Everything's coming up Bishoo.

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Devendra Bishoo is another leg-spinner who makes me (wrongly of course) feel like I could be a Test bowler. Bryce McGain and Pravin Tambe made me feel like I had time left, that not being in age group sides, or even playing a great standard of club cricket was no barrier to eventually playing Test cricket (or the IPL). Devendra Bishoo makes me feel like being a 5’8” bag of skin and bones is no barrier to top level cricket. It is of course, and despite appearances, Devendra Bishoo has more spinning talent in his fingers than I do in my whole body (plus more muscle and fitness etc.)

It’s been a long road back. Bishoo’s first year of Test cricket brought him the ICC Emerging Player award, after just five Tests in four months. That might have been premature, but his figures up to that point of 21 wickets at 35.42 don’t do justice to the overs he bowled, long spells at home against Pakistan and India, and the promise he showed against quality players of spin.

Soon after that award, he picked up his first five wicket haul, against Bangladesh at Dhaka, but a difficult tour of India meant that after one further Test at home against Australia, he was jettisoned. He had three years in the wilderness, bowling domestically, learning and growing.

This is the second Test match of Bishoo 2.0. The first was a long slog for a four wicket haul against England. This was a joyous celebration of everything leg-spin can do. He got all of the leggie classics. The edges to slip, off balance, beaten in the flight, dismissed by the spin. Steven Smith, comprehensively stumped, the fleet footed Aussie dancing past the lure, pulled back half-way down. He saw you coming, mate.

Then the coup de grâce: twenty-two years to the day after the Ball of the Century, Bishoo produced his own version. Of course, he’s not Shane Warne, so replace Gatting with Haddin, take away about a foot of spin and note how poorly the Aussie wicketkeeper played it. Still a great ball though.

He secured his five-for with Samuels catching Mitchell Johnson on the sweep, then secured his Mitchell two-for (and sixth wicket overall) when Starc swung over the top of a leggie from around the wicket for the easiest clean bowled you could think of.

He could be even better. Either adding the googly, or sorting out his seam position - which is generally more scrambled than it could be - could add another dimension to his attack, with either extra spin or the ability to threaten the inside edge.

The one big thing he has to work on his his knuckles. Most leggies gets problems with the first knuckle on the ring finger because unless you’re gripping the ball loosely like Warne used to, you’re going to get cuts and blisters on it which make bowling painful. He went off the field for treatment on it just after his sixth wicket, and actually missed a Test in the England series because of it.

The only way to get past the problem is to bowl and bowl and bowl, creating a callous on the finger which hardens and stops blisters developing. That’s a minor problem though. He ended up with 6-80, the best innings figures by a leg-spinner since Danish Kaneria took 7-168 back in 2009. In fact, in the last five years, only five leg-spinners have five wicket hauls: Kaneria, Bishoo, Imran Tahir, Yasir Shah, and Jubair Hossain. Not a great list, a match-fixer, the bowler with the worst match figures ever, and

Shane Warne, Stuart MacGill and Anil Kumble spoilt us for leg-spin, over a fifteen year period where we also had Murali as the leggiest offie of all time. Things have changed now. There are no great leg-spinners around, none even threaten to be great. We have to live within these reduced parameters. You never know, there might be a future great out there, developing, bowling, gestating even, but for now Devendra Bishoo is good enough.

Where is terrifying Mitch?

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For a while I was terrified of Mitchell Johnson. There was an Ashes series, I’m told, where he was very frightening. Personally I don’t remember. It does seem strange that two Ashes in a row will be in England, but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t an Ashes series during either of the last two winters.

Joking aside, for two series eighteen months ago, Mitchell Johnson terrorised England and South Africa. In three and a half months, he went from has-been laughing stock to the best and fastest bowler in the world.

Since then, he has 22 wickets at 30.59, and while those figures aren’t that bad, they’re also not that great for a bowler of his supposed class. He doesn’t have a five wicket innings haul in that time, or for that matter more than five in a match.

Look back to the World Cup, and those figures have more lustre, with 15 wickets at 21.73. Forward to the IPL, and it’s pretty terrible, averaging 37.33 with an economy rate of 9.37 for his nine wickets.

Now it’s his first taste of Test cricket since India at home just before the World Cup, and Australia are in Dominica. His first spell of the match ended after three overs, not a short spell by design, like he was used to great effect in the last Ashes, instead a bowler taken off because he was bowling poorly. He improved in later spells, getting Shai Hope caught at gully, and castling Denesh Ramdin.

