by Tim Wigmore
As technology improved so did testing procedures. The ICC soon discovered that all bowlers flexed their elbow in delivery and eventually they permitted spin bowlers 15 degrees of flex in the elbow at delivery, a move that some suspect was partly introduced to accommodate Muralitharan’s talents. Continual testing never cleared Muralitharan’s action in the eyes of some, but his astounding career ended up with 1,347 international wickets, the highest of all time.
As the T20 circuit boomed in the years after the inaugural IPL, the quality of attacking batting snowballed. For bowlers, necessity was the harbinger of innovation: the doosra became a staple for the off-spinners Ajmal, Ashwin, Harbhajan and Narine. For these bowlers it was a particularly valuable delivery because it enabled them to take the ball away from right-handed batsman – who faced 71% of deliveries in T20 – taking it out of their hitting arc.
The other option for finger spinners was the carrom ball, a delivery which did not challenge the laws of the game but was arguably even harder to master. Named after the South Asian game ‘Carrom’ where players flicked disks across a board, the carrom ball required the bowler to flick the ball out of the front of the hand to impart spin.
Tellingly the carrom ball, like Muralitharan, emerged from Sri Lanka, a hotbed of unusual talent and entrepreneurial zest. Mendis came upon the ball when playing indoor tennis-ball cricket. The smaller, softer ball enabled him to grip and flick it in a way that would have been considerably harder with a hard ball. But as the strength in his hands and fingers increased he eventually translated the technique into hard-ball cricket as well. Mendis made a stunning impression at the onset of his international career in 2008, confounding batsmen with his ability to turn the ball both ways with no discernible change in release.
A short, skinny man with large ears and bright wide eyes, Mendis was another unlikely revolutionary. He approached the crease with a neat run-up and his action was very unassuming. It wasn’t until the ball pitched that anything about his bowling appeared unusual. It was then that what looked like a floaty half-volley would suddenly stop and grip in the surface before deviating one way or the other – not to a huge degree but enough to beat the inside or outside edge of the bat. In his first year of international cricket Mendis took an astonishing 85 wickets in 24 matches at a scarcely believable average of 11.98 runs per wicket.
Before long Ashwin added the delivery to his repertoire as well. Narine’s own version – inspired by Mendis and honed during his days playing windball cricket – also became central to his success. ‘When Ajantha Mendis came out my dad said I should try it in softball,’ recalled Narine. ‘I did it in the nets and Darren Bravo and a guy called Marlon Barclay kept saying I should try it and it was decent enough and in the next game Bravo was in my ear over and over saying, “Bowl the ball, bowl the ball,” and it came out that game and I never turned back.’
Naturally the carrom ball required a great amount of strength in the fingers and was exceptionally difficult to control consistently. The smaller and slower spin it produced made it less effective than the doosra, which fizzed and spun sharply off the pitch. Unlike Mendis who largely relied on it, Narine and Ashwin only used the carrom ball as an occasional variation rather than their main weapon.
After his amazing start to his international career Mendis’s potency quickly dwindled when he ceased to be such a mystery. His average between 2008 and 2012 was 15.52 but after that point it rose to 31.41. Video analysis allowed batsmen to decipher his different deliveries and gradually batsmen started to play him more off the back foot, giving them time to adjust to the slow and small spin, treating him as a medium-pacer rather than a spinner. Mendis also struggled in the second innings of night matches when heavy dew made his light and delicate grip on the ball problematic. Despite only being 24 when he made his T20 debut Mendis’s time at the top of the sport lasted less than five years. Yet his creativity and the carrom ball have endured.
Despite his decline Mendis still had a brilliant career record and between 2008 and 2015 Ajmal, Ashwin, Harbhajan, Mendis, Muralitharan and of course Narine were exceptionally dominant, each taking more than 130 wickets in the format. Only three wrist spinners and just two conventional finger spinners could match their returns in this period.
