It’s akin to the clan of Pele facing a dearth in striking options. Though Bishan Singh Bedi is widely reckoned to be the finest ever exponent of left-arm spin bowling, he who transpired the craft to art, his ilk is endangered in India’s landscape. While there is a general paucity of finger spinners in the country, the legacy of Bedi, Vinoo Mankad Padmakar Shivalkar, Rajinder Goel and Dilip Doshi has even less heirs.
While none of them was armed with the guile of Bedi or Doshi, India at least possessed a few lefties till a decade ago. The dawn of a generation of canny seam pacers, in whom skippers furnished profuse faith, meant that only two specialist spinners got the nod on spin-conducive Indian strips and one abroad. These spinners were inevitably Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. Fielding three spinners was a rarity, just like playing three medium pacers in the 1960s and 1970s, the halcyon days of the spin quartet.
But in between Kumble’s foray and Harbhajan’s burst, quite a few lefties were tried and tested. Fragile framed Venkatapathy Raju oozed initial promise and was Kumble’s partner-in-chief in the mid-1990s. He had his share of honour — taking 20 wickets in the 1994-95 home series against the West Indies. But ineptness on overseas tracks, where he managed only 22 wickets in 12 Tests, proved to be his undoing. Also, Kumble’s spearheading the attack reduced him to the periphery. Though Raju made comebacks against Australia in 1998 and 2001, he was only a silhouette of his old self.
Simultaneous to Raju’s decline was the dawn of Sunil Joshi, who impressed the selectors with his silky action and adeptness with the bat down the order. On the back of domestic consistency, Joshi made his debut against England at Birmingham in 1996, but couldn’t quite cement his place in the squad. More of a hardworking bowler, Joshi’s variations were limited, most notably the arm-ball, a left-armer’s most potent weapon, was absent. “Good for Karnataka but not for India,” was the common refrain.
Yet, Joshi had his moment under the sun, rather ironically on an overcast afternoon in Nairobi, when he hoodwinked the South African batsmen with flight and churned out figures of 10-6-6-5. Strangely, the skippers (Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammad Azharuddin) who extolled Joshi’s mesmerizing loop didn’t invest enough confidence in him. Quite often, he was only part of the touring party.
Mumbai’s Nilesh Kulkarni and Delhi’s Rahul Sanghvi, too, were experimented with but both were equally inadequate for the needs of international cricket.
When finally the selectors backed Joshi, the skipper (Sourav Ganguly) didn’t. Murali Kartik was the man. Naturally, Ganguly meted out a raw deal to Kartik, often deploying him as a defensive option; that is on the rare occasions when he wasn’t carrying the drinks. All the same, Ganguly couldn’t be overly blamed as he had Kumble and Harbhajan at his disposal, besides a swarm of young fast bowlers.
By any yardstick, Kartik, mentored by Bedi himself, was the most talented leftie finger-spinner since Maninder Singh. He had everything that a left-armer could wish in his armour — the loop, flight, turn and a sinuous arm-ball — best exemplified by his spellbinding spell against Australia in Mumbai (2007). And the strip was dissimilar from the one he accounted for seven Australian wickets (match) in 2004.
Kartik plotted his dismissals with subtle variations in pace, drift and flight, and of course the scything arm-ball. Kartik rightly felt that he had arrived, but three ODIs later he was back in the lurch. Similar was his fate in Tests, when he lived only on more Test after spinning India to victory against Australia in 2004. Though he has been among the wickets on the domestic and county circuits, Team India’s doors seem perennially shut on him.
Hopefully, such a fate won’t befall Pragyan Ojha, a loopy customer deemed to be talented. Else, the exalted art form of left-arm spin will fade into oblivion in its heartland.
sandipgopal@gmail.com