Know Your Sport: Cricket – Spin bowling

There is nothing as magical and spectacular in cricket than a perfectly delivered googly or top spinner to bamboozle a batsman.
The spin bowler is one of cricket’s magicians who can pull a rabbit out of the hat in crucial moments and can be a true match winner. Spin bowlers might seem like easy targets to some batsmen who favour slower bowlers but, if there is enough trickery in the bowler’s arsenal, the batsman can really struggle.
Spin bowling is an integral part of cricket and has been utilised most in the sub-continent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) to great effect over the years. The reason for this is that the pitches get dry, slow and dusty. In other words, this means that the ball gets a greater chance to grip on the pitch and turn. Spin bowlers generally have a holding role in South African conditions as our country’s pitches are more suited to the fast bowlers.
Types of spin bowlers:
Off-spinner/Slow left arm (left arm offspinner)
Off spinners are the most common spin bowlers who use their fingers to turn the ball. A flick of the fingers puts revolutions on the ball to make it spin into the right-handed batsman and away from the left-handed batsman. This is the conventional delivery and the grip on the ball is the crucial aspect of this one. Off spinners do have variations, though, and can deliver an arm ball (The ball does not spin) and a doosra (invented by former Pakistan spinner, Saqlain Mushtaq) which goes the opposite way to the conventional off spinning delivery.
Famous off-spinners
•Muttiah Muralitharan
•Harbhajan Singh
•Saqlain Mushtaq
•Graeme Swann
Leg spinner/Slow left arm chinaman
The leg spinner is one of a cricket side’s greatest heroes or villains. This being one of the most difficult bowling styles to master, a leg spinner can either get it perfectly right or horribly wrong on occasion. The best in the business normally get their deliveries right 9/10 times and are deadly with their numerous variations based on flight, speed, and bounce.
Leg spinners use their wrists to deliver and put a spin on the ball. The leg spinner’s normal delivery spins away from the right-handed batsman and into the left-handed batsman. The googly spins the other way while the top spinner is a slower ball that generates a lot of bounce. The flipper is a fast, flat ball that is incredibly difficult to bowl and is used as a surprise to fool the batsman. The most famous leg spinner in the history of cricket, Shane Warne, bowled the ball of the 20th century, where the ball spun from outside the leg stump to clip the off stump. The spin and the revolutions on the ball was something incredible.
The slow left-arm chinaman bowler is exactly the same as a leg spinner, the only difference is that the bowlers bowl with their left hand. The ball then spins in the opposite direction of a normal leg spinner.
Famous leg spinners
•Shane Warne
•Anil Kumble
•Imran Tahir
•Brad Hogg