There’s something missing though, and it’s extreme pace. His slingy action and left arm delivery still make him awkward to face, but with his pace dropping from 150 to 140kph, his menace is diminished. The visceral thrill you’d feel, even in the safety of your living room, has faded.

When he was troubling the best batsmen from two very good teams, it seemed like new version Mitch was here to stay. He’d been great before, but he’d never been so purely terrifying. But maybe that’s the problem, maybe he was never going to sustain that pace, and therefore that terror. He wasn’t swinging it. That was how he had his initial success, six years ago now, but he’d abandoned that to be the battering ram that broke England apart.

Fast-forward a month or so, past this two Test hors d'oeuvres, and it’s the Ashes. The scene of his greatest heights and his lowest lows. The mustached terror, and the ridiculed spray gun. Are this England team still scarred, or do the new guns hold no fear? Which Mitch shall we see? Terror, terrible, or just… this.

West Indies selection mistakes prove crucial to England comeback

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Cricket is all about mistakes. Wickets drive the game forward, and they’re rarely down to an unplayable ball. Fielding mistakes, dropped catches, poor shots, poor shot selection. Then there’s the off-field mistakes. Wrong team, wrong call at the toss.

The first day of the Test series between the West Indies and England was defined by mistakes, most of them made before the first ball was bowled. The first mistake was made by both teams, not playing two spinners.

Both teams went in with a specialist finger-spinner, and left out a leg-spinner. For England, it seemed more understandable. Those watching England’s warm-ups and net practice report that Rashid, in the words of George Dobell, “is not currently in the form to select.”

But net bowling is one thing, Test cricket is another thing entirely. Perhaps Rashid wouldn’t merit selection as an only spinner, but as a second spinner, batting at seven, even if he didn’t contribute wickets, his overs would be expendable. England may have made the correct decision, but it wasn’t the brave one, it could still prove to be a mistake on a pitch where seamers found it difficult once the new ball's shine faded.

Rashid’s selection was a risk worth taking, but Devendra Bishoo’s was an obvious choice spurned. I’ve written extensively about West Indies’ spinners, so it hardly needs repeating. Suffice to say, Bishoo is in form, the pitch should spin, and England are inclined to self-destruct at the mere possibility of leg-spin (witness Steven Smith’s wickets in the 2013 Ashes - from a bowler well inferior to Bishoo).

If you’re not with me on my leg-spin hobby horse, fair enough, but one decision which will take some explaining is Denesh Ramdin’s decision to bowl upon winning the toss. It wasn’t quite Nasser Hussain at Brisbane levels of misguided, but England are not quite the 2002 Australians.

The decision was flattered by three early wickets, confirming Denesh Ramdin’s reasoning at the toss of early moisture. However, making a decision based on early moisture can backfire when it evaporates. The moisture did, the swing slowly ebbed, Bell and Root got in and made hay.

Then there were the on-field mistakes. Sulieman Benn dropped Root at mid-wicket on 61. He went on to make another 22. Ian Bell edged through a vacant third slip on 21; he went on to make another 122.

Still, as the game goes on, the fundamental bowling mistakes may cost West Indies just as much. Bowling too short as the day went on, waywardness in the face of stubborn, then increasingly fluent resistance.

England have been known for starting series slowly, but what was impressive for them today is that they didn’t let it degenerate beyond 34-3. Perhaps the best analogue for today is the first Test two years ago in New Zealand. England were confronted with a decent but not world beating attack, and after losing early wickets, batsmen never got in and never got a chance to grind the bowlers down.

Here, the bowlers were ground down. It seems a long time ago now, but 16 overs in to the day, Gary Ballance had just succumbed and each of the West Indies’ quicks had a wicket, whilst Benn when he came on also threatened, but only briefly. But good batting exposed the West Indies bowlers.

Individually they’re all talented, but they were thrown a raw deal by their captain, and his lack of leadership in the field meant that the day drifted, the West Indies drifted and squandered their opportunity.

Perhaps the lack of Bishoo defined the day. After the early wickets, the West Indies seamers searched too hard for wickets, bowling bad balls in the process. Add Bishoo to the equation and you have another wicket taker in the middle overs of the day, allowing the seamers to bowl consistently and not worry about blasting out wickets.

Add Bishoo as a fifth bowler and you eliminate the costly and impotent overs from Samuels, you take some burden off the seamers (and Benn for that matter), allowing them to be fresher late in the day for the second new ball. Put simply, when coming up against the quality of Bell and Root, the West Indies needed more incision and more overs and they left the man who could have provided that out. Big mistake.

