Best old time players in a modern setting

[the big bambino]

Yeah O'Reilly had a life long involvement in cricket and didn't need a time machine to see the so called modern era. There was nothing knew in the way of spin bowling that he would've had to pick up. Well maybe the doosra but his arm was too straight for that.

 

[karan_fromthestands]

I don't know why people think that old-time spinners would just "translate" their game into the modern day. In addition to some of their styles being extinct (medium pace spin, like Barnes), it's not like spin is a purely mental activity that doesn't improve from physical improvements of professionalism.

These days emphasis on revolutions, accuracy, and speed through the air (and subsequent changes of) keep improving, and techniques against spin bowling keep improving as well. A dude just flighting it up, depending on an uncovered pitch against a hapless batsman who can't see or pick up **** he's doing, isn't really the norm (this is hyperbole, but the point is that spin isn't the same either).

While it's true that techniques against spin bowling have improved, the art of spin bowling itself has also evolved. Spinners now have more variations (like the 'doosra', 'carrom ball', etc.) in their arsenal. There's no reason to believe that spinners from the past wouldn't have adapted these into their game.

 

[Silver Silva]

Here’s what O’Reilly thought.He pretty much bowled the modern way and probably better than anyone has ever done.His writing in 1982 when many thought spin was gonna die.


By Bill O’Reilly

Spin bowling's return is bound to take lots of time. To regenerate spin bowling in Australia and to have it functioning as it did in the thirties one starts thinking about the year 2000.

For instance, I read with great interest of the opening of a new cricket school in Sydney's southern suburbs just the other day, and cheerfully thought of the prospects lying ahead for the ambitious boys of that district. It struck me however as a lopsided event when I read that youngsters interested in fast bowling will be coached free of charge by a leading international, Len Pascoe.

But there you are - what silly boy would waste his time thinking about anything else but speed these days.

None do, but the time will come - let me assure you - when many will.

It is refined cruelty for a leg spinner of other days to watch batsmen brought up on a diet of fast bowling sending out all the signals that induced a slow bowler to get his hands on the ball as quickly as he could catch the captain's eye.

I have written it often - with Clarrie Grimmett at one end and myself at the other we could "do" all the international sides I have seen in the past without raising a sweat.

Footwork has gone without a trace. Backfoot defense is not even a memory. How then in the name of all that's precious can a batsman expect to cope with a bowler who has length , direction, change of pace and leg spin, supported by a wrong 'un. What hope has he for survival ?

I envy the first young man who shapes up with all those bowling tricks in his armoury to revive the lost art.

His rewards will be gigantic.

I can see for him a programme which will rewrite the bowling record book.

Basically he was describing Shane Warne