Cricket- The Spinners

The Game Room
1

In an earlier thread I was opining that it was far harder to find a top notch spinner than a top notch seamer. Off the top of my head I came up with a few names and AK84 volunteered that I had missed a couple, which was fair enough.

My original list was:

  1. Warne
  2. Laker
  3. Murali
  4. O’Reilly
  5. Kumble
    6.Vettori
    7.Grimmett
  6. Harbi

The list is in no order of ability, just as I thought of them. Anyway I’m trying to establish a list of spinners that batsmen would prefer not to face. I think one aspect I’m trying to get at is the bowler would be expected to be able to gat a bag of wickets rather than winkle a few batsmen out every match and by longevity in the game get a swag of wickets.

In the above list I think I’d have to drop Vettori (much as I hate to ) and substitute Derek Underwood.

I’m off to do a bit of research and see if I can establish some workable criteria.

Please feel free to contribute and add suggestions or say why those above should not be there. I have three other bowlers who I believe could be included but need to look at a bit more closely.

Just two points if I may:

  1. could we agree that murali does bowl so we don’t have an argument about his action, and,
  2. Preferably players with careers after 1900 as it is often difficult to establish the exact action of earlier bowlers- that is round arm etc. (This one is a suggestion only).
2

Abdul Qadir and at least a couple of Indias spin quartet. How the hell is Wilfred Rhodes not there? And finally, I think Kumble should be removed, he was a v good bowler, but not great, and you always backed yourself against him.

3

And if Harbi means Harbajan Singh, then again no. He is a very good spinner, not a great one and while he has had good matchs especially against the Aussie, he has never been someone relied upon to take wickets.

4

Wilfred Rhodes- his stats aren’t that great for the time he played (around 1900). On uncovered wickets I think you could expect more.

Adbul Qadir averaged almost 33 a wicket.

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Here are Qadir’s stats

Australia 45 wickets, 11 tests
England 82 wickets 16 Tests
India 27 wickets 16 test
Sri Lanka 14 wickets 5 tests
West Indies 42 wickets 10 tests,

Thats 4 wickets per match or more against the best teams of his time. A strike rate of 72. Compared with Vettori, 77,

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It’s very difficult to compare players across eras, too many differences in the nature of the pitches and the opposition. Probably the best way to do it is to pick the players who stood out from their peers. On that basis Abdul Qadir does qualify, he was a match winner who revived legspin. Kumble was not a great spinner of the ball, so often struggled overseas, but 600 wickets at under thirty is a great achievement. He won more matches for India than anyone. Lance Gibbs should also be on the list. 300 wickets at under thirty, while going for less than 2 an over. On unresponsive pitches, especially in the first innings, the spinners job is to contain the opposition.

In the modern era, Murali and Warne are head and shoulders above the rest.

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A quick StatsGuru search on Cricinfo suggests the forgotten man from the list was Hedley Verity - 140 Test wickets at 24, despite his career coinciding with Bradman’s.

Jim Laker has already been mentioned; Tony Lock wasn’t half bad either and Johnny Wardle (who played at the same time) actually has a better average and economy rate than either of them.

Bert Ironmonger has the best Test average of any post-WW1 bowler, though he only played a handful of games.

Others worth considering are Ramadhin (the original mystery bowler), Underwood (a feared spin bowler in a very fallow period for spin bowlers), Ritchie Benaud, Bishan Bedi and Iqbal Qasim.

I don’t think Vettori ranks on the list - he’s a very good all-round performer in all versions of the game, but hardly feared as a wicket-taking spinner. If you simply wanted to get good batsmen out, would you really pick Vettori (or Harbhajan) ahead of Graeme Swann?

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When considering the worth of a spin bowler it can be not so much “how many” wickets but “who and when and for how much”.

With that in mind, Swann certainly ranks among the best of the current crop.

(of course bowlers such as Warne, Murali, Laker. have both the quality, quantity and stinginess. Therein lies true greatness.)

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I’d second Swann.

How about John Emburey? No idea about his statistics, but remember him playing for England a lot in my youth.

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Emburey could be an example of the OP’s contention that great spin bowlers are hard to find. He was good enough to play 64 Tests, and for much of his career he could make a reasonable claim to being the best off-spinner in the world - but his 64 Tests brought only 147 wickets, at an average of over 38 and a strike rate less than one wicket ever 100 balls.

Compare Swann (153 wickets in 36 Tests, average 29, strike rate 58) or Laker (193 wickets in 46 Tests, average 21, strike rate 62) to see the difference between a genuine world-class spin bowler and one who’s merely the best of the journeymen.

Swann’s strike rate is close to Warne/Murali standards, and better than many acknowledged greats from earlier eras. The best strike rate of the lot (among post WW1 spinners who took at least 100 Test wickets) belongs to … Stuart MacGill, whose 208 wickets came in 44 Tests at a rate of one every 54 balls. MacGill, like Wardle, would probably be remembered as a great bowler if his career hadn’t coincided with an even better one.

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Merrick , you could just about read my mind. The three bowlers I thought possibly could go in there were Verity, Arthur Mailey and Leslie O’Brien Fleetwood-Smith (if only for the name).

I was trying to think of a simple formula to establish a bowler who was likely to get a team out rather than chip in for a few wickets and give the pacemen a rest.

In the end I came up with:

a) Ability to get 5 wickets in an innings, and
b) A reasonable average.

