Obituary - Spin Bowling
Tribute To Shane Warne
The Art of Spin Bowling may just die with Shane Warne’s pending retirement. As sad as this is may I take you back to the glory years when fast bowlers ruled over Planet Cricket.
Every child wanted to bowl fast like Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan, Courtney Walsh, Kapil Dev, Dennis Lillee, Bob Willis, Ian Botham, Joel Garner or Michael Holding. Batsmen feared to tread a path into the fastest, meanest bowling that up until that point, the cricketing world had ever seen. Kerry Packer put these giants in Jim-Jams, kept them up at night under lights and created what was a cricketing fans nirvana. Packer turned them and their predecessors into prime time mega-stars.
The West Indies were once the team to beat. They blasted their opposition out with brute force. An aggressive bearded man called Isaac Vivian Richards was not a bad batsman, nor was the quiet one Richie Richardson. Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge opened the batting and were harder to dismiss than a drunk at a wedding, and Jeff Dujon performed more leaps and bounds around his ears and eye balls behind the stumps than a circus clown in rolling out batsman after batsman. They represented bling-bling glamour and natural god given ability never seen before in such a "white" game. Having the West Indies visit your town for a Cricket fan was akin to the Pope visiting for Catholics, a rare and religious experience. Definitely school was to be wagged at all costs. To many of us they were the first black people we had seen up close. Not a Primary school kid in the country would forget the size of 6'8 Joel Garner's plaster hand as you measured up against it while waiting to get his autograph.
Then the worm turned. Batsmen worked out how to play these mad macho men. They got better helmets, more padding and had their reactions and eyes tested. The ICC (Ignorant Crusty Club) eventually ruined fast bowling with the no ball rule. West Indies' internal structure imploded. All over the world cricket pitches got flatter in the quest for runs over wickets to make the game more of a spectacle.
It is hard to name the best bowler that Cricket fans have ever seen. The modern day Cricketer plays almost twice as many tests than the players of old so the statistics can be misleading. In the leading test wicket taking ranks it is Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Anil Kumble and a little spoken of now 72 year old West Indian called Lance Gibbs that stiffen the ranks of spin bowlers. Except for Gibbs the other three are still playing. Gibbs, a right arm off break, had a remarkable economy rate of 1.98 runs per over, the best of all leading wicket takers.
Yet it is Warne who has captured the imagination of an entire modern Cricketing era. Simply because spin bowling at its best is a Cricketing purist’s panacea.
In Warne we got gifted a bleached blonde overweight slightly thick, happy go lucky fat boy, with sparkling eyes and a curious grin. In terms of MCC Membership Warne is the least likely to conform to the British upper crust that have a tenuous grip still on the sport. Warne is to Cricket like what Tiger Woods is to golf, a revelation both on and off the field. Warne’s delivery variation such as the flipper or slider created many thousands of hours of fun for commentators who would gloriously use the latest in technology to visualize for us where the ball should land and the trajectory of the various Warne arsenal. Warne turned the Art of Spin bowling into a pure science.
His off field antics have always been accepted on the basis that modern Cricketers are away so many days a year that it is statistically impossible for them to stay faithful to one partner. Least of all that most bowlers insure at least their bowling hand for earnings loss therefore cannot afford to overuse it to relieve tension after hours. His accidental diuretic incident was believable as he’s not the sharpest tool in the box, and he did lose weight where we once thought not possible. He may have taken money to give pitch reports, but he obviously never took money to throw a game, not pick up wickets or play badly. Warne was simply too arrogant and proud to play anything other than his best on his cigarette smoking pizza dough boy diet. He must train in private for at any given warm up conspicuous by his absence is usually Shane Warne.
If you look at the best batsmen in the world, judged by the number of runs scored, they all have understood the science of spin. For a top quality deadly accurate spin bowler can take any technical weakness of an average batsman and expose it. Every year the Black Caps line up is plundered by quality spinners to make a mockery of any “rotation” policy, we have no more talent to rotate. Our two best ever batsmen Martin Crowe and Glenn Turner had sublime footwork and cricketing brains to take apart the spin bowlers of their era. Stephen Fleming being an exception, is not to be regarded in the same breath as these two. He fails to consistently master fast bowlers and actually has a superior record against spinners. His average of 39 is far too low for his pivotal position in the team and he’s played over 100 tests, to Crowe’s 77 and Turner’s 41.
New Zealand has produced only one quality spinner in my watching lifetime, Daniel Vettori. Our batsmen do not get enough internal practice against them as currently New Zealand specialises in producing Gavin Larsen dibbly dobbly middle of the road bowlers. Most without Larson's legendary accuracy. I note Dipak Patel but he was a fluke and the beneficiary of some of the slowest tracks in the world produced by our bad weather and good groundstaff. Dipper did not turn the ball in so much as he bored the batsman out.