The Second Era of Spin Bowling – Leading Spin Wicket-Takers, 2008–15
Bowler
Spin Type
Wickets
Sunil Narine
Mystery Spin
216
Saeed Ajmal
Mystery Spin
207
Shakib Al Hasan
Finger Spin
195
Shahid Afridi
Wrist Spin
186
Muttiah Muralitharan
Mystery Spin
162
Amit Mishra
Wrist Spin
160
Ravi Ashwin
Mystery Spin
157
Harbhajan Singh
Mystery Spin
154
Piyush Chawla
Wrist Spin
151
Nathan McCullum
Finger Spin
142
Ajantha Mendis
Mystery Spin
134
Pragyan Ojha
Finger Spin
134
Strangely left-arm finger spinners found it harder to adopt these new-age variations with no one able to bowl a doosra and only New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner deploying a version of the carrom ball.
Left-arm spinners and off-spinners unable to bowl mystery deliveries were put under a huge amount of pressure. Unable to hide behind the mystery of which way the ball might spin, these bowlers bowled fuller than those who could turn the ball both ways and relied on accuracy, speed changes and intelligence to survive.
‘When you don’t have a lot of variations you need to be proactive or you need to be a little bit smarter to win certain battles,’ explained the Indian off-spinner Washington Sundar. ‘Where’s he trying to hit me? Where I can bowl where he’s not expecting me to bowl? Things like that.’
As attacking batting continued to improve, conventional finger spinners were increasingly used as jokers, selected to exploit certain match-ups and target combinations. For example, in the 2019 IPL, Sunrisers Hyderabad typically picked the off-spinner Mohammad Nabi against left-handed-heavy teams and the left-arm spinner Shakib Al Hasan against right-handed-heavy teams, ensuring in both instances that they had a finger spinner who was turning the ball away from the bat. This intelligent selection helped conventional finger spinners endure but also elevated the value of mystery spinners whose match-ups were not determined by the hand of the batsman.
In late 2014 the game became more onerous for mystery bowlers such as Narine when the ICC initiated a clampdown on bowling actions. Up until then the ICC had turned a blind eye to many of the game’s foremost doosra bowlers who always pushed the limit of legal actions. But a change in governance at the ICC prompted a change in policy and with the ICC’s showpiece event, the 50-over World Cup, less than a year away the ICC began to suspend bowlers with suspect actions. ‘It is arguable that we should’ve taken this action earlier,’ David Richardson, the ICC’s chief executive, admitted when asked to explain the sudden change.
Within weeks Ajmal had been banned from bowling in international cricket and Narine was suspended along with a number of other bowlers. Subsequently Narine pulled out of the World Cup to work on remodelling his action but by the end of the year he too had been banned from bowling after his action was found to be illegal.
The ICC’s clampdown had a radical effect on the nature of finger spin bowling, reducing the effectiveness of many of the world’s leading bowlers who were either forced to remodel their actions and/or bowl fewer doosras to avoid suspension.
Major Off-Spin Bowlers, Before and After ICC Chucking Clampdown
2008–14
Bowler
Average
>
Doosras
Sunil Narine
15.82
46%
Ravi Ashwin
24.15
18%
Saeed Ajmal
16.28
14%
Harbhajan Singh
25.29
5%
2015–18
Bowler Average Doosras
Sunil Narine 24.79 28%
Ravi Ashwin 24.87 10%
Saeed Ajmal 20.85 0%
Harbhajan Singh 27.70 2%
Although finger spinners continued to be effective, they were enfeebled by the ICC’s clampdown. They were unable to bowl their doosras as regularly and when they did the delivery lost the bite and fizz that made them so effective. The change in Narine’s fortunes was emblematic of finger spinners more generally. Before the end of 2014 Narine effectively combined attack and defence: he took a wicket every 17.4 balls while conceding just 5.45 runs per over. Yet after being suspended in late 2014 and remodelling his action, Narine’s strike rate rose to 23.2 and his economy rate to 6.40 runs per over by the end of 2018.
