The beautiful art of leg-spin

Shane Warne was the greatest exponent of the art of leg spin

To watch Shane Warne bowl was to watch Leonardo da Vinci paint. A slow measured run up to the crease, as if sizing up the batsman and a simultaneous tossing up of the cherry in hands, like a shrewd sorcerer planning his next move. It was followed up by a classic side-on action and out came a ball which made the best of the batsmen look clueless. The greatest strength of Shane Warne was not having all the leg-spinning variations in his armoury, but knowing how to use them differently.

And if you want to understand and appreciate that art, watch an over of Shane Warne, here , here and countless other clips on youtube after reading this article.

The first and most crucial ingredient is to have all the variations and gain control over them. The stock ball of a leg-spinner is a leg-break, a ball that turns away from a right-hander. The grip of the ball is between the index finger and the middle finger with the other two fingers turned in. When the arm rolls in the action, the ring finger provides the spin from right to left. An important aspect here is that back of the hand faces the bowler which helps ensure more spin on the ball. Shane Warne and many other leg-spinners start off their spell with this stock delivery to get the rhythm going.

The classic ball of the century to Mike Gatting that turned from outside leg was an excellent leg-break that got etched in the history forever. What made it different from all the leg-breaks was that it drifted and dipped and then spun back so much from outside the leg-stump that it hit the top of the off-stump. If a leg-break is bowled too often outside the off, it becomes too predictable for the batsman to dispatch it in the backward square region.

The top-spinner of leggie doesn’t turn but comes straight, often trapping the batsmen looking for a leg-break LBW. The grip is similar to the leg-break, with the ball slotted between the index and the middle finger. But the back of the hand here faces the batsmen which cuts down the spin of the ball. Bhagwat Chandrasekhar was a master at bowling vicious top-spinners, especially in the famous spell of 6/38 at the Oval in 1971 that handed India its first series victory in 1971.

The deceiving ball of the leg-spinner is the wrong-un or googly. This cunning variation turns the other way and comes back into the right-hand batsman. The release of the ball changes here while the grip remains the same as in a leg-break or a top-spinner. The back of the hand faces the fine-leg fielder and the balls comes out from the back of the hand. And this delivery can often stump the left-hander who fails to read the hand and steps out to hit the ball over long-on, completely missing the line of the ball that turns away and foxes him.

The googly becomes more dangerous when the bowler’s action makes it extremely difficult to separate the leg-break from the googly. One such bowler was Bill O’ Reilly in the Bradman-era who bowled the wrong-uns indiscernibly and troubled Englishmen along with his bowling partner Clarie Grimmett, who is widely believed as the developer of the flipper.

The flipper is a little easier to read from the hand, as it comes from under the hand with the thumb providing the ‘click’ to the ball at the time of action. What ensues is a ball that stays low and skids on the batsmen who is not expecting the ball to come at such quick pace, often bagging bowled and LBWs.

It is a instant memory to connect flippers with Daryl Cullinan, who could never get the better of Warne’s flippers. Though Warne got him out only on 4 occasions, but the stay at the crease for Cullinan was a struggle for everyone to see. The close bat-pads would surround him like a sea when Warne came on to deliver a plethora of spinning cannons at him, the most venomous of them being a flipper.

The slider is the toughest of them to master as per Warne, who says it took him years to master the ball. The slider is bowled with the palm facing the batsman. The ball goes on without much bounce and it has an element of backspin along with the sidespin. The 2005 Ashes saw the dismissal of Ian Bell with a slider, a ball that trapped him LBW and famously called as ‘the slider to end all sliders’.

The current crop of leg-spinners like Piyush Chawla and Rahul Sharma fell by the wayside, not because they lacked the basic variations of leg-break, googly and top-spinners but because they never used to out-think the batsmen by using the right ball at the right time. It was something which made the lesser armoured bowlers like Anil Kumble use presence of mind and an immense control over flight of the ball to run through batting orders.

The recently concluded T20 World Cup was a tremendous success for the dwindling art of leg-spin with Tahir, Mishra and Badree stealing the limelight. Increasingly, captains have lost trust in playing a leg-spinner in the shorter versions of the game. When a leg-spinner loses the confidence to pitch the ball up, he is a liked a painter whose hands have been tied up. That is exactly what these men did differently in Bangaladesh – they pitched the ball up more, lured the batsmen to hit over the top and bagged a handful of stumping dismissals in the tournament. And the captain plays a big role in making a wrist spinner bowl to his potential. The success of Abdul Qadir in the 1970s had a lot to do with how Imran Khan handled him.

After Shane Warne took the baton from Qadir, he raised the standards for leg-spin bowling. It has always been an art in times of adversity, when one or two saviours in evety generations have ensured that the art survives in cricket. After Warne’s retirement, the art faces the question of survival in the shorter format yet again, with captains turning to off-spinners who control the leak of runs. The Tahirs and Mishras of the world need to step up here.

Without magical leg-spinners, the game of cricket is like a woman without jewellery.