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Why aren't there more spinner all rounders?

OverratedSanity

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Just personally speaking, Ive found bowling spin way harder than pace. Atleast when bowling seamup off a proper run up I can bowl something akin to an actual delivery. When I try to bowl with a traditional spinners action and try to turn it I go full Pavel florin with the trajectory (OK not quite full but close enough) and loop up harmless top spinners. It's incredibly taxing on the wrists too. Can't imagine how much it'd hurt your fingers bowling those iron man 20 over spells
 

RossTaylorsBox

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Just personally speaking, Ive found bowling spin way harder than pace. Atleast when bowling seamup off a proper run up I can bowl something akin to an actual delivery. When I try to bowl with a traditional spinners action and try to turn it I go full Pavel florin with the trajectory (OK not quite full but close enough) and loop up harmless top spinners. It's incredibly taxing on the wrists too. Can't imagine how much it'd hurt your fingers bowling those iron man 20 over spells
It's fine once you develop calluses on your fingers.
 

trundler

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The unbridled joy that comes from bouncing someone out can't seriously be compared to getting lucky wickets caught in the deep.
 

MrPrez

International Debutant
From an aesthetic point of view I feel that it's harder for a wrist spinner to look a s smooth and graceful, as the best finger spinners. I liked watching Harbajan Singh almost danced up to the crease, way more than Shane Warne's run up and delivery even when it is obvious Warne is a much better bowler. This is speaking ENTIRELY from an aesthetic point of view
DIsagree completely, I think offies look boring and generic, whereas leggies are much more snappy and interesting.

Harbhajan had a unique but I'd still much rather watch Warne even from an aesthetic point of view.
 

OverratedSanity

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The unbridled joy that comes from bouncing someone out can't seriously be compared to getting lucky wickets caught in the deep.
What about making a batsman look silly by beating him in the flight and stranding him in the middle of the pitch. Fast bowlers rarely ever truly embarrass batsmen to that extent..
 

vcs

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The unbridled joy that comes from bouncing someone out can't seriously be compared to getting lucky wickets caught in the deep.
Neil Wagner is boring to watch though. The Jadeja of fast bowling.
 

weldone

Hall of Fame Member
Why have the best all rounders tended to be pace bowlers (in recent times - i.e. last 40-50 years), which seems to be far more draining physically (batting, then running in to bowl multiple overs/spells in a day).
Spin requires a lot less 'work' (especially in tropical etc conditions), so you'd think the game would have produced more spin all rounders.

Obviously Shakib is one, Jadeja another at the moment, Warne and Vettori (last one rather loosely) from generation by gone. But the top top bowling all rounders have been pace bowlers - especially the 80s lot, and even a few of the 90s (Wasim, Cairns - Kallis from the batting side). Sobers obviously could do both
lol
 

Burgey

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DIsagree completely, I think offies look boring and generic, whereas leggies are much more snappy and interesting.

Harbhajan had a unique but I'd still much rather watch Warne even from an aesthetic point of view.
Harby’s run up was, as some have said, almost balletic. I thought his action was pretty filthy though, in his early days anyway. His front foot used to face towards point when it landed. As an exercise, try doing that and keeping your arm straight. Maybe he changed it later in his career, but it didn’t seem as troublesome to me as time went on. Though afaik there was never an issue so it may well just have been my perception.

Certainly not Gannon -level or anything like that.
 

andruid

Cricketer Of The Year
DIsagree completely, I think offies look boring and generic, whereas leggies are much more snappy and interesting.

Harbhajan had a unique but I'd still much rather watch Warne even from an aesthetic point of view.
I suppose we have different tastes. No harm in that.
 

Flametree

International 12th Man
Hooper started off bowling medium pace swing I think.

As for the original premise, when I was growing up, every provincial team in NZ had a spinning all rounder at 6 or 7... or two. Chris Kuggeleijn, Evan Gray, Stu Duff, Mark Priest, Vaughan Brown, John Bracewell, Dipak Patel etc. Given NZ pitches through the ages, a spinner who couldn't bat was a real luxury, so they had to be very good to survive (eg, Stephen Boock).

Meanwhile in India, lots of spinners over the years couldn't bat but made the team (Ojha, Raju, Doshi, Hirwani, Prasanna, Bedi, Chandra) while quite a lot of allrounders were seam bowlers, eg Kapil, Prabhakar, Phadkar, Lala Amarnath, Madan Lal, Ghavri, Roger Binny, etc.

As to why there are more top seam allrounders, I think it's just a case of numbers - there are more seam bowlers per team than spinners, so there are more seam allrounders. If you listed out the top 20 allrounders, I suspect more than 5 of them would be spinners, so the basic premise seems wrong - ranking allrounders is obviously subjective but I'd probably have Jadeja, Shakib, Faulkner, Ashwin, Rhodes, Mushtaq, Mankad, Macartney, Benaud in there.
 

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