With Glamorgan opting for a pace-led T20 attack with Dale Steyn and Timm van der Gugten, plus the experience spin of Dean Cosker, cricket writer Peter Miller discusses the pros and cons of each in the shortest format.
In the early days of Twenty20 cricket spin was king. In the first season of the T20 Cup in 2004 four of the top five bowlers in terms of economy rate were spinners.
There has been a lot of talk since that people predicted that spin would be killed off by T20 cricket, but as was pointed out by Jarrod Kimber in an article for ESPNCricinfo there is plenty of evidence of people saying people said it, but little evidence of anyone actually saying it.
According to Kimber Terry Jenner, the Australian legspinner who played nine Tests for Australia in the 1970s, said something along those lines in 2008. But that was long after spin has been hugely successful in the format. We have been conditioned to say that the demise of spin was foretold even though not many people were saying it.
From the very start the best T20 sides have worked out that the key to success is variation. In the absence of out and out pace, and bowlers that can get the ball down the other end at 90mph and faster on a regular basis are few and far between, the way to keep the scoring rate down is to keep the batsmen guessing.
Often it is the spinners that are best placed to do this, especially the ones that can turn the ball both ways. Of the ten best career economy rates in T20 international cricket nine of them are from spin bowlers, which bears this out.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for the slower men, with the issue of illegal bowling actions at the forefront of the cricketing agenda. Perhaps the most successful T20 spinner of the last five years, Sunil Narine, has been plagued by allegations about his elbow flexing and he has been suspended and retested on numerous occasions. And he is far from alone, Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal has had to completely remodel his action and many others have found themselves spending time out of the game.
The biggest issue stems from it being difficult to bowl the “doosra”, the off spinner’s delivery that turns away from the right handed batsman, without flexing your elbow. Some would argue that it is impossible to do it without bowling becoming throwing.
The removal of that variation from the arsenal of the off-spinner has blunted their effectiveness somewhat, but the legspinner has picked up the slack.
The ability to turn the ball both ways with the googly and legbreak has seen them become the most powerful weapon. At the recent World T20 the West Indian leggie Samuel Badree opened the bowling and conceded just 5.39 runs per over.
Not that it is only the spinners that have a monopoly on variations and with these innovations seamers are now also keeping batsmen guessing. For those quicker men that can’t get batsmen jumping around with searing pace the ability to bowl changeups have been vital to the evolution of the format. The leading wicket taker of all time in T20 is Dwayne Bravo who is a fast-medium bowler. However, the majority of his deliveries are slower balls.
The big break through star in T20 in the last 12 months has been Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman who is another bowler who can bowl at around 85mph but has a number of variations that have seen batsmen mesmerised across the World T20 and Indian Premier League.
It will be fascinating to see how well he does when he turns out for Sussex in this season’s Natwest T20 Blast.
Where spinners struggle and the quicker men are still vital is the end of the innings. With batsmen given licence to swing hard and hit big in the death overs, spinners have really toiled.
Only Narine and Ajmal with full licence to use their variations have been regularly successful, other than that the slower men have gone the distance.
Although there have been any number of developments in the way seam bowlers have attempted to keep the scoring rate down the most successful is still the oldest.
While there have been off-cutters, out of the back of the hand slower balls and off-pace bouncers, the one that works best is the yorker. A ball in the blockhole is the still the hardest to hit, but there is far less room for error.
A badly aimed yorker becomes a low full toss and if a batsman can get underneath it there is a good chance it is going for six, but it is still what bowlers go for.
The innovation has been that rather than aiming at the stumps bowlers have been pushing the yorker wider to make the batsmen reach for the ball.
The most exciting part of T20 is the way the format has seen so many variations develop. A form of the game that was invented as a bit of fun is now the proving ground for shots and deliveries that we have seen in every type of cricket match.
While spin has proven the best bet in the middle overs of a T20 and seamers are best at the end, they both have their place. A well-rounded attack is the key to success.