The demise of the Indian leggie

Even a cursory glance at the wickets tally in the Ranji Trophy this season suggests the vanishing nature of the leg spinner. A more piercing stare reveals that the leg spinner with the most wickets in the competition in the just concluded season is a certain Jagannath Das from Orissa who sneaks in at 51st in the wickets tally with 17 victims to his name. Not exactly what you would call an embarrassment of riches. Historically, India has never been wanting in this respect from CS Nayudu in the 1930's to L Sivaramakrishnan and Narendra Hirwani in the 1980's. Even now there is Anil Kumble but he's a guy who gets the ball to fizz through off the pitch rather than use classical weapons like flight and turn. Sairaj Bahutule, who was offered seven ODI's to sink or swim, cannot even find a place in the Mumbai side although he took six wickets at 15.33 in the scant opportunities he was proffered this Ranji season.

"The encouragement to leg spinners is going down by leaps and bounds at the school and college levels", says VV Kumar, former Indian Test leg spinner. Coaches at these levels consider a leg spinner as 'an experiment in futility', he notes. Right at this early stage the captain reads out the riot act to them: don't try anything fancy, just stick to line and length stuff. And the bowler would be naive if he expects the captain to give him the field he wants. Of course the advent of one-day cricket means that the bowler has to keep the interests of the team in mind, and those interests unfortunately give pride of place to containment. One day cricket has perhaps scared off many potential exponents simply because the runs column acquires a disproportionate importance in this form of the game.

Even assuming a bowler survives all these obstacles and comes to a higher plane of cricket like the Ranji Trophy, Kumar said they are not given the freedom to bowl attackingly and use all their variations to full effect. At the back of their minds is always the worry that "if I concede a boundary, I will be changed in the next over." If a leggie ceases to experiment, he loses his shock value and becomes just another predictable wicket to wicket bowler. Sivaramakrishnan too attributes the lack of quality leggies to the reluctance of domestic captains to use them at crucial times to win games. The captain he says should identify one or two defensive bowlers and keep the runs down at one end while letting the wrist spinner bowl for wickets at the other end.

Another factor is that the craft of the leg spinner is simply more difficult to master than that of a finger spinning practitioner, as Kumar maintains."Do you know that bowling a leg break involves the coordination of 42 different muscles in the body", he enquired? A bowler can specialise in this field only after a long apprenticeship involving much hard work in the nets. It takes a leggie years to develop consistency and he must be seen as a long term investment. "A leg spinner matures with age and the number of overs bowled", Kumar observed. He also has to practice constantly, perhaps more so than other kinds of bowlers, because his vocation does not allow someone to roll his arm over and hit a spot rightaway. A rhythm bowler if there was one, without constant honing of his skills, a leggie can lose his rhythm in the twinkling of an eye. Several notable burnouts after precocious starts are testament to the perils which wrist spinners are prone to. Siva suggested that a loss of rhythm is far more pronounced in a leggie because he goes for more runs.

A leg spinner who's looking to attack all the while is going to get some stick. Even when he's bowling well, he's going to be taken for runs but the flip side is that even as he's being put to the sword he is going to pick up wickets. Now he must possess a thick skin. A wrist spinner cannot afford to be a sensitive sort of chap. As Ray Illingworth says the right temperament is so vital. The bowler has to remain in good cheer mindless of the number of runs he's being taken for.

A leg spinner also has a greater mystique attached to him and the greater number of variations in his repertoire means that he can keep trying something different more often to relieve the monotony. A greater degree of scheming is involved here rather than just plugging away and waiting for the mistake. The leggie is also less of a 'wicket' bowler than his other spinning cousins in the sense that he relies more on his own skills rather than help from the pitch to get results. "A good leggie shouldn't depend on the wicket except to make use of the bounce available", says Sivaramakrishnan. And the very fact that there are so few of these guys around means that international batsmen are ill equipped to handle their wiles. Thus despite all the negative publicity surrounding it, the trade has a lot of attractions on offer to potential exponents. According to Kumar, youngsters at the U-14 or U-16 levels have confided that they are drawn to this trade because they believe that a leg spinner is a wicket taking bowler, which is the bottomline really.

Kumar said the MAC Spin Foundation in Madras, with which he is associated, has 7-8 leggies in a group of about 25 trainees in the 13-19 age group. One thing that's always been emphasised is the importance of giving the ball a real tweak. But youngsters have before them the two extremes of Warne who turns it almost at right angles and Kumble who spins it so that it goes straight on. Asked whether he encouraged the youngsters to emulate the Warne or Kumble models, Kumar replied, "Neither is to be followed. The boys are advised to try and combine the virtues of both". Warne, he said, lacks a devastating googly for all his other variations while Kumble is more of a straight ball bowler depending on bounce and pace off the wicket although he has developed the googly of late. "Neither of them is a complete leg spinner like Subhas Gupte, Doug Wright, Clarrie Grimmett or Bill O'Reilly".

Asked about any promising youngsters, Kumar mentioned Sandeep Sawal from Punjab who went on an India U-19 tour of South Africa and played a couple of Ranji Trophy matches before being muscled out by the likes of offies Harbhajan Singh and Sharandeep Singh. The leggie is fast becoming an anachronism in this age which is a boundless shame. The outlook does seem bleak at the moment and India junior coach Roger Binny has lamented the absence of a single wrist spinner among the 29 trainees at the NCA although he said that there were a few promising guys at the under 15 level. Kumar believes the decline of the leggie is a worldwide trend and one has to be a phenomenon to break out of the shackles imposed by the system. He cited the case of Chris Schofield who bowled in one Test for England before being packed off to Lancashire. The game has certainly come a long way from the unspoilt innocence of the days of Arthur Mailey who bowled like a millionaire and was allowed to do so as long as he picked up wickets in the bargain.