Wrist spin is back in fashion again – thanks to T20 and ODI cricket
In Spring last year an Australian journalist Andrew Wu called for the term “Chinaman” to be removed from cricket’s vocabulary. The “Chinaman” is a ball bowled by a left-arm wrist spinner. It has usually been used to describe the wrist-spun off-break to a right-handed batsman, but some think it properly applicable to the left-hander’s googly, which (of course) goes the other way. This was my view when I attempted to bowl it long ago. I could wrist-spin my off-break sharply, but my Chinaman was a different matter. It rarely turned when, that is, I managed to land it at all, and was usually dispatched to the boundary. Be that as it may, Wisden has now deemed it politic to go along with Andrew Wu and decided it will no longer use the word “Chinaman”. So we must no longer use it to describe the delightful and sometimes baffling bowling of the young Indian Kuldeep Yadav. He bowls left-arm wrist-spin and that’s that.
The origin of the cricketing term “Chinaman” is disputed. In a Test in 1933 Walter Robins (later to captain England) was bowled by the West Indian left-armer Ellis Achong who was, as his surname suggests, of Chinese extraction. Achong normally bowled orthodox left-arm finger-spin, but the ball that got Robins was apparently a wrist-spun off-break. Returning to the pavilion Robins reportedly said, doubtless in disgust, “Fancy being bowled by a bloody Chinaman.” It’s clear to me from the context that Robins was referring to the bowler, not the ball, just as if he had – improbably – got out to a Frenchman, he might have muttered about being bowled by a bloody Frog. If, however, he was indeed referring to the ball, then it’s reasonable to assume that the term ‘Chinaman’ was already current.
Indeed, in Yorkshire where first Roy Kilner and then Maurice Leyland occasionally bowled left-arm wrist-spin, their teammate Emmott Robinson disapproved of this “foony Chinese stoof”. So, I think the term came in because this sort of bowling was regarded as a bit comic or perhaps inscrutable, a word then often applied to the Chinese.
Be that as it may, it’s been purged from Cricket’s Holy Book, and Andrew Wu, an Aussie who is in his words proud of his Chinese heritage, should be content. (I wonder if he refrains from describing English cricketers as “Poms” or “Pommy bastards”).
Writing enthusiastically about young Kuldeep Yadav, who is indeed a joy to watch, Michael Atherton wondered why there had been so few left-arm wrist-spinners in Test cricket. Theoretically it should be no more difficult than right-arm wrist-spin, though that is itself hard enough to do well.
As far as England is concerned the answer is easy. In English conditions finger-spin has always almost been as successful as wrist-spin, besides being generally easier to bowl accurately. This was certainly the case in the good old days of uncovered pitches. When the sun came out to dry a wet pitch, the finger-spinner might be well-nigh unplayable. Moreover, the slow left-hander’s natural spin goes away from a right-handed batsman and the going-away ball – the leg-break – has historically been considered more dangerous than the off-break which turns in. So there was little incentive for a left-arm bowler to bowl wrist-spin.
Then there have always been fewer left- arm than right-arm bowlers, consequently fewer left-arm wrist-spinners. Indeed, in English conditions orthodox slow left-arm bowlers were historically so successful that there weren’t many left-arm fast bowlers either. Actually the whole question of left-and-right in cricket is interesting. Left-handed batsmen seem more numerous now than they used to be, and so are left-arm fast and fast-medium bowlers.
The first leftie wrist spinner – let’s just say LWS – to make a real mark in Test cricket was the Australian L B “Chuck” Fleetwood-Smith. As a boy he bowled right-arm until an injury got him experimenting. He spun the ball sharply, toured England in 1934, but didn’t make the Test side, being kept out by the apparently ageless Clarrie Grimmett and the six-foot three Bill O’Reilly who bowled right arm wrist-spin at near medium pace. Comparison over the years is as futile as it is fun, but I reckon Bill O’Reilly at least as great as Shane Warne. Fleetwood-Smith’s career was short: 45 wickets in 10 Tests. The ball he bowled Walter Hammond with in the 4th Test in 1936-7 has been called the ball that won the Ashes. Less agreeably, Fleetwood-Smith conceded 298 runs at The Oval in 1938, when Len Hutton made his then Test record 364 and England declared at 903 for 7.
