Spinners now a MUST in the 'cowboy' game

When 50-over cricket first came into being, all countries concentrated in playing medium pace bowlers. Spinners were not given a look in.

But with the passage of time, spin bowling came into the picture and today most teams plonk for spinners in the limited over get up. And playing spinners has began to pay dividends.

Imagine teams playing spinners in twenty20 cricket. It is unbelievable, but true as the recent twenty20 international between Sri Lanka and India shows.

While the Indians fielded spinners, Sri Lanka too went in with three spinners - Malinga Bandara and Sanath Jayasuriya and also with Jehan Mubarak if he could also be bracketed with the spinners.

And as for Sri Lanka, after the pacies Dilhara Fernando and Lasith Malinga sprayed the ball all over, the spinners took over to stun the Indian batting and nearly brought the home team a historic victory.

On the spinners and one cannot understand the treatment meted out to leg spinning googly bowling Malinga Bandara. Although being sidelined or ignored, he hit at his detractors with a vengeance.

How he had been cotton-wooled for so long is inexplicable. Leg-spinners do not come a dime a dozen. They are self made toiling to get to the top and be among the best.

There are not many leg-spinners in the scene in Sri Lanka. Not many would want to take to this style of bowling, because this is the most difficult art in bowling and needs several buckets of sweat and toil to master the art.

Bandara is brilliant and sadly he is not getting the push he deserves to go places. In the game against the Indians coming back after a long time he flighted, spun and teased the visitors batsmen to destruction and it was just one of those things that he could not take the Lankans to a famous victory against the World Champions India.

We hope the selectors will have him in their 'in box' and play him when the opportunity knocks.

Poor Indian spin

Seeing the Indian spinners on show during the one-day series, we are forced to ask the question: 'where are the likes of Bapu Nadkarni, Gupte Prasanna, Venkatraghavan, Ahmed, Bishen Bedi and Chandrasekhar to name a few that come to mind. They were mesmerising spinners who had all opposing batsmen in a flat spin.

In the good old days the Indian captains would rub the new ball on the rough after the first couple of overs and bring on the spinners who would immediately put on their wicket taking act. Indians have won Test matches on spin and only spin.

But the spinners India now have cannot be not only compared with the ones mentioned above, but it would be to waste energy to speak of the spinners they now have other than for their turbanator Harbhajan Singh.

Benaud - a light goes out

A light will go out when former Australian Captain, journalist and TV commentator Richie Benaud retires next year from broadcasting after nearly half a century.

Benaud, whether he was doing radio, TV or describing the game as a journalist, was well received and many were the followers he earned, because he was fair with his comments.

He dominated the scene after giving up the game and many were the youngsters who took up similar jobs and used Benaud as their guru. And Benaud was always ready to help and show the youngsters the ropes as it were.

As a cricketer in the late fifties and early sixties, he had no equal as an allrounder. He was a marvellous leg-spin, googly bowler and as a batsman, he was a hitter of the ball in the true sense of the word.

Benaud was my idol-as a cricketer. I too, was a leg-spin googly bowler and I would never miss watching Benaud play in Sri Lanka. He used to take the field with the top button of his shirt undone.

I always liked to copy his style and one such style I still have is that I too have my top button in the shirt undone since seeing Benaud that way when he first played here, if I am not wrong in the late fifties or early sixties.

When Benaud was taking his team to England for the Ashes series, his team played a whistle stop game at the Colombo Oval, as it was then known and it was after this game that he paid Sri Lanka cricket and that off-spinning allround sensation of that time Abu Fuard the greatest compliment when he said he would like to have Fuard in his team.

That was after Fuard spun them this, that and every way to capture five wickets in a splendid piece of tantalising, cunning and rarely seen spin bowling.

Benaud and the late Sir Frank Worrel had turnstiles creaking for oil, the excellent and fighting manner in which they played a five-tests that will always be remembered in Australia in the 1960/61 series. The cricket was entertaining that the Australians lined the streets to give the Windies a ticker tape farewell.

WICB in poor light

The West Indies Cricket Board came out in very poor light after the second Test between England and West Indies was abandoned after only two overs of play owing to the poor and unfit nature of the Sir Vivian Richard Stadium in Antigua.

When the stadium conducted a World Cup match, it was in fine shape, but after that apparently the stadium was allowed into neglect, especially the draining system and what happened broke the heart of that dashing Windies batsman Viv Richards in whose honour that stadium has been named and a black mark on the West Indian Cricket Board.

The ICC is awaiting reports from the match referee Allan Hurst and others and with Sri Lanka's Ranjan Madugalle as chief match referee also to figure in the proceedings as to what action should be taken against the WICB it would be interesting to watch!