These are good times for Indian spin bowling

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The extraordinary success of Amit Mishra in the ODIs in the Caribbean suggests he is doing more than just getting the basics right. Much in the manner of all legspinners, he has toiled on for years at an art that is difficult to master.

It is the good fortune of Indian cricket that the art is not dead yet. In just this year, Team India have played two leggies in ODIs with Piyush Chawla figuring, somewhat controversially, in the World Cup.
Ironically, the pitches in the Caribbean have been proving to be a spinners’ delight. The surfaces are essentially slow but there is so much turn to be had, especially with the hard ball, that any spinner worth his salt would be licking his lips in anticipation of bowling on them.
Also, no West Indian side may have been so dependent on slow bowling and variations of pace from medium pacers as this one.
By his good fortune of being able to figure in this series, Mishra has moved ahead of Chawla in the pecking order. Chief selector Krish Srikkanth is one who has always sworn by playing a leggie against the West Indies, England and South Africa. He believes these teams are weak against the ball spinning away from the bat and so has championed the cause of the leggies against them.
Chawla may have got in as the special pick of Dhoni and Tendulkar for the World Cup. The move may have boomeranged but it was based on the technical evaluation of the need for a leggie against teams known always to be uncomfortable against the purveyors of googly and topspin.
Mishra is slower through the air, which is actually a plus point when bowling against those who tend to get uncertain while reading the flight of the ball. The drift he gets makes his stock ball, the leg break, quite hard to play, especially on the kind of damp turners seen in the first three ODIs when the West Indies batted first in games when the series was still alive. His scramble-seamed top spinners are also ideal camouflage for the googlies that he is never afraid of using.
As a rule, legspinners tend to mature late, which means a lot more patience is needed to see even one of them come through at the international level. Considering even talented ones tend to drop off the radar if their confidence is not nurtured by understanding captains, it is rather important to believe in such bowling as a cause.
Even Warne had a horrendous start to his Test career with figures of a lot for very little as Sachin Tendulkar and Ravi Shastri got stuck into him.
It does not, however, pay to see too much into a leggie’s success against the West Indies because they play that type of spin so awkwardly. Even so, Mishra’s success gives Indian spin bowling the dose of confidence it needs for the bigger battles ahead as the Test champions ready to keep their title. And these are particularly good times for spin what with Harbhajan Singh and R. Ashwin being in the same squad.
It’s not as if Ashwin is flooded with opportunities but he has done very well in the limited openings that have come his way. He has enormous variations up his sleeve and his temperament is sound as seen in the few big matches that he has played. It can’t be long before he is a regular, which means Team India have a kind of envious depth. If only the story were the same in the pace department there should be no difficulty in making Duncan Fletcher’s prediction come true with India dominating world cricket for another 10 years.