Spinners in the Ranji Trophy are bowling less and taking far fewer wickets than they used to, and this could have troubling consequences in the long term
Karthik Krishnaswamy13-Jan-2015Some 20 or so faces were pressed to the main gate of the KSCA Stadium in Hubli. All peered at the Karnataka bus, which was slowly filling up at the end of day two of the team’s Ranji Trophy game against Jammu & Kashmir. The crowd at the gate recognised everyone, and called out their names. When Shreyas Gopal carried his kitbag up the bus steps, a chant went up.”Junior Kumble! Junior Kumble!”It’s a massive comparison for someone who is only playing his second season of first-class cricket, but at surface level, there’s something to it. Shreyas finishes his action in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Anil Kumble, plays for the same state side, and has picked up his first 38 wickets at an average of 18.10. When Kumble was first selected for India, he had played one season of first-class cricket, in which he had taken 24 wickets at 19.62.Dig a few inches below the surface, however, and it becomes clear that Shreyas and Kumble are entirely different kinds of cricketer.In his debut first-class season of 1989-90, Kumble bowled 196.4 overs in five matches, or close to 40 overs per match. Shreyas, so far, has bowled 183.5 overs in 11 first-class matches, or a little under 17 overs per match. He has barely had an opportunity to bowl extended spells or set up dismissals.His wickets, instead, have come in clumps. Where Kumble needed to bowl 48 overs to claim his maiden five-wicket haul, Shreyas only needed 16, against Uttar Pradesh in last season’s Ranji Trophy quarter-finals. His second five-for was even quicker: 9.5 overs, in the Irani Cup match against Rest of India, where his last three wickets came in a hat-trick.This season, Shreyas has picked up six wickets at an average of 19.50, but he’s only bowled 37.1 overs in seven innings. There’s plenty to like about Shreyas’ bowling. He seems to give it a rip, and he doesn’t seem to bowl too many bad balls, but he has had little chance of showing whether he can sustain his bite and accuracy over a long spell.It’s hardly a unique situation. The role of spinners in the Ranji Trophy has shrunk significantly over the last ten seasons. They bowled 47% of the overs delivered and picked up 42% of the wickets taken in the 2005-06 season. Since then, both those numbers have undergone a steady decrease. This season, both those numbers have hit bottom for the decade: an overs share of 36% and a wickets share of 32%.The influence of spinners has waned over the last decade of the Ranji Trophy•ESPNcricinfo LtdAccording to Murali Kartik, the former India and Railways left-arm spinner, the primary reason for the waning influence of spin is the pitches.”Since 2011, when we had that 8-0 drubbing in Australia and England, there’s been this diktat of a minimum of 4mm [of grass]. Or at least people say there’s been no diktat from BCCI but if that’s the case why would every ground leave a minimum of 4mm? In that process, obviously in the first two innings the spinner doesn’t come into play.The use of the heavy roller negates any wear and tear, Kartik adds, and rules out any assistance for spinners even on days three and four.”The spinner is not coming into play even on the fourth day. It’s because of this minimum 4mm, and then people use the heavy roller. By the last day there’s nothing left for anybody, there are no spike marks, so where will the spinner come into play? Without natural wear and tear it just becomes a flat wicket, come day three, day four, with all the heavy rollers being used. It nullifies the effect of the grass. It just becomes well rolled-out grass.”He goes back to the 2012-13 season to provide an example, from Railways’ home game against Gujarat in Bhubaneswar.”I won the toss. We blew them away for [117]. We used the heavy roller, obviously, because it’s allowed to be used, because we don’t want to face the same green track, no? So we get [308]. They again used the heavy roller, at whatever time. The effect of the grass is still there, it’s still functioning, because obviously the game is moving fast.”We get them six down, and then seven down, actually. Then [Manpreet Juneja] and [Rush Kalaria] get [hundreds]. Why? Because it’s like mosaic right now. The ball isn’t swinging, the ball isn’t spinning, anybody could bat on it. It’s live grass on day one, then it just gets rolled and rolled and rolled, so it’s just a beautiful even sheen on the surface.”This season, the statistics support Kartik’s argument. Spinners have picked up 350 wickets in the first and second innings at an average of 34.65. In the third and fourth innings, when they are traditionally expected to perform better, they have taken 164 wickets at 37.51. Spinners, with no real window in which to come into play, have become marginal figures.”Last season, as a captain I bowled [71] overs in [seven] games,” Kartik says. ” England [I’ve never bowled so few overs even in England, where the pitches are green].”Rahul Dravid pointed out recently that Shreyas Gopal has bowled [37.1] overs in four games. Why? Because everywhere they are saying green wicket, green wicket. You pack your team with three seamers, and every team has got the likes of [seam-bowling allrounder] Stuart Binny or somebody, then obviously you won’t be bowling.”And the SG Test [ball] starts [reverse] swinging around the 30th over, so they come into play again. So the spinner just gets to do a holding job where they are bowling for five-seven overs, ten overs, and then thank you, see you later, come back again. It’s just a holding job, [Don’t give runs, bowl for a little while]. Everywhere the same thing is happening.”Aakash Chopra, the former Delhi, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh opener, says the SG ball, while being a “wonderful ball for the spinners”, also keeps seamers in the game right through a day’s play.”Seam bowlers tend to get swing right till the 80th over, and by that time the second new ball is due,” he says. “So if the seamers stay relevant, there is this temptation to have a seamer bowling from one end, and possibly from both ends, as long as it’s possible. But at the same time the SG ball is conducive to spin bowling also, because of its pronounced seam, and if it’s shining and it’s swinging it’s also going to drift if you deliver it properly.”But that drift has gone out of the game completely. Nobody is even trying to do that. What’s happened is, teams are inclined to go towards seam-bowling options, because the ball is conducive to swing bowling till the 80th over, and then, of course, you have the pitches, and why would you not have that? If seamers are your stronger suit, you will make sure they are relevant till the 80th, even the 90th over, they are there the whole day. If your spinners are just going to do a containing job then good luck to you, what can be done? Then you’ll have to bat well to make sure you stay in the team.”Whether it’s out of necessity or it’s just a coincidence, Indian cricket has seen a spurt of spin-bowling allrounders. Shreyas is an example of this trend. He was a batting allrounder through the junior levels, but has mostly batted at No. 8 or No. 9 during his first-class career. After a slow start, he’s done very well in those positions – he has made scores of 145, 18 and 58* in his last three first-class innings.Shreyas, in short, is an allrounder playing as a bowler who doesn’t really bowl that much. The fact that he has picked up wickets whenever he has been called upon is probably a bit of a bonus for Karnataka.In that match in Hubli, the J&K side included only one spinner, Parvez Rasool, who batted at number five and bowled nine wicketless overs in a Karnataka innings that lasted 103 overs. Given the greenness of the surface, J&K played a fourth fast bowler. Given the value Rasool provides with the bat – and given the fact that he captains them – they left out the left-arm spinner Waseem Raza, who had picked up 11 wickets at 27.27 till then. Rasool had picked up six wickets at 58.66.In his first-class career, Rasool averages 34.62 with the ball and 38.45 with the bat. Those are pretty good returns for a batting allrounder at No. 5 or 6. He fulfils that role while playing for his state side, but his place in the India side or on its fringes has generally been that of a specialist offspinner. When he picked up 7 for 45 for the Board President’s XI against the Australians in 2013, he batted at No. 8.
