Favorite Spin Bowler

Hi!

My favourite is Saqlain.

I have lots of favorite spinner but my favorite one is m.muralidharan he is exceptionally superb and he spin the bowl on both sides he is legend and i like him ..



Edited by Andrew_Wood_CW - 04 October 2011 at 12:09pm

Shane Warne is my favourite spinner, but Stuart MacGill is not the far behind. My favourite non-Australian spinner would definitely be Saqlain Mushtaq and no one else can compare to him when it comes to finger spin in the times that i Have watched cricket.

Wasn't he just a beauty in ODIs especially Zuhair? I remember I was still a young lad watching the 2001 triangular ODI series in England between England, Pakistan and Australia and he bamboozled Martyn with this 'top spinner'. All the commentators, even back in 99/00 were calling it a 'top spinner'. They didn't know what it was. It turned out to be the doosra, and hasn't it revolutionised finger spin. Certainty he did for off spin what Warne did for leg spin. Although, Warne turned out to be a lot more successful on the field. Two top cricketers.

Saeed Ajmal, who is just one year younger has copied his style with success... although there's the slight difference in action. Saqqi was somewhat more side-on and his doosra was much harder to pick, and he had a much better offie because of his side on action. I never doubted his action, whereas Ajmal has that stop and jerk action. For me that's a big reason why Saqqi is such a top bowler in my book, he changed off spin, but did it within the confines of the rules. I'll never rate Murali on that basis, and I'm sorry to say that.

I concur completely - you can throw Afridi in your list, whenever he bowls that 'faster ball' at 80+mph I cringe (although his leggie and toppie are absolutely fine).

Swann has made it obvious that the doosra is too hard to bowl legitimately and hence he won't bowl it. In Australia they have decided to discourage offies from bowling the doosra as well. Swann is a classical off spinner with a good action and nice turning offie.

One thing you'll see with Ajmal is that he won't bowl his offie with the seam at 45 degrees like someone like Swann. He does this so the batsman can't pick if it's a doosra or offie, but at the end of the day it means his offie suffers and isn't a particularly good ball or one that drifts or dips much.

Saqqi was awesome when the doosra wasn't even called a doosra and he didn't bowl it too much. He just bowled it a bit too much at the end and almost forgot how good his off break really was. A real big shame, such a great bowler to watch , almost as exciting as Warne.

He did indeed overuse it, but he got dropped when he was something like 28. It's ridiculous. Ajmal is one year younger than him, there's no reason why Saqqi shouldn't still be playing and have over 100 tests under his belt. PCB let us all down by taking him away from us.

PCB treats some of their truly great players with absolute shame. The way Wasim was left out, same with Waqar and Saeed Anwar. Completely and utterly disgraceful.

Pakistan has had some brilliant players to watch - there's no doubt that Pakistan is my 2nd favourite team to watch. I grew up on a diet of Wasim, Waqar, Saqqi, Mushi, Saeed, Youhana, Shoaib and loved every minute of it.

I loved watching Yousuf Youhana - might be a wrong assessment but he was more flamboyant to me before he converted to Islam.  He became a much better batsman after his conversion - didn't lose any elegance at all though.  As much as Inzimam was better, I loved watching Mohammed Yousuf more due to his elegance - it was superb.

Bhajji has been awful for a long time. I wouldn't write him off - people were writing off Hussey after a lean 10 tests but he came back with a bang. Bhajji is a professional, despite his stupid antics, and I'm sure he'll work himself out.   Zuhair is spot on, I'm not a fan either and I think some of his deliveries looks illegitimate. His line is almost always wrong, I don't know who the hell tells him to bowl on middle/middle-leg. He needs to bowl outside off stump to the right handers and always aim to bowl the batsman through the gate.

His line is bad, but he also seldom throws the ball up either - I'd like to see him looking for dip and loop. There's really nothing special about him at all, he doesn't do anything different from Yuvraj even... doesn't even bowl the doosra anymore.

Mark Richardson!