Followers of a rare form

Kuldeep Yadav is the 288th man to play Test cricket for India, but the first of his tribe. Left-arm wrist-spin has always been rare: By my count, only 20 men have regularly bowled it in Tests, many part-time trundlers, half of them Australian. The style goes by a name that is, even by cricketing standards, both bizarre and contentious — Chinaman.

The origin of the name is often traced to the West Indian Ellis Achong, the first Test cricketer of Chinese descent. Otherwise an orthodox left-armer, Achong had England’s Walter Robins stumped in Manchester in 1933 with a wrist-spun delivery that turned from off to leg. Robins is said to have remarked to the umpire: “Fancy being done by a bloody Chinaman!”

However, the use of the word Chinaman for left-arm wrist-spin has little to do with Achong’s ethnicity, and in fact goes back well before 1933. It more likely originated with Maurice Leyland, the great Yorkshire and England batsman. Leyland bowled part-time spin, usually — like Achong — of the orthodox variety. Occasionally he would bowl a wrist-spun off-break from around the wicket with little control. Leyland liked to joke that such a ball “might be good enough to get the Chinese out if no one else.” Thereafter, first in Yorkshire and then in the rest of England, this ball became known as a Chinaman. Leyland’s teammates thought he had invented the ball; but at least one other player, South Africa’s Charlie Llewellyn (also the first non-white South African Test player), had bowled it before.

Left-arm wrist-spin is often called unorthodox, or “mystery spin”. But a so-called Chinaman is only a mirror of the right-hander’s leg-break, and Yadav’s other weapons — googly, top-spinner, flipper — were all part of Clarrie Grimmett’s repertoire 80 years ago. It is difficult to say exactly why such bowling is so rare, and considered so exotic.

Part of the reason may be the old lbw (leg before wicket) law, in force between 1877 and 1937 — a batsman could only be given out lbw if the ball had pitched between wicket and wicket. In this era, almost all successful spinners turned the ball from leg to off: They were either leg-spinners or left-arm finger-spinners. The latter became known as “left-arm orthodox”, as there were no other kind.

The law was altered in 1937 to allow lbw dismissals to balls pitched outside off. As widely predicted, this encouraged bowlers who moved the ball from off to leg and led to an immediate profusion of right-arm off-spinners and in-swingers. Leg-spin, once common, particularly in England, began a decline that has only been arrested with the rise of T20. By contrast, for the first time in cricket history, left-arm wrist-spin became a recognised part of the game.

This was most true in Australia, where the combination of hard pitches and the new lbw law made “unorthodox” spin seem more profitable than the orthodox kind. George Tribe, perhaps the best-ever Australian left-arm wrist-spinner, made the switch from finger-spin in 1938. He was followed by the likes of Lindsay Kline, David Sincock, Johnny Martin. Decades later, Australia continue to produce the occasional Chinaman, such as Brad Hogg and the one-Test wonder Beau Casson.

Yet none of these Australians were able to forge sustained careers at Test level. Even Tribe, who thrived in English county cricket, struggled in three Ashes Tests and in unofficial Tests against India. The near-universal struggles of left-arm wrist-spinners are exemplified by the career of the form’s true pioneer, Leslie “Chuck” Fleetwood-Smith. Fleetwood-Smith is the only specialist Chinaman bowler to have made his Test debut before the lbw law change. He turned both off-break and googly sharply, and took 41 wickets in his first nine Tests; but he is known for what happened in his 10th and last. At the Oval in 1938, Fleetwood-Smith took one for 298, still the most runs conceded in a Test innings.

Fleetwood-Smith’s unlucky reputation — turn and potency, but poor control — has dogged his successors. Wrist-spin of any kind is the most difficult form of bowling to master. When the ball is spinning from off to leg, perceived as easier for the right-hander to attack, coaches and captains consider it too great a risk. The only bowler to take 100 Test wickets in this style, Paul Adams, used the safer googly as his stock ball, while for Garry Sobers wrist-spin was only one of his three modes, along with seam and orthodox spin.

The prejudice against such bowling is so strong as to have affected even its greatest-ever exponent, England’s Johnny Wardle. Wardle has the best bowling average of any England bowler since World War II, and his wrist-spun off-breaks and googlies were deadly in Test cricket, particularly overseas. But he was prevented by his county, Yorkshire, from varying from his less-effective orthodox style. At his peak, Wardle was banished from the game after a dispute with administrators — unrelated to his bowling — and cricket lost the only man to truly master the art of left-arm wrist-spin.

Since Wardle, most youngsters whose natural style is left-arm wrist-spin have been dissuaded by their first coaches — Yadav is a happy exception. With an increase in the number of left-handed batsmen, Yadav’s success is likely to encourage others. The term Chinaman is overdue for replacement, for both racial and cricketing reasons. Outside cricket, the term has long been considered offensive, while in the game it embodies prejudice and narrow-minded conservatism. Call it left-arm wrist-spin, or left-arm off-spin (in order to avoid saying Chinaman, journalists have taken to inaccurately calling Yadav’s stock ball “leg break”), or some other name altogether: it is as natural as any other form of bowling, and in the right (left) hand, as effective too.

Keshava Guha is a Delhi-based writer

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