Wrist spinners didn’t get much of a look-in for years after the 1939-45 war. This was partly because the authorities, deciding the game had been loaded in the batsman’s favour had the brilliant idea of giving the fielding side a new ball after only 55 overs. Australia had three great fast bowlers – Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller and Bill Johnston. All that was needed was someone to close up an end while the fast men rested before they had another new ball. So two great wrist-spinners, Bruce Dooland (right-arm) and George Tribe (left-arm) came to England to play , first in the Lancashire Leagues, then county cricket. Tribe played eight full seasons for Northants, taking a hundred wickets in each of them. Tom Graveney was, he said, probably the only English batsman who could read him and master him. So Tribe would give him a single on the first or second ball of an over to allow him to bowl at his hapless partner.
In Yorkshire Johnny Wardle was required to bowl orthodox slow left-arm, which he did as well as any Englishman between Hedley Verity and Derek Underwood. But he also taught himself to bowl wrist-spin and playing for England overseas he did this as well as anyone has ever bowled LWS. He almost won the Fifth Test for England against Australia in 1954-5, despite the first three days having been lost to rain, and in South Africa two winters later he took 26 wickets in 4 tests at 13 and a bit runs each. No English wrist spinner, right or left, has matched that. England might not have lost the 1958-9 Ashes so badly if Wardle had been in the team. But he had fallen out with Yorkshire (always something easily done), been dismissed, lent his name to some injudicious newspaper articles, and had his invitation to tour Australia withdrawn by the MCC in one of its characteristically stuffy moments. In his place, Tony Lock, a great bowler in England but not then overseas, took 5 for plenty in 4 Tests. Sad: Wardle was the greatest English wrist-spinner (right or left) of my lifetime.
The greatest cricketer to have bowled LWS was Gary Sobers. Well, it was only one string to the bow of the greatest all-round cricketer I have ever watched. He played his first Test, aged seventeen, as an orthodox slow-left hander against Len Hutton’s 1953-4 England. In the next couple of years, playing Tests in India and Pakistan, he taught himself LWS. Well, I guess, “taught himself” may be a misnomer; everything seemed to come naturally to Gary. Then he also began to bowl fast-medium too. He was pretty good at that too, able to move the ball either way. I don’t know what percentage of his wickets came from wrist-spin. I do know that he was always a joy to watch.
Wrist-spin, right or left, fell out of fashion for years, despite the occasional master like Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir whom some thought harder to read than Shane Warne who is credited, rightly, I suppose, with the revival of the art or craft. Both Warne and Qadir demonstrated that the prejudice against wrist-spin because it was thought to be unavoidably inaccurate was arrant nonsense. Even so there haven’t been many practitioners of LWS picked for their bowling alone in Test cricket. The South African Paul Adams and the Australian Brad Hogg are two of them.
In fact, a number of those who have bowled LWS in test cricket have been selected primarily as batsmen, the Australians Michael Bevan and Simon Katich, for instance. They had a distinguished predecessor in Denis Compton, who belongs to the select ranks of the greatest natural cricketers. Compton’s LWS bowling was rarely required or trusted in Test cricket, even though he took more than 600 first-class wickets. He did doubtless contribute to the notion that LWS bowlers were inaccurate, and indeed his 25 test wickets cost more than 50 runs each. In extenuation one might say that he was most likely to be brought on to bowl when batsmen were well-set and the scoreboard was ticking over merrily. Still one of the great might-have been belongs to him. At Headingley in 1948 Australia were set to make 400 odd in the last day on a dry pitch that was taking spin. They got the runs thanks to 182 from Arthur Morris and 173 not out from Don Bradman (of course). But England had a bad day in the field and Godfrey Evans, a great wicketkeeper, had a horror of a day behind the stumps. He dropped a couple of catches and missed at least one stumping, Compton the unlucky bowler. Neville Cardus thought that the England captain Norman Yardley should have kept his nerve and kept Compton on; he might, the sage said, have won the match with figures like 6 for 200. Perhaps.
Now, thanks remarkably, to T20 and ODI cricket, wrist- spin, both right and left, is back in fashion. This is fun, but now that we are coming to the serious part of this summer with five Tests, I look forward eagerly to seeing young Kuldeep Yadav plying his craft and demonstrating his arts. The word “Chinaman” may have been ruled politically incorrect and cast into utter darkness, but the thing itself – LWS – is happily with us and shining brightly.