Spinners bowled 47% of the overs delivered and picked up 42% of the wickets taken in the 2005-06 season. Since then, both those numbers have undergone a steady decrease. This season, both those numbers have hit bottom for the decade: an overs share of 36% and a wickets share of 32%
In the next tour game, Jalaj Saxena picked up five wickets for India A. Saxena is a batting allrounder who usually opens the batting for Madhya Pradesh – he averages 36.82 with the bat in first-class cricket and 34.61 with the ball – but in that game against the Australians, he batted at No. 7. Like Rasool in the previous game, he was a batting allrounder picked more for his bowling.Since Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha – who made their debuts in 2008 and 2009 respectively – India have given Test caps to three other spinners. All three can bat. Not all three were picked for that reason, of course, but it’s still interesting to note that R Ashwin averages 35.68 with the bat in first-class cricket, Ravindra Jadeja 46.44, and Karn Sharma 25.46. All three were in the Test squad in Australia, and when India lost Jadeja to injury, they flew in a like-for-like replacement in Akshar Patel, with a first-class batting average of 42.25.Why does it seem to have become imperative that spinners bat?”Depends on how good a spinner you are,” says Amol Muzumdar, the former Mumbai, Assam and Andhra batsman. “When I talk about a spinner, you have to be really confident about spinning the ball. None of the guys I’ve seen have really been spinners. They’ve just been rollers, coming in and putting it on a spot, just for the captain to maybe tie one end down or tie things down, and give a little breather to his fast bowlers, which was really unthinkable probably 10-15 years back. There used to be seam bowlers who used to do that job, giving a break to the spinners. It’s become completely the reverse.”Chopra argues that the lack of quality of spinners has caused the proliferation of green pitches.”What came first is something that needs to be deciphered,” he says. “A lot of people will tell you [about] this 4mm grass being a norm, and you can’t take wickets on these greenish pitches, but I don’t think it’s the only reason. It’s a result of inferior quality of spinners around and hence teams are now opting for seamer-friendly pitches.”For example at Rajasthan we would happily play on greentops and play four fast bowlers, because the spinner that we had in the side was not even good enough to plug the flow of runs, let alone take wickets. Same was the case with Delhi. When I was there for 10-12 years we would happily go to Roshanara and not play at [Feroz Shah] Kotla because Roshanara provided the greentop for us. Punjab is the same case once again.”In Himachal Pradesh, I didn’t have enough spinners in my team to prepare a turner. You talk about Delhi, you talk about Rajasthan, you talk about Himachal Pradesh, you talk about Punjab, you talk about Madhya Pradesh. Add Bengal to it. I can’t see a decent spinner in Bengal. And there are enough states whom I don’t know yet. So there aren’t enough good spinners available. So what do you expect?”Both Kartik and Chopra suggest that Twenty20 cricket could be a reason for spinners losing their sting.”You look at all the old bowlers, they were used to bowling long spells,” Kartik says. “You learn your craft on good wickets, you learn your craft against good batsmen by bowling long spells, and you also practice that way. The more you bowl, that’s the way you become. It is not T20 games where you have to bowl one over and another one over and another one over where a consistent length is supposed to be really bad. You can’t allow a batsman to line you up. That can’t happen in first-class cricket, no? If I bowl five different lengths the batsman is going to hurt me.”Any kid you go to, everywhere in schools cricket, what are they playing? It’s T20 cricket. All the old players including myself – not that I’m old – have been brought up on schools cricket which was two days, three days. I was brought up on league cricket in Madras which was three days against the best of opposition so you had to prise them out, you had to bowl well. And there was not just one game, you had to play 16 games. Which meant you were getting quality practice against the best.”Chopra says he doesn’t see spinners beating batsmen in the air anymore. This, he says, could be because of habits carried over from Twenty20 cricket.”In T20 cricket, spinners are challenged, they are pushed,” he says. “Unless you have already matured and know your game inside-out, there is a good chance, the moment you get in the shorter format, that you’ll start bowling flatter, you bowl straighter, you compromise on spin.”If I hit you as a batsman, the bowler’s first reaction is to bowl fast and get away. But spinners at times have to bowl slow. But that variation comes