Published: Feb 17, 2011, 10:55 AM (IST)
Edited: Jul 02, 2014, 11:31 AM (IST)
By Rajesh Ramaswamy
Could a spinner from South Africa be the joker in the pack at this World Cup? I’m talking about Imran Tahir who the Protea media and fans are all aflutter about. The question is: Will he be allowed to express himself?
Tahir is good, but a good leggie needs a captain and management who know how to handle him… how his mind works, how to set fields for him and how to back him when runs leak. I’m not too sure Graeme Smith and Co. have that nous.
They’ve always been suspicious of spin and have seen it as a necessary evil, needed to fill the gaps between fast bowlers’ spells, and curb the scoring rate (not to mention, the over rate). A leggie, however, is a different kettle of fish.
A leg-spinner who accepts the subservient role of ‘container’ is an aberration and is abhorrent to the true cricket aficionado…they are born attackers, and their unique way of dispensing the ball with the wrist rather than the more natural finger-spin, means they are more likely to err on the side of incaution. That means Tahir will never be as tight as a Johan Botha or Robin Peterson. He’ll go for more, but he could, potentially, get you a lot more wickets.
The issue is that a culture that prides itself on the straight and narrow, and on unquestioning discipline, will tend to view a leggie’s sleight of hand as sophistry and not a compelling argument.
The only possibility is if the South African captain has learnt something from his captain at Rajasthan Royals, one Mr. Shane Warne. If he has, and if he’s willing to allow Tahir the length of rope that ‘disciplined’ South African teams have always balked at, he might just find a match winner. For cricket, especially in the sub continent, rewards those who favour the right brain more than the left; the harnessing of intuition and artistry over method and rigid discipline.
Will Tahir be able to breach the defences of his management’s cultural mindset? The next fortnight will tell.
(Rajesh is a former fast bowler who believes he could have been the answer to India’s long prayer for an ‘express’ paceman. He regularly clocked speeds hovering in the late 80’s and occasionally let fly deliveries that touched the 90’s. Unfortunately for him, the selectors were talking ‘mph’, while he was operating in the metric lane with ‘kmph’. But he moved on from that massive disappointment which resulted from what he termed a ‘miscommunication’, and became a communications professional. After a long innings in advertising as a Creative Director, he co-founded a brand consulting firm called Contrabrand. He lives in Chennai and drives down to work in Bangalore…an arrangement that he finds less time consuming and stressful than getting from one end of Bangalore to the other)
