He was good. There were few other batters who were excellent against spin, but sitting ducks against pace. Kumar Dharmasena was one of them, superb against spin (a brilliant defensive player of spin), but was a tail ender against pace.
Who?
Apparently he was also a better player of spin than Lara. The greatest all rounder of all time was hiding in plain sight all along credit to migara for shedding light !
Qasim Umar, probably.
Bull. Lara ended Hirwani's career b4 it could get anywhere. You won't see it in any test score card but lara absolutely murdered him in a fc warm up during India's 1990 tour. Lara ended Kaneira's career and pretty much caused Warne to be dropped for the only time in his career. And man handled Murali home and away. Oh but here comes the "Raju" bs, which is like saying Sachin sucks vs pace because Cronje owned him in one series.
However averages 33 in India. BS Raju and another hack called Kumble made his life difficult.
Sidhu was a great player of spin but mostly at home.
Bro lara played one series in India, let it go. And I mentioned raju because any time anyone mentions lara as one of best players of spin, you bring up this raju nonsense. And in subsequent series vs India, it was their seamers that really troubled lara (weirdly enough).
Yeah true but having literally watched all those series, again it was their seamers who got him out, weirdly enough. As an example, in 1997, lara got out to India's spinners kumble and Joshi as those games were far gone draws and he was trying to entertain.
Lara by his own admission had a hard time getting on top of Indian spinners like Harbi and Kumble.
Having been given a specific list of players to rate in order, my answer is of course Barry Richards.
I watched those series and Kumble especially just seemed quite awkward for Lara to face. I wouldn't say he was weak against them but certainly didn't dominate them.
