Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Why modern English batsmen are so poor against spin
2 views
Skip to first unread message
RH
Sep 24, 2012, 2:40:59 PM9/24/12
to
Why modern English batsmen are so poor against spin
Posted on September 24, 2012
Robert Henderson
The dismal collapse yesterday against spinners during England’s
Twenty/20 game with India when they were shot out for 80 is the
latest dire performance against spin bowlers by recent England sides.
Over the past twenty years such weakness against spin has been a
frequent aspect of England’s batting. This was not always so.
Before the 1990s England generally batted capably against spin,
including in the most demanding spin bowling environment India.
What has gone wrong to produce the abject batting against spin we so
often see now? The fact that the rot set in circa 1990 is telling. The
last time England batted well in India was the 1984/5 five match Test
series which England won 2-1. India based their attack on three
spinners – Shastri SLA; a ROB and Shivaramakrishnan LBG. England
scored consistently with both Mike Gatting and Graeme Fowler turning
in double centuries. All of the players in the 1984/5 side had been
brought up at least in part on uncovered pitches. By the 1990s the
new players coming into the England side had no experience of
uncovered pitches in first class cricket.
The attack on spinners began before the covering of pitches.
Offspinners were badly treated by the law makers in the 1950s when for
the first and only time in the history of cricket there was a law
change aimed at hindering bowlers of a certain type – the
restriction on leg-side fielders – simply because they were deemed too
successful in what they did. Unlike bodyline, there was no safety
consideration prompting the law change.
But it was pitch covering in English domestic first class cricket that
gradually leeched out the potency of the English spinner. This began
in the 1960s. Over the next quarter a century or so it moved from such
halfway houses as covering bowlers’ run-ups and covering pitches
outside the hours of play to full blown covering of pitches and run-
ups in the 1980s. This resulted in the gradual marginalisation of
spinners in England. The covering of pitches outside of playing hours
simply reduced the number of rain-damaged pitches. The covering of run-
ups meant that pace bowlers could bowl on rain-damaged pitches where
previously, with run-ups left exposed, only spinners could do so
because of the treacherous footholds. Once run-ups were covered,
captains would often use pace bowlers rather than spinners because
pace bowlers on a damaged pitch could be as destructive or more
destructive than the spinner.
There have been other forces at work. The relaxation of county
qualification rules in 1969 and the influx of foreign players,
official or otherwise, which occurred, gradually produced an emphasis
on pace because the most common foreign player employed by counties
was a pace bowler, something especially pronounced after the West
Indian production line of high class fast bowlers took off in the mid-
1970s. (So large were the numbers of foreign quick bowlers in the
1980s that the pool of English pace bowlers became dangerously
small). Spinners became, if not despised, increasingly came to be
seen as a secondary and defensive form of bowling to fill in when the
fast bowlers needed a rest or, increasingly occasionally, useful when
a pitch took spin. The immense success of the West Indies using four
fast bowlers reinforced the idea that pace was what mattered.
Read more at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/why-modern-english-batsmen-are-so-poor-against-spin/
Posted on September 24, 2012
Robert Henderson
The dismal collapse yesterday against spinners during England’s
Twenty/20 game with India when they were shot out for 80 is the
latest dire performance against spin bowlers by recent England sides.
Over the past twenty years such weakness against spin has been a
frequent aspect of England’s batting. This was not always so.
Before the 1990s England generally batted capably against spin,
including in the most demanding spin bowling environment India.
What has gone wrong to produce the abject batting against spin we so
often see now? The fact that the rot set in circa 1990 is telling. The
last time England batted well in India was the 1984/5 five match Test
series which England won 2-1. India based their attack on three
spinners – Shastri SLA; a ROB and Shivaramakrishnan LBG. England
scored consistently with both Mike Gatting and Graeme Fowler turning
in double centuries. All of the players in the 1984/5 side had been
brought up at least in part on uncovered pitches. By the 1990s the
new players coming into the England side had no experience of
uncovered pitches in first class cricket.
The attack on spinners began before the covering of pitches.
Offspinners were badly treated by the law makers in the 1950s when for
the first and only time in the history of cricket there was a law
change aimed at hindering bowlers of a certain type – the
restriction on leg-side fielders – simply because they were deemed too
successful in what they did. Unlike bodyline, there was no safety
consideration prompting the law change.
But it was pitch covering in English domestic first class cricket that
gradually leeched out the potency of the English spinner. This began
in the 1960s. Over the next quarter a century or so it moved from such
halfway houses as covering bowlers’ run-ups and covering pitches
outside the hours of play to full blown covering of pitches and run-
ups in the 1980s. This resulted in the gradual marginalisation of
spinners in England. The covering of pitches outside of playing hours
simply reduced the number of rain-damaged pitches. The covering of run-
ups meant that pace bowlers could bowl on rain-damaged pitches where
previously, with run-ups left exposed, only spinners could do so
because of the treacherous footholds. Once run-ups were covered,
captains would often use pace bowlers rather than spinners because
pace bowlers on a damaged pitch could be as destructive or more
destructive than the spinner.
There have been other forces at work. The relaxation of county
qualification rules in 1969 and the influx of foreign players,
official or otherwise, which occurred, gradually produced an emphasis
on pace because the most common foreign player employed by counties
was a pace bowler, something especially pronounced after the West
Indian production line of high class fast bowlers took off in the mid-
1970s. (So large were the numbers of foreign quick bowlers in the
1980s that the pool of English pace bowlers became dangerously
small). Spinners became, if not despised, increasingly came to be
seen as a secondary and defensive form of bowling to fill in when the
fast bowlers needed a rest or, increasingly occasionally, useful when
a pitch took spin. The immense success of the West Indies using four
fast bowlers reinforced the idea that pace was what mattered.
Read more at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/why-modern-english-batsmen-are-so-poor-against-spin/
0 new messages