The new spin kings of the Caribbean

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It’s six years since England last toured the West Indies for a Test series and since then the ongoing development in West Indies regional cricket has continued to be towards the spinners. Thirty years ago every regional team had two or three decent pacers, now each plays at least two spinners. Times have changed.

In the last first class game at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, site of the first Test, 23 of the 32 wickets to fall went to spin. In the last game at the second Test venue that figure was 18 out of 25, and at the third Test venue 20 out of 31. Three matches, 61 of 88 wickets going to spinners. Where pace once ruled, spin is now king.

That hasn’t translated to West Indies’ Test cricket though. Since England last played Tests in the Caribbean, they’ve been through a number of spinners, but essentially, five main contenders. Three still contend: Benn, Bishoo, and Permaul. This domestic season, the first extended one, has brought to light three other serious contenders yet to play international cricket: Warrican, Jacobs and Khan.

The two to have dropped out of the reckoning are Shane Shillingford and Sunil Narine. Both have dealt with suspect actions and both are reduced with their new actions. Narine will continue to play in the limited overs teams, but Shillingford needs greater domestic form to push his way back in.

The man who replaced Shillingford - Sulieman Benn - is the West Indies’ number one spinner currently, having taken 34 wickets at 32.05 in Tests since he returned to the team in mid-2014. However, if you take out the two matches against Bangladesh where he harvested 14 cheap wickets, he’s struggled to be incisive, with 20 wickets at 45.80. Still, it would be uncharitable to discount the matches against Bangladesh, a team who usually play spin well. Benn deserves to keep his place… for now.

Pushing him for the spinner’s slot, and likely for a second spinner if needed, are the Guyanese spin twins, Devendra Bishoo and Veerasammy Permaul. Both have previous Test match experience, Permaul’s the more recent, and Bishoo’s the more extensive. Both have had a fantastic First-class season. Permaul sits atop the wicket-takers list with 63 at 14.49 and Bishoo is not far behind with 57 at 17.59.

On the surface, with five spinners heading the wicket-takers list (Veerasammy Permaul, Devendra Bishoo, Imran Khan, Jomel Warrican and Damion Jacobs), spin bowling looks rosy in the West Indies, but all isn’t quite as it seems. Despite at least five years of spinners dominating, batsmen still haven’t figured out how to counter them. Any spinner able to spin the ball reasonably hard and hit a consistent line and length is almost guaranteed an average in the low 20s. Guile barely required. Stats should be adjusted accordingly.

West Indies selectors have quite rightly not put too much stock in these inflated (or deflated really) figures, but with Benn being nearly 34, it’s time for them to look to the future. Beyond Bishoo and Permaul, two other spinners have come to the fore in the last year.

One is Barbados’s Jomel Warrican. A slow left arm spinner who bowls with an economical action, the young bowler harvested wickets as part of a decent Barbados team. 49 wickets at 14.98 was quite a statement, and pushed him ahead of Ashley Nurse by the end of the season as the team’s number one spinner.

The other was Jamaica’s Damion Jacobs. Continuing the trend of success for spinners taking the ball away from right handers, the fifth placed of the top bowlers is a late-developing leg-spinner. Jacobs just turned 30, yet only made his First-class debut a year ago. With Nikita Miller and Odeon Brown to get past, it’s understandable that he didn’t get a chance sooner.

Despite his age, Jacobs shouldn’t be discounted for future higher honours. Clarrie Grimmett to name one, only made his Test debut at the age of 33 (although, to use two conflicting examples, Bryce McGain made his debut 36 and Bob Holland at 38). Leg-spinners can take longer to develop, and have some of their best years (Shane Warne in 2005) at older ages than other bowlers.

Returning to the figures, spinners averages are significantly lower than what they’d get in a country with better pitches and batsmen. Take Sunil Narine’s domestic FC average as a benchline. He’s scalped wickets at a barely believable 11.54. That needs adjusting upwards get his true worth.

One way of doing this is calculating the overall average of all spinners in the Regional 4-Day competition. A long evening with Cricinfo and a spreadsheet later, and I worked out that the average of all spinners who bowled relatively often (either at least 10 wickets in the season or more than 0.5 of a wicket a game in their FC career) this season was 23.28.

That’s pretty low. Compare it to  So spinners figures in the West Indies should be taken as relative to this low bar. Slip under it and you’re performing above average, above it and you’re below par.

Applying this metric and we see that the likes of Permaul and Bishoo are well under par averaging in the teens. Permaul and Warrican lead the way with averages around 14, Jacobs and Bishoo are a little further back around 17, but still impressive, and Imran Khan’s figures suddenly look not as great, only slipping marginally under the average, taking his wickets at 21.89. With four spinners performing better than him, Khan slips out of the equation for now.

