Spin it to win it

Is there a tougher role in Test cricket than that of the spin bowler? Just think about it. Whereas there are usually at least six specialist batsmen in every side, and fast bowlers operate in packs of three or four, the poor old spinner is usually expected to rub along as a one-man band. And then there's the waiting. Who else has to hang around until the fourth or fifth day for pitch conditions to be at their best for him? Who else then has the rest of the dressing room looking to him to capitalise on the winning position they have created? No other discipline provides such a stark measure of success and failure as the spinner's endgame.

Even the game's greatest spinners have felt oppressed by the harsh and lonely position of the fourth-innings finisher. Though the showman in Shane Warne loved the chance for glory, he confessed that the fourth night of a Test match could be an anxious one as he reviewed plans for bowling out the opposition the next day. "First of all there were your own expectations," he once said. "You're a spin bowler on the last day, you've got 300 on the board, and you've got to bowl them out. Then there's everyone else's expectations. Your team-mates, the public, they just think you're going to do it because you've done it before. It's not quite that easy."

And Warne was lucky. Australia's batting was so strong that he usually had plenty of runs to work with. Usually he had enough leeway to complete the job. Other spinners have not been so lucky. During the recent series against England Muttiah Muralitharan, after he had just overtaken Warne as the leading Test wicket-taker, publicly bemoaned the fact that Sri Lanka so regularly looked to him to win the game. "It will be easy for me if we had another spinner to share the job," he said.

Murali knows better than most that taking wickets in the first innings only heightens expectations that he can win the game with another stellar performance in the second. In the first Test against England at Kandy, Murali took six first-innings wickets but struggled badly on the final day to clinch victory. He got through 31 overs, and five changes of ends, before taking his first wicket. Ultimately, he and Sri Lanka were successful but it was an arduous and uncomfortable day.

An analysis of Murali's fourth-innings performances certainly suggests that he needs plenty of runs, and time, to work with. Every time he has bowled in defence of a fourth-innings target of 250 or fewer, Sri Lanka have lost.

Nothing is guaranteed to raise a spinner's stress levels like a tight finish, and fifth-day insecurity may well have played its part in Brad Hogg's outburst during the notorious recent sledge-fest against India at Sydney. As the only specialist spinner in Australia's team, Hogg was under pressure to win the game for his side (something he had never done before) and was meeting resistance from Mahendra Dhoni and Anil Kumble when he allegedly said: "I'm looking forward to running through you bastards." Perhaps he was trying to convince himself that he could run through them, but if so it did not work. Hogg finished wicketless and was upstaged by the part-time spinners Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke.

Ashley Giles, who was often England's only spinner between 2001 and 2005, admits that he found the weight of fourth-innings expectation onerous. "It does get to you," he told TWC. "I think it gets to everyone. If the lads see one ball turn a lot there's a temptation for someone to say, 'You'll get eight-for!' The trick is to focus on the process and not on trying to take a wicket every ball. This comes with experience and time. Generally, the more experienced you are, the more consistent your bowling action and the more mature you are as a person. The mental pressure can disrupt your game."

Like many spinners, it took Giles several years to savour the satisfaction of bowling his country to victory in the fourth innings with successive five-fors against West Indies at Lord's and Edgbaston in 2004. How did it feel? "It felt good. I thought, 'This is what I do. It's what I'm here to do.' But it is ridiculous really, because there are five men in an attack. Seamers don't go through the same sort of thing. But then you are often on your own."

Aside from that pair of match-winning performances, Giles never took more than two wickets in any fourth innings. His most frustrating experience came at Old Trafford in 2005, when Australia battled through the final day for a nerve-jangling draw secured with their last pair at the crease. The pitch didn't offer Giles as much assistance as he had hoped for, but he didn't bowl well either. He finished wicketless. "The longer the wait for a wicket goes on, the harder things can get," he said. "The danger is, you try and force the matter."

The burden has now passed to Monty Panesar as England's leading spinner. His best fourth-innings effort to date came at Old Trafford last year, when he plugged away for more than 50 overs to break down the resistance of West Indies and deliver probably the most satisfying win of his career. That performance would also have gone some way towards erasing memories of his inability to lead the victory charge at Mumbai in 2005-06, when he was outshone by the wilier Shaun Udal.

