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“When I played, we had seven or eight bowlers who could all have done a
reasonable job in a Test match – by which I mean flat wickets, against good
players. Now, we’ve barely got one in the whole country. Spin bowling has
fallen by the wayside. It’s become a forgotten element of the game.”
Partly Borthwick has suffered at the hands of fortune. “As a young spinner,
you’ve just got to bowl and bowl,” says Geoff Cook, Durham
director of cricket.
“In the last couple of seasons, the wickets have been a bit damp. It’s hard to
get them dry enough to be real turning wickets. But we recognise Scott as a
real match-winning player, and he’s improving all the time.”
Yet more recent developments have had a hand too. As recently as 2009,
leg-spinner Danish Kaneria was the leading Championship wicket-taker. But
the move towards playing the bulk of Championship games in April and May,
when pitches are at their greenest, has seen dwindling opportunities for
even very good spinners.
“The teams that win the Championship have the best seam-bowling attacks,” says
Nottinghamshire director of cricket Mick Newell. “Because you’ve played
eight games by the end of May, quite often spinners aren’t getting the same
overs they were a few years ago.”
Often the best opportunity for a young spin bowler to make an impact at county
level will be in the shorter formats, and this has had a subtle effect of
the sort of bowler being produced.
“Danny Briggs is quite successful in T20, but he’s not a massive turner of the
ball,” says Glamorgan’s Dean Cosker. “He likes to fire it in at leg-stump,
because of all the T20 that he’s been playing, and his four-day form has
struggled. You lose your mystery if you just hone your skills in one-day
cricket. You still need a bit of guile.”
“A few years ago I asked Shaun Udal how many spinners ripped their fingers,”
Pocock says. “The answer was none. Because they don’t spin it. If you don’t
spin it, you just become a slow bowler. That’s why they get murdered. Look
what happened to Kerrigan. He had no front arm, no follow-through, so he had
zero margin for error. I felt sorry for him, but what does it say about us
when you have to pick someone like Kerrigan? The cupboard is absolutely
bare.”
Cook agrees that a lack of young talent is not the problem. “Up to under-17,
because they play two-day cricket, so you see lots of spinners,” he says.
“As soon as a young spinner makes the grade into second-eleven cricket, they
become very exposed and their immaturity comes through.”
Instead, it is what happens next that is often the problem. A few years ago,
Maurice Holmes was poised to be the future of English spin bowling. He was
able to produce, quite naturally, that rarest of deliveries: the doosra. In
2009 Ashley Giles watched him bowling in the Warwickshire nets for an hour,
and offered him a contract on the spot. But that was as good as it got.
Despite passing a series of biomechanical tests proving his action was legal,
umpires persistently called him for throwing. Now, he is studying to become
a barrister. He is 23 years old.
“There was definitely a lack of understanding, not just from coaches but from
umpires,” he says. “I felt there wasn’t as much support as there might be in
other countries. There probably aren’t many spin coaches in England who can
claim to have mastered the doosra.”
“We’ve got coaches out there who have played as little as 10 or 15 first-class
matches,” Pocock says. “We’re getting down and down on experience. There are
more spinners at the base of the triangle – under-15 and under-17 level –
than ever before. They progress, get a county contract, and then they
regress. Because the knowledge is just not there.”
So, who will be the next England spinner to take 100 Test wickets? Briggs?
Adil Rashid? Ollie Rayner? Newell reckons Kerrigan will come good
eventually. Cosker believes it will take at least five years for any of the
current crop to mature into a consistently good Test performer. But it is
Pocock who provides perhaps the most doom-laden analysis of all.
“That is the $64,000 question,” he says. “If you’ve got any sense, you’re
going to say nobody.”