to your mind only if you are a complete bowler already. A Daniel Vettori will not start bowling darts. But a young left-arm spinner, the moment he’s hit, he says okay, lets start bowling darts.”It’s nobody’s fault, I’m not blaming the format, but the dynamics are such that spinners are challenged, and if spinners are challenged they will have to find a way to stay relevant and the easiest way is to lower the trajectory and bowl fast. And compromise on spin because you need more accuracy. So that is your natural tendency, and that needs to be addressed, because young spinners don’t really know about spinning the ball and beating the batsman in the air.”Sairaj Bahutule, the former Mumbai and Maharashtra legspinner, says spinners find it difficult to adjust between formats.”In Twenty20, I’ve seen bowlers of international repute bowling just short of a length, not a good length, which it demands, but when the format changes, you bowl the same length,” he says. “[Maybe] we [can] make a pool of spinners only for Ranji Trophy and Test matches, and some allrounders who can do a job for T20 and one-dayers.”Muzumdar doesn’t think Twenty20 is much of a factor in young spinners developing the way they are.”Again it all boils down to the quality of that man,” he says. “If that guy has immense quality, he would be useful in Twenty20, one-day cricket, and Test match cricket. It’s easier to say Twenty20 cricket has spoiled that. If you have a spinner who rips it in the air, he would be the most sought-after player in the IPL auction, I can guarantee that. If that boy spins the ball like a top.”You have to go really deep into it. You have to work on the psyche of a spinner right from Under-16. Under-19 or Under-23, they are already finished products. The raw material is the Under-14s and the Under-16s. Not many play IPL or Twenty20 at that age. If the raw material is bad, then the finished product will be bad. If they put revolutions on the ball, I’ll be on my guard in my crease. But if that ball has no revolutions, I know this guy will go for plenty. If he cannot beat me in the air, off the surface, I know I’ll take him for a ride for six hours.”Chopra says a good spinner should be able to take wickets anywhere.”If you are not beating batsmen in the air, if you are not turning it off the wicket, why should I prepare pitches where you are going to get wickets? Rank turners, you’ll get a bagful of wickets, but that is not a true reflection of who you are.”This is precisely what makes it hard to assess the merits of the spinners who have been taking wickets this season.Of the ten highest wicket-takers among spinners this season, three – Malolan Rangarajan, Aushik Srinivas and Rahil Shah – play for Tamil Nadu. All three were part of their bowling attack in their three home games, in which the quicks barely played a part. L Balaji played the first two games, and bowled a total of 24 overs. In the third, against Railways in Chennai, Tamil Nadu didn’t select a single specialist seamer.In those three home games, the three spinners combined to pick up 42 wickets at an average of 21.21. In the two away games, Malolan and Aushik – playing as the lone spinner against Karnataka and Bengal respectively – took a total of five wickets at 49.80. How is a selector supposed to judge their performances?Baroda’s Swapnil Singh is the highest wicket-taker among spinners this season, but bowled only four overs across two innings in seam-friendly conditions in Gwalior, where Baroda made Madhya Pradesh follow on. Delhi’s Varun Sood picked up 10 wickets in the match against Gujarat at the Feroz Shah Kotla, but only got to bowl 6.2 overs in his next game, against Haryana in Lahli, where he picked up three tail-end wickets.The established names, meanwhile, have struggled for various reasons. Harbhajan Singh has two wickets this season at 74.50. Piyush Chawla has been almost as poor, with seven wickets at 49.00. Mishra, playing for a Haryana side that plays its matches on the greenest pitch in India, has bowled 42.1 overs in four innings. Ojha has been banned from bowling.Spinners with bagfuls of wickets in recent seasons have also struggled to maintain their consistency. Vishal Dabholkar, who took 39 wickets for Mumbai last season, was dropped for their last three matches. Shahbaz Nadeem, who took 42 wickets for Jharkhand in 2012-13, has picked up 13 wickets at 21.15 this season, but has done this against Group C opposition. KP Appanna, who took 28 wickets in the Elite tier in 2011-12, hasn’t played all season for Karnataka. Bharghav Bhatt, who took 47 wickets with his left-arm orthodox in 2010-11, has played only one game for Baroda.The pool of spinners in Indian domestic cricket, then, is both shallow and murky, filled with good bowlers who are barely getting a bowl, average bowlers who are getting by on their batting, and a collection of established but fading names.