The pine after spin bowling after Australia ghosted the bowling art during the Ashes, has turned into a clamour. After MCG Test became the first time in Australia when not a single over of spin was bowled, Australia didn’t select a specialist spinner in three of the five Tests, including at Sydney, where SCG has seen a spinner all the 138 preceding years.
Former international pacer and ABC Sport expert Jason Gillespie said while spinners still had a key role to play at Test level, they would simply need to bowl on surfaces that didn’t aid them.
“A spinner always plays a role, even if the surface doesn’t necessarily dictate it,” Gillespie told ABC cricket. “Spinners are going to learn how to bowl on different surfaces, surfaces that may not encourage spin. I can kind of understand why the teams both chose not to play spin at times in this series — they probably felt that the Test matches weren’t going to go for five days. But it’s a Test match and our young spinners need to learn how to bowl in all conditions, not just in spin-friendly conditions,” he urged.
The Ashes had young upcoming spinners as young as U15s calling in to ask what was their future. 12-year-old Boyd, had messaged ABC Sport during the Sydney Test asking, “As a young aspiring spinner playing under 12s, why has the Australian team made it so hard for me and other young spinners to play Test cricket?”
ABC also quoted 19-year-old leg break Geelong bowler in Victoria’s Premier Cricket competition, Paawan Sharma saying Australia’s pace-friendly pitches were tough to survive on. “It’s obviously hard with the pitches in Australia, they don’t offer much to spinners,” Sharma said. “Pitches are favouring pace bowlers more, so spinners aren’t getting much of a go. We obviously don’t get [pitches] that turn a lot or bounce, so spinners don’t get much value from spinning the ball.”
“It’s not great to be seeing a team with no spinners, especially in Australia,” he added to ABC. “[Spin bowling] is always going to keep evolving, it’s not going to say the same as what it was five years ago — spinners will keep finding a way to get up there because we are an important part of the team. I guess we just have to find a way to get up there,” he mulled.
Former Australian spinner Ray Bright said this Ashes series had probably been one of the shortest, so it hadn’t really given wickets a chance to deteriorate.
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“They’ve been green and grassy from day one, so they haven’t broken up at all in any shape or form. If they keep serving up the wickets they have, well you might as well play a batter [instead].” He sensed a dearth of support from coaching side for spinners. “I don’t know how much effort has been put into developing and encouraging them,” Bright said. “We need captains and coaches to give [young spinners] a bowl and not just go to the medium pacers all the time, particularly on good, flat wickets.”
Frankston-Peninsula Cricket Club’s Peter Buchanan said the drop-in pitches were more conducive for medium pacers. “A lot of young cricketers today tend to be bowling medium pace or even faster,” Buchanan said. “There is the odd spinner, but nowadays boys and girls tend to rely on two or three of the skills. You don’t see too many young cricketers that are just trying to learn how to bowl off spin and leg spin, they’re generally batters who can bowl a bit. I think there’s still a place in the game for a spinner, but I just think at the moment with these drop-in pitches, they’re tending to be more conducive to medium and fast bowling,” he said.
“With the white ball format, a lot of these junior competitions, young cricketers are only allowed to bowl certain amount of overs and as a spin bowler you actually need to bowl lots of overs to … improve your craft and it takes a long time.
“So, I think it’s an issue but hopefully it’s not a dying art because we need to have spin bowling as an option in all games of cricket.”