Having benchmarked West Indies’ spinners against their peers, I also wanted to see what their figures would look like in a country where spinners find it harder. In the 2014 County Championship Division 1 season, the average spinner (calculated in the same way as before) would have taken their wickets at 39.63. That is a factor of 1.7 higher than in the West Indies, so to compare spinners across competitions, we times West Indies’ averages by that.

Permaul and Warrican’s averages adjust to 23.96 and 25.50 respectively. That gives them lower averages than the likes of Jeetan Patel and Adil Rashid, the best performing spinners in an seemingly unusually spin unfriendly year. Bishoo and Jacobs’ averages adjust to 29.05 and 30.32, giving them better averages than the likes of Simon Kerrigan and George Dockrell.

If you do the same with the Division Two figures (a division much friendlier to spinners with an average of 32.71), Permaul beats all comers, Warrican and Bishoo had a year similar to Gareth Batty’s 2014, and Damion Jacobs compares favourably with Monty Panesar and Danny Briggs.

In the end, these stats are instructive but not conclusive. Bishoo is currently the first in line behind Benn, jumping above Permaul probably due to more extensive Test experience and the selectors reluctance to go into a Test with two left-arm spinners. Warrican and Jacobs now need to show they can repeat or better their seasons. If they can, West Indies’ spin stocks may be healthier than they have been for a long time.

McCullum’s three balls

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Take a ball Brendon. Surely?

It was over the moment the ball hit the stumps. New Zealand have come back before, but their head had been cut off. It was not to be at the MCG, not against Australia this time. McCullum gone: game gone.

Will those three balls play over and over again in Brendon McCullum’s head? He was always going to hit out off the first ball. When you’ve lead from the front all tournament, it looks like a backward step to take a ball. But should he have?

First ball, between bat and pad as McCullum swings, missing off stump. Second ball, between bat and pad as McCullum swings, missing leg stump. Third ball. Zing bails. Detonate.

It takes immense bravery to hit that indiscriminately at the beginning of the innings. Brendon McCullum hit his first ball of the tournament for four; the first ball of the next match he sliced over cover for one attempting to do the same. Against England he actually dabbed his first ball for one, but second ball he cut for six.

Then against Australia he came up against Mitchell Starc for the first time in the tournament. Brendon McCullum was Starc’s first Test wicket. It’s a duel that can’t be dull. Pacey, swinging ball against blunderbuss bat.

Round one went to McCullum. Starc started with a wide as McCullum charged. Then he bowled full and McCullum launched himself at it. Six over extra cover, full swing of the bat ending up over the shoulder.  Starc bowled him nine balls. Two went for four, one went for six, and McCullum harvested 17 runs. Peaking too soon?

Sometimes McCullum did take a ball. Against Afghanistan he was positively sedate, pushing a single off his first ball before launching Dawlat Zadran for two fours Against Bangladesh he had to wait until his third ball for a boundary.

In the quarter final against West Indies he even accorded Jason Holder the honour of defending a ball, taking an age in McCullum terms, until his fourth ball, to hit a boundary.

Could he have waited? Could he have taken a ball? Could everything have been different?

Who knows.

Aside from his batting, McCullum’s spring uncoiled fielding has been a trademark throughout the World Cup. Time after time he’s chased a ball down to the boundary, legs whirring. Instead of sliding to stop it, McCullum dives. Head first, no regard for life and limb. Keep the ball inside the boundary, worry about the advertising hoardings later. (Not long later)

Not many captains have blended leading from the front in so many ways with tactical agility. He opens the innings, biting as much as he can from targets or setting up for a big score for others. He fields like a man possesed, besting men ten years his junior. He is New Zealand’s captain. Mitchell Starc may have got Man of the Tournament, but this was Brendon McCullum’s World Cup in all but one way.

New Zealand are magic

Trent Boult rips a ball past the outside edge. Matt Henry jars one into the splice. Grant Elliott backhands one past the stumps. Brendon McCullum chases a ball down like it’s a baby in a pram rolling towards a cliff. New Zealand are at Eden Park, but it feels like the Colosseum.

South Africa are present, but barely. After three overs they have 20, the next ten harvest 23, painfully eked out off the edge and the splice. A lot is made of Brendon McCullum’s tactical brilliance, but it’s overstated. What really sets him apart is his extraordinary commitment in the field (helped by his perpetual motion legs) and willingness not to let the game drift.

His captaincy is inventive, but like an inventor, sometimes it blows up in his face. It wasn’t a game changing mistake, but giving Trent Boult a seventh over in his first spell was the wrong move, as Boult dropped short repeatedly, showing that slight fatigue that should have been spotted and gave away twelve. 

