Yasir Shah: Pakistan's latest match-winning anomaly

It doesn't take long for even the truth to become a cliché. It's obvious that the failings of the Pakistan team, particularly its batsmen, often have their roots in the state of the domestic game - yet this is a line that has been trotted out so endlessly over the past year or so that that it is starting to become a cliché. The inability of Pakistan batsmen to rotate the strike, play wristspin or convert their starts has its foundations in the domestic game. But the national team, for much of its history, has been ruled by the anomalies in the system, not its mass products.

Right now this is especially true of the bowling: the top tier of Pakistan bowling exists almost in isolation from all that is happening below it. Pakistan went into the World Cup without their best quartet from this generation and yet still seemed to have enough pace to trouble nearly everyone. This in an era where the domestic game is dominated by wicket-to-wicket medium-pacers. It's the anomalies that have risen to the top.

This is true of Yasir Shah.

Pakistan like to claim credit for the revival of legspin, yet their arsenal of legspinners is negligible. In the 2014-15 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy Gold League only one of the top 50 wicket-takers was a legspinner. For comparison, that's the same number as in the 2014 County Championship, and fewer than what the Sheffield Shield, Ranji Trophy and the premier first-class competitions in New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies had last season. The rise of Usama Mir, Shahzaib Ahmed and perhaps Karamat Ali might change that but the current situation in the legspin department is not great, and that helps explain why Pakistan batsmen appear to react the same way upon seeing a wristspinner as vampires do to a cross.

In a country so obsessed with aggression, this does not seem logical. After all, with the exception of putting a slip in even when there is no need for it, nothing warms the hearts of those who believe in the cult of aggression quite like having a legspinner in the XI. However, in Pakistan, a cricket fraternity infatuated by the sight of a legspinner can't seem to spot or develop one.

But right now, one anomaly might be enough for Pakistan.

Yasir has in the past ten months gone from an afterthought to a bona fide star. In the second Test against Sri Lanka he became the fastest Pakistan bowler to 50 wickets - and it's not as if he has done it against teams that play spin badly (with the possible exception of Australia).

It's not just the numbers that explain his rise but his method. He has replaced Saeed Ajmal as the soul and the battering ram of the team. Along with Sarfraz Ahmed he has injected adrenaline into a team that looked to have stagnated. And he bowls like he never got the memo that conventional spinners are obsolete. In the era where variety is mistaken for quality, Yasir's modus operandi is refreshingly basic. He does things the old-fashioned way - he bowls legspin with drift, and has the slider up his sleeve in case the batsman starts getting comfortable. He bowls over upon over, spell upon spell, never losing his verve, his smile or his intensity. He doesn't have a repertoire of wrong'uns (apart from the recently developed one - which far too many had clamoured for - that hardly spins back into the right-hander) but rather relies on subtle changes in spin and flight.

Take, for instance, the wicket of Dimuth Karunaratne in the Galle Test. The left-hander had gone down the wicket to four of six balls in Yasir's 22nd over. The 23rd started with him coming down again. Instead of getting to the pitch, as he had done so often in that innings, he was beaten in the flight; the ball didn't spin - it took the outside edge but landed safely. The commentator talked of Yasir winning a battle but not the war. The second ball of the over was shorter, Karunaratne was now camped on the crease; this time the spin was sharp and ended up inducing a fine leg-side take from Sarfraz. The third was tossed up, this time it had both spin and dip. Karunaratne was beaten, Sarfraz wasn't; and the stumping removed the biggest obstacle to Pakistan's first win in Sri Lanka in nine years.

More obviously there was the wicket of Mushfiqur Rahim in the last over of the second day in Mirpur. Each of the first four balls landed on a good length and went away, two of them sharply, none inducing an attacking stroke from Mushfiqur Rahim. The batsman, seemingly, was happy to play out the day. The fifth ball was a little wider and Mushfiqur decided to pounce on it. But suddenly this one dipped in and went straight on. By the time his bat came down, the timber had been disturbed, and Sarfraz - as is his wont - was ready to laugh in the face of the batsman.

Yasir's immaculate control of length allows him to play with the batsman's psyche. Every over is like a game of Russian roulette. There is bound to be one in six that goes straight on, but no one except him knows which one it is. And repeatedly we have seen batsman struggle with that reality. That's the reason why right now about 43% of his wickets have come from bowleds and lbws, a higher percentage than Shane Warne, Stuart MacGill, Anil Kumble, Mushtaq Ahmed or Danish Kaneria had, even if Yasir's Tests are a small a sample size.

There are caveats to his meteoric rise, though. His record thus far is Ashwin-esque - he has yet to play a Test outside Asia, and won't for at least another year, thanks to Pakistan's standing in the international cricket community. And he has been led by Misbah-ul-Haq, a man who has played first-class cricket with him for the last seven years and captained him for the majority of that time, and is considered one of the better captains around for spinners. It will be interesting to see how effective Misbah's successor, whoever he is, can be with Yasir. And we have seen enough spinners recently who burst onto the scene and then faded away as quickly as they came. The story of Devendra Bishoo is one that Pakistan should keep in mind when dealing with Yasir.

But for now Pakistan can celebrate unearthing another leader of their attack.