A tide in sore need of turning

Derek Underwood’s ascent to MCC President prompted the Times to run that immortal photo of the match-winning, Ashes-squaring wicket taken by “Deadly” when he trapped John Inverarity leg-before at The Oval 40 years ago. What made it unforgettable was less that Inverarity may well have had as good a case for wrongful dismissal as he has always insisted, but that every fielder bar one is in the frame.

Underwood, understandably, has taken the opportunity to lament the decline of British spin, pledging to do everything in his power to save that endangered species, the left-arm spinner. Mind you, if truth be told, his own brand of left-arm deliveries, which made him the only English slow bowler to take 200 Test wickets, relied more on pace, cut and damp pitches than loop, twirl or devil.

The statistics, on the face of it, are profoundly depressing. In the final Professional Cricketers Association MVP rankings, only six specialist spinners figured in the top 40, and most owed an inordinate debt to their ability as run-makers. The only one to dent the top 25 was Adil Rashid (11th), whose 65 wickets at 31.83 lagged just two behind Steve Harmison atop the first-class lists. In the County Championship MVP chart, only three twirlers made the top 30, and Ian Blackwell’s berth at No. 6 had rather more to do with his 1000-plus runs: after all, for all his parsimony and admirable economy-rate, he was forced to plough through 19 overs for every victim. Rashid tallied more than double the number of bowling points (246.53) gleaned by any rival twirler bar Shaun Udal (127.05). I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that his omission from England’s Indian tour party – and I’ve lost count of how many respected commentators have argued, ludicrously, that the experience would damage him – beggars belief.

We could go on. No homegrown spinner in the Championship, not even Rashid, managed 35 wickets at under 30. We could point to this as evidence of a global trend: look at Australia’s fretful and thus far fruitless attempts to uncover bowlers even half as good as Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill. With Panesar lacking variation and Kaneria all too often failing Pakistan in the fourth innings, the somewhat freakish Ajantha Mendis and possibly India’s Piyush Chawla may be the only contemporary players who have what it takes to rack up figures comparable to Daniel Vettori or Lance Gibbs, let alone Muttiah, Shane and Anil. But let’s stick, for now, with Blighty.

Even if we bypass the obvious disadvantages of a sodden season (and Imran Tahir’s 44 scalps at 16.68 in seven outings for Hampshire and Danish Kaneria’s 40 at 21 for Essex cocked a sizeable snook at that), the reasons for the steep decline in British spin since 1966, when Underwood became the youngest Pom to take 100 wickets in a season, are not unapparent. Ever-heavier and chunkier bats; the dearth of ex-spinners among the ranks of county coaches; the caution instilled in captains by the advent of the two-divisional Championship; the technical advances made by batsmen more accustomed than their forbears to weathering spinners on the Indian subcontinent. Nor can exposure to the best - the game’s niftiest slow men have been regular features of the county landscape over the past decade - have hurt their self-assurance. Facing those of lesser renown has become a bit of a picnic. Those who believe I have overlooked pitches as a factor have presumably forgotten how consistent a force Kaneria has been for Essex, much less the havoc Mushtaq Ahmed wreaked from 2003-07. If you’re good enough you will prosper.

Mushtaq says he wants to work with county spinners because he is convinced there is more raw material there than in his native Pakistan. Hmm. I wonder. Rashid, Sussex’s Ollie Rayner and Hampshire’s Liam Dawson do show distinct promise but it might just be that he is free with the flattery because he is bucking for a well-paid job.

More than ever, spinners, as a species, are now welcomed as light relief from trial by pace. Emboldened by enhanced techniques and surfaces less inclined to wear and tear, batsmen are less inclined to sell themselves cheaply. “A lot of that is the development of Twenty20,” reckons Shaun Udal, who enjoyed something of an Indian summer in helping Middlesex win the Twenty20 Cup. “It’s changed the way the batters play spin. You just get smacked down the ground. In Championship cricket, you don’t get any chance to relax. My first five overs [against Northants] went for 30-odd, and I hadn’t bowled a bad ball.”

Yet it is in the Twenty20 Cup that reasons for cheer can be found. In the competition’s six-year history, the leading wicket-taker, Nayan Doshi, is a spinner; five others feature in the top 10. Spread the field of vision and you might note with interest that of the top six career-economy rates in Twenty20 cricket worldwide, four belong to slow men. In terms of strike-rate, two Pommy leggies, Chris Schofield and Simon Marshall, rank in the top eight. This may have less to do with the bowlers’ artfulness than the fact that the hasty desperation for runs breeds error, but spinners have always preyed on such fallibility.

Nor is there any reason to believe that this shift will not continue. The more Twenty20 games are played – and boy, are we guaranteed more, at all levels – the more the cannier spinners will rise in confidence. But relying on rashness isn’t enough. Unless aspirants broaden their repertoires, master the carrom ball or find other ways to aid the evolution of this mystical art, the transition to five-day sorcerer will remain fraught with difficulty.

It is not left-armers per se that we need, nor off-breakers or leg-breakers. Forget the traditional categories, as Mendis and Murali have done (and the sooner someone offers the former a county contract, the better). What we need are spinners who spin rather than roll, who give it a real tweak, who put revolutions on the ball (Graeme Swann is the only one I have seen since Phil Tufnell to have done so for England at 78rpm rather than 45 or 33). Spinners who, like baseball pitchers, have a proper arsenal of differing deliveries. It’ll hurt, and so it should. Gibbs’ fingers frequently bled, so fiercely did he apply pressure on the seam.

The recipe seems straightforward enough. Ambition, practice, commitment, courage, self-belief, a rhino-like hide and invention: as David Byrne would doubtless put it, same as it ever was.