Indian spin in the post-quartet era

It was unfair, but all the same inevitable, that the spinners who followed the peerless quartet would face comparisons with them. Everything they did would be seen against the background of what Bedi, Prasanna, Chandra and Venkat achieved. To the credit of the spinners who have appeared on the scene over the last 20 years, however, it must be said that, while they cannot be compared with the Fab Four ­ nobody can, for that matter ­ they have more than held their own and have done much to uphold the rich and noble traditions of Indian spin bowling.

That left only Kumble to spearhead the spin attack and it must be said to his credit that, virtually on his own, he has carried the Indian tradition throughout the last decade, during which he has been the country's main strike bowler. Statistically, he is miles ahead of his nearest rival.

In the 80s, for a change, it was an opening bowler, Kapil Dev, who was the main strike bowler. The spinners bowled in his great shadow, but this did not mean that they did not win Test matches for India. Almost as soon as they came on the scene, Dilip Doshi and Shivlal Yadav proved to be a competitive strike force. Doshi, a left-arm spinner from Bengal, had to wait in the wings for long, like Padmakar Shivalkar and Rajinder Goel, because Bedi held centre stage. But for almost four years, he was the fulcrum of the spin attack, and when he was discarded prematurely, he had taken 114 wickets in 33 Tests at an average of 30.71. Yadav, an off-spinner from Hyderabad, was in and out of the Indian team, but his international career lasted from 1979 to 1987, and he finished with 102 wickets from 35 Tests at an average of 35.09.

Then, in the early 80s, came a host of spinners who proved to be match winners. Teenage prodigies Maninder Singh and Laxman Sivaramakrishnan appeared on the scene almost simultaneously. Siva was the most talented young bowler seen for a long time, and it looked like he would be the next great leg-spinner when he bowled India to victory over England at Bombay in 1984 with a match haul of 12 wickets. He took 23 wickets in the series and was named Man of the Series, but astonishingly faded away from the scene sooner than he entered it. Maninder Singh, a protege of Bedi, lasted longer. He also won matches for India, both at home and abroad, and became a good enough strike bowler to take 10 wickets in a match twice in a season. But considering his promise, he never really lived up to potential, a statement that is confirmed by career figures of 88 wickets from 35 Tests at an average of 37.36.

Ravi Shastri, who started out as a left-arm spinner before making his presence felt with the bat, also came up with tidy, if not matchwinning, performances. As a utility man, his career stretched from 1981 to 1992. Gopal Sharma, an off-spinner from Uttar Pradesh, the first from that state to play for India, made a fleeting but generally ineffective appearance. In the late 80s, Arshad Ayub proved to be a useful bowler with his floating off-spinners. And then came Narendra Hirwani, who turned the record books upside-down with his out-of-the-world feat against West Indies at Madras in January 1988. In taking 8 for 61 and 8 for 75, the leg-spinner, then only 19, bowled India to a notable triumph. In the process, his match-haul of 16 for 136 was the best by a bowler on debut in the history of Test cricket, surpassing Bob Massie's feat at Lord's in 1972 by a single run. Neither of these bowlers, however, had an extended career; Ayub's lasted just two years while Hirwani, even though he continued to play for India till 1996, was always struggling to take wickets.

By the early 90s, even as most of the spin bowlers who made their mark in the 80s faded away, a new spin trio seemed to have formed in the combination of Anil Kumble, Venkatapathy Raju and Rajesh Chauhan. For some time, the trio could do little wrong on tailor-made pitches at home. Raju, a slim, wiry left-arm spinner from Hyderabad had his moments, notably when he took six for 12 to bowl India to victory over Sri Lanka at Chandigarh in 1990, but he did not live up to his early success. Chauhan, after a promising start, faded away, especially after his action came under closer scrutiny from the ICC.

That left only Kumble to spearhead the spin attack and it must be said to his credit that, virtually on his own, he has carried the Indian tradition throughout the last decade, during which he has been the country's main strike bowler. Statistically, he is miles ahead of his nearest rival. At the moment of writing, his haul of 276 wickets in 61 Tests is the second-best among Indian bowlers and the best among all Indian spinners. Among contemporaries, Raju with 93 wickets is the next best.

Kumble is not a great spinner of the ball and does not have the fire or the variety of BS Chandrasekhar, to whom he is inevitably compared. But he is remarkably accurate, is always making the ball do things, and is very difficult to get away. The one blemish is that his record away from home is quite unflattering. In his absence through injury over the last year, young off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, improving by leaps and bounds, had a great series against Australia, taking 32 wickets in three Tests and bowling India to a famous victory. This, coupled with the fact that Kumble is back and another promising off-spinner, Sharandeep Singh, is also around, can only augur well for Indian spin bowling in the early years of the 21st century.

History of Indian spin

• From Palwankar to Nayudu
• From Mankad to Gupte
• The Fantastic Four of Indian Cricket