Change masters

From S. Giridhar, India
How often have we heard the expression, “Here comes ... the man with the golden arm” and even the most despondent supporter of the fielding team that has been defied for hours by the batsmen perks up with hope! What kind of legerdemain does this occasional bowler consistently serve up that over the years the change bowler has acquired an almost Robin Hood kind of charm? How many matches have they simply turned on the head because they wobbled the ball or spun the ball when the more accomplished comrade had almost thrown in the towel?

Recently, as South Africa against all odds ran down a target of 414 runs on the last two days of a Test, there were three big partnerships, each of them inexorably taking the match further and further away from Ricky Ponting and Australia. As I ran my eyes down the bowling column I saw Andrew Symonds had not bowled a ball and neither had Simon Katich. Would it have made a difference?

I don’t want to use Australia’s travails to base my story but as I cast my mind back for more instances of matches lost because the golden arm men were absent I cannot but stumble upon two significant India-Australia matches.

The first and most obvious one is the greatest comeback win ever in cricket history. Kolkata, March 2001 … India in their second innings, following on, are 200 for 4, down and out for the count. VVS Laxman is joined at the crease by Rahul Dravid. How well each one of us knows this piece of our history! I recall this only to demonstrate that Steve Waugh too had no change bowlers with golden arms at his disposal while Dravid and Laxman constructed the most monumental of partnerships. Steve had only his twin Mark and Ponting to relieve his main bowlers. By no stretch of imagination do either Mark Waugh or Ponting qualify as true change bowlers. Maybe for a change of ends, maybe when a match is petering out into a draw, but certainly not bowlers who will change the course of the game with the magic ball!

And the second example from India v Australia - this time it is Adelaide in December 2003. India in the first innings on their knees at some 180 for 4, miles behind a mammoth Aussie first-innings score. Dravid and Laxman get together and again proceed to put together such a long huge partnership that it seems they have been batting since Kolkata. What does Steve Waugh have at hand this time as change bowlers to break this pair? Mark again and Simon Katich, who with his left-arm chinaman stuff is different.

And having set the table so to speak, let us look at some of the occasional bowlers who have done enough to be spoken of as change bowlers who do not merely provide respite to the main bowlers but produce the golden ball regularly. Do I begin with the Virender Sehwag - Sachin Tendulkar - Sourav Ganguly trio? No rather let me begin with a chap who must be about 63 years today. Old timers reading this will immediately realise that I am talking of that quintessential man with the golden arm, Doug Walters. Walters, one of Australia’s best batsmen in the 60s and 70s, played over 70 Tests and was regularly called upon by all his captains – from Bob Simpson to Bill Lawry to Ian Chappell – every time they faced a road block. He would run his 10-12 paces and produce almost with predictable regularity the away-swinger or the in-dipper to break partnerships. The record books say that he took 49 wickets this way. Many changed the course of the match. If one averages out his bowling stats it shows that Walters bowled only around eight overs in a match and got a wicket for every 11 overs bowled.

If you allow me to use Walters as a bench mark, I can then set some kind of criteria and identify other men who can claim membership in this 'hall of golden arm' fame. So shall we look for the change bowler who has not bowled more than 13 overs in a match on an average and whose strike-rate is not poorer than a wicket for every 15 overs bowled? So we must consciously exclude from our list cricketers who are in the genre of batting al-rounder and restrict our search only to the genuine change bowler.

I am not going to begin this by trawling through statistics but would rather let my memory help me. I will recall the names of all those batsmen who in my view (time, memory, loyalty, emotion - all these will contribute to my selection) probably are change bowlers and not more than that. How do they measure up to the “Walters Gold Standard for Change Bowlers”? My mind reels out these names:

Mudassar Nazar from Pakistan – who can forget the furtive way in which he ran up to bowl medium pace, ball clasped in both hands looking almost stealthily at mid-off and mid-on as he began his run-up; Nathan Astle and Craig McMillan from New Zealand; Paul Collingwood from England; Chris Gayle, Viv Richards, and Larry Gomes from West Indies; Symonds, Michael Clarke and Katich from Australia; Aravinda de Silva from Sri Lanka and of course Ganguly, Sehwag and Tendulkar from India. Enough on the plate for some study! Here are the numbers against these gentlemen. Gritty to good to great to greatest batsman, all in this list!

Doug Walters, 74, 3295, 7.4, 49, Right-arm medium, 11.2 Michael Clarke, 41, 1294, 5.3, 18, Left-arm slow, 12.0 Virender Sehwag, 65, 2323 6.0, 29, Right-arm offspin, 13.4 Andrew Symonds, 24, 2010, 14.0, 24, Right-arm medium & offspin, 14.0 Chris Gayle, 74, 5867, 13.2, 66, Right-arm offspin, 14.8 Craig McMillan, 55, 2502, 7.6, 28, Right-arm medium, 14.9 Aravinda de Silva, 93, 2595, 4.7, 29, Right-arm offspin, 14.9 Mudassar Nazar, 76, 5967, 13.1, 66, Right-arm medium, 15.1 Paul Collingwood, 40, 1287, 5.4, 14, Right-arm medium, 15.3 Sachin Tendulkar, 155, 3880, 4.2, 42, Right-arm everything, 15.4 Sourav Ganguly, 113, 3117, 4.6, 32, Right-arm medium, 16.2 Nathan Astle, 81, 5688, 11.7, 51, Right-arm medium, 18.6 Larry Gomes, 60, 2401, 6.7, 15, Right-arm offspin, 26.7 Viv Richards, 121, 5170, 7.1, 32, Right-arm offspin, 26.9

A look at the bowling stats of these gentlemen exposes the error that I made in including Richards and Gomes in the list. Sorry, but if they are going to take a wicket for every 26 or 28 overs bowled it means that their team waited a very long time for their golden arm to show up! So out they go.

I am also tempted to drop Astle from the list because he too takes around 19 overs to produce a wicket but since he has over 50Ttest wickets I think he is doing something that my analysis is missing. So he retains his place in my pantheon of change bowlers with golden arms.

While doing all this, we must also be vigilant to ensure that bowlers who are bordering on being regular bowlers do not sneak into this exclusive club of change bowlers. Symonds at 14 overs per match I think is dangerously close to being viewed as a regular bowling option rather than as a change bowler but let us not be too strict with him and include him in this list. Do you feel good Mr. Symonds or do you feel offended that I clubbed you with the change bowlers?

Oh by the way I looked up the numbers for Simon Katich and he seems to be doing exceedingly well and may well end up on top of the heap by the time he puts his cricket kit away. His strike-rate is right at the top but he has only 13 wickets to show so far. That will surely change but for that he will need another captain, not the current one! I can see why Ian Chappell and the brigade of Aussie experts were baffled at the extremely limited use of Katich as a change bowling option during Australia's recent visit to India.

Please don’t tell me that I have missed out more obvious names because I know that already! I deliberately waded into this piece leading from memory and only validated those names against certain criteria.

For instance surely I ought to find a better representative than Collingwood for England in this list! Jog your respective memories and pull out worthier names. Like my cousin Babu, an avid follower of cricket for the past 55 years, who was peeping over my shoulder as I typed this article kept insisting that I must add Chris Harris and Greg Chappell to this list!

In fact, not disheartened by the fact that I have not added those name,s Babu is now hissing in my ear that I must explore and validate his hypothesis that good change bowlers make the best thinkers and the best vice-captains in cricket history. Now that is something I will leave to someone else.

I am only certain about one thing. Change bowlers produce the magic ball because they are batsmen, think like batsmen and when they get the ball in their hand they outwit the batsman using a batting brain. Howzat?