| Why is England not producing quality spinners
Spin bowling is one of the most fascinating aspects of cricket. Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne and controversial Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan are constantly putting batsman in a spin with deliveries like googlies, doosras, back-spinners, flippers, sliders and many other variations.
Spin bowlers are seen as wicket-taking machines and a test team without at least one quality spinner looks toothless. You will hear people calling the art of spin bowling as ‘slow bowling’, but do not be fooled by this statement. The art of spinning is not a gentle art because great spinners bowl with unanticipated speeds, skilful aggression and with a intelligent brain to trick batsmen. It is normal for a test side to go into a match with at least one genuine spinner because spinners give variety to an attack. For example if the seamers are finding assistance from a damp/green pitch, it will be a clever ploy by the captain to have a fast bowler at one end and a spinner at the other end. This can pay dividends because the batsman can find it hard to change from playing a fast bowler who his hurtling down 85mph and then facing a spin bowler who is turning the ball at around 45-50mph. Spinners can also be helpful to the fast bowlers because spinners don’t have long run-ups and don’t necessary tire themselves by trying to bowl fast, this allows them to bowl longer spells. Spinners bowling long spells can give a fast bowler much needed rest after they finish bowling.
When you ask a cricket fan to name the best spinners of the world he will probably name Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Anil Kumble, Danish Kaneria and Daniel Vettori. Rarely will a cricket fan mention of any English spinners as the best in the world. The best spin bowler in England today is left-arm finger spinner Ashley Giles. Even though Ashley Giles is a regular member of the English team it would be hard to believe he would be able to break into any other major side in cricket today. What is preventing England from producing a world class spinner?
Most international cricket players have become so skilful and talented is because they have been improving their skills whilst they were having fun playing cricket in the park or in the West Indies by playing beach cricket. A person who has been playing from a early age would normally have a head-start over a person who has just started playing the game few years back, this would explain why Australia produce better players than England due to more focus on cricket at Australian schools compared to English equivalents. When a child is playing in a park you would normally see him bowling fast than bowling spin. This is because concrete surfaces do not provide spinners much assistance and thus the bowler is left in tears because he is smashed all over the place, this is not great confidence booster to a child who would one day want to be a ‘leggie’.
Terry Jenner, spinning legend Shane Warne’s mentor said he was very disappointed with the young English spinners, he even said England will never unearth a spin bowler like Shane Warne. He said this because he believes the spinners are not working hard enough and he was frustrated that the young English bowlers are trying to learn new deliveries to soon before they have developed a good turning leg break. The reason that Shane Warne has so many test wickets is because of his slider-the delivery which does not spin and just goes straight on. The success of the slider is aided because he bowls his leg break very well thus meaning that the slider proves a large variation from his stock leg spinner. This is why a spinner must learn to master art of a big turning leg break first. Australian leg spinner who was once the world record test wicket taker, Riche Benaud said if a wrist spinner wants to be successful he must bowl the big turning leg break 90% of the time and the other 10% of variations. Wrist spinners normally mature later but sadly in England if you are not playing top level cricket at 16 and haven’t made it by 18 you can find yourself in no-man's land. This is why England is missing out unearthing a Shane Warne. But Terry Jenner also blamed the counties who seem unwilling to give time to players, who are bound to be hit for a few runs when they first start out.
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Thank you for reading my article. This is my first article on WAT. I would like be given some comments about my article because it will help me improve my articles in the future.
Thank you, Waseem Khalifa.
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01-09-2005, 09:58 PM
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