He had a remodelled action that maintained his consistency and accuracy but robbed him of his elan. ‘The difference was the speed and the spin. I had to focus more on accuracy because the spin was less,’ he explained. Narine was still among the best in the world but was no longer the best in the world.
***
As Samuel Badree stood at the top of his run-up before bowling his first ball on T20 debut he had already done something remarkable. Badree was a leg-spinner opening the bowling.
It is an unwritten rule of cricket that pace bowlers should open the bowling. From village cricket up to international level fast bowlers invariably take the new ball. There is logic behind this – the new ball swings and seams more than the old ball which spinners normally find easier to grip. When the ball gets older and softer, batsmen find it harder to create pace on the ball, helping spinners further still. Generally, the spinners operate through the middle before the quicks return at the death.
But in T20 convention has been challenged at almost every turn. Not only has the shortest format proved to be a boon for spin bowlers generally but it has seen them explore hitherto untouched areas of the game and start bowling with the new ball. Before Badree’s debut in 2006 a handful of spinners had opened the bowling in T20 – but more as an occasional surprise tactic than a long-term strategy. Across Badree’s career he opened the bowling in 160 of his 197 matches.
Leg spin, which involves the bowler imparting spin by rotating their wrist anticlockwise in the way that one might turn a doorknob, is a rare and precious skill. The spin that the wrist imparts is more significant than that applied by finger spinners but the unnatural motion compromises accuracy and control. As a result leg-spinners have long been renowned as bowlers who take wickets but also concede a lot of runs.
On his T20 debut Badree returned the astonishing bowling figures of 3 for 9 from 3.5 overs: the start of a phenomenal career as a Powerplay specialist. Up to the end of 2018 Badree bowled 60% of his overs in the phase, comfortably the most by any spinner in T20 history. He bowled so often in the phase simply because he was so good there, boasting a superb economy rate of 6.08 and a healthy strike rate of 22.9.
Badree’s brilliant record in the Powerplay was founded on a unique, but straightforward, method of bowling flat and straight at a good pace. ‘Whenever we have a bowling meeting my plan is always the same,’ recalled Badree. ‘I tried to bowl wicket to wicket on a good length when the batsman can’t get under the ball. It doesn’t matter if it is a right-hander or a left-hander, I target leg stump on a good length.’
With only two fielders permitted outside the 30-yard circle Badree’s options were limited. ‘In the Powerplay of course there were only two fielders out so I had to be wicket to wicket and there was very little room for experimenting in terms of length.’ His method was simple but the basic combination of challenging the stumps and a hint of spin in either direction made attacking him a hazardous task.
‘He knows his game and sticks to his plans,’ said Phil Simmons who coached the West Indies to the T20 World Cup in 2016. ‘I’ve seen him taken apart but the majority of times he wins the battle. He knows his target, he bowls wicket to wicket with the new ball and it’s hard to get him away consistently. He knew exactly what he wanted to do in those three overs and he just came up and he did it. It was unbelievable.’
Spinners who looked to turn the ball a long way often struggled in the Powerplay because gripping the hard new ball and extracting purchase from the pitch was difficult. So, paradoxically, not spinning the ball much was central to Badree’s success. With an emphasis on maintaining a tight line so that he could attack the stumps and force the batsmen to hit to his boundary fielders at midwicket and long on, less spin – rather than more spin – was preferable. Badree had four deliveries – the leg break, googly, slider and flipper – but none of them spun far. His primary mode of attack was to push the ball through and get it to skid on. ‘He didn’t really turn the ball,’ remembered Ganga, his Trinidad and Tobago captain. ‘The ball skidded on because it was new.’
Badree’s role in the Powerplay was enhanced by most opening batsmen being unused to facing spin. Ganga, who first used Badree as an opening bowler in 50-over cricket and then translated that to T20, recognised that ‘openers were always expecting two fast bowlers to open the bowling’. Many T20 openers were big, muscular players who relied largely on natural strength rather than the nimble footwork and timing that was required against the slower bowlers. ‘Opening batsmen typically were not accustomed to facing spin bowlers as much as pace initially,’ said Badree. ‘They would have been accustomed to fast bowlers. So immediately getting a spinner on up front was a novelty back then.’