I’ll be the first to admit that this has a lot of flaws as it can’t take into account what types of wickets the matches were played on, or the quality of the teams other bowlers. As an example Warne would have a more difficult job getting five wickets in an innings when competing with McGrath and someone like Gillispie or Brett Lee. On the flip Murali could be seen to have far better opportunities because the only quality pace bowler in his side to take the wickets was Vaas (that I can remember).

Using that system the stand out bowlers would be Murali, Grimmett and O’Reilly. They had 5 for percentages of 50%, 56% and 40% and averages between 22 and 24.

Warne would probably poke along next with five wickets/ innings 25% of the time and an average of 25.

Then there is a bit of a log jam with a number of spinners with 5 fors around 25% but averaging around 30 per wicket . This would cover your Gibbs, Saqlain, Kumble, Harbi and Abdul Qadir, MacGill and Mailey.

Strangely enough Verity, Underwood and Laker while economical enough but didn’t get 5 fors that often- especially with Laker and his 19 wickets in one Test.

And poor old Chuck Fleetwood Smith? He doesn’t make the cut but he only played ten Tests and in one of those England scored 900 runs so I can forgive hime. He did get 600 first class wickets at an average of 22.6

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Kumble was in the same position as Murli, he was the only quality bowler in his team for the entirety of his career. As was Vettori since Cairns retired.

Abdul Qadir had Imran and Wasim alongside, while Saqlain had the W;s and Shoaib while Lance Gibbs started with Wes Hall and ended with Holdings and Roberts.

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Iqbal Qasim?:dubious:

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Lance Gibbs didn’t play many tests with Holding and Roberts- they were starting as his career was ending. And Griffith and Hall were gone by 1969, so Gibbs had a long time where the Windies bowling was not sensational.

Merrick, I once asked Peter Burge (Australian batsman of the 60’s) over a beer at the Bookies Club how Benaud compared with Warne. He said Benaud was no where near as good as Warne.

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The paucity of spin talent can be best described by Imran Tahir, who has walked into the Proteas despite never being anywhere near the quality needed to be a Pakistan player. Its like asking someone, can you drive and giving the the controls of an F-1 car if the answer is in the affirmative.

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Couple of Rhodes anecdotes:
He’s bowling to Victor Trumper on a perfect batting track. Trumper is a fantastic batsman in great form, but he still wryly says to Rhodes when he’s at last got to the other end: “Give me five minutes’ peace, Wilfred!”. :slight_smile:

Len Hutton meets Rhodes years after the great man has retired and Wilf comes down to the nets, slips his jacket off and bowls to him for twenty minutes. Hutton later reports that no-one he played against before or since ever made him misread the length as much as Rhodes did.

You have to remember that Rhodes spent a large slice of his career as a batsman - opening with Jack Hobbs and by no means disgracing him.

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One I should probably think of is Hugh tayfield of RSA.

Malacandra- that is one difficulty with trying to rate those players of that era- stats rarely tell the full story. The stats in tests don’t indicate anything extra special but the stories from those players do need to be respected. Trumper himself is an example- he averaged about 40 in tests yet those who played with him often rated him one of the best they had ever seen.

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AK84 - Iqbal Qasim is a case of “which criteria do you pick on?” Based on bowling average and economy rate he comes out top of the Pakistani spinners, based on strike rate and 5-wicket innings not so much.

Saqlain, for example, took 208 wickets in 49 games (strike rate 68), with 13 5-wicket innings, while Iqbal managed only 171 wickets in 50 games (strike rate 76), with 8 5-wicket innings. But Qasim’s bowling average is significantly better (28.1 vs 29.8).

Saqlain, incidentally, beats out Qadir on both average and strike rate - but I don’t think opposing batsmen ever feared Saqlain (let alone Qasim) the way some of them undoubtedly feared Qadir.

Cicero - Interesting analysis. As you point out, 5-wicket innings flatter good bowlers in an otherwise mediocre attack (Laker for example at various times player with Trueman, Tyson, Statham, Bedser, Lock and Wardle, all of whom were more than capable of getting 5 wickets themselves). It also favours the risk-taking bowlers who can get a hatful of wickets when things are right (and a pasting when they’re wrong). That’s why I was looking at strike rates.

I did a StatsGuru seach for post-WW1 spin bowlers who took 100 Test wickets. 5 bowlers made the top 10 for both average and strike rate - Murali, Warne, Laker, Wardle and Grimmett.

O’Reilly is an interesting case - while he took a lot of wickets (144 in only 27 games) at a very good average, he must have bowled a lot of overs because his strike rate is only just below 70 - which slots him in between Harbhajan and Monty Panesar!

This underlines how hard it is to compare statistics across the eras. Strike rates seem to have come down in the modern game (Paul Adams, who is no-one’s idea of an all-time great, has a better strike rate than Grimmett or O’Reilly). Economy rates, on the other hand, have gone up.

I can agree with Burge about Benaud vs Warne. I threw out Benaud’s name because he has a more-than-decent record (250 wickets at 27) and was regarded as one of the best of his era. But Warne and Murali are two of the best of all time - not only are they close to the top of any statistic you choose to rank, but they maintained that performance for very long careers, often on hard-wearing modern pitches that go on favouring the batsman into the fouth innings.

Then again, we can only speculate on what numbers Laker or O’Reilly would have put up if they’d played 100 Tests in the modern era.

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Merrick- could you link to your StatsGuru search? Your skills with cricinfo are probably far better than mine.

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Try this