Having watched relentless frenetic T20 cricket for three weeks,I thought I would watch some Test cricket and allow its beautiful,lazy rhythm to lull me to sleep. I needed to,the incessant action was keeping me awake. Instead,I chanced upon Shane Shillingford bowling some really eye-catching off-spin. He was getting the ball to kick off the surface and got really good players of spin in Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke caught high off the bat. It helped,too,that two of my favourite broadcasters,Tony Cozier and Michael Holding,were on air.
One obvious reason is that modern bats deposit anything that is tossed up into the stands. For long I have worried about short boundaries but I barely see any small sixes these days. More sixes have hit the concrete than the boundary rope. It could be of course that free of the worry of being caught in the deep (courtesy the boundary distances),batsmen are actually hitting the ball better. But it doesnt dilute the argument that T20 is best played with long boundaries.
The other factor is the preponderance of right-handers. There are a lot of left-handers around the world but in the IPL,only two of the top-ten run-getters bat left-handed Chris Gayle and Jesse Ryder breaking the mould. It gets a little better if you expand the base but still it is only nine out of the top thirty. Now this works on the assumption that right-arm off-spinners cannot bowl to attacking right-hand batsmen,and I hope there are some young bowlers out there who want to vigorously contest that.
Also worrisome is the fact that there are few classical off-spinners around. Among those at the IPL you have Muralitharan,Ashwin,Marlon Samuels and Sunil Narine,none of whom would fit that bill. Go further and you are stuck. Johan Botha and Harbhajan Singh and then the part-timers. It would seem that if you want to watch off-break bowling you need to look beyond T20 cricket.
On the other hand,every team has a left-arm spinner and some are willing to play two. And while there are some whose actions suggest they studied angles in high school geometry rather than straight lines,there are others who are looking very acceptable and impressive. (Why cant more spinners possess the beauty of Murali Kartiks bowling action!)
Left-arm spinner: Everyones got one in the tournament
But quality of actions apart,the left-arm spinner has become,like rice in a South Indian thali,an integral part of the offering. Compared to the drought in off-spinners,we have seen Jadeja and Jakati (CSK),Appanna and Vettori (RCB),Ojha (MI),Shakib and Abdullah (KKR),Chavan and Hogg (RR),Kartik (PW),Nadeem,Roelof van der Merve and Negi (DD),Ankit Sharma (DC),Bhargav Bhatt and Bipul Sharma (Kings Xl). Only Hogg out of those bowls the chinaman variety (talking of which,not a player in the league has picked his wrong un) which in itself has baffled me. Maybe someone can explain to me one day why more young men dont bowl left-arm wrist spin.
It must worry Indian selectors,too,that only three of the top-ten wicket-takers and,just as worryingly,only four of the top-ten run-getters (and eight of the top-twenty) are Indians. It would be easy to explain that away by saying that the overseas players are among the worlds best,but if the IPL has to develop local talent,we should start seeing some new names soon. In earlier editions,we saw Ambati Rayudu,Saurabh Tiwari and Paul Valthaty forcing you to look at them,but neither of those is likely to break into the Indian limited overs team in the immediate future.
There is another month to go. I hope I can see much more of Appanna and Nadeem,Rahul Sharma and Ashok Dinda,but I have given up looking for an off-spinner unless Harbhajan Singh goes back to his roots.