‘I’ve faced seamers most of my life opening the batting,’ explained the New Zealand opening batsman Martin Guptill. ‘You can’t just get into one-pace hitting [against spin]. You’ve got to keep changing, keep adapting to different bowlers. Over in the Caribbean, it seems that a lot of teams open with a spinner, and it’s quite a good tactical ploy.’
Badree’s success in the first six overs drove more teams to bowl spin at the start. The proportion of overs bowled by spinners in the Powerplay increased from 6% in 2006 to 25% by 2018.
While many of these overs were bowled by specialists like Badree, the late 2000s also gave rise to a new phenomenon: part-time spin bowlers bowling the very first over of the innings.
The fielding team recognised that opening batsmen very rarely took risks in the opening over of the match and the first over represented an opportunity to squeeze six balls of a lower quality bowler in. It was a trend popularised by Rajasthan Royals in the 2009 IPL when they regularly opened the bowling with Yusuf Pathan’s part-time off spin. Other occasional bowlers, like Faf du Plessis at Lancashire and Will Smith at Durham, mimicked the tactic of opening the bowling. These bowlers succeeded by bowling flat, fast and full – firing the ball in at the feet of the batsmen who were unwilling to take a risk. The benefit of this tactic went beyond the frugality of the opening over; it also gave the fielding team wriggle room with their frontline bowlers, enabling them to protect against one of them having a bad day. It was a curious phenomenon that encapsulated the tactical anarchy of T20 with the opposition’s best batsmen starting their innings against one of the fielding team’s weakest bowlers despite only two fielders being permitted outside the circle: a phoney war before the stronger bowlers were introduced.
As opening batsmen became more familiar with facing spin bowlers in the Powerplay, Badree managed to stay ahead of the game by closely analysing opposition batsmen, preparing for games as he might one of his PE lessons.
‘I planned, I analysed batsmen using footage. I looked at their strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes with the analyst but sometimes of my own accord. I think that is an important part of the modern game.’ Badree’s pre-match analysis was made easier by him being a
ble to predict whom he would be bowling to, a benefit not afforded to spinners who operated through the middle overs.
The combination of Badree’s erudite perspective and his exceptional skill allowed him to succeed in a fast-evolving game. Bowling in the Powerplay was a treacherous business with only two fielders outside the 30-yard circle and batsmen looking to maximise the benefit of the fielding restrictions. Yet despite these severe challenges he thrived in the role for more than a decade.
Badree mostly bowled three overs in the Powerplay and finished his fourth by the middle of the innings. In this regard Badree assumed the role of a classical fast bowler and in doing so underlined how original thinkers and pioneering players could shape a sport in its nascent years.
Stricter enforcement of chucking laws on doosra bowlers in 2015 ushered in a new age of spin bowling. With finger spinners unable to turn the ball both ways as easily or as often, the spotlight moved on to those that could: the wrist spinners. ‘I think it [the chucking clampdown] has helped wrist spinners,’ said Badree. ‘It has ruled out a few bowlers. Therefore it means there are more opportunities for others.’
Wrist spin had always been a potent bowling style in T20. Mushtaq Ahmed had great success in the early years of the Twenty20 Cup in England before the effervescent Pakistani Shahid Afridi took the international format by storm. The leg-spin masters, the great Australian Shane Warne and Indian Anil Kumble, also enjoyed triumphs in the first few seasons of the IPL. But it was Badree’s effectiveness in the Powerplay that heralded a change in the game.
Until Badree leg spin had been viewed almost exclusively as an attacking weapon. He showed that by spinning the ball less, leg-spinners could maintain greater accuracy of their lines and lengths which, coupled with a flatter trajectory and faster speeds, exerted control over batsmen. He lent control to the art of wrist spin that few believed was possible.
