South Africa's aversion to wrist spin
In the Business Day , Telford Vice says legspinner Imran Tahir will be faced with a South African cricket setup that has been too conservative to accept the creativity of wrist spinners.
Dustin Silgardo
25-Feb-2013
In the Business Day, Telford Vice says legspinner Imran Tahir will be faced with a South African cricket setup that has been too conservative to accept the creativity of wrist spinners.
The last time South Africans took wrist- spin bowling seriously, Guglielmo Marconi was months away from sending radio waves across the Atlantic. The year was 1907, and the wrist-spinners concerned were Bert Vogler, Reggie Schwarz, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White, who went to England with Percy Sherwell’s SA team. That’s right: a Test team from this country that included four leg-spinners. Better than that, they were the stars of the attack, taking 40 of the 51 wickets that SA claimed in the three Tests. Vogler and Faulkner alone accounted for 29 wickets.
Dustin Silgardo is a former sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo