Tabraiz Shamsi and left-arm wrist spin

Plus notes on Australia and England

Close your eyes for a second and imagine a bowler running in to you. As you think about that, I can already guess what you are seeing. Most of the bowlers will be right arm. There will be a few spinners in there too. A few of you might think about left-arm pace bowlers. But my guess is most of you just saw right arm seam. That is because at the professional level it’s more than 50% of deliveries. And I’m thinking that almost none of you saw a left-arm wrist spinner.

And chances are growing up if you played cricket, you barely faced one. There are very few left-arm bowlers at the amateur level, and even in the places with more wrist spin, there is still almost no left-arm spin around.

Put it this way, when a young South African spinner was coming through the system; he bowled left-arm wrist spin because his hero was Shane Warne. But his coaches told him that left-arm wrist spinners turn the ball into right-handed batters, and the better option was left-arm finger spin when which went the other way.

That cricketer, as you may have guessed, was Robin Peterson. Look, it worked out well for him, but I do wonder how many left-arm wrist spinners have been dissuaded by coaches who thought they spun it the wrong way.