rivera213
U19 Vice-Captain
It's strange how he declined SO rapidly. I suppose it can just happen when you're post-30.He did. I've said it many times - Donald lost so much between early-2001 and early-2002. Some people don't accept this, of course, but that's the way it went. He was quite superlative one minute and barely a year later he was a skeleton.
Purely with hindsight I so wish he'd hung-up his boots after the West Indies tour of 2001, even though I would never, ever have wanted that at the time and can absolutely 100% see why he wasn't thinking that way (because, as I say, I wasn't myself).
By far the best IMO, though they did play half their tests on wickets which were pretty much perfect for them.FYI, Bedi-Chandra-Prasanna-Venkat was either the best or second-best spin attack in cricket history (the only competitor being the SA wristspin triplet of Schwarz, Vogler and Faulkner in the 1900s). To succeed against them is a far more notable achievement than succeeding against one spin bowler, however good, in Warne.
However, finger spin is easier to null than wrist as a general rule (regardless of whether the bowler and batsmen are both right handed or are opposities) and only Chandrasekhar was a wrist spinner of the quartet.
I don't disagree with Lloyd and Kallicharran being great players of spin (both average 55+ I believe against India in an era when 40 was the bench mark of great batsmen).
But:
Lloyd was dismissed by Bedi & Chandrasekhar 7 times each I think, Venkataraghavan 5 times and Prasanna 3 times as well as against lesser known spinners and Kallicharran was dismisse by Chandrasekhar 4 times, Bedi 3 times, Prasanna twice and Venkataraghavan once so while both were excellent players of spin, there weren't by any means unpenetrable for the spinner.
Therefore, it's not a given Lloyd and Kallicharan wouldn't have been owned by Warne like so many other great players of spin (Tendulkar for example) or that a team including Haynes, Richards, Kallicharan and Lloyd wouldn't have fell to Warne like so many others.
You don't have 700+ wickets @ a strike rate of in between 55 and 60 if you don't constantly find a way of getting even the best players of spin out.
Individually, none of the Indian Quartet were as good as either Warne or Muralitharan IMO and it only takes 1 bowler to run through a team.