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Who is the second great leg spinner ever?
- Thread starter Craig
- Start date
chaminda_00
Hall of Fame Member
O'Reilly > Warne
a massive zebra
International Captain
Bill O'Reilly > Shane Warne > Clarrie Grimmett IMO
SJS
Hall of Fame Member
SJS
Hall of Fame Member
A list of all time great leg spinners might include (in no particular order)
- Grimmett
- Orielly
- Benaud
- Gupte
- Chandrashekhar
- Abdul Qadir
- Warne
- Kumble
SJS
Hall of Fame Member
He also swung it prodigiously in the air. He was a medium pacer and bowled with the new ball. The 'spinning' the ball is more to do with delivery and action rather than what he was trying to get the ball to do.
Almost all the early pace bowlers bowled 'off breaks' at very high speeds which were not very different from the 'slower 'off break' bowlers as far as grip and delivery of the ball at release were concerned.
It would become too nuanced and an exercise in futility if we were to describe the bowlers by the grip alone.
One sees similar debates on what constitutes a 'wrist spinner' and people write of Murali as a wrist spinner. This is again getting into semantics rather than what the bowler is trying to get the ball to do, which is 'break from the off' which is what off break is supposed to do. Just like a leg break is one which breaks from the leg.
The off cutters and leg cutters came later with the finger just moving (cutting) across the seam to give the movement off the wicket in a direction different from which the ball would have moved off the seam if it had not been 'cut'.
In very old texts one finds most references to bowlers as just slow bowler or fast bowler. The difference was probably only in trajectory with the slower bowlers tossing the ball a bit in the air at the time of delivery. That is why so many bowlers we classify as spinners actually opened the attack on so many occasions. The line was hazy and some of the 'spinners' or 'break bowlers, bowled at pretty high pace.
BoyBrumby
Englishman
Grimmett is remarkable in that he was 30 by his debut & still went on to take more wickets than the Tiger. Against that Tiger's averages in both the test arena & FC cricket are superior and most who saw the two seem to rate him as the better bowler.
Barnes is an interesting one, I remember a story I read (it's in his cricinfo profile actually) that Bradman rated O'Reilly as the better bowler because he possessed a googly, which Barnes did not. When Sir Neville Cardus put this to Barnes he replied, "It's quite true I never bowled the 'googly'. I never needed it." This certainly suggests he bowled a leg break, but it seems to have been just a part of his considerable armoury rather than his stock delivery.
Barnes is an interesting one, I remember a story I read (it's in his cricinfo profile actually) that Bradman rated O'Reilly as the better bowler because he possessed a googly, which Barnes did not. When Sir Neville Cardus put this to Barnes he replied, "It's quite true I never bowled the 'googly'. I never needed it." This certainly suggests he bowled a leg break, but it seems to have been just a part of his considerable armoury rather than his stock delivery.
Richard
Cricket Web Staff Member
Never really considered Barnes as a bowler who could be classified, personally. He wasn't pure spinner, and he certainly wasn't seamer. I'd never include him in a list of either spinners or seamers, though I consider him better than any of either of them.
As regards the best spinners, it's so ridiculous the way some people state out-of-hand that Warne is the greatest conventional Leg-Break-stock-ball wristspinner (ie, excluding Muralitharan who is a unique one-off and incomparable to any other wristspinner). He might be, sure, but there's no way he's unequivocally greater than either O'Reilly or Grimmett. Maybe in 10 years' time when the Warne-o-mania has faded more people will start to offer a fairer assessment.
As SJS mentioned, too, other fine wristspin bowlers included Benaud and Gupte (the most often criminally forgotten). But Abdul Qadir was in many ways a wasted talent.
Kumble - and, so I hear in recent times (would be interested to hear SJS's words on this as he'll have seen both bowl plenty), Chandrasekhar too - are somewhat different to the "normal" wristspin in that neither were prodigious spinners of the ball. They weren't fingerspinners but they were more like fingerspin than wristspin in one respect. This means I don't rank either up with the Grimmetts, O'Reillys and Warnes, or even Benauds or Guptes, but of course both were excellent bowlers.
As regards the best spinners, it's so ridiculous the way some people state out-of-hand that Warne is the greatest conventional Leg-Break-stock-ball wristspinner (ie, excluding Muralitharan who is a unique one-off and incomparable to any other wristspinner). He might be, sure, but there's no way he's unequivocally greater than either O'Reilly or Grimmett. Maybe in 10 years' time when the Warne-o-mania has faded more people will start to offer a fairer assessment.
As SJS mentioned, too, other fine wristspin bowlers included Benaud and Gupte (the most often criminally forgotten). But Abdul Qadir was in many ways a wasted talent.
Kumble - and, so I hear in recent times (would be interested to hear SJS's words on this as he'll have seen both bowl plenty), Chandrasekhar too - are somewhat different to the "normal" wristspin in that neither were prodigious spinners of the ball. They weren't fingerspinners but they were more like fingerspin than wristspin in one respect. This means I don't rank either up with the Grimmetts, O'Reillys and Warnes, or even Benauds or Guptes, but of course both were excellent bowlers.
