Long post coming up, This is Mike Brearley on Legspinners in his book "The art of captaincy"
"... What the legspinner has to offer is not what it seems. Or seemed. For the species has all but become extinct, at least in England as anachronistic as the language used to describe it. There are many reasons for the decline, and I will return to them later. Now I will mentioned just one: the misuse of leg-spinners by captains temperamentally unsympathetic to them.
I can give three examples. Johnny Wardle was a most versatile cricketer. He was a highly competent orthodox spinner, a brilliant bowler of chinamen and googlies, and even an adequate swing bowler. In many, conditions his orthodox bowling was the best bet, it was more accurate, and he could defend one side of the wicket. On wet pitches in particular he could bowl sides out more cheaply than with the Chinamen, In other circumstances, though - and especially overseas- he could be a genuinely attacking bowler only with the Chinaman. In hte other style, he was reduced to defence, he might force good players to make an error, but was unlikely to get them out when they were defending. Now, Len Hutton, as captain of England had a deep respect for fast bowling, and an equally deep mistrust of leg-spin; the outcome was that he used Wardle as a stock bowler whose job was to allow the fast bowlers to rest. He wwas allowed to bowl Chinamen and googlies in the lat Test of the 1954-5 when the Ashes were safe, and took eight wickets in the match.
I think Hutton like many Yorkshiremen found leg-spin utterly enigmatic. Wardle once told me of an occasion when he was bowling orthodox spinners to Hutton on the nets at Headingley. Hutton, he said, kept dancing down the pitch and hitting him everywhere; not least way back over his head. Wardle became fed up with this, and switched to Chinamen. " don't want to sound immodest,' he went on,'but I have never made a great player look so much at sea.'
Leg spin bowling with its flourish and strut, its long-hops and its patches of brilliance, is anathema to the Yorkshire mentality. It is difficult to imagine Abdul Qadir being allowed to survive and flower in Yorkshire; and if the next small, flexible-kointed Qadir happens to be born in Bradford, his best chance would be to move south(if not also east) an an early age.
In my other exampls,the captains used their legspinners are stock bowlers than as potential match winners -I refer to Bill Lawry with Gleeson and Trevor Bailey with Robin Hobbs.In 1970-71, few if any English batsmen could read Gleeson, yet Lawry rarely used him to attack, rarely crowded the batsmen with fielders.
In the case of Bailey and Hobbs, there was far more excuse. Hobbs always claimed that his captain wanted him to bowl like a slow left-armer- pushing it through, capable of bowling defensively and for long spells. The result was that Hobbs lost his ability to spin the ball sharply, and became exactly what his captain wanted; he even drifted the ball in, like the left-armer. But this may, in fact, have been his best chance of building a career, and surviving in a form of county cricket which already included one-day matches. Possibly, too, Essex were never in his formative years powerful enough as a side to be able to afford a potential match-winner who was also quixotic and experimental.
Legspinners are in fact, of most value in a team that can score plenty of runs, and score them quickly. Middlesex's immediate postwar successes were based on a marellous batting lineup, adventurous captaincy and three leg-spinners. The leg-spinners are most effectve on dry pitches and in warm weather; in short, in relatively high-scoring matches. The climate, as well as the character of Yorkshire has militated against them.
But why have leg-spinners all but disappeared? Part of the answer lies in hte factors that have countered against spinbowlers in general and helped seamers: the use f fertiliser, the watering of outfields and the changes in ball manufacture.More specifically though leg spinners have suffered from a change in attitude. Crickets have beome less cavalier. It is no longerr thinkable that a wicket keeper should have 64 stumpings in a season, as Les Ames did in 1932.
Selectors, captains and cricketers in general have becoe more conscious of containment, and the leg-spinner especially in recent English conditions, has become a luxury. One-day cricket which calls for attacking batting and defensive bowling has hastened his demise, but it, too is a symptom as well as a cayse. His decline is hte saddest loss for cricket, and if Abdul Qadir's and more recently the young Indian Sivaramakrishnan's English victims contribute in any way to a revival of the art, then their successes should be cheered by Englishmen, however partisan. For all the skills of the game, theirs are the most subtle, charming and delightful. Leg-spinners are a pleasure to play agains,t and to have on your side. And they are a rewarding breed to captain.
