Crash: The 100-year stat which proves left-arm spinners have been an elusive force for Australia
Australia’s selectors have openly encouraged players with a special skill set this nation cannot seem to find, with our best having last played a Test more than 100 years ago.
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Pick the odd name out … Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Nathan Lyon and Big Jack Saunders.
Maybe the better question would be what do these four men have in common?
The answer is they are Australia’s leading Test wicket-takers in their specialist skills … Warne (708) is the top leg-spinner (and highest overall), McGrath (563) the top quick, Lyon (530) the top off spinner and then, from somewhere beyond Pluto, comes cricket’s invisible man.
Former Victorian Jack Saunders is Australia’s leading left-arm spinner with just 79 wickets.
It’s a weird, quite unexplainable stat. Australia has played 866 Tests over 147 years yet the best left-arm spinner in the country has taken 79 Test wickets in 14 Tests, dying 97 years ago, aged 51, in Toorak.
We get that Australia, with its flat decks, suits wrist spinners like Warne who put a bit of whip on the ball rather than your grinding finger spinner … but still.
Australia’s chairman of selectors George Bailey would love this anomaly addressed to the point where at this week’s press conference he issued an open plea for up-and-comers to develop this elusive skill.
His words came after New Zealand’s modestly credentialed left armed slow man Mitchell Santner upended India this week with 13 wickets to snatch a Test and an instantly iconic Test series win in India.
“I’m happy to very much throw it out there that it is an incredible skill set in the subcontinent and we’ve seen that for many years,” Bailey said.
“Realistically there’s not a huge amount of players in domestic cricket that are doing it, so it’s something we’re looking to expose.’’
Australia’s left arm spinners – finger and wrist – have been a quirky lot.
Saunders, with a moustache twirled and curled at both ends, looks like an old time movie star.
Then there is one of the greatest of all cricket stories, Bert “Dainty’’ Ironmonger who did not play first class cricket for 33 years and had to wait another 13 for his Test debut.
One of 10 children, Ironmonger was raised in Ipswich where he worked as a gardener for the Ipswich City Council before moving to Victoria where he lived in St Kilda, Shane Warne’s old hunting ground.
Warne, who had a great affection for all things slow bowling, even found out what address the long departed Ironmonger lived in on St Kilda road just to give it a glance as he passed by.
India has had the gifted left-arm magician Bishen Bedi and, more recently Ravi Jadeja. New Zealand had Dan Vettori and England Derek Underwood.
But for Australia, the search goes on … and on.
Originally published as Crash: The 100-year stat which proves left-arm spinners have been an elusive force for Australia
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