The subcontinent lead batting lineup Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Rahul Dravid, Javed Miandad and Inzamam are all students of spin bowling, having faced through their early school yard careers more spin action than others. Brian Lara and Viv Richards showed fearless disregard for the danger of dancing down the wicket and crashing spinners for six. It is all in the fancy footwork and they did it best. It was simply beautiful.
When a top batsman duels with a spin bowler it has an unbelievable edge of intrigue. Every mere mortal who does not have a deep understanding of the game (herein known as “cricketing slob”) watches television and shouts “he bowls so slowly why don’t they just charge him?”, “how can they have missed that?” and the legendary "who is winning?". There is a logic for the cricketing slob as to why the fast balls are missed, but they can’t get their head around how Shane Warne’s deliveries can pitch outside a batsman's legs, turn square and knock off the bails. Why didn’t the batsman have time to react? Ask Daryll Cullinan, an otherwise excellent South African batsman who Warne mentally ruined to the point of tears.
When Warne is at his best he literally is unplayable, such as his absolutely legendary dismissal of fellow Fat Boy and obscenely bearded Mike Gatting, acknowledged widely as the most unbelievable spectacle in Cricket. A cut up and turning pitch can assist this. Even as recently as the second Ashes test where in one magical hour on the final day he turned the match to Australia’s advantage in a sublime spell of bowling, Warne showed that he is King of Spin.
So why does the Art or the Science of Spin die with Warne? The answer is his heir apparent Muttiah Muralitharan. Murali is ugly. I don’t just mean physically he is an awkward looking creature, but his bowling action is about as muddled and terrible as they come. Apparently he has some kind of double jointed wrist. Whatever it is that causes him to roll his eyes into the back of his head and throw the ball at the batsman, I have no biological answer for. I do know that the commercial value for the game of Cricket of Murali is minimal. He is tainted with the most suspect action ever in Cricket. He has the personality of a damaged cricket box and has a face that will scare children.
No kid wants to bowl like Murali. Rather like no kid wants to play golf like Fred Couples, soccer like Danny Murphy or tennis like Marat Safin. Because a lack of personality and edge makes for boring sport.
The leading wicket takers in test cricket are old, retired or in Fred Trueman’s case, dead. Apart from spinners Murali (#2) and Kumble (#4), only Shaun Pollock (#9) and Chaminda Vaas (#17) are still playing. And Pollock is a Ginge so no one will want to play like him.
So we face a few years in the Cricket desert with a lack of established bowlers. The beneficiaries should be Tendulkar, Ponting, Dravid, Hayden and Inzamam who will continue to plunder attacks at will should they stay in the game. More runs will be scored and scores such as Lara’s 400*, 375 and 277 will come common place.
Don’t fear for Australia’s future. They have a second tier of players in their State competition playing against themselves who are among the unluckiest in the world. They are a bit like the All Blacks in that regard. They will emerge in the next couple of years to ensure that Australia remains the best one day and test side in the world. Australia has an embarrassment of riches that New Zealand could never dream of. Who knew of Michael Hussey? Well there is a whole team of Hussey's waiting in the wings. All they need is a chance and they will take it.
So back to Warne. Is he the greatest bowler ever? Possibly. Is he the most entertaining? Definitely.
And who else can score a relatively paltry 40 not out, take 5 for 39 and 2 for 46 and win Man of the Match over teammates who scored majestically struck centuries of 156 and 153 then have both the star batsmen carry him off the pitch?
Shane Warne. That’s who.
The Art of Spin Bowling may just die with Shane Warne’s pending retirement. As sad as this is may I take you back to the glory years when fast bowlers ruled over Planet Cricket.
Every child wanted to bowl fast like Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan, Courtney Walsh, Kapil Dev, Dennis Lillee, Bob Willis, Ian Botham, Joel Garner or Michael Holding. Batsmen feared to tread a path into the fastest, meanest bowling that up until that point, the cricketing world had ever seen. Kerry Packer put these giants in Jim-Jams, kept them up at night under lights and created what was a cricketing fans nirvana. Packer turned them and their predecessors into prime time mega-stars.
The West Indies were once the team to beat. They blasted their opposition out with brute force. An aggressive bearded man called Isaac Vivian Richards was not a bad batsman, nor was the quiet one Richie Richardson. Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge opened the batting and were harder to dismiss than a drunk at a wedding, and Jeff Dujon performed more leaps and bounds around his ears and eye balls behind the stumps than a circus clown in rolling out batsman after batsman. They represented bling-bling glamour and natural god given ability never seen before in such a "white" game. Having the West Indies visit your town for a Cricket fan was akin to the Pope visiting for Catholics, a rare and religious experience. Definitely school was to be wagged at all costs. To many of us they were the first black people we had seen up close. Not a Primary school kid in the country would forget the size of 6'8 Joel Garner's plaster hand as you measured up against it while waiting to get his autograph.
