Decade of spin

In Cricket, it has been the decade of spin. Four of the top five wicket takers this decade are spinners: Muralidharan, Warne, Kumble and Harbhajan. Ntini is the only quick in the top 5. If you look further down, 7 of the top 20 and 12 of the 35 bowlers who took 100 or more wickets in the 2000's were spinners. If these last two numbers don't look impressive, consider that most teams play only one spinner in the side made of four bowlers. So while spinners playing the game make up one fourth of the bowlers, they make up more than one third of the top bowlers. Anyway, at the very top, the numbers are indisputable.

Look at it another way, the top 5 spinners by wickets taken have all played this decade: Muralidharan, Warne, Kumble, Harbhajan and Vettori. Of course the top three are the top three wicket takers among all bowlers. True, there have been more matches for them to play but their wickets per match is also better, atleast for the top 4: 4.3 for Harbhajan, 4.7 for Kumble, 4.9 for Warne and a whopping 6.0 for Muralidharan. The best from the earlier era, Lance Gibbs, Bedi, Benaud, Chandrasekhar averaged around 4 or less. Grimmett is an exception but he played his cricket before WW II. Similarly, Vettori among the current lot is an exception but he has to contend with extremely spin adverse conditions at home.

Whichever way you look at it, the top three: Muralidharan, Warne and Kumble are the top bowlers of this decade and the top spin bowlers of all time. Given they are three highest wicket takers of all time, some may even claim them to be the top bowlers of all time.

Other spinners have come to the fore as well. Danish Kaneria, for all its fast bowling potential, has been the leading bowler for Pakistan. Before him was Saqlain Mushtaq. Very different from the glory days of the W's. Similarly Stuart Macgill did excellent work when he got the opportunity, even outbowling Warne in the matches they played together. Sad for him that his career coincided with Warne's. Tellingly England have had two spinners who have taken more than 100 wickets this decade, Giles and Panesar and a third who has been taking five fors in recent times, Swann. And these after the barren days, remember Min Patel, of sometimes belied potential, remember Phil Tufnell. Even West Indies now have a spinner who plays regularly and takes more than an odd wicket for the first time since Lance Gibbs in the form of Sulieman Benn. Indeed South Africa have been the only country without a spinning force for most of this decade while Australia has been struggling post Warne and Macgill retirement.

Why has this decade been so dominated by spin? Pitches have become better: even those in India are no longer dustbowls, bats and batsmen have become muscular: mishits go over the ropes, boundaries have come in. So why? One arguement is that we just had three of the greatest spinners of all time playing this decade. Second, the fast bowling stocks this decade weren't all that great giving spinners more opportunity to take wickets: certainly true for India and Sri lanka. Third, better batting surfaces meant that fast bowlers couldn't dominate and collapses against pace (which mostly comes first in an inning) were much less frequent. Fourth, a lot of innovation has come into spin bowling this decade: doosra and the carrom ball. Fifth, batsmen are more aggresive and a spinner relies on batsmen making an aggresive mistake more than a pace bowler: stepping out and getting stumped, getting caught in the deep on a mishit. Any other reasons?

Post script: A friend of mine asked me to compare strikes rates. I decided that averages should be considered as well. In terms of strike rates, Muralidharan and Warne are third and fourth among bowlers who have taken atleast a hundred wickets this decade. Shoaib Akhtar and Dale Steyn have significantly better strike rates (around 40 as compared to 50 for the two spinners). Raw pace does take wickets in fewer balls but it can bowl fewer balls as well. Kumble's strike rate is around the mean. In terms of averages, Murali is second behind Mcgrath. Warne is around 25 which is the new 22 this decade. Kumble is around 31, which again is around the mean.

The other comparision would be to compare spinners across ages. Murali, Warne, Kumble, Macgill, etc. have vastly superior strike rates than their predecessors. The verdict on averages is much more mixed, with Murali next only to Laker among major spinners but Warne and Kumble being back with the pack.

If we consider all four variables: total number of wickets, wickets per match, strike rates and average; still the three spinners come across as formidable if not as the all in winners that they seem based on the number of wickets taken. Paragraph 3 needs to be modified. I would consider them the greatest spinners of all time and the most influencial bowlers of this decade. After all to win you have to take 20 wickets and bowlers who can take more wickets per match are defintely better as long as the time and runs cost are not much higher: as is the case with Murali and Warne, and in the context of the Indian team, Kumble. Besides, paragraph 4 cannot be denied: South Africa are playing Paul Harris in Kingsmead Durban and Swann was the highest wicket taker in South Africa's first innings.