leg-spin is an art, arguably, the most difficult one to master in cricket. And, like any other form of art, you are either good at it or not. There are no half measures. Probably that’s why you don’t find many at international level. More so, the new-age fast-paced cricket has dried out the last remains of patience from captains, coaches and team management. The art of wicket-taking has lost its place to run-containing and the leg-spinners have gone down in the pecking order.
Only those who understand and have first-hand experience of leg-spin know the sheer pleasure of a perfect leg-spin delivery — going just above the batsman’s eye level, dipping just short of driveable length, ripping off the surface and beating the outside edge of the bat. “leg-spinner is difficult to pick because the ball comes from behind the wrist that’s why we have seen a number of times that leg-spinners get wickets on a full-toss or short-pitched ball,” says former India left-arm spinner Maninder Singh.
At his best, a leg-spinner with a variety up his sleeves is a treat to watch for spectators, a mystery for the batsman and a match-winner for his team. When Amit Mishra, a highly skilled leg-spinner, was warming the bench despite raking in good performances whenever an opportunity came his way, a question “Why don’t they play him regularlyIJ” rankled many minds. In the absence of any logical answer, many theories took birth. The prominent among them were captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s alleged favouritism and his defensive approach.
“No captain will risk his team’s performance to play his favourite player. It also involves his own prestige. If he feels that someone can win him matches then only he will play him,” Mishra’s coach Sanjay Bhardwaj says brushing aside all the conspiracy theories or bias against his ward.
But Maninder feels that Dhoni may not have much confidence in Mishra because he is slow through the air which gives batsmen time to play their shots. “I am not sure how much confidence does Dhoni have in Mishra. To me, he doesn’t give much confidence because he is too slow through the air,” Maninder tells you. “It (slow through the air) may be a factor but I think he is a good attacking bowler. He is a bowler who can get you wickets,” Bhardwaj asserts his confidence in Mishra.
“He is slower through the air because his bowling trajectory is high. He doesn’t bowl flat. Another thing is that he has high-arm action, not side-arm. And he has got a good flipper, googly and other varieties. So, whoever has high-arm action and bowls a lot of varieties, he will always be slower through the air. If you look at (Shahid) Afridi and other such leg-spinners, they are of different kind.
“leg-spinners are naturally attacking. For me, if a bowler can get four wickets in 10 overs at the expense of 80 runs is better than a bowler who gives only 30 runs but takes no wickets,” he adds.
Mishra made his international debut more than a decade back but he has played only 23 ODIs, 13 Tests and four T20Is. On an average, that makes 2.3 one-dayers and 1.3 Tests in a year, and only one T20I in every 2.5 years. In these limited opportunities, Mishra bagged 40 ODI wickets, 43 Test wickets and eight T20I wickets — a good performance by any standard. But these performances never converted into opportunities. “It depends on team’s requirement. You can’t keep more than one spinner in the first eleven outside the sub-continent. You rarely find two spinners in the playing eleven when you play abroad. Earlier it was (Anil) Kumble and Harbhajan (Singh) and now (Ravichandran) Ashwin and (Ravinder) Jadeja. Sometimes it’s about the time you are playing in,” Bhardwaj, who is also the coach of Gautam Gambhir and Unmukt Chand, says.
But successive Man of the Matches in ICC World Twenty20 in Bangladesh may change a lot of things for the Haryana lad. Even Maninder feels that T20 may be Mishra’s true calling. “He has been very impressive lately. He bowls to get wickets which is very important. Whatever format you play, I think that’s the most important thing for a bowler. He bowls to get wickets, that’s special about him. As I said he is generally slow through the air, he is probably more effective in T20 cricket than one-day or Test cricket because he doesn’t give you the speed to hit. He has been mixing his deliveries well.
“I hope if he ever gets a chance to play Test cricket, he can be a potent force, especially when he plays abroad because he is a kind of leg-spinner who can turn the ball on any kind of track. Before I comment on that, we will have to wait and see how he does when he gets that opportunity.”