Then the worm turned. Batsmen worked out how to play these mad macho men. They got better helmets, more padding and had their reactions and eyes tested. The ICC (Ignorant Crusty Club) eventually ruined fast bowling with the no ball rule. West Indies' internal structure imploded. All over the world cricket pitches got flatter in the quest for runs over wickets to make the game more of a spectacle.
It is hard to name the best bowler that Cricket fans have ever seen. The modern day Cricketer plays almost twice as many tests than the players of old so the statistics can be misleading. In the leading test wicket taking ranks it is Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Anil Kumble and a little spoken of now 72 year old West Indian called Lance Gibbs that stiffen the ranks of spin bowlers. Except for Gibbs the other three are still playing. Gibbs, a right arm off break, had a remarkable economy rate of 1.98 runs per over, the best of all leading wicket takers.
Yet it is Warne who has captured the imagination of an entire modern Cricketing era. Simply because spin bowling at its best is a Cricketing purist’s panacea.
In Warne we got gifted a bleached blonde overweight slightly thick, happy go lucky fat boy, with sparkling eyes and a curious grin. In terms of MCC Membership Warne is the least likely to conform to the British upper crust that have a tenuous grip still on the sport. Warne is to Cricket like what Tiger Woods is to golf, a revelation both on and off the field. Warne’s delivery variation such as the flipper or slider created many thousands of hours of fun for commentators who would gloriously use the latest in technology to visualize for us where the ball should land and the trajectory of the various Warne arsenal. Warne turned the Art of Spin bowling into a pure science.
His off field antics have always been accepted on the basis that modern Cricketers are away so many days a year that it is statistically impossible for them to stay faithful to one partner. Least of all that most bowlers insure at least their bowling hand for earnings loss therefore cannot afford to overuse it to relieve tension after hours. His accidental diuretic incident was believable as he’s not the sharpest tool in the box, and he did lose weight where we once thought not possible. He may have taken money to give pitch reports, but he obviously never took money to throw a game, not pick up wickets or play badly. Warne was simply too arrogant and proud to play anything other than his best on his cigarette smoking pizza dough boy diet. He must train in private for at any given warm up conspicuous by his absence is usually Shane Warne.
If you look at the best batsmen in the world, judged by the number of runs scored, they all have understood the science of spin. For a top quality deadly accurate spin bowler can take any technical weakness of an average batsman and expose it. Every year the Black Caps line up is plundered by quality spinners to make a mockery of any “rotation” policy, we have no more talent to rotate. Our two best ever batsmen Martin Crowe and Glenn Turner had sublime footwork and cricketing brains to take apart the spin bowlers of their era. Stephen Fleming being an exception, is not to be regarded in the same breath as these two. He fails to consistently master fast bowlers and actually has a superior record against spinners. His average of 39 is far too low for his pivotal position in the team and he’s played over 100 tests, to Crowe’s 77 and Turner’s 41.
New Zealand has produced only one quality spinner in my watching lifetime, Daniel Vettori. Our batsmen do not get enough internal practice against them as currently New Zealand specialises in producing Gavin Larsen dibbly dobbly middle of the road bowlers. Most without Larson's legendary accuracy. I note Dipak Patel but he was a fluke and the beneficiary of some of the slowest tracks in the world produced by our bad weather and good groundstaff. Dipper did not turn the ball in so much as he bored the batsman out.
The subcontinent lead batting lineup Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Rahul Dravid, Javed Miandad and Inzamam are all students of spin bowling, having faced through their early school yard careers more spin action than others. Brian Lara and Viv Richards showed fearless disregard for the danger of dancing down the wicket and crashing spinners for six. It is all in the fancy footwork and they did it best. It was simply beautiful.
When a top batsman duels with a spin bowler it has an unbelievable edge of intrigue. Every mere mortal who does not have a deep understanding of the game (herein known as “cricketing slob”) watches television and shouts “he bowls so slowly why don’t they just charge him?”, “how can they have missed that?” and the legendary "who is winning?". There is a logic for the cricketing slob as to why the fast balls are missed, but they can’t get their head around how Shane Warne’s deliveries can pitch outside a batsman's legs, turn square and knock off the bails. Why didn’t the batsman have time to react? Ask Daryll Cullinan, an otherwise excellent South African batsman who Warne mentally ruined to the point of tears.
