he was dramatically called for chucking by the umpire Darrell Hair in a Test match in Australia.