During his career, Giles took an unfair amount criticism for his perceived shortcomings as a match-winning bowler and found much of it hard to take. He would have received a more sympathetic hearing from every other Test spinner who has been in a similar position. Richie Benaud for one. The Lord's Test of 1953 is remembered for the famous rearguard action of Willie Watson and Trevor Bailey but their delight was the despair of the young Benaud, who was playing in only his second Ashes Test. In his book, Way of Cricket, published nine years later, Benaud conceded the situation had got to him.

He recalled dismissing Denis Compton early on the fifth day to leave England in dire trouble at four down. "The pitch was wearing and this was the only ball I dropped in the right spot all day ... if I had known then what I know today about bowling legbreaks and wrong'uns, I think they [Watson and Bailey] would have found it harder. It just shows that several years of solid apprenticeship are required to produce a spin bowler."

Benaud's memory was actually at fault here; it was Bill Johnston who dismissed Compton. Benaud's only wicket of the day was that of Freddie Brown, late on, when the game was already safe for England. Fortunately for the Benaud franchise, his name is now associated with a more glorious last-day effort at Old Trafford in 1961 when, as captain, he pulled the game out of the fire with four wickets inside 20 minutes after switching to bowl round the wicket; in all, England lost nine for 51 and with them the Ashes. Such last-gasp heroics, with runs or time (or both) running out, provide some of cricket's most cherished memories. Remember Derek Underwood and Phil Tufnell whipping out the Aussies at The Oval in 1968 and 1997?

Such occasions inevitably remain rare, although the speed of the modern game means that there are more positive results, and therefore more fourth-innings denouements, than there used to be. Benaud took 248 wickets in 63 Tests but on only one other occasion - at Calcutta in 1956-57 - did he take five wickets in a fourth innings. Overall, his record of 20 fourth-innings wickets at 32.6 each is modest compared with many other spin greats. Historically, many top-flight spinners fall into two categories.

On the one hand there are the highly strung, highly sensitive types; on the other, the aggressive confrontationalists. The former might include Panesar, Tufnell and Colin Blythe. The latter would include Warne, Jim Laker, Phil Edmonds, Abdul Qadir, Stuart MacGill and Harbhajan Singh. But the pressures might be the same for both groups: the loneliness of the long-distance spinner.

Blythe, among England's finest left-arm spinners, found the emotional strain of Test cricket almost too much to bear and it was perhaps no coincidence that some of his most disappointing displays were when the pressure was greatest. In his short career he had a history of failing in the fourth innings: 41 wicketless overs at Adelaide 1901-02, one wicket in 28 overs at Johannesburg 1905-06, one wicket at Sydney in 1907-08, and two at Cape Town in 1909-10.

England should have won three of these games; in the event, they lost all four. Hardly surprising, perhaps, that Blythe withdrew from the Lord's Test of 1909 due - according to a doctor's note - to the "strain on his nervous system caused by playing in a Test match". As Giles implies, the spinner seems to be the fall guy in a way fast men are not. Certainly, many great fourth-innings run chases were written in the blood of failed spinners. Jim Laker was held responsible for England failing to defend 404 in the 1948 Headingley Ashes Test, although in fact the selectors erred in not picking a second spinner and several chances were dropped. But Laker, playing only his seventh Test, did struggle badly with his length.

MacGill, whose overall Test record is admirable, has not often shone in the fourth innings (either with or without Warne for company). When West Indies broke the record for a successful chase by scoring 418 at Antigua in 2002-03, MacGill (1 for 149) was the most culpable bowler. Clive Lloyd largely gave up on spinners after West Indies failed to defend 406 against India in Trinidad in 1975-76.

Statistically, few spinners seem to have relished the role of finisher more than Bishan Bedi, who took 60 fourth-innings wickets at 14.5 each, including five five-fors. Admittedly, he had the reassurance of often working in tandem with other high-class spinners such as Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Erapalli Prasanna (although their fourth-innings records were nothing like as good).

Similarly Anil Kumble's record in the final innings is superior to that of Harbhajan, with whom he has so often worked in tandem for India. Rather like Murali, Kumble and Harbhajan need runs to work with. Rarely successful when defending a target of 100-250, neither has been on the losing side whenever India have protected an advantage in excess of 250.

Even Warne can't match such a record, having finished on the losing side four times when Australia were defending targets in excess of 300. But with more than 250 runs to play with, Warne has delivered victory more reliably than any spinner in history. So dependable was he that team-mates were genuinely shocked on the few occasions when he failed to deliver. As in so many other respects, when it came to holding his nerve under extreme pressure, Warne was king.