The rebirth of Devendra Bishoo

Devendra Bishoo travelled a long and winding road on the way to his dismantling of Australia's vaunted middle order in last week's Dominica Test and the delivery that was instantly proclaimed "ball of the 21st century".

The little legspinner from Berbice county, a hotbed of cricket in Guyana, travelled smoothly through his first year in the West Indies Test team, pausing briefly to accept the ICC's award as its Emerging Cricketer of the Year in 2011, an honour he dedicated to the memory of his late father, Mohanlal.

"He played a great role in my life and encouraged me to play cricket," Bishoo said at the presentation. "After he died, I made a promise to always give of my best and reach for the top." That initially didn't take long.

Bishoo immediately justified the selectors' curious decision to send him to the 2011 World Cup in India and Bangladesh after one match as a replacement for the injured Dwayne Bravo - an unproven legspinner for an established batting allrounder. His 3 for 34 against England in Chennai was his first match in West Indies colours.

Back home, he marked his Test debut, at Guyana's National Stadium in Providence a couple of months later, with 4 for 68 against Pakistan, including a spell of six overs in which he dispatched Misbah-ul-Haq, Asad Shafiq and Mohammed Salman with skidding flippers; in the subsequent Tests against India, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina were among his victims. His lively fielding, typified by a sensational flying catch in the deep to end Harbhajan Singh's swashbuckling 70 in Kingston, enhanced his value.

Such success was to prove a liability, though. The way suddenly became as potholed as a notorious Caribbean dirt track; Bishoo found it difficult to negotiate through it.

In five Tests in back-to-back series on typically unaccommodating pitches in Bangladesh and India in October and November of that year, he was given a heavy workload, averaging 43 overs a Test.

As India amassed 631 for 7 declared in Kolkata, with hundreds from Dravid, Laxman and Dhoni, Bishoo's figures were 45-2-154-1. By the last Test, at the Wankedhe Stadium in Mumbai, Wisden reported that Bishoo was "reduced to a fatigued hobble" as painkillers had to carry him through 40 overs on the third day and into the fourth.

It sapped his stamina and his earlier passion. The first Test against Australia, at Barbados' Kensington Oval five months later, would be his last for three years.

One for 169 from 53 overs in the match meant he gave way to offspinner Shane Shillingford, who held the position until his crooked elbow on delivery twice required remedial work; Sunil Narine, with his assortment of mystery balls, also featured briefly as a spin option until he was lured away by the IPL.

Bishoo still gathered wickets for Guyana on spin-friendly pitches in the annual regional tournament, but it remained clear that he wasn't the bowler he had been in his initial series.

Ottis Gibson, the head coach then, witnessed Bishoo's promise followed by his decline first hand. He wasn't prepared to give up on him, and arranged for former Pakistan offspinner Saqlain Mushtaq to conduct an instructional clinic for spin bowlers in Barbados.

"At the back of my mind, when I spoke to Saqlain about the clinic, was Devendra Bishoo," Gibson said at the time. "I've been saddened by the way things have gone for him. Coming into the West Indies team and becoming ICC's Emerging Player of the Year to where he is right now, I strongly felt I needed to get someone over here to give him the support and the belief." Gibson hoped it would be the spark to get the legspinner "back into the frame of mind" of his early Tests.

Bishoo's rehabilitation included matches for the West Indies A team against India A in the Caribbean in 2012, and with the A team in Sri Lanka in 2014.

After a combination of left-arm spinner Sulieman Benn's loss of form and his own 61 wickets at 17 apiece for Guyana in the 2014-15 regional season, the new selection panel, headed by Clive Lloyd, deemed Bishoo ready for a recall in the second Test against England in Grenada in April.

"You only had to see the bounce in his step to know that his confidence was back," Lloyd said. "Like any legspinner at his best, he is a wicket-taker, and that's what our attack required."

Once more, however, overwork took its toll: 51 overs (for 177) in England's first- innings 464 stripped the skin off Bishoo's spinning finger. It hadn't healed five days later, so his place in the third and final Test went to left-arm spinner Veerasammy Permaul, a fellow Guyanese, also from Berbice.

The gap of a month before Dominica was enough for Bishoo to be ready once more for his 13th Test. He relished the challenge against powerful opponents with a strong batting order, and a turning, if slow, pitch assisted his sharp fingerspin.

It was a challenge accentuated by West Indies' meltdown for 148 by tea on the opening day. Bishoo was up for it. In two spells, the first carried over from the first day into the second, he brought them back into contention with six wickets in succession from high-class legspin. Among the victims were such eminent masters of spin as Michael Clarke and Steven Smith.

Smith was flummoxed by a classic piece of bowling. He danced down to hoist an overhead boundary one ball; when he advanced again a few balls later, he was stranded as Bishoo pitched his legbreak a bit wider. Denesh Ramdin might have completed the stumping with his eyes closed, whistling "Waltzing Matilda".

The pièce de résistance was Brad Haddin's wicket. As the dangerous wicketkeeper-batsman carefully defended against a delivery touching down on a leg-stump line, a fizzing legbreak spun past the face of his bat to hit the top of off.

Instantly compared to Shane Warne's famed "ball of the century", to Mike Gatting in the Old Trafford Ashes Test in 1993, it became "the ball of the 21st century". The bowler's reaction afterwards was typically understated: "I don't know what to say." The media and the internet had plenty to say.

By then, Bishoo was once more seeking attention to the skin on his spinning finger, torn by another extended effort. His effectiveness noticeably waned, the West Indies fast bowlers could strike nothing from either the sluggish pitch, nor could they faze the resilient Adam Voges as he advanced to his hundred on Test debut.

The three-day West Indies' defeat has given the team doctor a few extra days to repair the crucial finger. It would be an idea for Bishoo to consult an even more illustrious spin bowler from Guyana on the matter.

Lance Gibbs, at one time Test cricket's leading wicket-taker with 309 in his 79 matches, used his long fingers to give his offbreaks a vicious tweak. Advice from the late Australian legspinner Richie Benaud on the 1960-61 West Indies tour of Australia helped Gibbs deal with the problem that is now afflicting Bishoo.

"It was a mix of boric acid and calamine lotion that Richie said was effectively used by Australia's aborigine population," Gibbs, now an active 80, recalled from his home in Miami. "He said it worked for him and it certainly worked for me. What it does is that it keeps the skin from bursting."

Gibbs' one reminder of the strain he placed on his vital finger in a career spanning 18 years for West Indies, Guyana, Warwickshire and South Australia is a callous the size of a marble. "But it never burst," he said.

Bishoo is right now at the peak of his powers. Now 29, he is unlikely to have a career as long or as prolific as Gibbs'. But the application of Benaud's aborigine remedy might just keep him going without the recurring bother of a sore finger.