When Warne is at his best he literally is unplayable, such as his absolutely legendary dismissal of fellow Fat Boy and obscenely bearded Mike Gatting, acknowledged widely as the most unbelievable spectacle in Cricket. A cut up and turning pitch can assist this. Even as recently as the second Ashes test where in one magical hour on the final day he turned the match to Australia’s advantage in a sublime spell of bowling, Warne showed that he is King of Spin.
So why does the Art or the Science of Spin die with Warne? The answer is his heir apparent Muttiah Muralitharan. Murali is ugly. I don’t just mean physically he is an awkward looking creature, but his bowling action is about as muddled and terrible as they come. Apparently he has some kind of double jointed wrist. Whatever it is that causes him to roll his eyes into the back of his head and throw the ball at the batsman, I have no biological answer for. I do know that the commercial value for the game of Cricket of Murali is minimal. He is tainted with the most suspect action ever in Cricket. He has the personality of a damaged cricket box and has a face that will scare children.
No kid wants to bowl like Murali. Rather like no kid wants to play golf like Fred Couples, soccer like Danny Murphy or tennis like Marat Safin. Because a lack of personality and edge makes for boring sport.
The leading wicket takers in test cricket are old, retired or in Fred Trueman’s case, dead. Apart from spinners Murali (#2) and Kumble (#4), only Shaun Pollock (#9) and Chaminda Vaas (#17) are still playing. And Pollock is a Ginge so no one will want to play like him.
So we face a few years in the Cricket desert with a lack of established bowlers. The beneficiaries should be Tendulkar, Ponting, Dravid, Hayden and Inzamam who will continue to plunder attacks at will should they stay in the game. More runs will be scored and scores such as Lara’s 400*, 375 and 277 will come common place.
Don’t fear for Australia’s future. They have a second tier of players in their State competition playing against themselves who are among the unluckiest in the world. They are a bit like the All Blacks in that regard. They will emerge in the next couple of years to ensure that Australia remains the best one day and test side in the world. Australia has an embarrassment of riches that New Zealand could never dream of. Who knew of Michael Hussey? Well there is a whole team of Hussey's waiting in the wings. All they need is a chance and they will take it.
So back to Warne. Is he the greatest bowler ever? Possibly. Is he the most entertaining? Definitely.
And who else can score a relatively paltry 40 not out, take 5 for 39 and 2 for 46 and win Man of the Match over teammates who scored majestically struck centuries of 156 and 153 then have both the star batsmen carry him off the pitch?
Shane Warne. That’s who.
posted by Cactus Kate at 1:57 AM
8 Comments:
Some of the best Sports writing I have seen in ages. Not sure about the title though, I suspect there will be another Aussie like Warne, I really hope he inspired to many youngsters in Australia for someone not to come through.
The only other thing I'd say is, the biggest price he paid for his off-field antics is not having the chance to match his success as a bowler with success as Australian captain, but I strongly suspect his influence as a future Australian coach will be massive.
who is shane warne kate, like he an australian intellectual or what, don't you girls get shagged at chrisytmas
Fuck off. Your boyfriend wrote this. No girl can write about cricket like this.
Hi Kate
Here is something to protect your wicket from Shane Warne spins
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=82639971
I read this blog once a month, mostly as a bang-my-head-against-a-wall exercise whilst wondering if it was for real.
However, this is quite possibly the best thing I have read in a while.
Happy New Year,
Nick
Yep it is rather an indictment on the entire sports section of the Compost that the best sports writer could very well be the chick from the gossip section.
Anonymous #1
Fuck off. If I had a boyfriend do you think I could write like this?
Duh. The whole point of the blog is that I am single, if I got a boyfriend I would have to stop blogging wouldn't I?
I was going to write a post on Warney, but I think we will leave it at that. I don't think world cricket has ever seen anybody like him: the combination of brilliance, stupidity, bloody mindedness and dickheadedness. God, it still staggers me that he is such a dickhead! Shane Warne rewrote the book on how to act like a total plonker.
Warne could never have captained Australia. He simply isn't smart enough. His entire cricket career has taught him to focus on the next delivery. It's produced a ruthlessness in him, and an obsessive short-term thinking, whereby he can't think strategically. He has taken absurd risks on the cricket field, and often they've been so brazen that he's managed to pull them off. In fourteen years of test cricket, he has become a machine that is capable of doing little else, other than bowling the most majestic deliveries that the cricket world has ever seen.
MacGill will be around for another season or two, and did pretty well while Warne was off a few seasons ago. Australia has a few spinners coming through the domestic competition that are worth keeping an eye on: Dun Cullen, and Cullen Bailey, both from SA, have made some serious impact in the Pura Cup in the last couple of seasons.
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