9 mystery spinners through the ages

9. Sunil Narine

Sunil Narine announced his arrival in the international cricket with a devastating 6-wicket haul

Sunil Narine a mystery spinner, caught the eyes of the West Indies selectors by taking all ten wickets in a trial match and received a call up to the Trinidad & Tobago squad in January 2009. With umpteen tricks up his sleeve, Narine announced his arrival in the international cricket in 2011 and he led West Indies to their maiden T20 world cup title in 2012 with his versatile assortment of carrom balls, knuckle balls, and skidders.

He was one of the chief architects of the Kolkata Knight Riders' two title victories in 2012 and 2014 and he continued to prosper in the shortest format of the game for his national team as well. However, he didn’t do to well in the Tests and he was left to ply his trade in the shorter formats.

Narine ran into serious trouble with his bowling action in the Champions League Twenty20 2014 and he was banned for the final under controversial circumstances. Then another setback came when Narine was withdrawn from the West Indies squad, who were due to play the hosts in a limited-overs series of five ODIs and a T20 in October that year.

The bowler himself withdrew from the squad named for the 2015 World Cup, citing the need to keep working on his bowling action and lost a year due to that. Though he made a comeback toward the end of November, he again was called for a suspect action.

After remodeling the action, the bowler marked his return in IPL 2016 and performed decently. He also earned a recall to the national side for the tri-series featuring South Africa, Australia, and West Indies and he didn’t disappoint.

Does he still have the same sort of enigma with this remodeled action? the question started doing the rounds and he certainly made a strong statement by taking 6 wickets against South Africa which helped West Indies clinch a 4-wicket victory.