GLOOMY PROSPECTS FOR LEG-SPINNERS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30934, 15 December 1965, Page 19

GLOOMY PROSPECTS FOR LEG-SPINNERS

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W. J. O'REILLY

years spent as a professional cricket spectator, I have come to recognise that the depressing sight of water laden tarpaulins provides excellent opportunity to recall nostalgic memories of other days, and to reassure myself that the game can never be so good as it was in the days of my youth. But Brisbane’s steady soaking rain seeped so deeply through the crust of memory that I found my self comparing the test leg-spinners’ lot today with that which applied when C. V. Grimmett and I were stock bowlers for Australia.

And comparision made me feel sad for men like P. Philpott and R. W. Barber who will be carrying the banner for us when this test does get underway properly. The main problem which modern leg-spinners have not solved is how to counter the tremendous disadvantages that have been stacked up against them by backroom boys who tinker with the laws of the game.

Two savagely unfair rules have been perpetrated against “my mob” since my exit from the game rules which have made it highly improbable that leg-spinners could compete with off-epin-ners, who have been the pampered class. The first one is the legbeforewicket rule which savs that batsman can be dismissed by the ball landing outside the stumps on the off side, and which hitting the batsman’s leg in line with the wickets, would have struck the stumps. That is “old hat" stuff now. So old that no one stops to think what it has done to the bowler who among his legbreaks has dared to cultivate the aoegtie. The googiie, the rulemakers say is the bowler's answer. But put yourself in place of a batsman. Faring leg-breaker who trains

his sights on the leg and middle stumps, he can forget the leg before rude entirety, unless he has the misfortune to misjudge a full toss. To bring the rule into play he must toss his googiie outside the offstump. As soon as he sees ft, the batsman automatically thinks, googiie. Greet

help indeed for a bowler who has tried to conceal the delivery so that It will come as a surprise. The leg-before role to quite unfair, but the role which says that no more titan five fieldsmen cm be stationed on the leeride to worse. This rule, which applies to all ci asses of bowling, will eventually drive leg-spinners right out of important fixtures like tost matches. They are only just bolding on grimly now. The off-spinner can set the offside field as beavtiy manned as he pleases, put the whole nine tiiere and

then bowl wide of the off stump inviting a righthanded batsman to bit dangerously across the spin in an attempt to get runs. No law has been promulgated to worry him; but the leg-spinner coming in the opposite way has been limited to five on the on side and no more than two of those can be stationed behind squareleg. What thoughtless nonsense on the pert of those responsible for forming the game’s laws. I can imagine the dismay with which the young leg-spinner views the thought of sending down a googiie under such conditions. Let ft come short, and the batsman hits it though wide open gaps that never exist on the other side when the off-spinner bowls short Surely the elimination of the leg-spinner never entered the minds of those responsible for these two devastating nfies.