Brendon McCullum’s natural leadership style has dovetailed with the current ODI playing conditions. As teams have put more emphasis on building through the innings and exploding at the death, McCullum has attacked with the new ball and forced opponents to pick their poison.

Either they attack and risk losing too many wickets, or they defend and reduce the platform to launch from. Australia made the former mistake, forgetting that in the battle between high class swing and big hitting, the bowlers will win. England made the latter mistake. 

But with the bat, where they’ve zigged, he’s zagged, swinging like a windmill at anything that comes along, and dispatching most of it into the outfield or the stands. For most teams, 59 is a decent score from an opener, but one in which the opener failed to see it through. McCullum doesn’t even think of seeing it through. If he did he could score 300.

Kane Williamson is so often a totemic figure in the New Zealand batting that, measured elegance the other pole to McCullum. Even though it seems silly to think it now, after he fell I almost conceded the game for them. It seemed like the perfect combination: a quick innings from McCullum to bring down the required rate, and a big one from Williamson to take it deep and leave the death over hitters a manageable task. 

But when he under-edged a pull, his reaction showed how crucial he knew his role was. The zing bails lit up and Williamson bowed his head and trudged off. When Ross Taylor ran out Martin Guptill, the other main candidate for a big innings, it was left to Elliott and Anderson.

Grant Elliott was batting a place too high. Grant Elliott’s bowling lacked much of anything. Grant Elliott barely made the squad. Grant Elliott won a World Cup semi-final with a six.

New Zealand are magic.

Selfishness and West Indies batting

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It’s clear that the West Indies don’t have a strong and united team. Perhaps the only thing they’re united on is abandoning tours. In India they left in body, in South Africa today they left in spirit. Are the West Indies’ best batsmen, the men who should be grafting runs, selfish?

Marlon Samuels is more arrogant than he has any right to be. Virat Kohli can say he has no respect for Mitchell Johnson if he’s just made 499 runs at 83.16 in the series, but can Samuels say that no spinner in the world can bowl at him with a Test average of 35.72?

He’s received, perhaps rightly, a great deal of criticism for getting caught at long on, precipitating another West Indies collapse, but the criticism from the commentators and pundits fell down in one crucial way. When Samuels had hit Harmer for two sixes and an aerially struck four, all with long on in place, he was applauded for the shots, but labelled “brainless” by Bob Willis for trying to do the same thing again.

A less obvious example of selfishness was Shivnarine Chanderpaul. Compare his batting with the tail to Kumar Sangakkara’s. The Sri Lankan legend built three significant partnerships with lower order batsmen to give his team an unexpected lead. He did that by taking as much responsibility as possible, giving his partners one or two balls an over at most whenever possible, helping them settle and even coaxing the odd defensive shot out of Rangana Herath.

While Samuels was chastised for taking too much risk, Chanderpaul (despite being the owner of an 69 ball Test century, proof he can take the attack to teams) seemingly refused to take responsibility, leaving tail-enders who either didn’t have the talent or the temperament to cope with a fired up Dale Steyn.

It would be difficult to blame him giving Jason Holder, an emerging all-rounder, the strike, and Jerome Taylor got out too soon to try to protect him. However, the ball after that wicket he blocked the last ball of an over, not even trying to get the single to protect the number ten, Sulieman Benn. Lo and behold, Benn nicked off against Steyn next over, sucummbing to bowling that was just too good for him.

Next, Chanderpaul took an ill-advised single off the fifth ball of that over, giving Shannon Gabriel possibly a whole over against Simon Harmer. Again Chanderpaul kept himself away from danger, responding to Gabriel’s call for a single off the fourth ball of that over then padding away the last ball of the over, not even trying to take a single to get to Steyn’s end.

Gabriel ended up facing ten of the fourteen balls in that last wicket partnership. The final indignity from Chanderpaul was running himself out taking a ludicrous single to get on strike for one ball, which he presumably would have left alone to give Gabriel the strike yet again.

Samuels will get more blame, but the utterly brainlessness came from Holder and particularly Taylor’s shots, and Chanderpaul’s utter lack of desire to take responsibility for shepherding the tail. You get the feeling that Chanderpaul thinks that if he gets a red-inker that he’s done his bit. He hasn’t.

Is he too old for this shit? Not physically or in terms of ability to score Test runs, but has Chanderpaul’s formidable mental strength been worn down by years of struggle? He’s just as good as ever at batting within himself, but has he lost the mental strength to be the main man, sometimes the only man. If he has, it’s time to go.